The real YCW can be recognized by three inseparable objectives or three touchstones, which allow it to be distinguished from any fake or caricature.
- – The YCW aims to transform (conquer) the mass of working youth.
- – The YCW aims to re-Christianise the real life of working-class youth.
- – The YCW aims to reclaim the milieu or environment in which the mass of young workers work and live.
I. – WORKING MASSES
a) The YCW is a mass movement.
The YCW does not wish to bring together a privileged few whom it separates from the mass of their work comrades, or pits against them, or even worse, turns them into the dominators and exploiters of their working brothers and sisters.
It is just the opposite.
The YCW aims to bring together the mass of young workers, all young workers, to form, protect and defend them.
That is its reason for being, the reason for its foundation.
All its organization, action and methodology is determined by this formal goal: to transform the mass of young workers.
The mass of young workers: from each street, each district, each parish, each commune, each region, all over the country.
The mass of young workers in every workshop, factory and office as well as every industrial, commercial and financial enterprises and government administration.
Why the masses?
Because it is the masses who need the YCW, because the masses cannot be saved without the YCW
Left to themselves, dispersed among other works, the masses are fatally lost.
As long as we fail to understand this need, we will understand nothing of the problem of adolescence and working youth.
And yet this problem is decisive for young workers: the whole future of the working class depends on its solution.
b) Reaching the masses through the elite.
Make no mistake, however. A mass movement does not mean a superficial movement, a movement with the most minimal requirements and the shallowest influence! No, a thousand times no!
The YCW aims for the highest ideal, the greatest holiness, the most absolute perfection for the mass of young workers. And to achieve this, it never starts with a large number.
A true mass movement is IMPOSSIBLE without the formation of an elite, without a nucleus of militants.
Otherwise, we will simply have a herd, a gang, a crowd!
Only a well-trained elite and a nucleus of militants capable and dedicated will be able to form and organize the mass.
A mass movement has a much greater need of a very well-formed elite of activists than any so-called project of the elite, no matter how apostolic and supernatural it may be.
However, in order for this elite to be able to act on the masses, to be able to transform and train them, it must be in contact with them, it must mix with and live the life of the masses; we cannot act on the masses from a distance. The elite, i.e. the nucleus of activists, is the leaven in the dough, the salt in the food, the seed, the heart, the soul.
The tree will be like the seed.
And the movement will be like its elite and activists!
There are no exceptions!
c) Transforming the masses by teamwork.
However, the elite, i.e. the militants will not be able to act deeply, effectively and methodically on a crowd or large number of people at the same time. The work of the apostolate, especially with the masses, is not a series of projects. The work of the real apostolate means working with souls, and it is always personal and interior. External work via the press, radio and cinema, by means of speeches, large meetings or demonstrations, or via the mass media is not enough. It is necessary to impact on public opinion and thus support an often heroic internal effort. In order to expose truly scandalous abuses, it will never be enough to form souls and change hearts, engender ineradicable convictions or to ensure obscure and persistent dedication.
True apostolic work is obscure, humble, hidden work. The true apostle adapts and understands the soul he wishes to form; he follows up, provides support, advises and lifts them up. This cannot be done on a large number of people at the same time. This is why the real work of the YCW activist needs to be done by a team or a group. It is in small cells, similar to small communities, that the activist acts on and with his teammates. Small teams, small groups of six members at most, who know each other, form and love one another and in which the militant is the leader, the trainer, the manager. At the head of each local section, there is a committee, which is made up of militants each of whom is responsible for a few members. Thus all the work of the JOC becomes more precise and spreads out. The publicity, achievements and meetings become genuinely formative. No member is lost from sight or forgotten among more general concerns. Each one is monitored, supported and followed up.
Jocist action and Jocist transformation targeting and reaching out to the masses is an in depth project; it is truly formative and ambitious for the spiritual life of the most humble of young workers. Those who judge the YCW only by its publications, congresses, events, external achievements and meetings are deceiving themselves! Such fireworks and enthusiasm are necessary for a youth movement, however, this is not the real YCW or real Jocist action. This latter is found in the intimate, heart-to-heart conversations, in the obscure devotion and the hidden sacrifice of the militant who, in order to go after a lost sheep, knows neither distance, nor fatigue, nor obstacle, often after a long and hard day at work! Therein lies the secret of the YCW! It is written in the golden legend of the Jocist harvest.
II. – WORKING LIFE
The second objective of the YCW is to re-christianise the everyday, ordinary life of the mass of young workers.
Do we think about this enough? Do we know it well enough? Do we live it out enough? With all its problems, its material and moral conditions, incredible difficulties, temptations, scandals, sufferings, revolts, and disappointments?
And yet it is this very life, the whole of this life that must become Christian again if we want young workers to become Christian again.
Not just a life of piety; a life of prayer, Mass and communion; not just life lived together at our local centres or, in meetings, excursions; and not just on Sundays.
No, the whole of everyday, natural daily life, with the family, on the street, at work, with comrades, companions, neighbours and adult workers.
The personal, interior, intellectual and moral life of a child, an adolescent or a young man who is looking, observing, reflecting or comparing, and who thus develops his own world of thoughts, judgments, and personal appreciations that he will retain for life.
The relationships of a young man or young woman, who is experiencing the crisis of adolescence, who feels the need for affection, who is called to marriage, who is initiated into sex life, who seeks to get to know, to have a girlfriend or boyfriend, to get engaged and get married.
His recreational life, including the attractions of the cinema, dancing, sports, examples, conversations, freedoms, appreciations and all situations that surround him or her on every side.
Finally, his or her working life which marks its imprint on every other aspect of life, which will largely determine his or her future; working life with all its new aspects: the environment, comrades, travelling, learning and organisation …
It is this whole life, real life, not an artificial life that it is a question of re-christianising, and thus to exert influence and to achieve goals.
The YCW wants to re-christianise, influence, reform, protect and defend the whole of this life of the mass of young workers.
The whole organization of the YCW, including all its action and all its methodology aims to reach life in this way.
It is this life, which is the subject of the enquiries, studies and articles that form the YCW program including its meetings and publications.
It is this life, which is the subject of all the conversations, discussions and concerns that are on the YCW agenda.
It is this life, which is the target of the services, procedures, demands and claims, which aim simply to protect and defend it.
It is this life that must constantly preoccupy activists, chaplains and leaders in all their contacts with members and in every Jocist initiative and activity.
Its members do not exist for the YCW. Rather the YCW exists for its members, their real life, the sanctification and re-christianisation of this providential life, of this life willed by God for them and for all young workers.
A Jocist section that neglects real life and the real needs of its members and young workers in the locality is not a Jocist section.
An activist who is not interested in real life, the real needs of YCW members and other young workers, and who would not seek to influence and re-christianise it is not a Jocist activist.
I repeat: This is the real mission of the YCW
Everything is organised for this life as a means of influencing, transforming, supernaturalising that life. The spiritual direction of YCW militants, their Eucharistic life, recollections and closed retreats all aim at achieving their sanctification and their apostolate in this real life which must give glory to God!
III. – THE WORKING MILIEU
All of the above explains the third character of the YCW, namely that it aims to re-christianise and reconquer or transform the working milieu.
The first two objectives cannot be achieved if the third is forgotten or neglected. It is impossible to re-christianise the masses and the lives of young workers, if the milieu in which they live and work remains corrupt and corrupting.
We have never stopped insisting on the decisive influence of the milieu. This may have been over-neglected in relation to young workers!
And it is not a matter of developing a new milieu, an artificial environment in which one will lock them up for a few hours per week only to release them afterwards back into their national milieu. Action in an artificial milieu, e.g. at school, local projects, at church, must all be oriented towards the natural milieu. This can only be a start, an effort or a feedback for action in the natural milieu. War is not fought in the barracks, it is fought in the trenches and at the front. The Jocist trenches or the Jocist front is in the natural milieu, the working milieu. That is where the battle is fought, every day, every moment. It is a social battle, a moral battle and areligious battle. This is where souls are lost and won. It is this providential milieu, this milieu desired by God that needs to be reconquered. Have we not forgotten this somewhat? Are we not working too far from the milieu, alongside it and without connection with it. We invite young people to meetings and exercises, in premises without any connection with their natural milieu. When they return, they are not supported. Sometimes they are even smashed, disoriented, or uprooted by their own milieu. The complete opposite needs to be achieved. The natural environment is the mission of the interior. There we need missionary action. That is where we need missionaries.
It is to this mission from within and to this field of apostolate that the YCW aspires.
Let us never forget: Jocist meetings will not suffice; jocist services will not suffice; Jocist publications will not suffice; activities will not suffice. All these are simply means. None is the goal in itself. All of them simply serve to conquer or transform the working environment.
A large meeting that is as lively as you wish is not Jocist merely on that basis. It is essential that the object of the meeting aims at the conquest and transformation of the milieu and that the Jocists leave their meeting more enthusiastic, more decided on the conquest and transformation of the milieu.
A Jocist section that is simply content with meetings and even with services and activities and which is not continually concerned with the action to be exercised in a particular milieu to be conquered, is not a genuine Jocist section. A Jocist section that is not concerned with working-class families, working-class streets, working-class districts of the parish and the commune as well as workplaces, factories, workshops and offices where the young workers of the parish and the commune work, the means of transport which they use to go to work and to return home, the trains, the trams, the buses, such a section is not doing genuine Jocist work,
Jocist activists who do not care about the natural milieu in which their members and other young workers live and work; who do not learn about this milieu, who do not seek to enter this milieu, who are embarrassed, who are not comfortable among the families of their members, who do not visit them, who do not frequent them in their street, their neighborhood, and who do not organise YCW conquest on transport and at work, are not true YCW activists, will never be good YCW leaders and do not understand the YCW.
All YCW services, all Jocist activities, publications, demonstrations as well as every Jocist militant, the whole organisation, all of the action and the whole Jocist methodology aim at the working class milieu, the conquest and transformation of the working class milieu and the re-christianization of the working class milieu.
JOCIST CATHOLIC ACTION
Only then will we understand the true Catholic action desired by the Pope: Conquest and transformation of the lay masses, re-christianisation of lay life, reconquest of the lay milieu.
By lay people, by a lay organisation, by a lay apostolate, by a lay apostolate organised under the direction and authority of the Hierarchy!
Since the laity alone can enter this milieu, they are at home in this milieu because it is their milieu.
“Entry prohibited” to priests, religious, the Hierarchy, except by its militants, its lay apostles and lay missionaries as well as its conquering and radiating members of the militant Church.
“The first apostles of the workers will be workers”.
It is up to the chaplains to train these apostles, to make them capable of this apostolate, to make them ambitious for this apostolate, to provide them with the supernatural resources necessary for this apostolate.
What a transformation of their lay life! Their whole lay life becomes a life of apostolate, a life in the service of the Church, a life in the service of God!
What a power of expansion and transformation for the Church! This organised lay apostolate constitutes the great offensive front of the Church. No longer just on the defensive, but a general, methodical, disciplined offensive for the transformation of all milieux, for infiltration, penetration, the transformation of every milieu.
The laity against secularism!
Laity officially participating in the royal priesthood of the Church, officially mandated by the Ecclesiastical Authority, given a mission by the Hierarchy!
What a prospect!
No, thus conceived, thus organised and supported, the transformation of the working masses, the conquest of working life, the conquest of the working environment is no longer a utopia, nor a chimera!
It is the great miracle of Catholic Action which is taking place, to the consternation of the adversaries of the Church and to the greater glory of God!
J. CARDIJN
SOURCE
Three touchstones of the genuine YCW (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)