Joseph Cardinal Cardijn (1882-1967)

Exemplar for Catholic Democratic Action and Evangelization of the Working Class

Reminder: readers can view the following post, and dozens of other ones, at the Social Catholicism and a Better Kind of Politics website.

As dark clouds continue to threaten the future of the human family, the Catholic faith offers abundant resources and examples upon which we should draw. To the extent we do so, we would be fostering the in-breaking of the Kingdom that Jesus inaugurated, and we would be participating in what St. Paul called the gospel ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18).

Although some Catholics seem to think that a focus on reaching heaven justifies effectively dismissing Catholic Social Doctrine, the authentic Catholic faith is absolutely not an impotent piety that can be lived in separation from our lives in the world. Nor does it allow us to focus on our own salvation to the neglect of the plight of our suffering brothers and sisters. As the Second Vatican Council and many other sources affirm, a living faith—that is, one informed by charity—instead labors to be salt and light (Mt 5:13-16) in the world, to inform the world with the spirit of the Gospel (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), and to bear the fruit of charity for the life of the world (Decree on Priestly Training). Authentic Catholicism is an incarnational faith, one that continues to make present in the world the saving love of God in Christ. In my opinion, the failure to do so explains to a significant extent the loss of faith in the contemporary world, and the desperate situation in the world.

[1965 Photo of Cardinal Joseph Leo Cardijn]

Contemporary Catholics looking for inspiration and guidance in responding to the great challenges of our day would do well to learn about Servant of God Cardinal Joseph Leo Cardijn. If we do, we will discover that he not only did much more for the Church and world than many realize. We will also learn that he provides an example and resources that can help us to address the great challenges facing the human family.

Early Life and Ministry

Joseph Cardijn was born in 1882 in Schaerbeek, which is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital region of Belgium. He was born to poor but devout parents of four children.¹ Cardijn’s father was illiterate and worked is a caretaker, and then as a coal merchant. His mother’s health was too poor to nurse him, so he initially lived with his grandparents. Although his struggling parents had looked forward to the prospects of his contribution to the family finances, they generously and proudly supported his ardent desire to become a priest. At age 15, he began his humanistic studies for the priesthood in 1897 at the nearby seminary in Malines and was ordained in 1906.

Cardijn began his priesthood with a strong desire to evangelize the working class who had become largely alienated from the Church as the industrial revolution had unfolded for generations without an effective Catholic response. Although the example of pioneers like Bishop Wilhelm E. von Ketteler—and the social Catholics he inspired—contributed to the 1891 publication Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor, effective work for social justice was much more the exception than the rule. Cardijn was strengthened in this orientation by Fr. Adolf Daens, who was a significant influence on his life and ministry, and who remains famous in Belgium through a 1992 film about his life. Fr. Joseph Cardijn was a man of deep prayer, and radiated the profound faith, hope and charity that animated him in a way that attracted others.

Cardijn’s ordinary, the revered and visionary Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier agreed to send him to Université catholique de Louvain for further studies in sociological and political sciences. This program not only introduced Cardijn to the relevant scholarship. It also deepened his understanding of “the reality of social life with visits to factories, travel and personal research. Thanks to the friendship established, Cardijn made a series of trips first to Germany, then he participated in the social week of Amies.” He also “had the opportunity to stay with the Catholic industrialist” and social reformer Leon Harmel, who strove to make his factory an exemplar of social reform.²

This short time of study gave the young Fr. Cardijn a good understanding of the range of conditions possible for industrial workers. Whereas exploitation was too often the case, he also understood that much better conditions were possible as he witnessed under an exemplary Catholic like Leon Harmel, about whom a recent monograph has been published. Cardinal Mercier, however, recalled Cardijn in 1907 to teach mathematics, literature, and Latin. Following an illness in 1912, Cardijn was assigned to a parish. There he soon “began to gather young apprentices, workers and employees and launched investigations into their working environment, so that they could experience first-hand the problems of a material, moral and religious nature and learn to judge those situations in order to act and remedy them.”³ Cardijn’s charism and vocation quickly became evident.

Soon, a young bank employee, Fernand Tonnet, also asked Cardijn to organize a similar study circle for boys and to do something “for the youth.” Cardijn’s enthusiastic and intelligent activity was immediately noticed and Cardinal Mercier appointed him Director of Social Works for the Brussels district in 1915.

By this time what we now know as the First World War was raging. As it progressed, Fr. Cardijn engaged in the corporal works of mercy by obtaining food and medicine for soldiers and war victims, and was involved in other “patriotic activities” on behalf of the poor for which he was imprisoned. Picking up on this work after the war, he founded the Young Trade Unionists in 1919 as part of his zealous outreach to win back the working class to the Church. In 1924, this movement was renamed to Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne or JOC for short. In English, it was known as the “Young Christian Workers” (YCW).

I should also mention that Cardijn founded the YCW on a solid spiritual basis, with a deep grounding in prayer and the sacramental life of the Church. Even if the movement sought to include everyone, including non-Catholics, he sought to form an well-formed core to provide sound leadership.

As often happens with new initiatives that seemingly follow self-evidently from the gospel, this work initially met resistance within the Church. By 1925, however, Pope Pius XI had received him at the Vatican, had expressed his delight that someone was finally working to reconcile the Church with the masses, and had affirmed this work as “our own.” In a statement that merits careful consideration so we grasp its significance for today, the eminent theologian Yves Congar, OP, compared “the pope’s approval for Cardijn’s movement” with “Pope Innocent III confirming the Order of Friars Minor for Saint Francis of Assisi centuries prior.” Given that Cardijn’s model of social Catholicism has been largely bypassed in the United States in favor of an alternative socio-political orientation based on culture war issues like abortion, I will continue to revisit this topic.

The movement Cardijn inspired was often called “Jocism,” and it spread rapidly, with its participants called “Jocists.” By 1935, Pius XI had backed it as an “authentic model” for Catholic social action, and by 1938 it had 500,000 members. Cardijn was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940, and released in 1942, before narrowly escaping an attempt to recapture him in 1944.⁴

The See-Judge-Act Methodology

Cardijn and the YCW followed a relatively simple methodology that had wide applicability. A concise statement of it was later included in no. 236 of St. John XXIII’s 1961 social encyclical Mater et Magistra: On Christianity and Social Progress, so I will simply cite that.

236. There are three stages which should normally be followed in the reduction of social principles into practice. First, one reviews the concrete situation; secondly, one forms a judgment on it in the light of these same principles; thirdly, one decides what in the circumstances can and should be done to implement these principles. These are the three stages that are usually expressed in the three terms: look, judge, act.

The inclusion of this statement in a social encyclical is a clear indication of the influence of Cardijn and the Jocists on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. The reference to principles can be understood to include principles of Catholic Social Doctrine—for example, the dignity of every person, justice, the common good, the solidarity of the human family, etc—and various principles drawn from Scripture such as loving one’s neighbor, and caring for the most vulnerable. The approach has the advantage of being simple enough that small groups without special training can get together and discuss the social situation, how it should be judged, and what actions might be taken to advance the common good. A similar approach could be taken by policy specialists in think tanks or pubic office. The application of the approach can range from a micro-level consideration of how the grace of a particular lectionary reading calls me to act now, to a more macro-level consideration of how to respond to something as broad as the global polycrisis in a Church that has too often forgotten her social tradition or been misled by ideology and propaganda.

Although the see-judge-act may seem novel to Cardijn or trivial,⁵ I see the basic logic of the model as something that can be understood with the help of Thomistic virtue ethics. Interpreting see-judge-act through the framework of the virtue of prudence,⁶ I interpret the first step of seeing or observing as an attempt to understand the socio-political situation—or signs of the times—as they pertain to the common good. It can be focused “seeing” factors that range from what we might call the “micro level” of someone needing assistance to the “macro level” of collapsing constitutional government. Such observation will benefit from dialogue with informed persons and what the 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church calls “friendly dialogue with all sources of knowledge.” In our age of widespread disinformation, however, we need to supplement “friendly” with “discerning” or “critical.” For a Catholic, this “seeing” also means listening to the discernment of the magisterium, especially through documents like social encyclicals. Such listening presumes that God assists the teaching office of the Church, and that the Christian or theologian can be aided by the Holy Spirit to recognize both the goods at stake and the evils threatening the good. Through the first step of seeing or observing, therefore, we identify goods to be sought and evils to be remedied in relation to the common good, and set our wills to intend to address them. The way we perceive goods and intend ends, however, is highly dependent on our character, and I would argue our identity, although that topic is beyond my present scope.

On this basis, the second step entails deliberation about means to foster the common good,⁷ which includes various judgments, including a judgment of conscience about the good action/s to be done. Following such deliberation and judgment, one chooses some means—an action—to advance the common good, and carries that out through what Aquinas calls the command or execution, which brings the act to fruition. Although I think any well-disposed person should see such an approach as at least intuitively sound, contemporary Catholics rarely appreciate it, so I hope to revisit the topic in future posts.

Suffice it to say, I see my whole project as aligning with this approach, even if I approach it from a broader background including practical work in engineering, information technology, and construction, and decades of academic work in Pauline ethics, and Thomistic virtue ethics.

Influence on the Second Vatican Council

By the time the Council opened, the Jocists had increased to almost 2 million in over 60 countries. Just as importantly, Fr. Cardijn and his preconciliar work had won over many who would be either bishops at the council, theological advisors, or lay observers. These Jocists generally thought the movement had vital insights regarding how the universal Church should relate to the modern world, and that these should be reflected in the conciliar documents. Although Fr. Cardijn did not know Father or Cardinal Angelo Roncalli before he became Pope John XXIII, the two quickly developed a good rapport and friendship. As we just saw, Cardijn’s see-judge-act methodology had just been cited in the Pope’s 1961 encyclical Mater et Magister, and John appointed him to the conciliar Commission on the Laity.

Fr. Cardijn had been close to the future Pope Paul VI from the time he was Fr. Giovanni Battista Montini of the Secretariat of State, and through the time he served as Cardinal Archbishop of Milan. When Cardinal Montini became Pope Paul VI in 1963, he made Cardijn a Bishop and then a Cardinal so he could participate in the 1965 session of the Council.

Beyond Cardinal Cardijn direct participation in the Second Vatican Council, Stefan Gigacz lists a network of thirty Jocist bishops, priests and lay auditors who advanced a similar perspective. Perhaps the best known of these to American Catholics was the Polish Bishop Karol Wojtyla, who would become Pope John Paul II. Gigacz describes how Wojtyla was much closer to the JOC than is commonly known. As early as 1947, Fr. Wojtyla

…made a trip to Belgium and France where he made contact with the JOC and with the worker priests. On his return he wrote an article for the Polish Catholic journal Tygodnik Powszechny on the Mission de France, the prelature founded with the objective of reaching out to the working class.

It is said that [Fr. Wojtyla] wished to create the YCW in his home diocese of Cracow, however, Poland was under communism by this time, severely limiting his opportunities. Indeed, in 1947 he visited the International Secretariat of the YCW in Brussels and spent a week being hosted by the movement.

Later while studying in Rome, [Wojtyla] lodged at the Belgian College where he again met Cardijn during the regular visits of the latter to the Vatican as well as returning to Belgium for further visits.

After Vatican II, Wojtyla wrote his book Sources of Renewal on the implementation of Vatican II and specifically mentions Cardijn's See Judge Act as the methodology of the lay apostolate.

Citing Paragraph 29 of Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the Lay Apostolate, Wojytla writes:

"These words sum up the modern idea of the lay apostolate (voir, juger, agir) associated first and foremost with the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) under the guidance of the famous Fr J. Cardijn, who was raised to the Cardinalate during the period of the Council." (p. 362)

As a member of the newly created Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Wojtyla became close to the international YCW chaplain, Canon Marcel Uylenbroeck. Later as pope, he wanted to make Uylenbroeck archbishop of Malines-Brussels, but Uylenbroeck was already suffering from the cancer that would kill him.

Wojtyla was also close to Patrick Keegan, first international president of the YCW.

Gigacz introduces the other men who supported Cardijn’s work in various ways. I hope to return to this topic in the future but for now I will simply note that these included Josef Frings, whose theologian was the young Josef Ratzinger. These also included the great dominican theologians Yves Congar⁸ and Marie-Dominique Chenu,⁹ the layman Patrick Keegan who was influential in the United States, and Marcos McGrath, CSC—who studied at Notre Dame and later surrendered his American citizenship, becoming archbishop of Panama.

Concluding Remarks

In what I hope to be the first of multiple posts on the work of Cardinal Cardijn and its contemporary relevance, I have just scratched the surface of what needs to be more widely known about him. From its beginnings, Fr. Cardijn saw his work as an education in democratic participation that was inseparably linked to the life of Christian virtue and apostolate in the world. Whereas the Church of his day had largely lost the working class by failing to minister to them in an effective way, Cardijn had shown—by the time of his death shortly after the Second Vatican Council—not only that the Church could do so, but also how this could be done. Indeed, by this time, the work of generations of social Catholics participating in representative forms of government had shown that it was possible to build a more just and peaceful world in which Catholics participated actively.

During over four decades of globalization according to a neoliberal paradigm, the Catholic Church—especially in influential nations like the United States—has largely forgotten the kind of social Catholicism developed by people like Cardijn, and reflected in Catholic Social Doctrine and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. A big part of the explanation is that massive amounts of money and effort—including by Catholics—have been invested to promulgate rival visions over several generations, and very little has been done to communicate an authentically Catholic social vision, including in most seminaries and universities.

Given the situation just outlined, it should be no surprise that—despite the many good things devout Catholics have done—the Church has failed to manifest herself as an efficacious sign and instrument of unity between the human race and with God (see Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 1). Nor have we realized the council’s call for an Apostolate of the Laity through which we inform the world with the spirit of the Gospel. As the Council fathers and generations of social Catholics would anticipate, this is a path to a bleak future for the Church and the human family.

In our day when the working class and broader society are tempted by cultural trends that are profoundly degrading and anti-human, Cardijn’s example of a Christian democratic humanism consistent with the vision of the Second Vatican Council offers us a path for both evangelization and democratic renewal. Let us work and pray that during this the Jubilee Year of Hope and under the leadership of Pope Leo XIV, God may do more that we can ask or imagine (see Eph 3:20) in helping us to recover our authentic tradition in response to the signs of our times.

1. In this section, I am drawing primarily upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cardijn, supplemented by the abundant work of Stefan Gigacz. https://stefangigacz.com/.

2. https://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/94282.

3. https://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/94282.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cardijn.

5. Gigacz has a website called See Judge Act https://seejudgeact.org/ that explains the origins, development, and contemporary reflections on the whole approach.

6. For an account of Aquinas on the stages in the process of moral action, see Daniel Westberg’s Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 1994). He discusses these stages as perfected by the virtue of prudence, which proceeds from intending an end/goal, through deliberation of the means to the end, through the choice of a means, and through the command/execution of the deliberated means, which is a human act. For Aquinas, the ends toward which we will begin the process of action—by intending an end—will depend upon our character or configuration of virtues and vices. I see this basic framework as also insightful for discussing what we might call collective action, but that topic is well beyond my present scope.

7. For Aquinas, deliberation is not needed for trivial actions where the means are already evident.

8. Gigacz writes that Congar “gave retreats to early JOC leaders and chaplains in France and Belgium, wrote extensively on the theology of the laity and played a key role at Vatican II.” https://www.josephcardijn.com/en/item/236.

9. Gigacz summarizes that Chenu “worked closely with the early JOC in France and Belgium during the late 1920s and 1930s.” He continues that, “[l]ike other Dominicans, he assisted in hosting retreats for JOC leaders and chaplains at Le Saulchoir. He also grew close to Cardijn during this period.” Although he fostered a renewal of Thomistic studies, he emphasized doing so with attention to history against the ahistorical approach of 19th century scholasticism. This got him removed from a teaching post and resulted in a book being put on the Index of forbidden works, although he was vindicated when he became a peritus of theological advisor at the Second Vatican Council. “ Chenu can be credited with being the grandfather of the liberation theology movement, since Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, who wrote the first book on liberation theology, studied with Chenu at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and cites him numerous times in his ground breaking book. Gutiérrez moved to France and became a member of the same Dominican community that Chenu belonged to.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Dominique_Chenu