THE 'FIRST' STORY OF MGR. CARDIJN

By Fr. EDWARD MITCHINSON Until recently Y.C.W. National Chaplain
THE CARDIJN STORY : A study of the life of Mgr. Joseph Cardijn and the Young Christian Workers' Movement which he founded, by Michael de la Bedoyere (Longmans, Green and Co., 15s.).
FOLK who are busy making -1history seldom manage to write it, and those closest to Mgr. Cardijn would hesitate to attempt the writing of his life while the course of it still runs. Many of us have seen and remarked often on the need and the great\ possibilities of this book.
Now that it has come, thanks to the stimulus of Pat Keegan and the generous industry of the author, it will be seized on eagerly by those throughout the English-speaking world who owe the Christian and apostolic tenor of their lives to Mgr. Cardijn, and by others still searching for the key to an understanding of the spostolate of our present times.
U the reviewer is inevitably biased as to the subject, he is at least equipped to make some appraisal of the book from 20 years of practical study of Cardijn's thought and 12 years of regular personal contact mid work with the great man. The Editor of the CATHOLIC:. HERALD has done a difficult job extraordinarily well. It is difficult, even for those intimately connected with Cardijn's work, to rid themselves sufficiently of their own pet prejudices in order to be able to seize and remain faithful to the essence and the totality of Cardijn's vision. The author went to great pains to
Mgr. JOSEPH CARD!"
achieve this. and the book is not only faithful to the true character arid work of Cardijn but captures a great deal of the dynamism and apostolic fire of its subject.
'Fishers of TTHERE are a few inaccura-1des, and the blame for these must lie with those of us who were asked to read and advise on the original typescript.
I thought for years, like the author, that "Fishers of Men" was a novel pure and simple, though inspired by the lives of the young worker apostles of Roubaix. It is, in fact, a true story of characters most of whom are still alive and no more, or just as much, a novel as the St. Teresa by the same author.
More seriously inaccurate is the author's view. expressed on p. 104 of "The Cardijn Story", that Cardijn's conception was arbitrarily limited to youth, and specifically worker youth through the inevitable limitations of any one man's experience and keenest interest. It is of the essence of the Y.C.W. that it is a movement of youth and young adults who are formed in and through the responsibility for their own movement. Furthermore, while guarding the youth autonomy of the Y.C.W., Cardijn has worked always to encourage the development of adult counterparts of the Y.C.W., like the Belgian F.E.M.O.C., the French A.C.O., or the English Family and Social Apostolate. The author happily has escaped the not uncommon and inaccurate view that Cardijn was the founder of all the specialised youth movements. On the contrary, Cardijn has never welcomed the barriers and divisions which over-specialisation can bring about. Champion as he is of the poorest and most illiterate young workers, his first president is a young bank clerk and his movement is open to all youth, whether preparing for or engaged in any and every kind of employment.
The Keegan Story
A.E would have welcomed, and must be blamed for not supplying to the author, more on the beginnings and growth of the Y.C.W. in England, but perhaps this belongs better to the Keegan than the Carden story. If the not yet t fully d begun, , the flaotrtmerer has y I last saw Mgr. Cardijn at the meeting of the international college of chaplains. a month ago; national chaplains of Japan, France, Spain, Canada, and England, representing their respective continents, engaged on a world study of the pastoral implications of the Y.C.W. In his 76th year, Mgr. Cardijn is as spiritually youthful and dynamic as in the beginnings of his great life work. The full story taking us to the last chapter will be told in God's ,good time, and we can look forward to the many autobiographical passages in Cardijn's recorded talks and lectures which could not be compassed in this first "Carden Story". But there is already plenty here for those who, in Cardijn's words, want "to understand how the reign of grace, the Kingdom of grace, is corning in all the countries of the world".