Monday, Sep. 26, 1938

Jocism

In Paris a year ago last July, in the Velodrome d'Hiver and the Parc-des-Princes, gathered 75,000 young people whose berets and uniforms, naming torches and fluttering banners made them look like any horde of young Communists, Nazis or Fascists. But they knelt before a cross, and the good grey Archbishop of Paris, Jean Cardinal Verdier, said to them: "You have sworn to effect that miracle upon which in our timidity we had no longer counted." The 75,000 were Jocists, members of JOC (Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne--Christian Working Youth), celebrating the tenth anniversary of the most vigorous youth movement outside Europe's dictator nations.

The first stirrings of Jocism began in Belgium 20 years ago when a young priest (now a canon), Rev. Joseph Cardijn, formed a small Catholic workers' group. Jocism grew much like other isms -- in cells (always with priests as nuclei) from which zealous apostles, called "militants," proselytized. Today, there are 90,000 Jocists in Belgium, 100,000 in France, a total of 500,000 in Europe, of whom one-sixth are militants. Jocism recruits mem bers at 14, asks their resignations when, they marry or reach 25. Like all militant organizations, from the Jesuits to the Comintern, the Jocists put their leader ship through exhaustive training, holding a retreat-like congress once a year in Belgium. Canon Cardijn calls it "the Jocist Sacrament." For the aim of Jocism is peaceful revolution, a Christian upsurge in the ranks of labor, based not upon Marxian materialism but upon the labor encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. Jocism in doctrinates its 500,000 youngsters with that Catholic dogma which many non-Catholics (and lapsed Catholics like Hitler and Mussolini) find difficult to understand--the Mystical Body of Christ, in which, with Christ as the Head, Christians are members, in a living association which transcends nationalist and political ties.

Canon Cardijn has repeatedly summed up JOC's program: "Every Jocist has a Divine mission from God, second only to that of the priest, to bring the whole world to Christ." French-speaking workers in New Hampshire formed the first Jocist group in the U. S. A Catholic college student of Glendale, L. I., Vincent J. Ferrari, is launching the movement on a wider front, under the supervision of an able Paulist father, Rev. Paul Ward. Four Jocist study groups have been started. Jocist Ferrari, no worker himself, last week appeared minded to modify the thoroughly radical temper of European Jocism. Full of zeal against Communism, he seemed less interested in spreading labor unions (of which the Pope and French, and Belgian Jocists are vigorous champions) than in making "immoral" magazines in the U. S. the first target of Jocist artillery.

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