Extracted from Colin Holford Jory, The
Campion Society and Catholic social militancy in Australia 1929-1939,
Foreword by Manning Clark, Harpham, Sydney, 1986 161pp. at p. 112-115
Other and more serious
difficulties were encountered when ANSCA sought to launch a Young
Christian Workers' Movement, which was to be an Australian equivalent
of the Belgian/French Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne (or J.O.C.). This
plan, which had been endorsed by the February Conference of Catholic
Action Organisers, involved the establishment of a single national
Catholic Action movement for young working-class males in the 14-25
year age group. The architect of the scheme was Kevin Kelly, who in
November 1939 was appointed by the Belgian J.O.C. Headquarters as the
official Australian representative of the world Jocist movement.26
The trouble arose from the fact that in Victoria the field of
organised Catholic youth activity was already occupied by two
well-functioning bodies, the Catholic Boys' Legion and the Catholic
Young Men's Society.
Kelly's
plan envisaged the eventual dissolution of both these existing
organisations, and the assimilation of their membership and their
functions into the Y.C.W. His reasons for this were set out in an
A.C.T.S. pamphlet which he edited. Young Christian Workers (31 July
1939), wherein he equated the C.Y.M.S. with a Belgian Catholic youth
organisation which had been taken over and re-constituted by the
Jocists. The implication of the analogy was that the C.Y.M.S. could
not be made into an effective Catholic Action body without being
totally re-formed, as it was too sport- and socially- orientated; too
inward-looking and implicitly defensive; and too set in its
traditions and structures, to serve as an efficient vehicle of the
militant social apostolate.17 However, it was essential, in the view
of Kelly and of ANSCA, that the proposed Y.C.W. take over, firstly,
the best potential leaders from within the C.B.L. and the C.Y.M.S.;
and at a later date, the mass working- class membership of both. It
needed the leaders to make up its trained, militant elite; and it
needed the masses in order to become a popular movement in its own
right, capable of transforming society from the factory floor
upwards. The Y.C.W., by its very nature, had to displace or take over
the other two bodies before it could hope to prosper.
During 1937 Kelly had
gained a firm foot-hold within the Catholic Boys' Legion. Dave
Nelson, the President, proved a valuable ally; and he in turn
transmitted an enthusiasm for Jocist methods to Father Francis
Lombard, a recently-ordained curate who operated a Catholic boys'
club in the parish of Northcote." Furthermore, a J.O.C. 'ginger
group' of Kelly's colleagues had been working systematically within
the Legion to promote the Jocist scheme." In 1938, as a result
of their efforts, 'nearly all' the members of the Boys' Legion
Committee came to agree 'that discussion groups along J.O.C. lines
should be established in each boys' club'. However, this proved too
much for Father Lanigan, who at the end of May dismissed all the lay
members from the Committee, and forbad the use of the J.O.C. prayer
in meetings of associated clubs. Lanigan regarded the Legion as his
own creation, and as his by right to command. His own vision of its
functions did not extend beyond sporting and social activities; and
he had apparently come to suspect that the Catholic Action
enthusiasts were conspiring to take effective control of the
organisation away from him. His purge of the Committee did not
eradicate the Jocist influence within the Legion, but it did greatly
restrict it.
In the short term, the
C.B.L. setback was a major blow to Kelly's Y.C.W. plans. An
alternative source of access to the 14-18 year age group existed in
the Catholic Youth Movement, and in an organisation which succeeded
it. the 'League of Catholic Youth'. The latter was an explicitly
Catholic Action body which was formally inaugurated on 26 February
1939 'to combine and co-ordinate over fifty groups of Catholic young
men and women, hitherto carrying on their activities
independently'.,l However, while these discussion group federations
could furnish the Y.C.W. with some of its leaders, they could not
provide it with a mass basis. Only the C.B.L. and the C.Y.M.S. could
do that.
The C.Y.M.S., for its
part, had no intention of going into extinction, whatever the desires
of ANSCA. It bad received fair warning of the forthcoming challenge
to its existence in a C.Y.M.S./Campion correspondence controversy
which had broken out in the Advocate in December 1936. The issue of
contention was whether or not the C.Y.M.S. could become an integral
part of Australian Catholic Action when that movement was formally
Inaugurated. Campion writers had asserted that the Young Men's
Society was inherently unsuitable as a framework for a Catholic
Action organisation: C.Y.M.S. supporters had insisted that this was
not the case."
To
the C.Y.M.S. leaders the controversy revealed that, in the Campion
perspective, their Society was expendable. Adding to the danger was
the fact that the established C.Y.M.S./Campion joint discussion
groups tended to regard themselves simply as Campion branches."
Clearly, if the Young Men's Society were to survive as a vital
movement, it would have to construct its own study-group network, and
break all dependence on the Campion Society in this regard.
Already, in August 1936,
a C.Y.M.S. Catholic Action Sub-Committee had been formed to report on
the Society's potential role in the lay apostolate movement. Now, in
consequence of both the Campion challenge and the Spanish War
dispute, its deliberations acquired a new significance and a new note
of urgency. The branches were combed for suitable study-group
leaders; and in mid-1937, at a meeting of 'thirty or forty
enthusiasts', the 'C.Y.M.S. Legion' was brought into being.35
The primary functions of
the Legion were to encourage the establishment of study-groups in
association with existing C.Y.M.S. branches, and to see to the
training of their leaders. Standish Michael Keon, an outstanding
C.Y.M.S. athlete and debater, was appointed its Secretary. By March
1938 the Legion had study-groups operating in connection with
twenty-four of the forty metropolitan C.Y.M.S. branches, and with six
of the sixty country branches, at a time when total Society
membership was in the vicinity of 5,00c).37 The success of the groups
is attested to by the fact that eighteen months later their numbers
in Melbourne remained unchanged.31
ANSCA was pleased at the
progress of the C.Y.M.S. Legion,39 seeing it as an excellent source
of future Y.C.W. leaders. Furthermore, Kevin Kelly and other Campions
assisted it by giving lectures when called upon.40 They obviously
failed to recognise it as a potential threat to their long-term
plans.
***
The
inevitable clash between the C.Y.M.S. and ANSCA finally came in
mid-1939. The Secretariat, having decided that the time had arrived
'to draw out the best members [of the C.Y.M.S.] and to make them into
the nucleus of a J.O.C. type of Movement',41 invited the C.Y.M.S.
General President, David Sherriff, and the General Secretary,
Reginald Hodgkinson, to attend at its offices.41 The Directors
assumed that neither these two, nor the Board of Management, would
have any objection to handing over their best Legion men to ANSCA, to
be trained as leaders for a movement which was intended eventually to
replace the Young Men's Society. The naivety of this assumption
reflected the long-standing inability of the Campion leaders to
recognise the other Society as being anything more unique, or more
important, than a debating and sporting union. Needless to say,
ANSCA's request was politely but firmly refuted. The Secretariat was
at last forced to acknowledge belatedly, and somewhat grudgingly,
that the C.Y.M.S. 'gave one of the best examples of the loyalty which
an organisation, despite methods which even its members admit to be
imperfect, can arouse in those same members'.43
This decisive rebuff
forced ANSCA to shelve for the time being its schemes for an
Australian Y.C.W. Archbishop Mannix was consulted on the dispute,
but, having for twenty-six years maintained a relationship of mutual
respect and loyalty with his Young Men's Society,44 he was not
prepared now to sanction its dissolution. ANSCA had no option but to
revise its plans, and to allow for two young men's Catholic Action
movements being formed in Victoria, one based on the C.B.L. for boys
14-18 years, and the other on the C.Y.M.S. for young men aged 18-30.