I did and still
maintain that the Grail were 'ahead of their time' in focusing on the
role of women not only in the Church but in society at large in
focusing in their training that we as women be prepared to as it were
to 'stand up and be counted', to be ready to be different if
circumstances presented themselves.
Rene Spellacy, past
member Grail/NCGM
The Grail (or Ladies of
the Grail) played a crucial role in the establishment of the NCGM in
Australia. Together with the National Secretariat of Catholic Action,
they were responsible for the development and direction of the NCGM
in the early years. In fact in 1942 the Secretariat recommended to
the bishops that the Ladies of the Grail be asked to take over
control of the national movement. The Ladies of the Grail accepted
and were in control of the national movement from early 1943 until
mid 1944 when their request to be relieved of this role was accepted
by ECCA.
The Grail
The Grail began in the
Netherlands in 1929, as a movement of young Catholic women. The
initiators and senior leaders of it were members of a lay community
of women called the Women of Nazareth, which had been founded just
eight years before in 1921 by a Dutch Jesuit priest, Jacques van
Ginneken. The members of this community had been inspired by him to
give their lives to working for the 'conversion of the world', not as
religious in a convent, but as lay women in the Church. After three
years intense preparation and training, they made a formal dedication
of their lives in 'chastity, obedience and apostolic poverty' to
bring the world to God through their energy and talents.
Father van Ginneken's
vision regarding women was vital to development of the ethos and
spirit of the Women of Nazareth. His main ideas are summarised below.
His ideas centred around
the vision of the new valiant woman of the Catholic Church who would
need to be spiritually strong, at the same time modern in her
outlook, way of life, use of technology and confident in herself and
her abilities. Women would have to be aware of the obstacles and
opposition they would meet in the Church, which he considered to be
anti-feminine. They would have to overcome them whilst not denying
the ultimate authority of the bishops. He believed in the potential
of women, that they had advantages over men in various areas and that
they had an important role to play in changing society. He thought
that women should define their own role and cultural parameters, that
they were not the moral guardians of society and that education was
their right, not a privilege allowed them by men.
He saw Mary, the mother
of Jesus, as a capable independent woman in the home and in the
world. He thought that lay women needed to be in and of the community
and that they had to maximise their independence. He wanted them
whenever possible to organise their own courses, retreats and
liturgies and not rely on priests for their spiritual direction. He
recognised that Christ's perfection embodied a harmony of masculine
and feminine and that this perception of Christ should be shown to
the world. This would result in i balanced society in which neither
men nor women would be superior over the other.
Van Ginneken also felt
that women had to prepare for the challenge and take the risk to be
different. He felt that the Women of Nazareth had a crucial role in
preparing them. Like the promotors of Catholic Action, van Ginneken
saw that Christian faith and Christian values could not be separated
from the culture in which it existed. He wanted all Catholics to get
out of the ghetto-like atmosphere in which they lived in the
Netherlands in the 1920s and 1930s. He believed that women could play
an important role in achieving that He also believed that women
should take responsibility for the development of ritual and
liturgical practices in the church.
Until 1929 the three main
functions developed by the Women of Nazareth were the organisation of
retreats for non-Catholics, contacting girls in factories to document
working conditions and preparing to establish a university in the
Dutch East Indies. In 1929 the Bishop of Haarlem, where the Women of
Nazareth were living and working, directed them to make the prime
function of their group the organisation of young Catholic women into
a mass movement. It was decided to give this movement the name of
'The Grail' because it was a name rich in Christian symbolism and
inspiring to youth. In 1932, just three years after the movement was
established, there were 8000 members. By 1941 it had just over 21000
members before it was suppressed by the Nazis.
This Grail movement of
young women became the all-absorbing work of the Women of Nazareth
and after their expansion into England, they increasingly became
known among English speakers as 'Ladies of the Grail'. In Australia
during the period relevant to our discussion, this is the name they
were commonly given, whenever it was necessary to it distinguish them
from the leaders and general membership of the young movement they
inspired and directed. It is the term, therefore, that will be used
in this text from now on. (Since the 1960s, this identifiable group
within the Grail movement has been renamed 'The Nucleus of the Grail'
and its members referred to as 'Grail Nucleus Members').
The Grail was not the
only youth organisation to develop in the early 20th century but most
of them, like the Boy Scouts (founded 1906), concentrated on the
personal development and formation of young people and on occupying
their time in positive activities. The Grail was to be different from
such organisations. It was to be an instrument of change. Like the
YCW, it was to be proactive and missionary. Van Ginneken had
investigated the various socialist and communist youth groups that
existed at that time and, though he rejected their aims, he did
admire their assertiveness, discipline, commitment and the role
drama, songs and literature played in their success. The Women of
Nazareth incorporated many of these features into the Grail movement.
It is interesting that Cardijn had begun his work with youth about
the same time, and like van Ginneken studied the various social and
communist organisations but also rejected them and developed his own
ideas.
The organisational
structure and methods of the Women of Nazareth and the Grail movement
were very new in the context of the time in Europe in the 1920s, as
were Cardijn's. The theories and attitudes of the Women of Nazareth
were certainly different from anything which existed at that time.
They were confident women, they were conscious of the position of
women in the Church and were prepared to use strategies to change it.
They had enormous potential to be an important factor for change in
the Church.
The Grail in Australia
Five members of the Women
of Nazareth — Dr Lydwine van Kersbergen, Judith Bouwman, Frances
van der Schot, Brigid Huizinga and Patricia Willenborg — came to
Australia in 1936. They were joined in 1938 by Elizabeth Somers,
Helen van Cleef and Therese Langemeyer. Bishop Dwyer from Wagga Wagga
had been to the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in 1932 and he had
seen a contingent of young Grail members marching. This aroused his
interest and he had discussions with the Women of Nazareth. He was
very impressed and wanted to have the Grail introduced into
Australia. In the period between 1932 and 1937 he spent a great deal
of time speaking to various groups in different dioceses and this
resulted in the Women of Nazareth coming to Sydney.
In her pamphlet, 'The
Grail', Dr van Kersbergen (the leader of the five women) wrote that
the aims of the Grail movement were to develop a pro-God movement to
answer the Pope's call to the lay apostolate.
By striving with the
utmost zeal and fervour for their own sanctification and the
development of their natural powers and talents.
By loving and serving
others for God's sake, in order to 'restore all things in Christ' and
to help in the establishment of His Kingdom.
The
activities of the Grail movement covered six areas — Religious,
Cultural, Charitable, Missionary, Family and School — and it was an
organic whole with one united aim and spirit in which each member had
her place in accordance with her own individuality and capabilities.
Lydwine also wrote:
that the 'Apostolate
of the Personality'was the greatest of all forms of Catholic Action
and that this development ofpersonality for the greater glory of God
is at the heart of the Grail movement.
When the Women of
Nazareth arrived in Australia very little was known about them or
what their exact role was to be. As one early member said, they had
clearly defined aims but not a specific plan of action. Sally Kennedy
in her book Faith and Feminism says that the response of the Catholic
women of Australia to the message of the Women of Nazareth was both
immediate and strong. Those women who were ready to hear the new
message responded enthusiastically because:
It offered them
affirmation of women s worth in the church, a coherent analysis of
women s position in the structure of the church and strategie to deal
with it.
These new ideas appealed
to the independent feelings in the women — feelings which had been
largely unnoticed, unrecognised or ignored by the clergy. She also
states that the Catholic press explained they they were able to
translate their ideas from Europe to the clergy-dominated Australian
Church without being absorbed by it. The Women of Nazareth had a
radical concept of the role of lay Catholics and their aim was to
bring this radical concept to the Catholic women of Australia.
It was certainly very
different from the ideas and attitudes of women in the Australian
Church which were in fact dominated by the Catholic view of women as
the pious supporters of their husbands and the clergy. This meant
that the perception of a woman's role and sphere of influence was
virtually restricted to the family environment. This perception is
supported by the fact that no attempt was made by ECCA or the
Secretariat to set up a specialised Catholic Action organisation for
adult women. However, Kennedy says that it was not for want of trying
by Catholic women as the Catholic Women's Social Guild (CWSG) in
Melbourne had tried in vain to be accepted and included as a
specialised Catholic Action movement for adult women. Mr Frank Maher,
the first president of the Secretariat, believed that Catholic women
were restricted in what they could do by their environment and that
their environment was the family. This was obviously the mind of most
of the bishops because in their statement on Catholic Action they
said of the NCGM that it should assist all girls to achieve their
proper destiny by the organisation of educational courses designed to
prepare them for marriage.
Though in Australia the
Grail movement was never designated as one of the specialised
official Catholic Action organisations it was approved as such in
Europe by the Vatican on 8 June 1935. Though the organisational
structure and method of operation of the Grail movement did differ
from that of the Cardijn-based movements it is easy to see how
similar the Grail movement was in its overall aims to those stated by
the Australian bishops. Van Ginneken felt that the Women of Nazereth
could contribute to changing the world by bringing Christian ideas
into patterns of life and social institutions. The bishops said that
Catholic Action had to change the ideas of people, their habits and
the institutions to which they belonged.
Training
and formation of girls
Once they established
their headquarters at 'Loyola' at Greenwich in Sydney, one of the
first and most important things the Grail did was to organise Grail
courses for young girls. The most important courses they ran were the
Summer Schools. The first of these week-long live-in courses was run
in January 1938. Forty young women from twelve dioceses in Australia
and New Zealand attended. There were four people from Brisbane who
attended that first Summer School. The theme of the first course was
'Women and the Lay Apostolate' and its main thrust was that Catholic
women could have a dynamic role in society. The attendees at this
course found the ideas proposed very liberating as they were very
different from the pious mould in which Catholic lay women in
Australia lived at that time. It is interesting to note that one of
those who attended, Elizabeth Reid, from Brisbane, was the editor of
the NCGM national newspaper Torchlight from 1943 to 1948 and was the
first Australian to join the Women of Nazereth. In the period 1938 to
the mid 1940s the Ladies of the Grail ran courses in various
metropolitan and country centres all over eastern Australia including
Melbourne and Brisbane.
Besides running the
Summer Schools, the Ladies of the Grail organised activities in
Sydney for women and young girls and set up the Grail movement there.
Membership of the Grail youth groups was open to all girls who had
left school and were over 15 years of age. There were junior Grail
groups called 'Vanguard' for younger girls aged 13 to 18. The members
wore uniforms on official occasions but not cloaks or veils (like the
Children of Mary). Their uniforms consisted of brightly coloured
skirts, blouses and beanies. They had a badge and held badge
conferring ceremonies. The conferring of badges was not automatic and
had to be earned. By the end of 1938 the Grail movement in Sydney had
600 members and by 1940 there were 900 members. They had parish
groups, special groups based on activities such as drama, and
vocational groups based on type of work. In general, each Grail group
had a committee with a President, Secretary, Treasurer and
Propagandist who were called responsible members. The committee had a
monthly meeting to facilitate and co-ordinate activities and
communication. They also published and circulated material concerned
with issues affecting women and girls. The Grail members paid a
membership fee of which one-third went to the Grail headquarters and
the rest was retained by the group to do with as it saw fit.
In 1939 the Ladies of the
Grail transferred much of their activities from Sydney to Melbourne
and established their headquarters at 'Tay Creggan'. It became a
centre for Catholic youth and the Ladies of the Grail ran training
courses and social functions for the women and girls of Melbourne. As
well as these activities, they developed, in conjunction with the
Secretariat of Catholic Action, the idea of organising a program ofintensive training and formation for young women in the work
of Catholic Action. These courses were to be six month live-in
courses called 'Quests'. These courses stressed that the integration
of religious, cultural and social values into a way of living was of
apostolic urgency for youth within the Church. The Ladies of the
Grail were not unknown in Melbourne as the five leaders had stopped
off in Melbourne on their way to Sydney and attended a rally
organised by the CWSG. Those attending had been most impressed by the
women and girls from Melbourne attended the first Summer School in
Sydney in January 1938.
The first official
co-operation between the Secretariat and the Ladies of the Grail was
in 1938 when they organised a course on Catholic Action for the
various members of the Catholic girls groups in Melbourne including
the Catholic Girls Movement. Berna Foster (Trenkner) was president of
the Melbourne Catholic Girls Movement at that time and later became a
member of the early NCGM national executive. In a talk at a Melbourne
YCW Past Members meeting she explained that the forerunner to the
NCGM in Melbourne had been the Catholic Girls Movement which began in
Melbourne in 1935. It had been set up in response to the call to
Catholic Action. Its aim was to help girls safeguard their Catholic
faith. The approach was firstly to set up girls clubs which organised
such activities as physical culture, drama classes, picnics, hikes,
indoor games, tennis and basketball. They also organised lectures and
Christian doctrine talks to help develop and broaden the Catholic
outlook of members as well as lay retreats, foreign mission and study
groups. The CWSG were very involved in this and Berna said, 'they
spared neither encouragement nor expense to foster the movement'.
Other groups were operating at that time including Catholic Action
groups and the Clitherow Society (the female counterpart of the
Newman Society).
However, Berna went on to
say that though they all understood that Catholic Action was a call
to prayer, study and action
and to participate in the work of the Hierarchy, no one knew how to
go about it. This changed after that first course run by the Ladies
of the Grail and a subsequent leaders course run by Judith Bouwman
for Catholic Action leaders in March 1939. According to Berna, the
plans made at that meeting in March and at subsequent ones formed the
basis of the NCGM programs. She also pointed out that, up to that
time, Catholic Action had been interpreted in a more or less
intellectual way but the Ladies of the Grail encouraged them to seek
their personal sanctification and the development of their talents
for God. They realised that Catholic Action meant Catholic life, and
that they as young women had to make the Catholic life of Australia
really J|1 Their own environment was to be their sphere of action and
so they followed la Preliminary Training Programme to fit them to be
leaders. Late in 1940 the Catholic Girls Movement and the Catholic
Action groups merged into one organisation called ¡9 Catholic Girls'
Legion but eventually the named was changed back to the Catholic
Girls Movement.
The co-operation between
the Ladies of the Grail and the Secretariat continued in the period
between 1939 and 1941. The Secretariat and the Ladies of the Grail
combined their respective expertise to organise training for leaders,
the establishment of leaders groups, the development of parish group
programs, a leader's bulletin and campaigns. However, by mid 1941
Frank Maher felt the various groups involved were sufficiently
developed to inaugurate the national movement. Therefore the
relationship between the Ladies of the Grail and the Secretariat had
to be formalised.
One thing that concerned
the Secretariat from the outset was avoidance of the situation where
there would be two different mass movements competing for the
attention of girls. There was ongoing discussions about how the Grail
and the new emerging movement could combine their efforts. Frank
Maher was particularly concerned that there not be two separate
movements set up, one based on the techniques and activities of the
Grail and the other based on the techniques of the YCW movements. The
Secretariat particularly didn't want the Ladies of the Grail to set
up parish based Grail groups. The parishes were to be the preserve of
the Catholic Action organisation set up by the Secretariat.
The National Catholic
Girls Movement
The basis of the
agreement suggested by the Secretariat was that both the Ladies of
the Grail and the executive of the NCGM would give mutual support to
all matters relating to Catholic Action for girls in Australia and
New Zealand. Some of the main points were:
That the Ladies of
the Grail would not set up a mass movement.
That any Grail
groups that were established could only be central groups and in no
case parish groups.
That, after
training, the Grail members would give assistance to the NCGM parish
groups.
That the NCGM groups
would be under the control of the national and diocesan executives
of the NCGM but there be a Lady of the Grail on the national
executive and all diocesan executives.
That Grail members
working in parish groups would use NCGM programs, bulletins and
campaigns.
That the Grail would
assist in the training of leaders, organise summer schools and
special courses of training and help develop bulletins and
campaigns.
There was some delay in
making the announcement due to difficulties with the situation in
Brisbane where the central specialist Grail groups called 'The
Brisbane Catholic Youth Group' and the parish-based groups called
'The Urban Youth Movement' merged and changed their name to the
Grail. Coupled to this was the decision taken by the Brisbane
Secretariat, with the approval of Archbishop Duhig, not to affiliate
with the national movement. They decided that a Grail movement was
better suited to the needs of Catholic Action in Brisbane as Mr J.P.
Kelly felt that the girls in Brisbane would be able to advance
Catholic Action as Grail members rather than pioneers of a national
movement. He had a very high opinion of the original leaders in
Brisbane and he said of them,
The leaders of that
movement have developed a sense of responsibility which I have never
seen equalled and are attached with their whole beings to the Faith
having that inner vision of Catholic truth which is not so much the
mark of the learned as of the true apostle.
This development caused
difficulties for the Secretariat because Frank Maher felt that he
could not go ahead with the inauguration of the national movement if
Brisbane was not affiliated because Sydney had already opted to have
its own Catholic Action organisations.
A temporary solution was
arrived at when the Brisbane Secretariat declared that it was in
favour of affiliating with the national movement and would do so when
a Grail house was established in Brisbane. The national Secretariat
put it to ECCA that a movement called the Grail would be recognised
as part of the national movement because they would affiliate when
the Grail house was established. ECCA agreed and the national
movement was inaugurated in October 1941. At that time it was
anticipated that a Grail house would be established in Brisbane.
Archbishop Duhig came close to purchasing a place for that purpose.
The architect for the archdiocese, Mr Frank Cullen, recommended the
purchase of Ashton Hall at the corner of Bonney Avenue and Victoria
Parade, Clayfield. However, the Ladies of the Grail were not able to
come to Brisbane on a permanent basis at that time so the
establishment of a Grail house was put on hold and never eventuated.
In late 1942 the Ladies
of the Grail approached the Secretariat about the possibility of
taking control of the NCGM in Melbourne. The Secretariat felt that
this was not practical as the Grail would be in control of the NCGM
in Melbourne and the national movement would be working on different
lines. The decision was that the Grail would take over the national
control of the Movement. Its main functions were to be the nomination
of new members to the National Council, the drawing up of programs
for Melbourne and interstate movements, the publication of the
Beacon, correspondence with interested groups and looking after
Torchlight.
This arrangement lasted
until 1944 when the Ladies of the Grail asked to be relieved of their
role because they preferred to assist the NCGM from the outside. The
Secretariat agreed and after 1944 the involvement of the Ladies of
the Grail was confined to helping with the training and formation of
leaders, providing services such as Retreats and Days of
Recollection, and helping with programs for activity groups. It was a
complex mix of factors which brought it about but it represented an
acknowledgment by both parties that it was not possible to combine
the Grail method of operation with a YCW method of operation.
The NCGM was very
fortunate in its association with the Grail. Even though the direct
input of the Grail had virtually ended by 1950, its input did have
important influences ofl the development of the NCGM. It is
interesting to look at the structure and organisation of the NCGM. It
had uniforms (skirts, blouses and berets) and banners. Each group a
President, Secretary, Treasurer and Propagandist. There was a
diocesan executive which consisted of representatives nominated and
elected by group presidents. They published their own national paper
Torchlight and Brisbane had its own publication Challenge. Its method
of paying membership fees was that half of the fees went to diocesan
headquarters (half of which went to national headquarters), and the
remaining half stayed in the group to do with as they saw fit. It is
easy to see how closely the NCGM structure was to that of the Grail
movement.
The
Grail legacy to the NCGM
The Grail left a
wonderful legacy to the NCGM with its highly developed structure and
organisation. This gave the NCGM a head start because there was no
need to develop a new organisational structure. It had only to be
adapted to suit the new direction. There was already in place a
method of operation, a training method, uniforms and activities
organised by women for young women. It gave the Movement a depth and
maturity beyond what any new organisation would have had in the early
stages. What would have happened if the NCGM had started with a group
of untrained and inexperienced young girls in charge? It gave the
NCGM a breadth of experience and intellectual base from the start.
Combined with the help of the early chaplains, this ensured its
success and explains why it applied the techniques of Catholic Action
so well.
It also meant that the
early executive members of the NCGM had a great deal of maturity and
independence which was essential for establishing a right
relationship between the clergy and the members. An indication of
this is the number of NCGM executive members and full-time workers
who in the early years were or had been members of the Grail (in
Brisbane alone at least 12). Catholic Action was not meant to be
clergy-dominated and the Grail influence ensured that this did not
happen with the NCGM. The partnership between the NCGM members and
the priests was a mature one from the outset as both respected each
other's position and worked together to build the Movement and train
mature and effective leaders. This was very important as there was no
other such model of lay women/clergy relationship in the Australian
Catholic Church at that time. The major Catholic adult lay
organisations were still following the older Irish Catholic model of
clergy control and leadership.
One practical example of
this legacy was that so early in its history the Movement was able to
organise and print a national paper. What organisation of 14 25 year
olds in the 1940s left on their own would have had the maturity to do
such a thing. Another example is the Beacon which was the leaders
bulletin and national source for information dissemination from the
national executive. It was first published in 1941, and though it did
not reach its full development until the late 1940s, it served as a
unifying force, a training document and a nurturing agent for the
ethos and culture of the NCGM. It also gave a directional focus for
local groups and emphasised the national character of the NCGM. The
Secretariat and the Grail also developed the original preliminary
training program which the Grail promoted at the Quests and wherever
they set up branches of the NCGM. In some ways the, NCGM was really
up and running right from the start thanks to the Grail.
However, the major
contribution of the Grail was the transfer of its ethos and spirit to
the NCGM through the transfer of its ideas and ideals. The ideal of
the development of women to their full potential and the development
of independence of thought and action through training and formation
provided an inspirational role model. The idea that women had a real
role to play in the Church and in changing the world and that it was
their obligation as baptised Catholics to fulfil that role brought
out the commitment only waiting to be tapped. The demonstration that
women were intelligent and valuable contributors to the Church and
the world gave the leaders a sense of self worth and self esteem.
These, combined with the example they gave, showed that women had the
qualities and talents to lead each other to greatness. The emphasis
on the potential of women was the essence of the Grail and its legacy
to the ethos and spirit of the NCGM.