Priests in Working-Class Blue:
Lenardon, Joan
ORDAINED TO LABOR PRIESTS IN WORKING-CLASS BLUE The History of the Worker-Priests (1943-1954) Oscar L. Arnal Paulist, $11.95, 239 pp. Joan Lenardon Oscar Arnal has written a book which anyone...
...class consciousness...
...Tracing the long and painful struggle of the industrial work force to achieve the legal right to form unions, achieved only in 1884 (and incidentally with the help of two paternalistic Catholics, La Tour du Pin and Albert de Mun), would have assisted the North American reader to comprehend why, for example, the French working class felt not merely solidarity among themselves, but also a keen if not fervid consciousness of being a class set apart, a proletariat...
...bourgeoisie...
...Through intimate and disarming details, the priests themselves tell their stories of how in fact they became' 'priests in working-class blue" by taking off the traditional soutane of the French priest and putting on the traditional blue trousers and jacket of the French workingman...
...and alienation...
...participating in the Communist-instigated political demonstrations of the early 1950s...
...But we must perceive His presence and aid our sisters and brothers to recognize Him...
...We are in solidarity with this world...
...Unfortunately, only two pages are given to their "worship and devotional patterns...
...Having accumulated a vast amount of documentation from the personal testimony of nearly one-half of the original one hundred worker-priests, from the private papers of several others, from personal interviews with most of the leading theologians who supported the worker-priests, along with rich material drawn from the papers of the Mission of Paris itself, the author gives us the opportunky to see this experiment from the inside, through the eyes of those real people whose names, ages, socio-economic origins, educational backgrounds, wartime experiences, and ecclesial roots in Catholic Action and working-class parishes, are revealed for the first time, certainly, to an English-speaking public...
...Greater attention to the history of the French labor movement could have uncovered the deep roots of pervasive distrust which the French working class cultivated for both the French state and the church...
...and cooperating with their comrades, Communist or otherwise, to confront day-to-day issues...
...The author does mention that they had difficulty in combining their proletarian lives with their "traditional priesthood" and their' 'classical style of spirituality...
...We must enter the working-class movement to evangelize the worker . . . In every case we must enter into the hopes, efforts,.quests (recherche), creations, enthusiasms of the modern world to there discover the action of God and reveal it to people...
...staying with the CGT nevertheless because it was the largest as well as the most dynamic of all the labor unions...
...After all, it was not only the church but the whole French nation, acting through its successive political regimes, which dealt callously with the French working class...
...Additionally, though briefly, he chronicles the phoenix-like character of the movement from March 1, 1954, through July 7, 1959-the date which looked like the irreversible termination of Cardinal Suhard's heroic missionary experiment-to its ultimate validation in the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests of the Second Council of the Vatican...
...Joan Lenardon Oscar Arnal has written a book which anyone who has had even the slightest affection for the worker-priests of France would like to have produced...
...de-Christianization...
...Arnal begins to fill in the dearth of original source material from the worker-priests themselves...
...The worker-priests sounded the alarm that not only was the church sociologically absent from the working class of the "eldest daughter of the church," but that in her place, Marxist messianism was received as the Good News...
...The worker-priests' incarnational method of evangelization, Arnal asserts, set them on a "collision course with the hierarchical church...
...accepting union office when pressed to do so by their once skeptical co-workers...
...The point is that the acknowledgment and discarding of this clerical mentality by the worker-priests constitutes one of their most prophetic if not apocalyptic acts...
...with this world...
...Does one not feel the Second Vatican Council stirring in the words of one of these priests...
...Deftly sifting his rich primary sources, the author coaxes the human lineaments from such faceless terms as proletariat...
...We must, like Christ, carry its sins...
...Going beyond merely chronicling a calendar of events, he has recreated and portrayed the "very stuff of their life and priesthood, what the French would call their vie integrate...
...But he never provides a palpable grasp of that "clerical mentality" which played so significant a role in the alienation of the working class from the church during the nineteenth century...
...The next three chapters focus upon the period from July 7, 1943, when the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Emmanuel Suhard, and Abbe Henri Godin, launched the Mission of Paris, until March 1, 1954, when the worker-priests had to submit to the conditions placed upon their ministry by their individual bishops...
...reformism...
...We do not have to put God into this world...
...revolutionary struggle...
...choosing the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) even though they learned that it was directed by the French Communist party...
...Hence the appeal of the Communist-dominated CGT...
...going on strike with their union comrades...
...Chapters 1 through 4 outline the historical background of the French working class, and several largely ineffective nineteenth- and early twentieth-century missionary apostolates of the Catholic church in France to these industrial masses...
...The book's strength lies in chapters 5 through 9, for here Dr...
...A few reservations are in order...
...Arnal does demonstrate how strongly the Utopian promises of Marxist ideology still reverberated throughout the French working class in the immediate postwar years...
...He is there...
...Further we must enter into the struggles and temptations of this world...
...Once inside the factories as workers, these priests quite naturally carried on their mission to re-Christianize the working class by deciding to join a union...
...In chapter 9, Arnal surveys the published contemporary reactions to the worker-priests in the French secular press and in the journalistic organs of the clergy and Lay Catholic Action organizations...
Vol. 115 • April 1988 • No. 7
