Simplicity

Simplicity

TAKEN FROM MARIA LEGIONIS VOL 26,481D, NORTH AMERICAIN EDITION. SEPTEMBER 1982

By FRANK DUFF

This talk delivered in early post-Vatican II days presents a theme which remains relevant to-day. Pope John Paul II at Puebla drew attention to wrong tendencies and interpretations in the Church. These thoughts from Bro. Duff will serve to correct any wrong tendencies in the Legion in days when we have to get along without his active presence.

My cry today is one for simplicity in the Legion. For I discern a tendency away from it. Necessarily this means some argument against these things which display that tendency. But I must not be understood at the same time to be derogating from method. For the idea of the Legion demands that we work with skill and finesse, and that unrefined effort only carries us part of the way. But neither must we fall into the error that the refinement is the test of quality.

Of course we must seek perfection. We must think and plan. But on the other hand it would be possible to do all that thinking and polishing and then to omit the essentials. And in that case you would have nothing but the superficial, a dolled-up glistening emptiness which would secure none of the things that the Legion is aiming at. As the proverb insists, "all is not gold that glitters".

These are days when little seems to count except the intellectual and the scientific, and there is every danger that even a spiritual organisation like the Legion could be affected. To the degree that we get complicated we will lose our grip on the things that really matter. This would be harmful in every department of life, but it would be sheerly fatal to the Legion.

Just look at what is going on around us. People cannot start even the simplest work of Christian love without proceeding to get scientific about it. In practice this means a certain lessening of our reliance upon grace. But even in the practical order it can mean a false line. It can end by making the work too expensive in money and time for anyone to run it except the State or the great Corporations. Or if it is attempted by the lesser organisations, it will have to be run on such a small scale as to be little more than a symbolic gesture towards the problem.

Apply this idea to the apostolic field, for instance. If the requisites for missionary effort be pitched too high, we are then thrown back on a missionary class, meaning a few, so that the evangelisation of the world is not attempted at all.

As against that, I point to what the Legion has been able to do by utilising the ordinary lay material along lines of simplicity, relying on faith and effort and fearing any such embellishment of those things as would exclude all except the choicer elements of the population. Again one must repeat that old saying "that the perfect is often the enemy of the good". Don't let us over-do things. Let us not remove a necessary work from the capacity of the multitude to tackle it. If every Catholic is bound to be apostolic, and the Council insists on that fact, then the system of organising the laity must not contradict that requirement by removing apostleship from the capacity of the common people. Yet that contradictory line of action is being applied around us.

Lectures are being delivered which state a set of qualifications for apostleship which the ordinary type of person either could not or would not be willing to meet. Some years ago there was an invasion of Belgium by the Jehovah Witnesses, and it was decided by authority that the Legion should be the force set up to counteract them. So a committee got to work and drew up a list of the qualifications which the legionaries engaged on that work would have to possess. Fortunately they sent this on to us for criticism. Our comment was that it demanded as much as would be required from the ordinary priest. You will see what a terrible disproportion is at work here. Yet all the people who should be leaders are talking in that same vein. They want a sort of perfection which will not be available. This idea tends to assert itself inside the Legion. In a current letter from Australia I am told by a legionary that all around her there is an inclination away from work and towards holding meetings; and talking, talking, talking. This could wreck the Legion if it got out of hand.

There is in the community-almost altogether outside the ranks of the Legion itself-a lecturing section. This delivers innumerable addresses to select audiences who never do anything about it. Sometimes these talks are so devoid of the practical that it would be impossible to do anything. But in any case works do not proceed from that alleged powerhouse of the platform.

Everything is made so Learned and complicated that if it be not made impossible, at least it is removed from the capacity of the willing worker. So in the end there is no manpower for the glorious schemes. People who think and talk have their important place. But there must be some sort of gearing system; they must be supplemented by the doers. It is preferable to start with rough work rather than with fine talk, because the work may refine itself as it proceeds. The Legion has demonstrated its capacity to begin with the work and then produce the finished technique which the thinkers had failed to deliver.

Another example of this would be afforded by the question of approaching the Protestants with intent to convert them. Learned talk on this subject has always been liberally delivered, but without much visible result. Then the Legion just went off and tackled it and ushered in a gigantic movement. It did this without the elaborate provision of knowledge which had always been supposed to be necessary for such a work. Again, Islam was more or less regarded as unconvertible. Volumes were written on the principle that when you know more about Islamism than its own professors do, then you can meet them and argue with them. No doubt that arguing could have been done, but all its complexity would not lead to conversions. Then the Legion approached that field and has been making penetration wherever the work has been tried. Similarly in regard to works for the unfortunate classes. But the Legion has blundered into all those works and made great progress in them.

The supreme danger which I see in the operations of that lecturing and expert school is that their claims must lead to a professionalising of the apostolate. Consider this and you will observe that it is the very opposite to the idea of the apostolate -which must be regarded as an apostolate of the whole people. The more I read the utterances of that school, the more I see that it represents a total contradiction of what is laid down in the Council legislation to the effect that every Christian must be found discharging an apostolate of some kind. The Legion must assert itself as the guardian of this basic element in Christianity. Also in that school I cannot help feeling that there is at least an overlooking of the primary elements of true apostleship, i.e., Faith, prayer, the Blessed Virgin, the Sacraments and the Sacramentals.

We are being told to read Acts of Parliament and scientific treatises, to indulge in the jargon of psychiatry instead of the words of Christian love. A pseudoscience has invaded the world and tried to de-Cath- olicise the world. I have observed that the Progressives never even mention the word "conversion" and that the only Decrees which seem to matter to them are those on Ecumenism and the Church in the Modern World. Science and expertness have their own tremendous sphere in which they have plenty of room to operate. Do not let us get caught up in that sphere. There is even a tendency towards setting up the atheistic scientists as religious prophets and teachers. But all the science in the world cannot convert a soul nor work a true miracle. Let us be wary about all that science and its processes and let us place our whole trust on the ordinary science of Catholicism.

All around us at the moment is a welter of argument. Alleged theologians are rising up to break a lance with the Pope himself. In Holland the other day a priest in mixed company declared that Father Schillebeekxs, O.P. is a far more learned theologian than the Pope and therefore must be followed instead of the Pope. This sort of thing shows us how mad expertness can easily become. Others would favour other theologians, and so the Church would soon be divided into a thousand camps, each with its own expert pontificating. Let us not be caught up by those disastrous follies. Let us keep to simplicity here again; let us go by the Holy Father.

Learning can be a supreme blessing and likewise it can be a desperate bane. For today argument is so polished up that it is well, nigh impossible to tell the true from the false. So just as the mariner looks to his compass in the darkness, let the Legion look to its principles. These have served it well so far and should continue to do so. It looks as if the Legionary logic is true because it works whereas all that jargon does not. As the Handbook says, there has been infinitely more religious printed matter let loose in the last half century than in all the previous course of human history. Has it converted in proportion to its bulk?

The best argument is the simple Catholic truth. Let us state that truth and then put it into action through our works. Successful action is the best method of proving that the truth is true. You know the saying that money talks. But a better one is that grace works. Truth plus correct action brings grace.

From that higher danger I now descend to what looks to be a minor one. But this one could prove disastrous too. It lies in that very refining of our work which we are bound to attend to. But in the aiming at that bettering of our methods, we must beware of throwing the stress from the simple basics of the Legion to a routine efficiency. All our techniques and improvements must stand firm on the foundation of spirit and the earning of grace.

We must not turn aside from action in order to study. There must be a balance in this matter. But balance is delicate; it must not be allowed to swing ever so slightly over to the incorrect side. Duty is one of those Legionary basics; it must be fully performed. If it be neglected, the most excellent technique in the world would not compensate.

Here are a couple of departments in which people are more than a little inclined to fall short: The attendance of praesidia officers at Curiae meetings. The attendance of Curiae officers at the Concilium. Here can lie a veritable interrupting of the life line of the Legion, as the Handbook declares. The Handbook goes on to point out that this life line can be interrupted in various other ways, unpunctuality, disloyalty. Again, are the praesidia in all cases insisting upon the performance of sufficient work? The Rule prescribes two hours. Is this being supplied? Also, the reports on work can often be very deficient. If these defects are much in evidence, there cannot possibly be an underlying spirit in the praesidia. After a while this becomes painfully evident, and then people begin to search around feverishly for remedies. The cause is laid at every door except the right one. There is demand for special meetings of presidents and for the other officers also. Meetings are summoned to regulate particular works which had been shown to be wavering. But this process of resorting to special meetings and other expedients is only going to add further burdens on to legionaries who already have enough to do. There is a tremendous amount of sense in that legionary slogan against the unnecessary multiplication of meetings. Not only do those meetings constitute an unbearable burden but they do not put the finger on the spot at all. The evil lies deeper, that is in failure of grace and spirit due to the neglecting of the legionary basics.

Among those basics I would fear that St. Louis Marie de Montfort is slightly out of fashion among us and is suffering neglect. And I am led to wonder how serious this may not be. Could it possibly be held to denote a disintegrating of the very legionary fabric? This sounds strong, but let us proceed to look back to the first pages of our history. St. Louis Marie de Montfort announced Mary to the Legion. One might wonder what would the Legion have been like without him. Certainly the starting of the Legion was divinely held up for several years until he had provided the soil or the atmosphere in which the Legion could take life and grow. The meeting out of which the Legion began was in existence for about three years before the Legion emerged. Why then did the Legion not emerge sooner, considering that all the other ingredients were present-just as much as they were when it did emerge? Evidently a special occasion was being awaited. What was it?

Well, on the second Sunday before the Legion began there was such a special occasion. It was a meeting summoned for the purpose of considering the True Devotion which had for some time past been a subject of casual discussion. The whole of that special meeting was given up to an examination of the True Devotion, and at the end those present were reasonably convinced of Mary's role in grace, that is that she is our mother in the order of grace to a degree not less but more than earthly mothers fulfil in regard to their young children. That knowledge and conviction seemed to be the element which had been missing before but which was necessary for the engendering of the Legion of Mary. Within seventeen days the Legion had come into being out of circumstances quite unconnected with that vital meeting. Yet we know that they were really connected invisibly and essentially; that God had been waiting the moment when the future legionaries would be filled with the correct idea of Mary, so that the Legion would commence as truly the Legion of Mary, a sort of mystical body of hers.

It was St. Louis Marie's teaching that provided in the mind of God the correct mould for the Legion of Mary. This latter statement of mine is of such drastic importance that we must face up to it. Is it true? Is it an exaggeration?

WELL, the statement is derived from what God actually did. It is history. He did not start the Legion until that ingredient had been supplied. If it had not been supplied at that special meeting, how long further would He have waited before starting the Legion? Would He have started it at all? So it does look as if St. Louis Marie de Montfort and his teaching about the Blessed Virgin are primary in the Legion. So that if we proceed to give things a different slant, we are getting away from God's own idea of the Legion. And where is that going to bring us to? I cannot sufficiently stress the importance of this consideration.

However, I go on to explain that I am not saying that the fullness of De Montfort's devotion of Slavery must be practised. The acceptance of his attitude towards Mary would be sufficient. Note that this attitude is one of total giving and of complete dependence. This is and must continue to be the legionary attitude. The Legion Promise contains it. So beware of any tonings down in respect of Our Lady. The smallest sign of it may betray a cast of mind poles apart from the Legion. If that wrong curve is given its chance, it will initiate a process of divergence which would finish up as the very opposite to the Legion. Indeed I would wager anybody that after a sufficient time it would land us back again at the old Catholic Action, the characteristics of which may be summed up under the following heads: Mary gone; Prayer reduced to a minimum; A deferred approach to souls in the interests of a system of preparation embodying lectures, study of the Bible, absorption in the social and economic; coupled with a tendency towards politics. The final end would have nothing to do with souls and hardly anything to do with the Catholic Church. Such I would truly believe is what is at stake in that divergence which begins with the minimising of the Blessed Virgin. Other things intimately connected with the early days of the Legion were the Brown Scapular, the Miraculous Medal, the Enthronement. Again simple things.

Once again I say: Do not permit a desimplification of the Legion to be attempted. Those Marian Sacramentals are of particular importance in these days when deliberate attack is being made on her position. As to the radical character of that minimising of her, you have evidence before your eyes in many of those new churches which are built, even in Ireland. The policy in regard to Mary seems to be that of putting her on the back wall behind the congregation, and then representing her in quite hideous forms which would dispel the very thought of prayer.

Beware of deviation. A germ expands to a preordained fullness and purpose. Over a long period even a minor distortion ends destructively. This applies most definitely to the Legion which is built on certain definite ideas. Now, I have claimed that God and Mary presided in quite a special manner over the launching of the Legion of Mary. It was a true spiritual germ constructed by those loving hands which had laid out such a gigantic mission for it. The expansion of that germ has been orderly and unerring so far, such that after 46 years it is precisely endorsed by the Great Council. It is a sort of miracle that this should have been achieved, because all along the road it has been exposed to criticism on grounds of excess and impropriety. Yet it did not waver in its course. Now unquestionably, more than at any stage in the 'past, the doctrine and system of the Legion are being assailed, amazing to say just at the time when it has been so emphatically endorsed by the Council and by the Holy See.

Frank Duff