Forward and First Interview

FORWARD

BY Msgr. Charles T. Moss

When I was in Manila this past January I showed one of Frank Duff's video interviews to the officers of the Senatus and the staff of Maria Legionis. Sitting next to me was Pacita Santos who had done heroic work in spreading the Legion in the Philippines especially during the years of the Japanese Occupation. During the viewing she turned to me and said with a voice choked with emotion: "As I sit here watching and listening to him, I find it difficult to believe that he's dead. He's so natural, so much the man I've met many times in Dublin. I feel like he's here in the room with us now."

All told Frank Duff gave eight interviews for the television camera in August, 1979, and he did so with his own unique brand of humor and warmth that even today he touches those who see the videotapes. These eight interviews then are like a living autobiography and it was for this reason that they have been titled, "Frank Duff-A Living Autobiography."

For those who have seen the television interviews I hope that the transcripts will not only rekindle the memories of the man but also give them the opportunity to mine the wisdom contained in his comments and observations in the quiet of their own homes.

For those who have not yet seen the television interviews I hope that the transcripts will provide them with an insight into the man. I hope too that his printed words will prompt them to see the interviews for as powerful as the printed word is, it cannot match the impact conveyed by the living image.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section contains all eight of Frank Duff's interviews. The second section is an article which he wrote originally for the Christmas 1939 edition of Maria Legionis. In this article, "The De Montfort Way," Mr. Duff explains de Montfort's True Devotion, the book on which he based his spiritual life and that of the Legion of Mary. While explaining de Montfort he reveals himself especially his love for Our Lady which was the keystone of his life and of the Legion of Mary which he founded. The third section is composed of a series of articles on Legion of Mary Television. So many legionaries have expressed an interest in how the video interviews were made and spread abroad that I thought they would appreciate having these articles under the same cover as the interviews even though some of them previously appeared in Maria Legionis (North American Edition).

Many other books about Frank Duff are sure to appear in the years to come. I would recommend the biography presently being written by Hilde Firtel. She not only knew Frank Duff for the better part of forty years but also has almost a thousand of his letters to her, to draw on for source material. Her book is due out in the Spring of 1983.

Lastly, a word of thanks to all who have made this book possible. Mrs. Anna Barazzuol and Mrs. Margaret McClure did all the typing. Anna B.O'Connor and Bill Peffley did the proofreading. Wally Weidner and Joe Geppert of Lehigh Litho, Inc. gave freely of their time and professional expertise for the design and layout of the book. Mary Peffley, her daughter, Edel, and Joan Balik were always most kind in offering helpful suggestions, comments and constructive criticisms. And, of course, without the sacrifices of the members of the Television Team, Walt Brown, Beatrice Flannigan, Al Norrell and Bill Peffley, there would have been no book because there would have been no television interviews. To all these persons I owe a debt of gratitude.

Msgr. Charles T. Moss

Feast of the Immaculate Conception December 8, 1982

"QUESTIONS"

An Interview with Frank Duff

"••• Vatican Council Two represents an act of faith in the Legion of Mary. "

He was alert, spry and even had a twinkle in his eyes as he walked into the improvised television studio on the second floor of St. Anne's located on Dublin's North Brunswick Street between the Regina Coeli and his residence. He took off his coat showing the blue-grey sweater he wore beneath, sat down under the hot quartz lights and waited patiently for the television crew to complete their checking of the sound and the video. As a concession to his impaired hearing, he reluctantly accepted a stack of numbered cards on which were printed the questions he would be asked by Al Norrell during the interview.

For fifty-five minutes Frank Duff answered the questions put to him sometimes responding quickly, sometimes slowly, often punctuating his replies with humor and laughter. He was himself. As he finished his final comment he laughed and handed Al Norell the question cards, the only time he used them.

This interview is but one of eight of Frank Duff, Founder of the Legion of MARY made in August 1979 by a team of legionaries from the Philadelphia Senatus (Monsignor Moss, Walt Brown, Al Norell, Bill Peffley and Beatrice Flannigan). During this interview Mr. Duff answered questions about his family, his personal background and the organization which he founded in 1921.

Q. Mr. Duff, where were you born?

A. I was born in this very city at a spot one mile north of where we are sitting.

Q. And what year was that?

A. Eighteen hundred and eighty nine.

Q. So, that would make you now ninety-years of age!

A. That is true-according to the laws of arithmetic! (Laughs)

Q. Where were your mother and father born?

A. They were born at a spot twenty-seven and a half miles from here, the town of Trim, County Meath, a place which is quite well-known in the history of ancient Ireland.

Q. And what type of work were they involved in?

A. My father was a civil servant and my mother was likewise a civil servant. My mother had the distinction of passing the first examination in the old British and Irish Civil Service open to women and she was appointed to London where she was for a few years. Then they extended the system to Ireland and so she came back, It was in the family to be a civil servant because that's what I became in due course.

Q. How many brothers and sisters had you?

A. There were seven children born in all. Two of them died young, both girls. That left five, three girls, my brother and myself.

Q. Are any of your brothers and sisters living today?

A. No, I am the sole survivor. It is one of the anguishes of life that when I want to go back into things in the past that I would very much wish to know, I have not a soul to turn to.

Q. What about your schooling background? Where did you have your schooling here in Ireland?

A. After being in what they call Dames' Schools up to a certain point, I was two years in Belvidere College run by the Jesuits and then on a change of residence, I was sent to Blackrock where I completed my education such as it was.

Q. Then, as you said, you became a civil servant.

A. I became a civil servant, yes.

Q. In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-one, the Legion was founded and you continued as a civil servant until what year?

A. Nineteen hundred and thirty three. At that stage I got an opportunity of leaving the Civil Service. I had for quite-a-time been suffering from the realization that the two things were incompatible. And sometimes I used to even think that I was dying under the strain. In any case the end of that was that I quit, a step I was never even in the remotest degree sorry for. (Laughs)

Q. And so, after that you gave and have given through the years your full-time to the Legion of Mary!

A. That is so.

Q. I'd like to ask you something about the organization of which we are all members. The Legion now is nearly sixty years old and is in every country in the world ...

A. Nearly every country in the world. Some of what are called the Iron Curtain countries have not yet come in. But we hope that that defect will be very soon remedied.

Q. Good! Good! Is it the same Legion you envisioned in the beginning? Is it really all that you hoped it would be?

A. Well, that's what I would call a tough question because it presumes some sort of foresight in me which I do not possess. (Laughs). You might as well put that to a mother about her young child-had she envisioned that he would become something very big? It is true that quickly enough I saw that we were dealing with something completely out of the ordinary. Some of you were speaking to me the other day on that subject and you suggested that that occurred at the second meeting of the Legion. That was not so. But it occurred within three months of its birth that I did tell them that they were destined to cover the whole world. Now you ask me, what was I going by? I was going by the terribly evident spirit of what I saw in operation. I was accustomed to good organization. I was in a number of things around me which I thought were awfully good. And I said to myself:

"This is remarkable! Ordinary, simple people with whom you would not associate the idea of very great accomplishment showing a degree of spirit which seemed to be limitless." And, building on that idea, I ventured on the prognostication to them that they would encompass the whole world. They thought it so funny that they must have consumed the best part of five minutes in uproarious laughter. Such was the respect with which the prophecy was treated. (Laughs)

Q. They couldn't see it themselves!

A. Oh, they took it all for granted, they had nothing to compare it with. To them it was just ordinary, routine.

Q. Perhaps, now we should turn to the calibre of membership we have today. In the beginning the Legion had its members going to Bentley Place and it was said that some of the members went in with fear of losing their lives. Do you think we have that same type, same calibre of membership today?

A. Of course! There's no question whatever about it. From that point of view really standards are higher because while those members took their assignments as a matter of course and would go to a place like Bentley Place or other difficult situations just as a matter of common duty. Well, I would say the same situation exists today

Q. You would?

A. Aye. We find for instance in any of the Perigrinatio Ventures, that the Legionaries go off to countries which at first sight constitute perilous adventures and they do it as a matter of course. That could have meant very little in a small body like the original body but it becomes more impressive when you see it on a large scale as today

Q. O then you are quite impressed with the quality of membership today?

A. Oh, the calibre of the membership today is simply without any limit. Now just to make that clear. There is an artificial limit imposed but usually it is from outside, that is, you'll get members to do anything which is proposed to them but then for several various reasons that very lofty proposition is not made to them frequently. There was a case recently of a group of members who wanted to undertake a specially difficult Peregrinatio. They came to us and mentioned a certain venture. It terrified us! That proposal proceeded from rank and file members who knew its difficulties and yet were prepared to go. I'd like to be able to give you a fuller account of the episode because it is so remarkable but perhaps we would better not give any publicity to it. But I'd say that it was something which very probably would have ended in their death. Very probably. It was from ourselves that the obstacle proceeded in the end. We wouldn't let them go

Q. So you prevented it. We have definitions of a true legionary given by many people I’d like to hear your definition

A. One who understands the rules and obeys them. (Laughs)

Q. Well that certainly is a simple definition

A. Will that satisfy you?

Q That will satisfy me coming from you. But you could elaborate and tell us a little bit more.

A. Well, perhaps, I might add another requirement. We would have to have the assurance that that person was going to last in the Legion. So you have to supply the additional proviso that such a person had been a certain amount of time in the Legion. That would be the only guarantee really in the end that a person was a good Legionary-that he had lasted the course ..

Q. Now we are going to ask you a question which may be difficult. Has the Legion ever disappointed you?

A. You describe that as a difficult question and, if ever a truth were spoken, that is truth! (Laughs) That is a question you used to call out in America, a 64 dollar question! (Laughs) With inflation of course now-a-days that would have to be put much higher. (Laughs) But, if you mean was I always in agreement with the attitude of the Legion at all moments of its career, I would have to say that I was not. There were a number of things that happened and will of course keep on happening that terrified me and where I thought that a wrong decision had been made. But then time wagged on and Icame to the conclusion that perhaps the Legion was right and I was wrong. And that's the way we'll have to leave it. (Laughs)

Q. Now you are in your ninetieth year and this is an age in which bishops are retiring at age seventy five. How do you justify your continued active participation in the Legion?

A. I don't fully follow that question. Am I to get out of it? (Laughs) What am I to forsake? My duty so solemnly imposed on me by the Church? Of leaving aside all active Christianity? What shape is my leaving it to take? Is this to be that of a complete retirement without membership of any kind? Obviously that's not meant!

Q. No! No! That's not meant.

A. What's meant, I presume is that at the age of seventy-five it's deemed that a person has lost his finer edge.

Q. But that's not true in your case!

A. Well, it might be! It's just that I am assuming that it is and that it is better that the 75 year-olds should yield their responsibilities to younger hands. But what responsibilities am I to pass over? I am not the President of the Legion! That question seems to assume that I am and that I should have resigned from that office when I was seventy-five years of age. But I'm not the President! I'm not a senior officer at all! Then what I am to resign from is not clear. (Laughs)

Q. We were referring to the Church's practice of asking the bishops to step down at seventy-five and we want to show the world that although you're past seventy-five, you have no need to retire because of the wisdom and the great strength that you give to us in the organization.

A. Well, if I had any wisdom or strength, it is available to the Legion under the present conditons. I have not the supreme authority in the Legion. The Legion has always from the first minute faced up to that seventy-five year old situation. Unlike the society to which it patterned itself onto some extent, it put restrictions on the term of office of those in authority. Every three years an officer, including the President of the Concilium, has to have his mandate renewed and after a second term of three years, making it six years, he has to vacate the office, not necessarily permanently, because after a further three years he could be voted back into it. And that re-voting presumes that he retains his powers. I'm out of the Presidency now for quite a considerable number of years. I availed of the first opportunity which was given to me to refuse a renewal of my term of office and to get into a lesser atmosphere.

Q. You serve as counselor now. Could you tell us what that is and how you participate?

A. In order to leave plenty of scope for the rising generation in our ranks, we set up this category known as the Counselor to absorb somebody who has been an excellent officer, going from one office to the other, and perhaps sometime back to higher office and put him into the elder-statesman category (Laughs) ... and leave that job for the talent which is rising up. That's a real problem everywhere. If you let people go back indefinitely into higher office, after say a period of being out of it, then out of loyalty and other considerations, you'll have the original people maintained too long and you'll have that seventy-five year old situation present itself. Now the Counselorship is the safeguard against that. After a considerable period of office, we say it is time that we solve this situation-not by getting rid of the person-because the counselorship preserves their experience leaving the major office which they had held open to a newcomer. There is at any moment in the Legion somebody before us who is obviously a case for giving high office to. Always at any moment there is that situation.

Q. So the counsellors are there to give the Legion the benefit of their years of experience ...

A .... While retaining the experience of the Elder Statesman you give the opportunity to the newcomer. That's awfully important! In Austria for instance, at the last election for President, a man of twenty-one years of age was elected to Presidency of the Legion of Austria. In writing to us at the time about this he said: "I think that makes me the youngest President of a Senatus in the world". And that we had to admit.

Q. That's just marvelous! We look at this organization of ours and we wonder what provisions have you made to protect your ideals after you have gone? Do you see the Legion continuing as it is at present after you have left us?

A. That's a peculiar position and demands an amount of foresight and an amount of control over the future that doesn't exist to me. In any case, to answer that question I would have to ascend to the realm of faith and devotion and I would have to say to myself: "Well, the Legion from its first moment was in the hands of the Blessed Virgin. My departure from the scene is not going to remove it from her hands". We must have sufficient belief to think that Her dispensation would continue on un-diminished, perhaps greater, inasmuch as the Legion becomes more and more a vital element to the Church.

One of your questions asked what had I envisioned about the future of the Legion fifty or sixty years ago? I, of course, had not envisioned anything like what has happened. That reply of mine about the Legion covering the world only saw it as covering the world in its then present type of action. But my mind had not expanded to the extent of thinking that it was going to become the right arm of the Catholic Church. It's an absolute essential! And that fact, you see, has at last been completely and unreservedly recognized. Our recent visit to Rome (March 1979) was utter evidence of that. Everybody we dealt with in Rome including the great man at the top was satisfied about that and was trying to put their realization into a distinguished welcome. They all realized it. There's nothing else. What else is there? And to that extent it's tragic to see so many of the important people of the world on whom that fact has not yet dawned! To that extent they are actually acting in a manner contrary to the true welfare of the Catholic Church. That's the way I'd have to look on your question. As I see things, the Legion has only now arrived at adult stature-only now. Up to the present it has in a sense been in the cradle. Now it is a grown and armed soldier ready for the terrible fray that the next century is going to place us in the midst of.

Q. And so you see it continuing in that state and even doing bigger and better things.

A. That is my conception. Other people wouldn't agree with it. It is said that at the Council many of the important figures, the Bishops, wanted to put the Legion into one of the decrees by name and that proposal was seriously considered and put aside for sufficient reasons, because, in the first case, such a move would stir up a certain amount of jealousy against the Legion which would not be a help to it and, in the second case, supposing in the designs of Providence that the Legion dies out in ten years and something else created by Providence and better than the Legion rises up. Well, that organization is not named in any decree and there's the dead organization enshrined in the decree. One can understand the good sense of all of that.

Q. The handbook tells us that the work is secondary. Can you justify this? That the work is secondary?

A. Yes. That is the most important truth about the Legion. There is something which ascends far higher than the nature of the work and that is the spirit, the faith of the Legion. What's the good in concentrating upon very high class work if you don't possess the ingredients for setting about it?

That's the fault of the world today tremendous programs and when the people proceed to analyze what they have got to accomplish those programs with, they find they have nothing! They fill pages with ambitious schemes and they don't advance an inch on the way of realizing them. That's the fault of this present moment. It's all a paper scheme. They're all designing paper schemes. They're writing out programs which presume a real army to carry through and they have no army! The thing is fantastic and represents a great waste of paper to put it at no higher valuation than that! The first question to be answered before you think of advancing towards the simplest work is: "Have you got the human material to undertake it?" The second is: "Has that human material itself got the capacity to undertake it and persevere?"

Q. For the Legion then the spiritual development of the individual is primary and the work is secondary. Is that the thought you had in mind?

A. That is. That must be the first thing-the development of the instrument. If you want to saw wood, you have to have a saw and that saw has to possess a certain quality. That's the simplicity of the system. When you talk about the spirit of the Legion and its faith, you must then become precise to another degree and you must say to yourself: "Well, now what do you mean by spirit? What do you mean by faith? Is a simple undeveloped faith that God is mighty and is perhaps on your side and leave things at that?" Well, of course, no! You have to have the entry of what we might call theological considerations into the position. It must be a complete faith. It must be a Catholic faith. It must believe in the doctrines of the Catholic Church. It must believe in someone who is far too much neglected today and that's the Blessed Virgin. Supposing now somebody said to us who was able to do it: "Well, now we'll put you in every parish in the whole world in great size with every opportunity to attack the work in the way you wish but one condition is necessary". And we say, "Well, what's that?" "That you cut out all this nonsense about the Blessed Virgin, take a more sensible view of Her". In other words "Cut Her out". Well, of course, we don't hesitate for the proverbial second. Our answer has to be a total refusal!

Q. How do you see the Legion in the future? Do you think that this organization of ours will con·tinue with the same vitality in the twenty·first century?

A. That again is in the category of the 64 dollar question. To talk about the future is really a very dubious proposition because at best it can only be a guesswork. I would have to say that, if the Legion is allowed to retain its present complexion, then it will not only keep its vitality and its degree of success but will far improve on them. But always in the background is the lesson of history which I happen to know a little about. To read history makes you uncertain about everything however solid it may seem to be to you. You look back over history and you may see the uprise of tremendous organizations. They seem to be so good and you say to yourself:

"Oh, they possess the secret of the future". And after a period they are gone. Now, that has been particularly the case among the lay societies which have risen. A very wise individual, the late Dr. Downey, Archbishop of Liverpool, after consideration of that old question, said that every lay society should be suppressed on its fiftieth birthday, that like humanity, it had grown old and was due for retirement. He didn't even give it to the seventy five year mark ... (Laughs) ... that we have been discussing.

While that is going too far, the fact is that extraordinary things happen. It's almost as if the Lord himself gives certain innings to an institution and then he wipes it away-no matter how good it had been. You know there's a line in Tennyson and it speaks of God renewing Himself in many ways lest one good custom should pervert the world. Inother words, that's His way of doing things. He creates and perhaps he keeps a whole lot of that permanently in existence through the radiation of His spirit. While it lived, it shaped minds and that would mean it was a permanent thing in the Church. But as a visible entity it has ceased to exist.

When we look out at things over the world, we see very troublesome situations. We've always a couple on hand. There are people who are passionately anxious to take possession of the Legion in their own place and change it according to their own notions. That's there in too many places. If by any sort of chance that mentality prevails and the Legion is changed, I would then be inclined to resort rather confidently to what you have been naming as prophecy and I would be inclined to say that the next thing the Legion will be dead which would be a grevious and appalling thought to think! But then you have to think again and to say to yourself: "Well, the Lord is in His heaven. (Laughs) He has allowed that to happen. He will provide".

But then think of what has been permitted to happen in the past. Look at the French Revolution! Look at the Protestant Reformation! There now the Protestant Reformation swept half of Catholicism out and, as Lord McCauley says in one of his writings, none of that ever cameback. He says that since that time great communities have left the Church and come back. But no community which left at the time of theReformation ever came back. You see these are extraordinary thoughts. Whole nations are living there now in a benighted form of faith and we're not able to bring them back. They die, pass on. You see there are sobering reflections of this kind whenever you cast your mind in to the future. I don't know!

The Legion could be terribly easily destroyed! Pervert its particular outlook in regard to our Blessed Lady. Ah! just a little twist, just a little twist, the whole thing is gone! Like the proverbial screw which comes out and brings a vast mechanism into inaction.

Q. Perhaps I've been asking too much about prophecy. Maybe I should ask you to tell us some of the outstanding accomplishments of the Legion over the past fifty-eight years.

A. They are so numerous that it is hard enough to rattle them off. I still am inclined to think that the greatest one was enacted in the Philippines which everybody considered to have drifted too far for anything in the way of a rapid restoration. The celebrated Dr. E. J. McCarthy, who was sent there by the Columban Fathers to investigate the position, reported that evangelization would have to begin all over again-that the Islands were too far gone for a rapid restoration. Now there's a great mind. He wouldn't attempt to start the Legion for that reason even though we argued with him. He said he didn't see even one potential Legionary in the San Tomaso University of which he was the Spiritual Director. But a Spanish priest, Father Gracia, a Vincentian, came in. Within a fortnight he had two Praesidia on foot. Then in the first year, there were fourteen. During the Japanese occupation which followed that rose to one hundred. Now there are possibly ten thousand Praesidia and it's a Catholic land again. A country that had no priests was able to open a foreign missionary college. There's an abundance of vocations for men and women. And now they say to us with confidence, which is justified by their record, that they are preparing a peaceful army of apostles to penetrate Asia. I'd be inclined to think that's the biggest achievement. But then you get the same thing in very many places. We're looking at a rather marvelous happening in Iceland at the moment where the most impossible enterprise in the world was attempted and just at this moment, apart from what has happened up to the present, there are fifteen persons under instruction. And much more than that. It is evident that the whole atmosphere of that island has become permeated with Catholicism.

Now what was accomplished in China was very portentous. You probably have, or will be, interviewing Father McGrath and he will tell you about that. The Legion had become established there just before the victory of the Communists and it got a fairly good chance of making itself felt with the result that a sort of landslide seemed to set in. That extraordinary figure, Archbishop Riberi, reported to the Pope of the time that the situation in China was one of intense optimism, that the Church seemed to be on the verge of an era of mass conversions. The problem had become one of instruction. The converts were there for the taking. Instruction had become the problem and as that super-spoken man said: "Optimism is to be the note". But there you have another of these extraordinary mischances that are permitted to happen-where every bit of that was swept away and where the Legion was persecuted unto utter death and annihilation and all those bright prospects were wiped out. You can't fathom these things. But there are others now, things, of very great importance-where whole countries are affected by the operations of the Legion. And then, of course, you have a whole lot of new works introduced by the Legion. In fact, I'd say the biggest thing of all in the Legion is that it has proven the fact that the ordinary lay person down to the very simplest person is capable of apostleship. That was never dreamt of in earlier times. I myself would be daring enough to say that Vatican Council Two represents an act of faith in the Legion of Mary. They legislated on the mobilizing of the People of God. Well, that's a vain proposition without the Legion. You're not mobilizing the People of God by getting a whole lot of elect persons to write grand treatises about everything. That's not mobilizing the People of God! You have to be able to get the ordinary, even the illiterate person. That's the great success of the Legion-it's mobilization of those people of the world who would have been deemed unfit for apostleship. There they are in our ranks and here we are not boasting of the princesses and other people whom we have in our ranks but of the simple people of the world. That's our chief possession. That's what Pope Paul said: "What I like most about the Legion of Mary is that it knows how to use the little people."

Q. Here is the final question for to· day. What would you say about the Legion as a maker of Saints?

A. A justified name I would say because it puts into the Legionary mind the capacity of understanding the great Catholic Doctrines: the doctrine of the Mystical Body which St. Thomas Aquinas says is the central doctrine of the Church; the Motherhood of Our Lady-the extraordinary sway of Our Lady over the Holy Spirit. You have to use an expression so extreme as that to denote the truth. These things it teaches the rank and file of the Legion. These things are holy and sanctifying. They make Saints. And they make Saints by the bushel. Now, and that is a truthful statement. By itself the Legion could solve the whole question of the vocations for the Church.

Q. We certainly do thank you, Mr. Duff, for being with us today and giving us this interview in which you provided us information which will be profitable to the Legionaries of the entire world. We thank you again.

A. Thank you, AI, for being so provocative in the form of your questions and being so patient with my actual replies. (Laughs)

This interview is available on video-cassettes and audio cassettes from:

Concilium Legionis Mariae, Morning Star A venue, Brunswick Street, Dublin 7, Ireland