Chapter IV: The future of the Society

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is destined to play an important part in the future of the Catholic Church in England. For it is a living contradiction to the falsehoods about Catholics, which have been repeated ad nauseam by historians during the past three hundred years. Our Church has been repre­sented as the enemy of civilization and of liberty, and Catholics generally as a superstitious, uneducated, and weak-minded class. Less than a century has passed since Catholics gained their rights as citizens. Many of us must remember the stigma under which in youth we laboured as Catholics. Most of the professions were closed against us, as well as all the great English Universities. Everything we did was misrepresented and distorted in the public Press; monks and nuns were shamefully vilified and accused of dark and mysterious outrages in their convents. And all these lies were believed against us by the Protestant public.

But a great change has taken place in public opinion during the past fifty years. It has been found that, after all, Catholics are not the evil-dis­posed people they were thought to be, and that they are even capable of doing some good. And this change has been partly brought about by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. For although it does not advertise its good works as Protestant societies do, nor spend one-third of its income in salaries (or even any of it), the example of its brothers in visiting and relieving the poor, and the self-sacrifice which this entails, is gradually getting known throughout the country.

Sir Arthur Helps said that there is no better training for life than the discipline of the playground of a public school, and he was right. But for a study of human life and character there is no better school than a Conference of St. Vincent de Paul. In the visits which a brother pays to his cases, what dramas and even tragedies of real life he meets with! What comedies and even farces, caused by ignorance and inexperience! What touching examples of charity and self-sacrifice among the very poorest in helping one another! Believe me, we have more to learn from the cases we visit than we can teach them!

To compare the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in 1844, when it was established in England, with that of 1913 is like comparing the Thames at its source among the hills, where a man can jump across it, with the great stream at London Bridge.

From being a small and insignificant Society it has grown to be a mighty influence for good throughout the world. It might well say with the Roman poet:

“Quag regio in terris, nostri non plena laboris!”

But it would not accord with the modest spirit of the Society to make such a boast.

Ozanam’s prophecy that the Society would prove an antidote to the poison of Socialism is likely to be verified in England in such districts as are influenced by the Conferences. In founding the Society he tried to realize a dream of his youth; he saw that in his own country men were divided into two cate­gories—the rich and landed gentry, and the working classes. The rich looked down on the poor as being ignorant and uncultivated slaves, while the poor regarded the rich as a class of men living upon the fruits of the toil of the working classes. Ozanam recognized that there was a modicum of truth in both views. He knew that one of the causes of the first French Revolution had been the well-known indifference shown by the landowners of France to the welfare of the people who cultivated their lands and created their large revenues, and whom they treated as serfs. He knew that in the sight of God all men, whether Kings or peasants, masters or servants, were equal, and that the Church had always treated them as such. The sons of peasants had become Bishops and Popes; and many Saints canonized by her were of the same extraction. He knew that the monastic life was the realization of an ideal republic, where the Abbot, perhaps the son of a peasant, was often the ruler of a community which counted among its numbers Princes and members of the highest families in the land. And yet he was only primus inter pares. “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” for which the revolutionaries raved hypocritically, were only to be found in perfection within the walls of a monastery.

In his lectures at the Sorbonne he had always argued that history proved that the Church had ever been the true promoter of civilization and culture and the protector of the poor. It was necessary that this fact should be brought home to the hearts of the people, and both he and his friend Lacordaire impressed this upon their hearers in their lectures and sermons. But the poor and the workmen did not frequent either the Sorbonne or the Notre Dame, and they only knew of either by the travesties which were published in the infidel papers, which alone they read.

Ozanam felt that the only way to reach the minds and hearts of the working classes must be by laymen. The anti-clerical feeling in Paris was very strong, and a priest would not be listened to. And it was for this reason that he established the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul.

He determined that the Conference should consist of laymen, not priests; not a confraternity, but a meeting of friends united unassumingly to do good to the poor, to visit, advise, and relieve them, thus performing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. He was totally opposed to the Society advertising itself in any way, either by badge or by publishing lists of subscriptions.

When Ozanam spoke to the men of Paris in praise of the Church, and in commendation of her power to heal the evils of Society, it was said to him : “If you speak of the past, what you say is true. Christianity did do wonders, but now it is played out. What works are you doing to prove your Faith, and to make us respect and believe it ?” Ozanam felt the full force of the retort, and resolved to remove further occasion for it. He said to his Catholic friends: “We must bestir ourselves and make our actions agree with our Faith. Let us, therefore, turn to the assist­ance of the needy, and so put our faith under the protection of charity.”

In this you have the true motto of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul—Faith, under the protection of Charity. The Society was created to be a vindica­tion of the Church by the exercise of charity in its widest sense, charity for mind, charity for heart, charity for the body, charity for the whole man— full and perfect service to our neighbour by charity of the spirit. The Society was intended to be a proof of the healing power of Christianity, a testimony before men of the truth and beneficence of the Church. Is this idea too ambitious ? Ozanam would have replied that no one can measure the power of charity, for it appeals to the human heart as nothing else can. Force may compel an un­willing submission, but the loving counsel of a friend wins the heart and keeps it.

As the good work done by the Society becomes better known and appreciated, the Conferences must increase in number, and attract to themselves numbers of active and honorary members, especially of young men. The weekly meetings of the Confer­ences are short and business-like, the subscriptions are placed secretly in a bag like any ordinary collec­tion in church, nobody knows what his neighbour has given. The case which is given to the brother to visit will deeply interest him, the employment of the father, his wages, his health, the attendance of the children at Mass and Sunday-schools, their employ­ment when they leave school, and their supervision; all of these are matters of human interest, and sub­jects of special study.

Some persons have objected to join or to subscribe to the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul upon principle. They said that they thought that alms­giving to the poor was very demoralizing and pauperizing, that it was humiliating to the poor, and destructive of their manly self-respect and inde­pendence. But does not everything depend upon the way the help is offered? No brother of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul could confirm such a theory from his personal experience. They are not relieving officers; they visit the families as friends and sympathizers, anxious to know how they can help the family—by advice as to the children, by getting hospital tickets when required, by arranging quarrels and family disputes, by getting the children employment when they leave school, or by suitable introductions. They do not go to patronize but to fraternize; they sit down and talk familiarly with the family, showing that they come as friends and by no means as patrons. Hence it comes that the brother is always a welcome visitor. The material relief is always a subsidiary matter, it, is the friendly interest and advice which is valued.

The Society already comprises a great number of works of charity of every description, but it is always ready to join in any work which may benefit the poor ; for it has adopted literally Ozanam’s noble motto: “No good work is foreign to the Society.” Future generations will inevitably witness a great development, not only in the number of Conferences, but also in that of the brothers.