"His fearless approach to industrial problems coupled with a determination to treat the teachings of Christ as the yardstick for industrial action brought him into collision with the authorities in Church and State."  [Bp of Southwark's jacket note]

" ... it was absolutely pointless for churchmen to go on behaving in their traditional way saying mass in their cold and empty churches for a few middle-aged spinsters ans reluctant altar-boys whent eh vast majority of Frenchmen and especially the industrial workers had lost contact with the Church altogether and could only be approached in a missionary spirit ... Young seminarians studying to become the new missionaries spent part of their time in factories ... The only difference between their circumstances and those of the other workers was that they were unmarried and said Mass." [Quote from Bernard Wall's Introduction]

It may seem strange to review a book first published (in French) 50 years ago, but over the next few pages I hope it becomes apparent why this one is well worth it!

A few minutes spent casting the eyes along the second hand selves of the SPCK bookshop in Birmingham before a recent CHRISM Committee meeting proved fruitful when they fell on a copy of Henri Perrin’s ‘autobiography’. Parenthetical as it is not conventional. The book was compiled by a group of his friends after Perrin’s untimely death at 40, in 1954, in a motorbike accident. It is largely a collection of his letter’s (and a few to him), with a minimum of explanatory narrative in between. The result is an intimate view of one worker-priest’s experience of that ministry, with enough context to illuminate the early years of the French movement as a whole.

First, an overview. Perrin studied at a seminary from the age of 12, was ordained priest in 1938, and joined the Jesuits. With them he engaged in teaching and youth work, being influenced by both the extensive Catholic social action movements of the pre-war era and the manifest marginalization of the Catholic Church from the bulk of the people. Although very much a loyal Catholic in his acceptance of authority and doctrine, Perrin held views on the self-inflicted wounds of the Church and the irrelevance of so much of its ritual that I identify with strongly. In the ‘30s Perrin travelled widely in Europe and the Near East, did his national service, and on the outbreak of war in 1939 was called up into an Algerian regiment, wounded and captured in the fall of France the next summer. Recovered and repatriated he then began work with the Mission de Paris in a working class arrondissement.

When conscription of French workers to Germany began in 1943, Perrin and a few other priests secured permission from their bishops to go with them as volunteers, but also as workers, not revealing their priesthood to workmates or German organisers. Perrin spent 8 months near Leipzig, gaining the trust and appreciation of his fellow workers, who slowly learned of his vocation, before being ‘found out’ by the Germans and sent back to Paris at the end of May, 1944. Some of the other priests were less fortunate, being despatched to concentration camps. In the summer of 1945 Perrin returned to Germany to help arrange the repatriation of the hundreds of thousands of French workers, then help build up co-operative and reconciling Catholic youth work between the two countries.

By 1947 Perrin was convinced that he was called to minister as a worker-priest. He was not the first, post-war: a small group were already, famously, working on Marseilles docks. With the blessing of the Archbishop of Paris, support of two local parishes, and aid of a small but dedicated group of lay co-workers, he set about entering the life of the poor working class arrondissemont XIII. He lodged in a series of run-down rooms and took various low-paid manual jobs in the factories locally. He made it his practice not to advertise his priesthood, but not to dissemble as it emerged. This seems to have worked. It is not easy to appreciate how far the Catholic Church was (and is) irrelevant to working class life in France. As Perrin himself put it, the ordinary people had even ceased to call “caw-caw” as a black-robed priest passed. By gaining people’s trust and respect for his personal qualities – especially integrity - first, he was able to help them look passed their prejudice when his priesthood became known.

After three years living thus, and having postponed his tertianship once already, Perrin’s Jesuit superiors insisted he undertake the year of study and retreat it entailed. During this time he realised that, reluctantly, he could not remain a Jesuit. The order demanded deployability and obedience, and Perrin was so convinced of God’s call to him as a worker-priest that he recognised he was not prepared to be otherwise deployed. The (new) Archbishop of Paris and the Jesuit metropolitan agreed that Perrin be asked to leave Paris, though they were content for him to remain a worker-priest, so with heavy heart he removed to the south-east of France and took a job as a mechanic on the massive Arc dam project in Savoy.

In the crude ‘township’ that housed the French, Italian, Spanish and North African workers on the dam and associated tunnelling, life was as tough as it could be. Perrin soon gained respect for his integrity and fairness and was before long co-opted on to the union committee and Joint Works Committee. It was some months before his priesthood became known, most widely after the death of a worker, whose funeral he took, but by this time he was known as a work-mate first, and the evidence of his writings is that he was simply accepted for who he was. Perrin was involved in a range of union activities: negotiating with the management, helping organise two long strikes, welfare and support schemes for fellow workers. There are two passages quoted from a Communist-run journal praising his qualities and work in the comradeliest terms!

It was this association with the unions and preparedness to work with anyone, including Communists, which eventually proved the worker-priest movement’s undoing. By the early 1950s the Mission de France was in full swing to develop the movement: it had its own seminary, the most influential bishops in France backed the movement, and the numbers were growing – over 70. Significantly, requests were coming in from other countries to train worker-priests. Then in the spring of 1954 Rome intervened. In a series of directives the French bishops were firmly told that the movement was to be reined in: the seminary was to close, no priest was to take full-time secular work, they were not to hold any office in a secular organisation, and they were to play a full role in parish organisation – on pain of excommunication. The worker-priests themselves were appalled and held a series of meetings to decide what to do. About a third submitted to the new discipline while most of the rest remained in their calling. Perrin was an exception to both. The work in Savoy had just come to an end so he was jobless. He secured agreement from a local bishop to take a sabbatical, which he spent reflecting on what to do next and visiting family and friends. He considered asking to be ‘laicised’, but never posted the letter. It was on one of his trips to visit friends that he lost control of his motorbike and was killed instantly.

The book that is his memorial is an extraordinarily good read as well as being a window into the early worker-priest movement. The letters themselves are thoroughly readable, the minimalist link material is well selected to complement the story Perrin tells, and the translation captures the immediacy of what each letter relates. Perrin himself comes across as both human and led by unconditional love for those with whom he worked. He clearly gave himself and his talents in the service of others, which was recognised. Typically he took no pride in what he did, and several times appears embarrassed by the gratitude of others. Significantly there is no sense whatsoever of self-abasement on the part of Perrin, and not a hint regarding other worker-priests. Sharing the daily work and life experiences of ordinary people was not ‘beneath’ them but rather the joy of following God’s calling.

There is much I could quote, but that might spoil the pleasure of reading the whole book. One dialogue I will refer to though. A Jesuit friend wrote to Perrin about his view of the priesthood – a high and traditional line. Perrin’s reply is typically right to the point, and expresses his drive to minister among the people. “The priesthood, far from belonging to us, is delegated to us by the Body of Christ, which is the whole Christian community, of which you are a member. The whole universe is sacred from the fact that it finds its unity from Christ and bathes in the grace of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes I get the impression that the world we live in … seems to us purely and simply the kingdom of evil, as yet not divinised. Whereas a vision of genuine faith seems to me to demand that we view the world not only as wrestling with God but also as already making its way slowly towards Him, through the Incarnation.” So how is this different to ministry in secular employment? Firstly, the worker-priests experienced a call to a different expression of ministry after already having been called to the priesthood. Having made this point it is also very much the case that the worker-priest movement was from the beginning far from exclusively priestly. Perrin was clearly following a normal pattern when working as part of a cell group of lay, religious (especially nuns) and other worker-priests. This more closely parallels MSE. A second difference is that MSEs predominantly remain in the work milieu in which they are called. By the nature of Catholic selection and training for the priesthood, especially in pre-war France, the French worker-priests could rarely have had first-hand experience of the work and social environments in which they were called to work for the Kingdom.

MSE is not the same as being a worker-priest, but Perrin’s experience makes it easy to see where the common ground, of which there is much, lies. This excellent edition will (eventually) find it’s way into the Michael Ranken Memorial Library. Please DO read it, and keep your eyes peeled for a copy lurking on a second-hand shelf.