NEW WORLD
"From far Ceylon five former Young Christian Workers, now Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, come and show you [by way of letter] their gratitude and sympathy." Belgian nuns wrote these words in 1947 to Joseph Cardijn, who was reputed as the great man of the YCW.
Young Christian Workers movement; in Belgium its name was Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne or Katholieke Arbeiders Jeugd. In this context 'Christian' means 'Roman Catholic'. About 85% of the Ceylonese Christians were Roman Catholics.
Monsignor - since 1965 Cardinal - Cardijn (1882-1967) was a Belgian priest from a simple family. As a seminarist he had been confronted by lack of prospects among boys of his own age and their estrangement from the Roman Catholic church. Cardijn countered with a method of learning from one's own experiences. "See, judge and act", was the motto. Each person possessed an inalienable dignity, which could be profoundly stressed by social injustice or unfavourable living conditions.
Some of the Sisters of Ragama, who payed a tribute to Joseph Cardijn, owed their religious vocation to the YCW. At the time, they were too busy caring for tubercular patients, unabling them to build up a youth movement. The sisters yearned for the opportunity of sacrificing themselves. "Ceylon's sun is not too hot. The deaf and blind who have been entrusted to us, are not too exacting. Our beloved ones are not too far away, if one has good intentions and knows for whom one is working", a sister wrote. In 1948, sisters could already inform YCW international headquarters of a movement of Catholic young workers in Colombo, led by fathers Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Henk Schram's youth
Henk Schram, Oblate of Mary Immaculate and missionary in Ceylon, in the years 1949-1965 played an important part in that movement, which was highly ingrated into Joseph Cardijn's ideas. Henricus Adrianus Schram was born and baptized in Nes aan de Amstel, a village near Amsterdam, on 28 November 1919. His father was a policeman and came from a family of shopkeepers. His mother had been a nurse, coming from a family of skilled workers. Henk (Henry) was the eldest of seven children: four girls and three boys. They grew up in the south of the Netherlands, on the German and Belgian border, where their family had moved to. When Henk was twelve years old, he chose for becoming an Oblate of Mary Immaculate. His brothers followed him in that choice. They were to become missionaries in Southwest-Africa (now Namibia) and Chile.
In May 1940, when Adolf Hitler's armies invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France, Henk Schram was studying in Belgium. The Netherlands were forced to surrender after four days. Belgium made a stand during two weeks. Overrun as it had been during the First World War, the country was panic-stricken. The Belgian government ordered all the young people to flee. Henk Schram and his fellow seminarists fled to France, where they met German armies. So they returned to Belgium and tried to escape over the coast. From the coast, where they stuck, they saw how French and British troops embarked for Great Britain and how German airplanes tried to annihilate them. Desperation and confusion were all over the country. The students saw people killed and took care of wounded. It made a deep impression on them. In his fatherland, where the Dutch seminarists soon returned to, Henk Schram got involved in a resistance movement. The occupiers and their accomplices persecuted thousands of innocent people, like Jews, putting an end to democracy and plundering the country. Schram helped people in hiding. In 1943 he had to go into hiding himself.
On July 1st, 1944, a few months before liberation of southern parts of the Netherlands by Allied Forces, Henk Schram was ordained priest. For Lemiers, the village that had seen him growing up, it was a great event. When he said mass there for the first time, the whole village participated in the festivities, which lasted almost a week. Photographs show a crowd with Henk Schram between his parents while a girl presents him his adorned priest's hat. Oblate reports state that he was a talented student with excellent traits of character. He and his fellow students came from families that knew scarcity and joblessness by experience. A lot of them showed remarkable openess to the modern world and had high ideals about their future work as a priest. There should be a new - a more truly Catholic - world, they thought: a world in which religion was a really inspiring force and in which the lower classes had a fair share in yields and management.
The Oblates of Mary Immaculate offered their pupils opportunities for developing themselves. Especially during the war, however, the development of some students, among whom Henk Schram, reached a pace some teachers could not keep up with. Students got involved in illegal activities, they even had to hide from some of their superiors, who were afraid. Students also showed interest in modern theology, which some of their teachers had little knowledge of. The Dutch Oblates of Mary Immaculate were, to a large extent, a congregation for working abroad. Still, when Henk Schram got his appointment for Ceylon, he experienced it as an expulsion. On 28th of May, 1946 his family accompanied him to the airport. - Ships were used for suppression of anti-colonial uprising in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). - The boat that carried Henk Schram's properties, among which his chalice, navigated on a mine and sank. Another chalice appeared to be stolen when the steamer arrived in Ceylon. In Lemiers women kept sewing doll's clothes for many years, to support the fathers Schram in their work as missionaries.
Religious Ceylon and her invaders
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was and still is extremely beautiful. Striking is her exuberance. Luxuriant nature and variation in landscapes form the scenery of a colourful variety of people, who are dilligently busy. The coastal region, where Henk Schram alighted, is sweltering throughout the year. Houses use to be small. A large part of life is outdoors or with opened doors. The country may be proud of an ancient culture of high standing. Temples, palaces, sculptures, irrigation works and classical literature show evidence of that. At the time of Schram's arrival they were gradually torn from rampant primeval forest and alien cultures. The country had known decline. From the beginning of the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century it had fallen a prey to respectively Portuguese, Dutch and Britons. The Portuguese had brought Catholicism, the Dutch had not been able to eradicate and the British had left in peace.
The Dutch fought their independence from the king of Spain in the years 1568-1648. In the years 1580-1640 the king of Spain was also the king of Portugal. He had tried to eradicate non-Catholic forms of Christianity, leading Dutch adhered to. Portuguese (Catholic) missionaries were considered to be tools of the king of Portugal, who was their patron and who kept annihilating real or supposed religious dissidents. Dutch Protestants were not interested in spreading their Christian religion abroad and would tolerate elsewhere any religion that was not hostile. Henk Schram's home region had been a kind of Dutch colony itself. More than ninety percents of her population were Catholic. At the time, they enjoyed equal rights.
Buddhists constituted now about sixty-five percent of the population, Hindus twenty, Muslims and Roman Catholics each seven. Especially in the coastal region the population was mixed.
So Roman Catholics were a minority, but an important one. They had to thank notably the Oblates of Mary Immaculate for that. The Oblates had been converting and renewing since 1848. With some benevolence they had been able to discover in Buddhism or Hinduism something of christian-like values. For the rest Ceylon had seemed to them an empire of the Evil: with local Catholics they also had not been satisfied. Those Catholics had been bold enough to say that only they, and not the missionary, had the command of the churches they had built. The newcomers had not realized that the world of miracles they firmly believed in resembled the worlds they poked fun of. Their idealism however had encouraged many religious to sacrifice themselves for the material and spiritual wellbeing of their fellow creatures. Ceylon had been enriched with a network of schools, hospitals and other institutions that were accessible also to non-Catholics, but which were powerful instruments in the hands of especially Catholics for exerting influence.
Independent and peaceful
When Ceylon became independent in 1948, not everything changed at once. For the time being Ceylonese society remained comparatively peaceful. A Western oriented, often English speaking, elite set the tone. Ethnic differences did not yet lead to explosions of violence on a large scale. Social peace could be bought to a certain extent. A system of food subsidies and welfare institutions helped in containing the influence of Marxists among the population. Also seen in an international perspective, this seemed to be wise. The Second World War had been succeeded by the Cold War. The Sovietunion had emerged as a world power, China became communist in 1949. Both could try to get influence in the collapsing Asian colonial empires of France, Great-Britain and the Netherlands, making use of comrades in Marxist doctrine. This was at least the prevailing notion.
Alien Christianity
Henk Schram, in short, made his first steps in an Asia that was thoroughly on the move. The religious community wherein he became a member was no longer the pioneers' who had been going around like a whirlwind. Certain features they had in common, however. One of those is, that they thought other religions hardly worth contemplation. Another is their orientation on Western culture. Born and bred Ceylonese could be perfect in Latin or Greek, the classical languages of the West, and at the same time have no or insufficient knowledge of Sinhala, Tamil, Pali or Sanskrit. Churches and sculptures looked as if they had been made for Portugal in stead of for Ceylon. "When I went to Europe for my studies, I was like a fish thrown back into the water. When I came back and wanted to go deeper into Buddhism and stayed in Buddhist temples and villages, I felt really a foreigner at heart", Sri Lankan educator and theologian Antony Fernando reveals. "Christianity in Sri Lanka conveyed Western culture under the colours of religion and did not realize that another precious culture was destroyed by that", Henk Schram said at the end of his life. Certainly on the coast around the capital Colombo, where Catholics were living in great numbers, they held little close intercourse with people of another religion.
Missionaries in a fairy tale world
For a European missionary who had just arrived, Ceylon looked like a fairy tale world. Henk Schram used this term in the first sentence he wrote to his superior in the Netherlands. Marcel Ayrinhac and Lucien Schmitt, French colleagues who arrived in 1948 and became friends with him, show, after half a century, they are still impressed. Ayrinhac: "My first impression was: everybody is in the street, but there are only women. Men had their hair tied in a knot. When they turned round, I saw beards." Schmitt, realizing the comfort of the sarong, is wearing it now in the nighttime. Missionaries also had to accustom themselves to the curries: the Ceylonese food was extraordinarily spicy.
Learning the languages was not an easy task. Ayrinhac only spoke French, Schmitt also German. Schram - apart from those languages and Dutch - had learned English, but was not nearly perfectly master of that language. In Ceylon these missionaries immediately set to work in a parish. How was that possible? In the whole world at the time mass was celebrated largely in Latin. For the rest it was a matter of managing to get on. Schmitt in the beginning did not preach. Ayrinhac read a few sentences, which had been translated for him, from the pulpit. When he heard confession, he thought: "The point is not that I understand, but that the Lord understands!" As an assistant priest, Ayrinhac went to the beach every day, to learn Sinhala from the children: children have a limited stock of words, but can express everything by that. (roaring with laughter:) "My parish priest established then that I had learned dirty words."
European missionaries served to fill gaps until Ceylonese could take over. Schram approved of that. Thomas Cooray, the Ceylonese coadjutor to the French archbishop of Colombo, had the right to succession. Other important posts were filled by compatriots already. Still there were many foreign priests. Among the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to whom Cooray also belonged and from whom were drawn by far most priests in the archdiocese, foreigners constituted the majority. Among the faithful they usually had no bad reputation. A priest was anyhow looked up to. "He was greeted with a genuflexion", Cooray's secretary Clinton Anandappa says. "The attitude of the faithful made us, Ceylonese priests, feel a bit inferior", Lucien Dep acknowledges. Dominique Abeynayake and his wife were married by Henk Schram in 1947. Abeynayake: "Father Schram always laughed; he greeted one with a smile. Foreign priests did a lot for the people. They had left their family and country for God's sake, had no relations to take account of and were not very interested in estates and houses. A foreign priest had no other interests: only the soul and God he was worried for."
Schmitt: "People liked to have a priest about whom they could say 'He is our's', even if he did not speak their language. On holy days someone from elsewhere could come and preach after all. People thought it important, that their church was always open and that there was a priest to care for that. They could pay him a visit at any moment. 'What do you come for?' A saying is then: 'For nothing.' People simply dropped in and left after a chat. They also came for certificates and so on, and a priest could come for a sick person. People liked to have such a person near them. Nowadays they would ask more from their priest."
Saint James', Mutwal
Henk Schram's first spot of work was Saint James parish in Mutwal (Colombo). A few weeks after his arrival in Ceylon he became assistant there under the guidance of the Belgian father Ernest Bourgeois. According to the newcomer, Saint James', with its mixed population, was one of the most difficult parishes in the diocese. It counted more than five-thousand parishioners. Bourgeois had been the only priest there during eight years. Half of the parishioners had English as their mother tongue, the others Sinhala. "I am happy here", Schram informed his former superior in the Netherlands. He baptized, blessed weddings and conducted funerals, celebrated mass and kept the administration up-to-date. Sometimes he had a job to get it done. He reported on it in a moving way.
"Yesterday I had to conduct obsequies", he wrote on 14th of August, 1946. "Such an obsequies gives one an opportunity to get into the houses of the people. The deceased was the only son of a widow. When I entered, the coffin was still open. The body had been lying there for three days already. You can understand that the atmosphere was very bad. Immediately, however, I was fascinated by something else. Whilst all the bystanders were very silent, the mother was moving, quietly rocking, over the body and sang a Sinhalese dirge. This made an extraordinary impression on me: the tranquillity and calm, the spirit of surrender, and then the tender, calm voice of the old woman, who singing said goodbye to her boy."
Kepungoda, Dungalpitiya, Pamunugama
Henk Schram cared for the people and saw for himself a future among them. On New Year's Eve, 1947, Thomas Cooray, who had become the archbishop in the meantime, asked him what he thought of a post in the country. Schram (in a letter): "Monsignor thought that I would get discouraged, alone at a post and only the local language [around me], and gave me the choice. I have immediately shaken hands on it. I have said that I didn't expect to be troubled too much with that and that Heaven was also there [to support me]. I may go as soon as the father whose place I am taking now is recovered. After a year I'll be transferred to another mission post to learn Tamil as well. I asked this too of Monsignor. And Monsignor promised me full co-operation. I made up my mind to this because the Tamil population, especially in the towns, has been neglected very much, as there are not enough Tamil-speaking priests. The Tamil population (workers) is most exposed to the communist danger."
Some months later Schram was working in villages on a spit north of Colombo. The overwhelming majority of their population were Sinhala native speakers; most inhabitants were Roman Catholic. A foreign missionary could apply himself to learning the vernacular. Father Zeiter, a Frenchman who had been living in the country since a long time and was familiar with Sinhala, was living in Pamunugama. His assistants were housing in neighbouring villages. The whole formed as it were a training parish. Schram was living in Kepungoda and served from there in addition Dungalpitiya, about three kilometres further on. He moved on bicycle. Schram also acted as a substitute of Zeiter.
Mid-1948 Lucien Schmitt arrived in the area where Henk Schram was active as a pastor. He too became an assistant priest under father Zeiter. His description evokes the atmosphere of the villages from Schram's youth: of small, good-natured, homogeneous communities, the members of which were dependent one on another. Most inhabitants subsisted on fishing. When the fishermen returned in their row-boats, small traders were waiting for them with their bicycles. There also was grown a bit of rice. Farmers did so - because of the heaviness of the soil - together. Further there was a weaving mill, where girls were working for a scanty wage. The church put up a hall at their disposal, entrepreneurs from Colombo looms. Pigs and fowl, which were routing around, and small yards with banana and coconut trees and pepper and coffee plants helped in making that little had to be bought from outside the area. If one visited a priest for anything official, he took eggs, cake or fish with him. In the evening people met in the junction, with its little shops and teahouses.
Kepungoda church looks, compared to the imposing, neoclassical buildings in Mutwal and Pamunugama, austere. From behind the altar one can hear the rushing of the waves of the ocean. The church is almost on the beach. Schram had opportunity enough to make acquaintance with the fishermen. "I have started a 'novelty' (!!)", he reported to the home front, "namely visiting regularly and, if possible, taking Holy Communion to the sick. Off and on there are some communist skirmishes. The gentlemen tried, against the will of the parish priest, to bring women upon the stage and threatened with [holding] a communist meeting in the square in front of the church. They seize every opportunity for gossiping against authority."
One is tempted to connect the things mentioned with the commotion concerning the tithes. Fishermen were supposed to hand over one tenth of their catch to the church. At the time there was vehement agitation against that in the neighbourhood. Lucien Schmitt however has his doubts and is not alone as to that. "In our area nobody could compel the fishermen to hand over anything", he states. "At that the money was intended for the yearly parish feast and to assist parishioners in an emergency, for example when storm prevented them for a while from putting to sea. The church received only a small part of the money. A committee of lay people administered the fund. Priests had to protect it, lest it would be spent on more and more fireworks. The people were proud of their church and gave a lot for it. That's why churches are so big."
“We were born for the combat”
Henk Schram felt strong. "Life is worth to be lived", he reported. At the start of his Ceylonese adventure he had stated already: "We were born for the combat and for the war." Schram had to face a lot alone. "The last joke here is", he recorded on Epiphany 1949, "that I belong to a race that is rapacious, tyrannical, capitalist, fascist, Hitlerian, pharisaic and sadistic. That's in the newspapers every day again, because of the police actions in Indonesia. The people here are greatly indignant with the Dutch. Even history of two centuries ago is trailed to prove what a devilish race we are."
The devilish Dutchman could find comfort in the fact that the last two weeks he had heard four Buddhists asking for entrance into his church. For his further development of great importance was the fall-in of father Fortin as vicar general of the archdiocese the year before. According to Schram, Fortin wanted to shift the helm and thought of Catholic Action as a form of modern apostolate. Schram experienced him as a real support. Perhaps it was under the influence of Gérard Fortin, that Schram started with taking statistics of housing conditions and incomes of the fishermen. His aim was "to play trumps in due time". It would not come to that. In January 1949 Schram together with Schmitt was transferred to Saint Joseph's College in Colombo. He did not at all sympathize with the idea of leaving his fishermen in order "to walk regulations again".
Saint Joseph's College, Colombo
Bishop Oswald Gomis, who was a pupil of Saint Joseph's College, still sees it happening. Gomis: "There was a school boy involved in a quarrel with one of those little street vendors, who used to come in and sell ice cream and so on. It was during recreation. Boys were standing around them. Father Schram walked right into the scene and got hold of that man and got hold of that boy. Then he spoke to them and very, very commandingly set over this dispute. It was clear that his leadership was accepted. So what I admired was: this man, being a foreigner, who did not possibly know the language properly at that time, immediately took control of the situation."
Saint Joseph's College since half a century was a very prestigious institute of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. It gave access to English universities, of which it reminded qua architecture. Its enormous buildings were bordered by sport grounds and lawns and there was industrious cricket and football playing. "It's all modern town-life", Schram stated. The rector was Peter Pillai, who is boasted of as one of the most learned men in southeast Asia or the British Empire. His boys were from about seven to eighteen years old. A number of them belonged to the elite of the country, but there were also boys of simple families: the teachers' salaries were paid by the State and at the college was prevailing a social attitude. For a long time education had been exclusively in English. In the 1940's, however, the swabasha (vernacular: Sinhala and Tamil) was gradually introduced as the medium of instruction.
When Schram arrived, the college numbered eighteen-hundred pupils, two-hundred of whom were boarders. Schram became the hostel warden for the senior boys and taught Gregorian and religion. Rector Pillai asked him to start Scouting. Within two months Schram also was concerned up to his eyebrows in the Young Christian Students and the Young Christian Workers, which were in their infancy. In the beginning pupils had to hang on his lips to be able to understand him; Schram exerted himself for that and spoke slowly. He further attracted attention by his relating religion to life: he used to talk not only on theory, but also on incidents of life. So there was practical application in his teaching.
Towards his pupils he took up a rather comradely position. "As a warden", he wrote, "I have some trouble with the system and with the people who are defending it. In my opinion the basis for education is friendship, so that my attitude towards the boys is more democratic. Sometimes harsh words have been spoken harsh words on that, but a few weeks ago an English university professor came here and gave a lecture on education. He drew a distinction between the dictatorial, the democratic and the laissez faire system. He proved from experiments that the democratic system is the best one, although the results find expression only in the higher studies. Now the wind has turned and nobody disputes. Providence!"
Catholics out of their ghetto
Henk Schram had asked himself why he had been called away from his fishermen. The reason is probably that he had attracted attention by qualities that could be used at Saint Joseph's College and, even more, outside. The impression was strengthened when he was seen busy at the college. "He is a man, we have been waiting for", his colleague Justin Perera said. Prominent Roman Catholics, among whom vicar general Gérard Fortin, rector Peter Pillai and 'Father Justin', worried seriously about developments in Ceylon. With independence, which had been attained in a peaceful way, nationalistic feelings had gotten strong impulses. Marxists and their trade unions also began to stir redoubtably.
Roman Catholics had, locked up as they had themselves in a ghetto, inadequate reply to that. It is true, since 1937 Peter Pillai had lead a movement and a periodical called Social Justice. The periodical was also published in Sinhala. There was, however, quite a distance between Pillai and the masses. Since 1928 there was the - kind of social democratic - Labour Party. Catholics could play an important part in it. The Labour Party and the related trade union had, however, lost much of it's influence. Causes were the economic depression of the 1930s and the rise of Marxist organizations. In July 1947, a general strike of the public service had broken out. Ossie (A.G.O.) Perera, a socially active Catholic: "The strike crippled the whole economy for a short time. Many Catholics were being almost dragged into it by those who were left-inclined. Catholics worried whether the strike was justified or not. The members of the clergy who could have advised them however did not know the full set-up of the services." The signal was understood: if Roman Catholics kept behaving like outsiders, they would lose their influence in the field of labour. Gérard Fortin, who was in charge of the lay-apostolate movements, made a search.
Thomas Cooray impressed by Joseph Cardijn's Movement of, for and by working youth
His search made him arrive at Joseph Cardijn's movement of, for and by working youth. The founders of the YCW had been inspired by Le Sillon, a French lay movement, which had closed itself in 1910 after condemnation by pope Pius X. Cardijn would always invest a lot in his relationship with the Holy Father. According to Cardijn and his fellow-founders of the YCW, working youth firstly had to christianize themselves and the places where they were living and working: they had to make them better spiritually and materially. "We don't make the revolution: we are the revolution!", was a slogan. Joseph Cardijn had received pope Pius XI's blessing in 1925. The YCW had been spreading itself from Belgium over Europe and, especially after the Second World War, the globe.
Archbishop Thomas Cooray knew the movement and had a weak spot for young people. In 1947 he had travelled to Rome (Italy) for a chapter of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. His bishop, Jean Masson, had asked him - now he went to Europe - to go to all the countries where the missionaries came from and thank them. The expectation was namely that in a few years the Ceylonese government would not allow any more missionaries to enter the country. So after the chapter Cooray went to Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great-Britain, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. During that journey Masson died and was automatically succeeded by Cooray, who wanted to finish his job before he returned to Ceylon. When he came back after half a year, he appeared to be full of Cardijn, whom he had met. "I was glad to hear that you will be going over to India in the near future", he had written canon Cardijn from Paris already. "We shall be very glad if you could come over to Ceylon and give a few conferences to our young men, especially in Colombo. I shall meet the expenses from India." In South France Cooray had ordained five Oblates of Mary Immaculate priest on the condition that he would get two of them for the work in Ceylon. Marcel Ayrinhac was one of them.
Gérard Fortin and Justin Perera pioneering
So Gérard Fortin was secured of Thomas Cooray's approval when he set to work. In Bambalapitiya (Colombo) in February 1947 already there had been started a small group that was working on YCW lines. The French Oblate of Mary Immaculate Charles Reymann was guiding it. Marcel Ayrinhac, who became an assistant under him, says that Reymann was very close to the people, but he questions whether Reymann's group may be called a movement. A similar group was founded in September by Catholic Guild members at the Income Tax Department. It was guided by Justin Perera and got advice from Peter Pillai. – Guilds were Associations to strenghten each others in one's religious life. At Income Tax Department Guild members pointed to literature. – Ossie Perera, who was involved, thinks that in this case there also should be thought in terms of experiment. The two groups started talks about the future. Perera: "We agreed that a jocist movement (YCW) was the most suitable in the circumstances, because it was meant not simply to agitate like trade unions, but also involved study, preparation. The jocist movement had a preparatory period of studying one's responsibilities; it also was Scripture-based. The aim was to help all Catholic workers to be hundred percent Catholic. To achieve this, the movement would aim at christianizing the environment of the workers. It did not aim at any form of proselytization." On the 3th of May, 1948 Gérard Fortin presided a meeting in the Mission House of Saint Philip Neri's church in Pettah (Colombo). A national YCW movement was born. Another period of trial and error dawned.
Father Justin Perera became the spiritual director of the YCW. He was a man who 'burned the candle at both ends': he worked day and night, at the cost of his health. Apart from spiritual director of the YCW, he was among others, English teacher at Saint Joseph's College, editor of The Ceylon Catholic Messenger (a newspaper) and chaplain of a Catholic Guild. People who have known him from closeby describe him as an inspirator, who listened well and let others take the decision themselves. As is to be expected, he was popular as a counsellor. "Science and literature, politics and sport, music, drama and the film, all have a place in the Catholic scheme. There is a Catholic perspective to everything, including news", he wrote in 1949. Just like Henk Schram, he thought that a Catholic should not stay aloof. "We must learn to see Christ not only in our Churches and on our Altars, but in our homes, our schools, our offices, our streets, our shops and our factories - everywhere and in everyone we meet. And we must learn to see Christ especially in our poor", he argued.
Henk Schram and Lucien Schmitt looking for the right way
"I have been charged with a YCW section. I have to fight in behalf of keeping the high ideal pure among the lords", Henk Schram at that time wrote to friends of his in the Netherlands. "The YCW is that new as a method and spirit, that the dynamism easily can be lost in this old (French) formalistic and traditionalist spirit." Schram blazed. "Scouting is running splendidly. Both for Scouting and for the YCW God gave me splendid leaders. I consider this gift as a great token of friendship from Heaven and, in fact, a little bit as a miracle. The fellows in the YCW are topping fighters and men who by grace immediately understood the ideal of the YCW. With respect to Scouting the same is true: well trained and persevering people, full of ardour, deeply Catholic. Apart from [being busy with] Scouting and the YCW, I am busy with engineering the Young Christian Students."
Justin Perera had founded the YCW without knowing exactly what the point was, Schram said many years later. "I also did not know that much about it - especially not about the method - but I had worked with Young Christian Workers in the Netherlands already. So I had a notion of the direction where I had to look for it." Personal notes and newspaper articles make guess that Henk Schram and Lucien Schmitt, who both gave guidance to a YCW section, put another emphasis than their colleagues. From the beginning they combined personal spiritual education and intensive interest in everyday life, while others were working more along the lines of pious or study minded organizations. There was a search for an own direction. Knowledge was largely borrowed from English and Australian publications. Sections were too large and comprised both older and younger people, many of whom did not know very well what they wanted or which was the aim. One inquired into working conditions of mercantile employees, organized a pilgrimage or held study sessions on Christian marriage, but lost oneself in the organization. Sections missed spontaneity and had no long life. Spiritual directors were scarce, among others because priests were not jumping at the organization. In order to avoid misunderstandings moreover, those priests after a while were no longer called spiritual directors but chaplains. Schram and Schmitt were working unobtrusively and more slowly, but their sections had more depth. Marcel Ayrinhac, who crossed over to Saint Joseph's College in 1950, helped them.
Working in slums – Marcel Ayrinhac remembers
"Two weeks ago we started with the slums", Henk Schram reported on May 20th, 1950. "During the holidays there was a study camp of the Pax Romana (Catholic students movement) section. With God's help I could find there some boys and girls who dare to do this work and have begun already. It will be very difficult, but perhaps very fruitful therefore. A serious, experienced priest with whom I talked about this work, asked me: 'Are you willing not to complain, to brave failures, to feel alone, to exhaust yourself within three years? If you can say yes to this, start! If you cannot, don't start!'" For his new field of action, Schram only had to cross the road.
Marcel Ayrinhac, who grew up in a poor family himself, in his memoirs describes – in French – the contrast. "Darley Road. On this side of this street the magnificent Saint Joseph's College, impressive by its numerous buildings, by its green cricket lawn, by its modern swimming-pool of Olympic dimensions: a whole breathing the riches, the comfort, the abundance. On the other side the slums, the huts, the famous shantytowns of southeast Asia, the misery, the poverty, the mud, the dirtiness, the malnutrition of the children in rags, illiterate. I am passing there. Something had to be done.
At the exit of the campus was a building of the Catholic Action Movement, which didn't exist anymore since a long time. This building had on the first floor four rooms that didn't serve to any purpose. Father Schmitt got permission to use them for Friendship House. We pushed off by making literate. Students undertook to assure of that three evenings a week. They did so by turns. One had to count a number of thirty boys and girls in charge. As hungry belly has no ears, one had to provide with a light meal. To prepare that, one needed money, but we hadn't one penny in our pocket.
We had sent a circular to persons of good fortunes: doctors, lawyers, industrialists, merchants. Several weeks passed...no answers. One evening I was thinking of this circular and, turning to the Lord like Moses in the desert, I prayed: 'Lord, make that tonight it will rain gold coins on the lawn of the college.' Early next morning I could investigate the lawn as much as I liked, run over it in all directions, run a fine comb through it, [but there was] no penny. In stead, with morning post, a letter for me. Who could write me? What could this letter contain? I opened the envelop and began to read: 'I received your circular in a good order. At the moment I cannot pay a visit to you: I had a small accident and have my leg in plaster. I am a lawyer by profession. Could you come and see me? My wife and me are interested by what you are doing.' Immediately I took my telephone.
Next morning I met a young lawyer whom I knew by sight since he came quite often to mass at the college, accompanied by his wife and son. The conversation was very warm. I expected a quite important cheque - which he made - but my surprise burst out when he told me: 'Father, my wife and me would like to invest ourselves in what you make up your mind to do. We have numerous relations in Colombo and elsewhere.' A few months later a movement was born: the Friends of the YCW. Its goal was to help the young workers or others who were in trouble. Everybody did so in his or her way: the lawyer pleading gratis, the doctor by free consultations, the industrialist by helping us find employment for those whom we inscribed at the Labour Exchange. This organism also had Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems.
Little by little Friendship House developed. In addition to making literate, the students of the medical school made their appearance as volunteers in order to accompany the ladies to the shantytowns. Friendship House did miracles. For me the great miracle was the change of mentality of all these volunteers, who discovered for the first time the real misery they 'ignoraient' while it was at their door."
('Ignoraient' has two meanings: 'they did not know' and 'they ignored'. From: Marcel Ayrinhac, Souvenirs 1915-1995. Je me raconte, (typescript) p. 94-95. Above passage was slightly abridged by me.)
“We are on a turning point. We have no time to lose.”
“We are on a turning point. We have no time to lose.”
The movements got going. "Life is wonderful, hard like steel", Henk Schram repeatedly informed his former superior in the Netherlands. "Please, send a couple of Dutchmen who have been trained in youth work, Catholic Action and social work. It is the fault of the Dutch, that Ceylon is not Catholic! We have a duty to restitution!" Schram kept urging. "Every day there is móre demand for the work in the slums and are discovered móre distresses. Communism is working extraordinarily fast, but we have to remain the first. The question is whether the small group of Catholics can make a stand. In several parishes the communists have openly started attacking. In other places they are working cleverly. Help us! Can you miss absolutely nobody?"
Schram himself was the longer the more made free for the benefit of the movements. A height was formed by Joseph Cardijn's visit from November 27th to December 4th, 1952. Like Cardijn had done in Rome in 1925 to pope Pius XI, in Colombo he went down on his knees to archbishop Thomas Cooray. Could His Eminence make two priests free? The archbishop consented. Marcel Ayrinhac saw and heard it happening and became one of the freed. The other one became Henk Schram, the acknowledgement of whom was complete. Schram: "The movement here is depending especially on you, Mgr. Cardijn said. And he, the old, great man, took my arm into his arm and walked with me out of the building." Cardijn entertained high expectations. "More than ever", he wrote on June 18th, 1953, "I am convinced that Ceylon has a mission to fulfil in the Far East and that it should help to prepare the lay missionaries for the other countries. Go ahead, dear Father! I count very much on all of you. We are on a turning point. The events are progressing fast now! We have no time to lose."
In August of 1953 Ceylon got through severe disturbances. The country was getting crushed between diminishing yields from exports and high expenditures on social provisions, a trend that promised serious problems also for the future. The (United National Party) government decided to reduce the rice subsidy, breaking a promise that had been made during the election campaign one year before. The price of rice, the most important food, almost trebled. Public protests rose, the Marxist trade unions called up for a one-day's strike and the police shot several demonstrators. The government declared the state of emergency.
Henk Schram lived to see it from the mountains, six-thousand feet above the sea level, where he spent his first holidays in three years. "It's storming and blowing!", he reported. "There is revolution in the country. Ceylon, the last country in the Far East that had remained free, experienced bloodshed. Whatever may happen however, I am not afraid of that. God is very good to me and I feel strong. Christ's Kingdom will come. If we don't 'verdienen' it without persecution or revolution, then in spite of and through the cross of a persecution."
('Verdienen' has two meanings: 'earn' and 'deserve'. Henk Schram's letters to his former superior Jos Voogt and to and from Joseph Cardijn are in Dutch.)
Schram in the meantime had passed through a good school, as he expressed it, both in the Netherlands and in Ceylon. Since May he was taking sick Justin Perera's place as the regional chaplain. In October he moved into the headquarters of the movements.
© JO SCHOORMANS
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