In 1673 the Illinois tribe showed Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette an overland route that bridged the Great Lakes and Mississippi river systems, which come within just a few miles of each other; close enough for canoes to be portaged.

Marquette and his companion, Louis Jolliet, made the crossing and traveled South from New France (present-day Wisconsin), down the Mississippi and into Spanish territory, the first Europeans to do so. After making this trip they spread word about the opportunity for a transportation link that would eventually become the city of Chicago.

The Jesuit university in Wisconsin today bears Marquette’s name, In honour of his history-altering expedition.

Earlier this month, on a visit to Chicago, I made my own expedition to Marquette University which holds the archives of CLC in North America.

I was met and kindly welcomed by archivist Bill Fliss, who arranged for the materials to be available. Imagine! All of the newsletters of CLC back to the first edition in 1914, when it was known as the Sodality.

With Bill Fliss in the reading room of the Raynor Memorial Library Archives

The first edition of The Queen’s Work, the Sodality’s newsletter in North America

I was aware that the Sodality was huge in the pre-Vatican II milieu in which there were fewer options for lay associations.

Just how huge can be seen in this photo of a Sodality convention that drew over 1,000 attendees.

However, once I started to read a bit closer, the story got more interesting. The Sodality was not simply a huge monolith that gradually faded away; it had many ups and downs, always driven forward by the work of inspirational individuals. I’ll share two of their stories.

The Sodality of Mary Immaculate and St Aloysius Gonzaga in Barcelona, Spain, and Fr Luis Ramon Fiter

An extract from The Queen’s Work, Edition 1, 1914:

The Barcelona Sodality has a long history, since it was founded as far back as 1577. But of course that first foundation came to an end with the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. It was not revived until 1860, and then so feebly that it died with great promptness the same year. In 1878 the Marquis of Palmerola resurrected it once more, chiefly for the benefit of his own sons, and for eight more years thereafter it lived on in a more or less precarious state; with a new Father Director every year, with very little animation, very little growth, very little efficiency; in number small, in spirit frail, holding perfunctory meetings, making small beginnings of good works which came to little or nothing.

But in 1886 it was galvanized into new life, it began to stretch its limbs, to grow, to be active with a vitality which has never since weakened or lessened. For in this year a rather remarkable man took hold of it as Director, Luis Ramon Fiter
[…]
He found the Sodality of Barcelona a decrepit organization, which although pretending to no more than the hearing of Mass on Sundays with the recital of the Little Office before Mass, could present to the new Director at the opening meeting of the year only a dozen members, out of some sixty on the rolls. When he died, sixteen years later, at the age of fifty he left a compact, earnest, trained body of nearly 1500 Sodalists, whose efficiency cannot be measured by mere numbers, who form certainly the most prominent, and perhaps the most powerful, social element for good in the city of Barcelona, and who have gone on in increasing vigor and earnestness during the eleven years since Father Fiter’s death.

Inspiring stuff! Here’s another:

The Sodality of the Immaculate Conception in Bordeaux, France, and Father William Joseph Chaminade

An extract from The Queen’s Work, 1961:

Father Chaminade had remained loyal to the Pope in the French Revolution. In 1801 he held a reception day for 12 members of the Sodality. A year later, there were a hundred members. In six years, six hundred members.
When the seminaries of Bordeaux and of Bazas were reopened after the Revolution, all their professors and students came from [this] Sodality. His Sodalists flocked to all the reviving religious congregations in France.
More than a dozen pastors joined the Sodality. So did the Vicar General […] Other bishops came, as did royalty, students, workers […] “Trace any good work in the diocese to its source and you will find the name of Chaminade,” Cardinal Donnet said some years later.
The poor were being fed and instructed, schools were begun, refuge houses were opened – all by Madeleine Sodalists. There were little societies for the young and the less gifted by grace.

Heady stuff. We live in different times. CLC is not the Sodality; it is very much a lay-run organisation. We can’t expect our Jesuit brothers to assign people to drive CLC forward. What can we do to be ready to support a lay Luis Ramon Fiter or William Chaminade when God sends us such a person?

I was reminded of a remark that Nick Galante said at a National Gathering some years ago: CLC will only come of age when it has people doing its work full-time. This is the case today in the Philippines, in Hong Kong and in South Korea where CLC runs staffed ministries. CLC Australia could well have such a moment in our future.