75 Years of the Legion of Mary,
by Kieran A. Kennedy
by Kieran A. Kennedy
Legion of Mary - Diocese of Phoenix, AZ
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| 75 Years of the Legion of Mary (Article for Studies - October, 1996) Kieran A. Kennedy |
There must be few organisations where the image and reality vary so much as in the
case of the Legion of Mary. Ask anyone not connected with the Legion what it is and
they are likely to say something derogatory like “It is a collection of holy Joes and holy
Marys who go about asking people whether they are saying the Rosary”. Even those
better disposed to the Legion tend to regard it nowadays as an anachronism, rooted
conservatively in the past, and rendered irrelevant by Vatican II and subsequent
developments in the Church.
The organisation I know through intermittent membership over a period of 40 years is
very different from this image. True, it takes pride in its strict Catholic orthodoxy, and
the quotation above from Pope John XXIII is the compliment valued above all others by
the founder of the Legion, the late Frank Duff. But orthodox Christianity is extremely
radical, and the Legion of Mary reflects this. So far from being superseded by Vatican
II, the Legion anticipated many of the key messages of that Council. Indeed Frank Duff
was one of a small number of lay auditors invited to attend the Council, where he acted
as a peritus (expert) to advise on the lay apostolate. As regards asking people if they
are saying the Rosary, this would be in direct contravention of the training legionaries
receive, which warns them not to engage in intrusive questioning and, as much as
possible, to concentrate on listening.
This year (1996), in which the Legion celebrates its 75th anniversary, is a good time to
try to close the gap between image and reality, by setting out some of the
achievements of the Legion and the spirit that drives it.
Origin
The Legion was founded in Dublin on 7 September 1921 at St Nicholas of Myra church
in Francis Street by a 32 year old civil servant, Frank Duff. In the prelude to the transfer
from the British to the Irish authorities, he was secretary to Sir Cornelius Gregg, largely
responsible for setting up the native civil service, and Duff was the first civil servant
taken over by the new Irish government following the signing of the Treaty, being
assigned first to the Department of Agriculture and later the Department of Finance.
Duff had been for some years a member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, and he
remained all his life an admirer of their work. He had come to realise, however, that
there were many forms of poverty which reached every level of the social scale. Even
with religious vocations at a much higher level then than now, there would never be
enough resources to address all these forms of material and spiritual poverty unless
the laity could be mobilised to become actively involved in the Church's apostolate.
Baptism and Confirmation, he believed, conferred this duty on every Catholic, rich or
poor, educated or uneducated — a view that was trenchantly endorsed 40 years later
at the Vatican Council. Furthermore he was convinced that “whenever these qualities
of apostleship are not sedulously cultivated, it is certain that the next generation will
have a serious problem to face in the lack of all real interest in the Church”. Duff's
genius was to develop a practical mechanism which would help ordinary Catholics to
exercise this apostolic duty. Pope Paul VI was later to say “What I like most about the
Legion of Mary is that it knows how to use the little people”.
At the first meeting, all of those present with the exception of Frank Duff himself and the
Spiritual Director, Father Michael Toher, were females, mostly young women. If it was
radical then to contemplate using the ordinary laity for a spiritual apostolate, it was
doubly so to think of women for the purpose. At that time the St Vincent de Paul
Society, for instance, was exclusively male, and the ladies who wished to be
associated were engaged in peripheral activities, including tea-making. Duff regarded
this as a waste of apostolic potential, and these tea-makers were to be his first
apostles.
Nor did he shrink from directing them to the most challenging and difficult tasks. After
a short training in hospital visitation, they turned their attention to the prostitution
problem, then rife in Dublin following the protracted War of Independence. Prostitution
was concentrated particularly in the notorious Monto area, the Nighttown of Joyce's
Ulysses. Duff sent his young and inexperienced female volunteers out onto the streets
and into the brothels of this area to make personal contact with the prostitutes and their
associates. The legionaries achieved astonishing results, resulting in the
establishment of the Sancta Maria Hostel and the eventual demise of the infamous
Monto area.
Duff's account of this saga in his book, Miracles on Tap, remains a thrilling adventure
story. A few years before his death on 7 November 1980 at the age of 91, Duff was
musing with some friends about what he would say to the Lord when called to account
for his stewardship. He listed various religious accomplishments, such as Mass
attendance twice daily for most of his adult life, the recitation of the full Divine Office in
Latin every day since 1917, undertaking the Lough Derg pilgrimage 49 times etc.
None of these, however, would he advance in his own defence. Instead he would say:
“Lord, on a few occasions in my life, I risked being blotted out for you”. He did not
specify what these occasions were, but one may reasonably assume that the Monto
episode was one of them. For a high-ranking civil servant to send out his young
charges on this activity was surely to risk social and moral obliteration — if anything
had gone wrong.
Spirituality
It must be stressed that Frank Duff was very wary of apostolic activism that was not
built on sound doctrine and solid spirituality. The foundation of legionary service is the
doctrine known as the Mystical Body of Christ. The Legion did not originate that
doctrine, which is bedrock Christianity: what it did was to teach ordinary people what
the doctrine meant, on a learning-by-doing basis, and thereby to challenge and help
them to put it into practice. The doctrine asserts that the essence of Christianity does
not lie in its code of ethics or even in its sacramental system, crucial though these are
in supporting the Christian life. Rather Christianity is a religion centring on a person,
one person ultimately, Jesus Christ. But Christ insists that he be seen and served in
every human person, no matter how lowly or deprived: “As you did it to one of the least
of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Math. 25.40).
The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ remains the most radical conception of
man's social relations. The ideal goes beyond merely treating all as equal, and enjoins
the Christian to try to recognise that each person encountered is a unique re-
presentation of Christ in the world, to be loved in the same way we love Christ — for in
a real sense that person is Christ. The acid test of our love for Christ, therefore, is the
love that we bear for every other human being. The love in question, of course, is not a
mere emotion but an active service that seeks out in particular those most in need.
The service encompasses the whole person, in the material as well as the spiritual
domain. Christ himself, in speaking of the Last Judgement, indicates that we will be
judged in terms of how we have responded to the basic needs of our fellow human
beings: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat ....”
The analogy of the body of Christ may be extended to his Church. Indeed St Paul does
so on more than 100 occasions in his Epistles — his obsession with the idea no doubt
originating from the traumatic circumstances in which Jesus addressed the words to
him “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” This transforms the notion of Church from
an institution into a living, growing person. As Frank Duff once wrote to me, “One
cannot wax enthusiastic over a mere institution”. It is Christ's desire that every human
should attain full membership of his Mystical Body. Each member has a part to play in
that body, without which the body as a whole is weakened.
It may surprise some that the Legion was led from the start into this profound Christo-
centricity by the influence of Louis Marie de Montfort, who is often associated with a
rather extreme devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. De Montfort, however, saw Mary
as the simplest and most effective means, devised by God himself, to imitate and love
Christ. His devotion can be summed up in three words “Life in Mary”, the path followed
by Christ in taking on human nature. If Christ elected to depend totally on Mary to
nurture and mould him to manhood, why should we not follow this example? Moreover,
Mary is the supreme model of how intimately Christ wants His love to be returned by
each of us. The legionary going about his work is enjoined to look for the person of
Christ in everyone he meets, and to love and serve that person in the way Mary loved
and served Christ. The three titles under which the Legion particularly honours Mary —
Immaculate, Mother and Mediatrix — have no meaning apart from Christ.
Mary also led the Legion into a profound consciousness of the role of the Holy Spirit. It
was by accident rather than deliberate premeditation that the first corporate act of the
Legion at its inaugural meeting was to invoke the Holy Spirit before proceeding to the
Rosary; that the Holy Spirit came to be depicted as the dominant feature of the Legion
emblem, the Vexillum, and of the prayer leaflet, the Tessera; and that the colour of
Legion is red, the colour of the Holy Spirit and not, as might be expected, the blue of
Our Lady. Later reflection on these developments led to the understanding that, as the
Handbook puts it, “it is always the Holy Spirit who regenerates the world — even to the
bestowing of the smallest individual grace; and His agency is always Mary”.
Consequently when the promise to be taken by every legionary on completing his/her
probation came to be formulated, it became inevitable that it would be addressed to
the Holy Spirit.
The Legion's greatest boast is that it has helped millions of people from all sorts of
background, some of them illiterate, to gain a deep understanding of these great truths
and, even more important, to put them into practice in their own lives. The three
legionaries whose causes are now under active consideration for beatification — Edel
Quinn, Alfie Lamb and Frank Duff — are merely the tip of the iceberg of those who
have attained great sanctity in this way. Not least among the latter are the thousands of
* legionaries who suffered martyrdom, torture or long periods of imprisonment.
Method of Operation
The first duty of an active legionary is to attend the weekly meeting known as the
Praesidium. The meeting begins with prayer, later followed by spiritual reading and a
short instruction by the Spiritual Director, reports on the previous week's assignments,
and discussion of future work — all of which must be completed within a strict time limit
of 1½ hours. Even viewed in secular terms, the Praesidium is an ingenious social
institution. Much of my life is spent attending meetings of one sort or another, but few
run as smoothly or effectively as a Praesidium. Legionaries never have to ask “Why
are we here?” or to engage in protracted debates about rules of procedure. In secular
terms, the first 15 minutes spent in prayer might seem like a waste of time, but it has an
amazingly calming effect which unites the members to focus collectively and fruitfully on
the business ahead. The fact that every member must report orally on the previous
week's assignment means that everyone participates actively in the meeting: it has
always impressed me how quickly even the most shy and tongue-tied novice becomes
quite articulate in this encouraging environment. Discussion following each report
ensures that mistakes are gently but quickly corrected, and helpful suggestions made
by the more experienced members. Learning-by-doing on a master-apprentice basis
is at the heart of the Legion's method of operation, reinforced by the strict requirement
that all active work must be done in pairs.
In addition to attendance at the weekly meeting, an active member is expected to
undertake two hours per week of apostolic work. The kind of work that may be done is
almost limitless in range, but it must involve personal contact. For example, however
valuable this article may be, there is no hope that my Praesidium would accept the time
spent in writing it as satisfying my legionary duty! In this, as in so many other respects,
the Legion has been greatly influenced by John Henry Newman whose writings are
cited more frequently in the Handbook than those of any other single writer except St
Paul and Pope Pius XI, the Pontiff at the time the Legion was founded.
Notwithstanding his gigantic intellectual achievements, Newman adopted as his motto,
taken from St Francis de Sales, cor ad cor loquitur (“heart speaks to heart”). The
legionary is encouraged to reach out respectfully to each and every soul on the grounds
that no one is too bad to be uplifted and no one too good. No matter how important the
Legion works may be, however, the legionary is constantly reminded that they do not
represent the ultimate or even the chief object of its members' apostolate. Rather the
Legion tasks are viewed as the spark which should ignite every other activity of the
members' lives.
Cooperation between priest and people is integral to the Legion concept of the lay
apostolate. The priest is the essential minister of the main channels of grace — the
Mass and the sacraments. Apostolic work is ultimately geared to bringing this spiritual
nourishment to everyone, including the legionaries themselves — in other words,
bringing the priest to the people. But if the Legion needs the priest, so also does the
priest need the Legion, or something akin to it. The priest working alone can achieve
only a fraction of his potential. He must multiply himself through the laity, in the same
way that Christ surrounded himself with disciples whom he filled with his own spirit.
Innovative Works
Many people know of the Legion through its work of home-to-home visitation, which
indeed is an enduring work described in the Handbook as “the apple of its apostolic
eye”. In fact, however, wherever there are people, there is scope for legionary work,
and the Legion throughout its 75 year history has been fruitful in devising a stream of
innovative works.
The establishment of the Sancta Maria hostel for street girls in 1921 was followed
within the next ten years with two other hostels — the Morning Star in 1927 for
homeless men, and the Regina Coeli in 1930 for homeless women. When it was
founded the Regina Coeli catered mainly for unmarried mothers and their babies. The
Legion insisted that the mother should be supported in caring for her own child — a
radical break with the then conventional practice of persuading her to place the baby in
an orphanage or in adoption. These hostels have been staffed on a completely
voluntary basis by legionaries, some of whom have devoted their entire lives to the
work.
Dissatisfaction with the low level of religious knowledge among Catholics led the
Legion in the 1950s to establish the monthly Patrician groups which have spread
widely. The underlying idea is that, by discussion and exchange of views, including the
free expression of doubts and difficulties, people will learn far more than by passive
learning. Many other initiatives were developed to enter into dialogue with disaffected
or alienated Catholics, such as the Leo League for trade union activists, or Common
Ground for literary and artistic people. The Legion approach to such dialogue was to
encourage articulation of the basis for any animosity against the Catholic religion, and
to listen much more than to preach. Christianity was to be exhibited by the legionaries
in their manner and not just as a doctrine. Frank Duff was never worried if at the end of
any of the meetings the Catholic position did not emerge triumphant: there would be
further meetings, and what mattered was that people were drawn into a milieu where
they could find the truth for themselves.
The Legion was way in advance of the Church generally in its approach to ecumenical
activity. More than 50 years ago, when the word ecumenism was virtually unheard of,
the Legion initiated ecumenical discussion in Dublin with Protestants through the
Mercier Society, and with Jews through the Pillar of Fire Society. The Mercier Society
ran on a monthly basis for 2½ years, with attendance figures of up to 200, including
large numbers of influential Protestants. Unfortunately the Catholic Church authorities
took an unfavourable view of this development, and while not banning it entirely insisted
that it could continue only if the Catholic position alone was presented, with the
Protestants accorded the role of passive listeners. This was diametrically opposed to
the Legion approach; as Frank Duff wrote to me many years later “If we (i.e. the
Catholics present) could have remained silent altogether, the work would still have
been perfectly done”. At the time the Legion had no option but to close both the
Mercier and Pillar of Fire societies. Patience, however, is another enduring
characteristic of the Legion, and it was possible in the 1970s, with full ecclesiastical
authority, to revive both societies, which still flourish, the Mercier having been retitled
the Pauline Circle.
One of the Legion's most exciting and fruitful apostolic initiatives was the development
of the Peregrinatio Pro Christo. This was started in the 1950s under the title Holiday
Apostolate by a dynamic group of young legionaries at UCD. Now the Peregrinatio is
operated by Legion councils throughout the world. The basic idea is to form teams of
legionary volunteers, accompanied by a Spiritual Director, who are prepared to devote
a week or more of their holidays to apostolic work in another country. The Legion's
disavowal of all forms of political activity, including Church politics, has often enabled it
to function without hindrance even in hostile environments: for example, the Legion
always operated in South Africa without racial segregation at any level of the
organisation. The Legion takes as its model for the Peregrinatio the golden age of
Irish missionary activity, celebrated in Montalembert's classic book, The Monks of the
West, when travelling monks from Ireland restored faith and civilisation to Europe after
the Dark Ages. As Newman put it in one of his University Sketches, “The Tradition of
Civilisation: The Isles of the North”
the Irish missionaries travelled down through England, France and Switzerland, to
lower Italy, and attempted Germany at the peril of their lives, converting the barbarian,
restoring the lapsed, encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding
churches, schools and monasteries as they went along.
Global Vision
I have concentrated mainly on the Legion in Ireland, but the Irish Legion, though acting
as the world governing body, is now only a tiny fraction of the Legion's worldwide
domain. From the very start Frank Duff had a global vision. Within three months of the
foundation of the Legion, he solemnly told his then tiny group that their infant
organisation was destined to cover the whole world. They laughed at him, but he held
to his vision.
In 1928, seven years after the foundation of the Legion, the first branch outside the
country was formed in Edinburgh by Lady May Carr, whose husband had been at one
time Commander of the British Forces in Ireland. The following year the Legion was
started in England, and in 1931 in India and the United States. Now the Legion
operates in over 2,000 dioceses in 163 countries with an active membership of 2¼
million persons. The Legion Handbook has been translated into over 50 languages,
most recently Lithuanian, with further translations in train for Latvia, Ukraine and
Belarus, while the Tessera or prayer leaflet is available in hundreds of languages.
While Legion membership in Ireland has mirrored the decline in religious vocations
since the 1960s, worldwide membership is growing rapidly. Moreover, unlike Ireland,
the age composition of Legion membership in newly-developing countries is
dominated by young adults. For example, in Hong Kong where there are 4,000
praesidia, the oldest legionary is 39.
The attributes most obviously identified with the great business entrepreneurs are
vision, innovation and risk-taking. In these terms, Frank Duff may aptly be
characterised as a great spiritual entrepreneur. He devoted these qualities to building
what has been described as Ireland's largest multi-national. Even from a purely secular
viewpoint, Irish people should surely take more pride in this achievement.
Used with permission, courtesy Kieran A. Kennedy
About the author:
Kieran A. Kennedy is an author and an active Legionaire, serving as president of Most Holy
Name of Mary Praesidium at Holy Name Church, and a member of Queen of Peace Parish in
Dublin, Ireland. A member of the Legion of Mary since before his college days, he was a
member of the praesidium at Oxford while he earned his masters in economics, later serving
as president. Frank Duff called upon him to correspond about the Legion in college, and he
still treasures the letters from their friendly discourse. He continued to attend praesidium
meetings while earning his PhD in economics at Harvard. Through a shared relationship with
Frank Duff, he met his wife, Dr. Finola Flanagan. After taking a break to raise a family of six
children, he has participated in the Legion of Mary regularly while maintaining a professional
career in the Ireland Department of Finance, a professorship at the Economic and Social
Research Institute, and as an author. Upon his retirement a few years ago, he has continued
his work with the Legion of Mary as president of his praesidium and participated in 13 annual
PPC's in England and Scottland thus far, twice serving as team leader. He also continues to
assist with the cause of Frank Duff. Kieran has great devotion to our mother, Mary, and
continues to call upon her in all that he accomplishes.
case of the Legion of Mary. Ask anyone not connected with the Legion what it is and
they are likely to say something derogatory like “It is a collection of holy Joes and holy
Marys who go about asking people whether they are saying the Rosary”. Even those
better disposed to the Legion tend to regard it nowadays as an anachronism, rooted
conservatively in the past, and rendered irrelevant by Vatican II and subsequent
developments in the Church.
The organisation I know through intermittent membership over a period of 40 years is
very different from this image. True, it takes pride in its strict Catholic orthodoxy, and
the quotation above from Pope John XXIII is the compliment valued above all others by
the founder of the Legion, the late Frank Duff. But orthodox Christianity is extremely
radical, and the Legion of Mary reflects this. So far from being superseded by Vatican
II, the Legion anticipated many of the key messages of that Council. Indeed Frank Duff
was one of a small number of lay auditors invited to attend the Council, where he acted
as a peritus (expert) to advise on the lay apostolate. As regards asking people if they
are saying the Rosary, this would be in direct contravention of the training legionaries
receive, which warns them not to engage in intrusive questioning and, as much as
possible, to concentrate on listening.
This year (1996), in which the Legion celebrates its 75th anniversary, is a good time to
try to close the gap between image and reality, by setting out some of the
achievements of the Legion and the spirit that drives it.
Origin
The Legion was founded in Dublin on 7 September 1921 at St Nicholas of Myra church
in Francis Street by a 32 year old civil servant, Frank Duff. In the prelude to the transfer
from the British to the Irish authorities, he was secretary to Sir Cornelius Gregg, largely
responsible for setting up the native civil service, and Duff was the first civil servant
taken over by the new Irish government following the signing of the Treaty, being
assigned first to the Department of Agriculture and later the Department of Finance.
Duff had been for some years a member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, and he
remained all his life an admirer of their work. He had come to realise, however, that
there were many forms of poverty which reached every level of the social scale. Even
with religious vocations at a much higher level then than now, there would never be
enough resources to address all these forms of material and spiritual poverty unless
the laity could be mobilised to become actively involved in the Church's apostolate.
Baptism and Confirmation, he believed, conferred this duty on every Catholic, rich or
poor, educated or uneducated — a view that was trenchantly endorsed 40 years later
at the Vatican Council. Furthermore he was convinced that “whenever these qualities
of apostleship are not sedulously cultivated, it is certain that the next generation will
have a serious problem to face in the lack of all real interest in the Church”. Duff's
genius was to develop a practical mechanism which would help ordinary Catholics to
exercise this apostolic duty. Pope Paul VI was later to say “What I like most about the
Legion of Mary is that it knows how to use the little people”.
At the first meeting, all of those present with the exception of Frank Duff himself and the
Spiritual Director, Father Michael Toher, were females, mostly young women. If it was
radical then to contemplate using the ordinary laity for a spiritual apostolate, it was
doubly so to think of women for the purpose. At that time the St Vincent de Paul
Society, for instance, was exclusively male, and the ladies who wished to be
associated were engaged in peripheral activities, including tea-making. Duff regarded
this as a waste of apostolic potential, and these tea-makers were to be his first
apostles.
Nor did he shrink from directing them to the most challenging and difficult tasks. After
a short training in hospital visitation, they turned their attention to the prostitution
problem, then rife in Dublin following the protracted War of Independence. Prostitution
was concentrated particularly in the notorious Monto area, the Nighttown of Joyce's
Ulysses. Duff sent his young and inexperienced female volunteers out onto the streets
and into the brothels of this area to make personal contact with the prostitutes and their
associates. The legionaries achieved astonishing results, resulting in the
establishment of the Sancta Maria Hostel and the eventual demise of the infamous
Monto area.
Duff's account of this saga in his book, Miracles on Tap, remains a thrilling adventure
story. A few years before his death on 7 November 1980 at the age of 91, Duff was
musing with some friends about what he would say to the Lord when called to account
for his stewardship. He listed various religious accomplishments, such as Mass
attendance twice daily for most of his adult life, the recitation of the full Divine Office in
Latin every day since 1917, undertaking the Lough Derg pilgrimage 49 times etc.
None of these, however, would he advance in his own defence. Instead he would say:
“Lord, on a few occasions in my life, I risked being blotted out for you”. He did not
specify what these occasions were, but one may reasonably assume that the Monto
episode was one of them. For a high-ranking civil servant to send out his young
charges on this activity was surely to risk social and moral obliteration — if anything
had gone wrong.
Spirituality
It must be stressed that Frank Duff was very wary of apostolic activism that was not
built on sound doctrine and solid spirituality. The foundation of legionary service is the
doctrine known as the Mystical Body of Christ. The Legion did not originate that
doctrine, which is bedrock Christianity: what it did was to teach ordinary people what
the doctrine meant, on a learning-by-doing basis, and thereby to challenge and help
them to put it into practice. The doctrine asserts that the essence of Christianity does
not lie in its code of ethics or even in its sacramental system, crucial though these are
in supporting the Christian life. Rather Christianity is a religion centring on a person,
one person ultimately, Jesus Christ. But Christ insists that he be seen and served in
every human person, no matter how lowly or deprived: “As you did it to one of the least
of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Math. 25.40).
The doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ remains the most radical conception of
man's social relations. The ideal goes beyond merely treating all as equal, and enjoins
the Christian to try to recognise that each person encountered is a unique re-
presentation of Christ in the world, to be loved in the same way we love Christ — for in
a real sense that person is Christ. The acid test of our love for Christ, therefore, is the
love that we bear for every other human being. The love in question, of course, is not a
mere emotion but an active service that seeks out in particular those most in need.
The service encompasses the whole person, in the material as well as the spiritual
domain. Christ himself, in speaking of the Last Judgement, indicates that we will be
judged in terms of how we have responded to the basic needs of our fellow human
beings: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat ....”
The analogy of the body of Christ may be extended to his Church. Indeed St Paul does
so on more than 100 occasions in his Epistles — his obsession with the idea no doubt
originating from the traumatic circumstances in which Jesus addressed the words to
him “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” This transforms the notion of Church from
an institution into a living, growing person. As Frank Duff once wrote to me, “One
cannot wax enthusiastic over a mere institution”. It is Christ's desire that every human
should attain full membership of his Mystical Body. Each member has a part to play in
that body, without which the body as a whole is weakened.
It may surprise some that the Legion was led from the start into this profound Christo-
centricity by the influence of Louis Marie de Montfort, who is often associated with a
rather extreme devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. De Montfort, however, saw Mary
as the simplest and most effective means, devised by God himself, to imitate and love
Christ. His devotion can be summed up in three words “Life in Mary”, the path followed
by Christ in taking on human nature. If Christ elected to depend totally on Mary to
nurture and mould him to manhood, why should we not follow this example? Moreover,
Mary is the supreme model of how intimately Christ wants His love to be returned by
each of us. The legionary going about his work is enjoined to look for the person of
Christ in everyone he meets, and to love and serve that person in the way Mary loved
and served Christ. The three titles under which the Legion particularly honours Mary —
Immaculate, Mother and Mediatrix — have no meaning apart from Christ.
Mary also led the Legion into a profound consciousness of the role of the Holy Spirit. It
was by accident rather than deliberate premeditation that the first corporate act of the
Legion at its inaugural meeting was to invoke the Holy Spirit before proceeding to the
Rosary; that the Holy Spirit came to be depicted as the dominant feature of the Legion
emblem, the Vexillum, and of the prayer leaflet, the Tessera; and that the colour of
Legion is red, the colour of the Holy Spirit and not, as might be expected, the blue of
Our Lady. Later reflection on these developments led to the understanding that, as the
Handbook puts it, “it is always the Holy Spirit who regenerates the world — even to the
bestowing of the smallest individual grace; and His agency is always Mary”.
Consequently when the promise to be taken by every legionary on completing his/her
probation came to be formulated, it became inevitable that it would be addressed to
the Holy Spirit.
The Legion's greatest boast is that it has helped millions of people from all sorts of
background, some of them illiterate, to gain a deep understanding of these great truths
and, even more important, to put them into practice in their own lives. The three
legionaries whose causes are now under active consideration for beatification — Edel
Quinn, Alfie Lamb and Frank Duff — are merely the tip of the iceberg of those who
have attained great sanctity in this way. Not least among the latter are the thousands of
* legionaries who suffered martyrdom, torture or long periods of imprisonment.
Method of Operation
The first duty of an active legionary is to attend the weekly meeting known as the
Praesidium. The meeting begins with prayer, later followed by spiritual reading and a
short instruction by the Spiritual Director, reports on the previous week's assignments,
and discussion of future work — all of which must be completed within a strict time limit
of 1½ hours. Even viewed in secular terms, the Praesidium is an ingenious social
institution. Much of my life is spent attending meetings of one sort or another, but few
run as smoothly or effectively as a Praesidium. Legionaries never have to ask “Why
are we here?” or to engage in protracted debates about rules of procedure. In secular
terms, the first 15 minutes spent in prayer might seem like a waste of time, but it has an
amazingly calming effect which unites the members to focus collectively and fruitfully on
the business ahead. The fact that every member must report orally on the previous
week's assignment means that everyone participates actively in the meeting: it has
always impressed me how quickly even the most shy and tongue-tied novice becomes
quite articulate in this encouraging environment. Discussion following each report
ensures that mistakes are gently but quickly corrected, and helpful suggestions made
by the more experienced members. Learning-by-doing on a master-apprentice basis
is at the heart of the Legion's method of operation, reinforced by the strict requirement
that all active work must be done in pairs.
In addition to attendance at the weekly meeting, an active member is expected to
undertake two hours per week of apostolic work. The kind of work that may be done is
almost limitless in range, but it must involve personal contact. For example, however
valuable this article may be, there is no hope that my Praesidium would accept the time
spent in writing it as satisfying my legionary duty! In this, as in so many other respects,
the Legion has been greatly influenced by John Henry Newman whose writings are
cited more frequently in the Handbook than those of any other single writer except St
Paul and Pope Pius XI, the Pontiff at the time the Legion was founded.
Notwithstanding his gigantic intellectual achievements, Newman adopted as his motto,
taken from St Francis de Sales, cor ad cor loquitur (“heart speaks to heart”). The
legionary is encouraged to reach out respectfully to each and every soul on the grounds
that no one is too bad to be uplifted and no one too good. No matter how important the
Legion works may be, however, the legionary is constantly reminded that they do not
represent the ultimate or even the chief object of its members' apostolate. Rather the
Legion tasks are viewed as the spark which should ignite every other activity of the
members' lives.
Cooperation between priest and people is integral to the Legion concept of the lay
apostolate. The priest is the essential minister of the main channels of grace — the
Mass and the sacraments. Apostolic work is ultimately geared to bringing this spiritual
nourishment to everyone, including the legionaries themselves — in other words,
bringing the priest to the people. But if the Legion needs the priest, so also does the
priest need the Legion, or something akin to it. The priest working alone can achieve
only a fraction of his potential. He must multiply himself through the laity, in the same
way that Christ surrounded himself with disciples whom he filled with his own spirit.
Innovative Works
Many people know of the Legion through its work of home-to-home visitation, which
indeed is an enduring work described in the Handbook as “the apple of its apostolic
eye”. In fact, however, wherever there are people, there is scope for legionary work,
and the Legion throughout its 75 year history has been fruitful in devising a stream of
innovative works.
The establishment of the Sancta Maria hostel for street girls in 1921 was followed
within the next ten years with two other hostels — the Morning Star in 1927 for
homeless men, and the Regina Coeli in 1930 for homeless women. When it was
founded the Regina Coeli catered mainly for unmarried mothers and their babies. The
Legion insisted that the mother should be supported in caring for her own child — a
radical break with the then conventional practice of persuading her to place the baby in
an orphanage or in adoption. These hostels have been staffed on a completely
voluntary basis by legionaries, some of whom have devoted their entire lives to the
work.
Dissatisfaction with the low level of religious knowledge among Catholics led the
Legion in the 1950s to establish the monthly Patrician groups which have spread
widely. The underlying idea is that, by discussion and exchange of views, including the
free expression of doubts and difficulties, people will learn far more than by passive
learning. Many other initiatives were developed to enter into dialogue with disaffected
or alienated Catholics, such as the Leo League for trade union activists, or Common
Ground for literary and artistic people. The Legion approach to such dialogue was to
encourage articulation of the basis for any animosity against the Catholic religion, and
to listen much more than to preach. Christianity was to be exhibited by the legionaries
in their manner and not just as a doctrine. Frank Duff was never worried if at the end of
any of the meetings the Catholic position did not emerge triumphant: there would be
further meetings, and what mattered was that people were drawn into a milieu where
they could find the truth for themselves.
The Legion was way in advance of the Church generally in its approach to ecumenical
activity. More than 50 years ago, when the word ecumenism was virtually unheard of,
the Legion initiated ecumenical discussion in Dublin with Protestants through the
Mercier Society, and with Jews through the Pillar of Fire Society. The Mercier Society
ran on a monthly basis for 2½ years, with attendance figures of up to 200, including
large numbers of influential Protestants. Unfortunately the Catholic Church authorities
took an unfavourable view of this development, and while not banning it entirely insisted
that it could continue only if the Catholic position alone was presented, with the
Protestants accorded the role of passive listeners. This was diametrically opposed to
the Legion approach; as Frank Duff wrote to me many years later “If we (i.e. the
Catholics present) could have remained silent altogether, the work would still have
been perfectly done”. At the time the Legion had no option but to close both the
Mercier and Pillar of Fire societies. Patience, however, is another enduring
characteristic of the Legion, and it was possible in the 1970s, with full ecclesiastical
authority, to revive both societies, which still flourish, the Mercier having been retitled
the Pauline Circle.
One of the Legion's most exciting and fruitful apostolic initiatives was the development
of the Peregrinatio Pro Christo. This was started in the 1950s under the title Holiday
Apostolate by a dynamic group of young legionaries at UCD. Now the Peregrinatio is
operated by Legion councils throughout the world. The basic idea is to form teams of
legionary volunteers, accompanied by a Spiritual Director, who are prepared to devote
a week or more of their holidays to apostolic work in another country. The Legion's
disavowal of all forms of political activity, including Church politics, has often enabled it
to function without hindrance even in hostile environments: for example, the Legion
always operated in South Africa without racial segregation at any level of the
organisation. The Legion takes as its model for the Peregrinatio the golden age of
Irish missionary activity, celebrated in Montalembert's classic book, The Monks of the
West, when travelling monks from Ireland restored faith and civilisation to Europe after
the Dark Ages. As Newman put it in one of his University Sketches, “The Tradition of
Civilisation: The Isles of the North”
the Irish missionaries travelled down through England, France and Switzerland, to
lower Italy, and attempted Germany at the peril of their lives, converting the barbarian,
restoring the lapsed, encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding
churches, schools and monasteries as they went along.
Global Vision
I have concentrated mainly on the Legion in Ireland, but the Irish Legion, though acting
as the world governing body, is now only a tiny fraction of the Legion's worldwide
domain. From the very start Frank Duff had a global vision. Within three months of the
foundation of the Legion, he solemnly told his then tiny group that their infant
organisation was destined to cover the whole world. They laughed at him, but he held
to his vision.
In 1928, seven years after the foundation of the Legion, the first branch outside the
country was formed in Edinburgh by Lady May Carr, whose husband had been at one
time Commander of the British Forces in Ireland. The following year the Legion was
started in England, and in 1931 in India and the United States. Now the Legion
operates in over 2,000 dioceses in 163 countries with an active membership of 2¼
million persons. The Legion Handbook has been translated into over 50 languages,
most recently Lithuanian, with further translations in train for Latvia, Ukraine and
Belarus, while the Tessera or prayer leaflet is available in hundreds of languages.
While Legion membership in Ireland has mirrored the decline in religious vocations
since the 1960s, worldwide membership is growing rapidly. Moreover, unlike Ireland,
the age composition of Legion membership in newly-developing countries is
dominated by young adults. For example, in Hong Kong where there are 4,000
praesidia, the oldest legionary is 39.
The attributes most obviously identified with the great business entrepreneurs are
vision, innovation and risk-taking. In these terms, Frank Duff may aptly be
characterised as a great spiritual entrepreneur. He devoted these qualities to building
what has been described as Ireland's largest multi-national. Even from a purely secular
viewpoint, Irish people should surely take more pride in this achievement.
Used with permission, courtesy Kieran A. Kennedy
About the author:
Kieran A. Kennedy is an author and an active Legionaire, serving as president of Most Holy
Name of Mary Praesidium at Holy Name Church, and a member of Queen of Peace Parish in
Dublin, Ireland. A member of the Legion of Mary since before his college days, he was a
member of the praesidium at Oxford while he earned his masters in economics, later serving
as president. Frank Duff called upon him to correspond about the Legion in college, and he
still treasures the letters from their friendly discourse. He continued to attend praesidium
meetings while earning his PhD in economics at Harvard. Through a shared relationship with
Frank Duff, he met his wife, Dr. Finola Flanagan. After taking a break to raise a family of six
children, he has participated in the Legion of Mary regularly while maintaining a professional
career in the Ireland Department of Finance, a professorship at the Economic and Social
Research Institute, and as an author. Upon his retirement a few years ago, he has continued
his work with the Legion of Mary as president of his praesidium and participated in 13 annual
PPC's in England and Scottland thus far, twice serving as team leader. He also continues to
assist with the cause of Frank Duff. Kieran has great devotion to our mother, Mary, and
continues to call upon her in all that he accomplishes.
