Frank Duff treated women with absolute equality in his relationships and his views, writes Dr Evie Monaghan
Frank Duff’s outreach to marginalised women has long been recognised. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Legion of Mary, the organisation founded by Duff and a group of lay women in 1921, was its mission to ‘street girls’. Duff’s first encounter with the prostitutes who worked in the Monto, Dublin’s red light district, was one that left a strong impression on him.
While undertaking visitation as a member of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Duff found himself unexpectedly in a room in a lodging house where some of these street girls lived. He was by his own admission, shocked. He remembered being “so confused, so doubtful about where I stood at all, I backed out of the place, almost without saying a word”. He considered that his hasty retreat from the lodging house was “typical of the attitude to the problem at the time”. The scene had however “made its mark on me and filled me with the notion that something had to be done with those girls”.
Duff seemed to have a unique ability to appreciate the hidden character of individuals, when others saw only exterior flaws”
The solution became known as ‘rescue work’ and involved making contact with the street girls, inviting them to take part in an enclosed retreat and providing them with accommodation afterwards. The Legion established a hostel for this purpose in 1922, the Sancta Maria Hostel, at 72 Harcourt Street. Two women, Josephine Plunkett and Rose Scratton, were appointed ‘matrons’ of the hostel and it continued to be a place of refuge for women until 1974.
In the first three years of the initiative the Legion dealt with over 200 women and Duff reported that they induced about two-thirds of that number to leave prostitution. The women were encouraged to seek treatment for venereal disease and their rehabilitation usually involved assistance with employment and housing. Many of the women went on to marry, find employment or were reconciled with their families.
Frank Duff with a statue of Our Lady.Matrons
Plunkett and Scratton, the two ‘matrons’ of the Sancta Maria, were two of many female friendships Duff cherished. One of his life-long friends, and a legionary from its early days, Celia Shaw, described how while walking her back to her accommodation after Legion meetings, Duff confided “all his plans and his hopes and his fears” for the Legion. Duff’s reaching out to Shaw after a disagreement between them at a meeting signifies a deep appreciation of their friendship. He recognised that their mutual propensity for obstinacy “is something that you and I should be very careful about … there is always present the possibility of extreme harm …. If one or the other has not the good sense or courage to strike against it at once”.
Duff seemed to have a unique ability to appreciate the hidden character of individuals, when others saw only exterior flaws. In an obituary for Elizabeth Kirwan, the first president of the Legion, he detected that beneath her reputed “disciplinarian” exterior was an individual whose “spirit, her will, her courage, her whole character was strength, strength softened by holiness and charity and by sympathetic understanding”. This capability, he argues, was what was needed above everything else “in a guardian of that new movement into which enthusiastic, heroic youth was about to throw itself in such numbers”.
The new movement was of course the Legion of Mary, founded as a women’s counterpart to the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, which at the time only admitted men as members. The Legion soon grew into an organisation with its own unique apostolic vision and men became more involved as active members of the Legion after the opening of the Morning Star hostel for the care of destitute men in 1927.
Because the Legion came about to enable women to undertake active apostolic work, the duties undertaken were naturally comprised of social work targeted at women. It began with visitation to the sick in the female cancer wards of the South Dublin Union Hospital but quickly expanded to include other, often more challenging work. As well as the rescue work with the street girls, the Legion became increasingly concerned at the plight of unmarried mothers in the city.
The Regina Coeli hostel, established by the Legion in 1930, quickly began to cater to these unmarried mothers. From the beginning, the Legion, and Frank Duff, were adamant that the hostel would be a place where mothers could keep their children, a feature in striking contrast to most other institutions operating at the time. Duff had a deep appreciation of the maternal bond between mother and child. Writing to a priest in 1948 he said that it was “one of the great joys of my life to look at the mothers and their children and to see the natural play of affection between them. I realise so fully every time I witness it that there is nothing on earth that can supply for it”. He credited this system of keeping mother and child together as being the reason why “none of our children [from the hostel] have got into trouble, and I would very strongly believe that few or none of them will”.
The new movement was of course the Legion of Mary, founded as a women’s counterpart to the Saint Vincent de Paul Society”
Motherhood
His vision of motherhood was an idealistic one, and likely born of the very strong bond he had with his own mother. Like Duff, Lettie Duff (nee Freehill) had been a civil servant prior to her marriage. Describing his relationship with his parents, Duff recalled that “they treated me seriously always … I would be consulted about things and told about things, and both of them made a companion of me”. His father died in 1918 leaving Duff, as the eldest son, with financial responsibility for the family. While Duff seemed uninterested in marriage, even from a young age, his responsibility to his mother was undoubtedly a contributing factor to why he remained single.
He explained: “there was a very extraordinary bond between my mother and myself. I suppose it would be hard to imagine two people more tied up with each other than we were. I could never have conceived the idea of leaving her. Any system of life which would mean pensioning her off or anything of that description like you hear of in marriages would be quite inconceivable to me.”
The Regina Coeli hostel, established by the Legion in 1930, quickly began to cater to these unmarried mothers”
Duff took his mother to the theatre once a week until his hearing loss made the experience untenable. They also went on holidays together, once to Paris and often to London where they went to the theatre and his mother enjoyed looking around the shops. His mother lived with Duff until her death and looked on with both appreciation and apprehension as Duff’s time became more and more occupied with the Legion.
She called him ‘Old Reliability’ and it was a nickname that Duff felt a responsibility to live up to. But Duff recalled how she felt keenly the exhaustion that came from his workload – “I look back over things and see the unutterable patience that she bore all these things with, because I really believe that her emotion at times was that of looking on at me committing suicide”. In his biography of Duff, Fr Robert Bradshaw considered that through his relationship with his mother, Duff acquired “wonderful and enriching insights into the meaning and beauty of true motherhood”.
Woman is one of the grand instruments of which providence makes use to prepare the way for civilisation”
Duff’s deep appreciation of motherhood and the role of women in the spirituality of the Church can be seen throughout his writings. In an entry in his personal diary, Duff had a heading ‘Women’s Influence’, under which he recorded some quotations from texts he was reading. The first, from the counter-Enlightenment philosopher, Joseph de Maistre, stated that “In the whole evangelical history women play a very remarkable part and in all the celebrated conquests made by Christianity, either over individuals or over nations, there has always been some woman’s influence”.
Influence
The second quotation, from a Life of St Bernard by Théodor Ratisbonne, underscores this fundamental influence of women in society: “It is above all, by means of a woman that piety is first awakened and spreads its mysterious influence over society. …woman is one of the grand instruments of which providence makes use to prepare the way for civilisation; she bears within herself the seed of the future moral being of nations; and should she prove false to her high mission, society would perish.”
Duff’s deep appreciation of motherhood and the role of women in the spirituality of the Church can be seen throughout his writings”
These ideas can be traced in Duff’s own writing, and can be understood more fully in the context of his deep Marian spirituality. Women he says “are specially well placed for this idea of going to the Divine Persons with Mary – possibly as compensation for the fact recently pointed out to me by a 7-year old maiden – that this is a man’s world! You can the more easily associate your states and occupations with those of Our Lady”.
Frank’s mother, Lettie Duff.While Duff articulated a nuanced position on women in the Church, his ideas were not incongruous with others in the Church at the time. One of the priests who helped Duff with the street girl initiative and who was the first spiritual director of the Concilium (the governing body of the Legion), Fr Michael Creedon, certainly shared Duff’s appreciation for the potential of women’s participation in pastoral work. At a Catholic Truth Society conference on 1923, Fr Creedon gave a paper on ‘Catholic women in Social Service’ in which he contended that women were an under-used resource in the Church and that there was an opportunity for a lay organisation of women because women were so “excellently equipped for social work”. Here he was in perfect agreement with Duff’s thinking, who felt that “women have something in their mental equipment which is able to give that ‘practising formula’ a meaning and an attraction which it does not possess for the men”.
Quotation
This latter quotation is taken from an article written by Duff in 1957 entitled ‘The Legion of Mary for Men’, which as the title suggests was a call to include greater numbers of men in the Legion. Duff fervently believed that the Legion was one that was suitable for men, even though it had a reputation as being a women’s organisation. Duff’s attitude was thoroughly egalitarian, that the presence of men and women in the Legion was crucial to its claim to be a genuine means of lay apostolate. In the same essay he goes on to say that both sexes had their “own distinctive contribution to make, without which the character of the Legion would be incomplete … it is not merely a case of two necessary ingredients side by side in the one organisation, but a mixture in which each has reacted happily on the other”.
Frank’s friendship with women was not confined only to fellow legionaries, he was an ever-present feature in the Regina Coeli hostel”
In this belief, Duff was perfectly in agreement with papal sentiments of the time. A year before Duff published ‘The Legion of Mary for Men’, Pope Pius XII proclaimed in a similar vein “absolute equality in personal and fundamental values, but different functions which are complementary and superbly equivalent” in an address on ‘The Dignity of Women’ in 1956. This equality could be seen readily in the Legion’s governing membership, with women frequently being elected president of the Legion and selected for envoyship. The most famous legionary envoy was of course Edel Quinn, who travelled to East Africa where she worked tirelessly establishing praesidia in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi. She died in Nairobi from tuberculosis in 1944, after eight years of missionary work in Africa.
Frank Duff had been apprehensive at sending Edel to Africa and some were critical of the decision to send someone in her physical condition on such a mission. He felt this criticism keenly, but respected that Edel herself wanted to go. Both Duff and Legionary authorities were unaware of the seriousness of her failing health and a letter he wrote to her a month before her death, full of Legion news and plans, indicates that he had little inkling of her physical frailty at the time.
The unexpected news of her death “came with crushing force; so much so that it took many readings of the wire tendering the sympathy of the Nairobi Curia … to bring to me realisation of what had happened. Even still I can only consider it with absolute pain”. Edel had recognised that the decision to send her to Africa was a difficult one and she wrote to Duff shortly after her arrival in Africa thanking him, saying “it is good to feel one is trusted and it will be a help in the days to come”. Duff saw Edel as “a wild bird” who must be “given her chance … [she] is going to make history, if she is let”.
Friendship
Frank’s friendship with women was not confined only to fellow Legionaries, he was an ever-present feature in the Regina Coeli hostel. He was a ‘tribune’ (the name given to the male liaison officer for female praesidia in the early Legion) to the hostel for many years and because he lived next door was constantly visiting the hostel, where he often took his meals. He knew the women residents well and took great interest in their children’s welfare. On occasion he acted as security, handyman and peacemaker for the hostel.
The fact that the position of women in the Church is a topic that is mentioned little in Duff’s correspondence suggests that the inclusion of women on an equal footing with men in the organisation was taken for granted, he accepted the talents of women as obvious, and not requiring special consideration. For the Legion, equality of membership is a fundamental principle. The Handbook of the Legion recognises that because of its origins as an organisation of women, they occupy “a place of honour in the organisation” but Duff was adamant that the Legion was an opportunity for both men and women to take up active apostolate. It was to be reflective of the universal Church, of Christ’s Mystical Body and of his belief that ordinary men and women would do heroic things for Christ “if they are shown the way”.
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