Who was Frederic – what did he do and say and what is his significance for today? FAMVIN.ORG has compiled a short list of links helpful in answering these questions.
Who was Frederic?
- Vincentian Encyclopedia on Frederic
- Frederic Ozanam – Life brief introduction at The Vincentian Center Web site, St John’s University
What did he say?
- Notable quotes his own words gathered by The Vincentian Center Web site, St John’s University
- “All my life I have followed the poetry of love in preference to the poetry of anger. I will not change now” Frederic Ozanam as quoted on the site of Vinnies Youth in Australia
- Ozanam on Strife
His significance for today
- Frédèric Ozanam – A Layman for Now – Shaun McCarty, S.T.
- See especially Chapter 6 “A Model for Today“
Ozanam ahead of his times
As a 20 year-old law student in Paris, Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853) and a few fellow law students founded the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which quickly grew throughout Europe and today is one of the largest charities in the world (with more than a million members on all continents). Later, as a lawyer and professor of commercial law and of literature at the University of Paris,
Ozanam was the first to conceptualize and elucidate the natural wage, drawing from Catholic Social Teaching, principally via St. Thomas Aquinas, regarding the common good. His work became an important platform for the first labor encyclical on the rights of workers, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891.
Ozanam was an exemplary Catholic scholar and eloquent public intellectual. He fearlessly championed workers’ rights, and his concept of the natural wage took root in the great labor encyclicals and in secular wage legislation that continue to resonate today in living wage initiatives.
He was, however, that rarest of intellectuals, serving, directly and personally, and throughout his entire adult life, the immediate needs of the poor.
He remains an important role model for those striving to build the good society, coupling academic and intellectual insight with direct, personal action.
From “Antoine Frederic Ozanam: Building the Good Society” by David L. Gregory
St. John’s University – School of Law
St. John’s Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-0029
Symposium Issue of the St. Thomas Law Journal, Vol. 3, 2006
Tags: David Gregory, Frederic Ozanam, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, SVDP, Vincentian Family Blesseds
