The 1976 U.S. Catholic Bishops' Call To Action Conference in Detroit

Commonweal Special Supplement
A New Way of Doing the Work of the Church

DAVID J. O'BRIEN

 

On October 21, 1976, some 2500 Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and lay people assembled in Detroit for the final conference of "A Call to Action." For three days they prayed, worshiped, and debated a host of subjects ranging from religious vocations to nuclear disarmament. In the end they voted approval of thirty resolutions containing over 180 recommendations to be presented to the nation's bishops. The conference climaxed a two-year program of consultation among American Catholics organized in celebration of the United States' bicentennial.

A Call to Action was unique. Convened by the bishops, with the majority of its delegates appointed by them, participants had reason to believe, as John Cardinal Dearden of Detroit told them at the opening session in Detroit's Cobo Hall, that they were "beginning a new way of doing the work of the church in America. "

Three years earlier, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) had voted to dedicate its bicentennial observance to the theme of justice in the world, and to hold a national conference on that theme in 1976. Its purpose would be to advise the bishops on how the American church could respond to Pope Paul VI's "Call to Action" for justice, and implement the 1971 synod of bishops' statement on "Justice in the World." The bicentennial seemed to provide an excellent opportunity to familiarize Catholics with the social teaching of the church while developing a plan of action to mobilize church resources for a more effective witness on behalf of justice and peace.

The idea of the Call to Action conference was spawned by the Advisory Council of the United States Catholic Conference, a little known body composed of priests, religious, and lay people appointed by the bishops. It had been examining the feasibility of a national pastoral council for the United States, but after extended consultation, concluded that such a council would be premature. The Advisory Council then proposed that several less formal, national assemblies might serve as experiments in shared responsibility. Sr. Marie Augusta Neale suggested that these deal first with justice and be held in connection with the bicentennial. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops gave its approval to this suggestion, and John Cardinal Krol, then president of the NCCB, asked Cardinal Dearden to assume leadership of the project.

A committee of bishops was quickly formed and three subcommittees appointed. The first, dealing with liturgy, was chaired by Boston's Humberto Cardinal Medeiros. It prepared several liturgical booklets for use during the bicentennial, but was superseded by the decision to hold an International Eucharistic Congress under Krol's sponsorship. The second dealt with history and was chaired by Edward A. McCarthy, bishop of Phoenix (now the archbishop of Miami). This committee, assisted by leading historians, formulated a national policy on archives, arranged for several television productions, and sponsored publications on American Catholic history in the Catholic press, and later in book form.

The third subcommittee, on the justice conference itself, was chaired by Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati. Its leadership later passed to Archbishop Peter Gerety of Newark when Bernardin became NCCB president in November 1974. Staff work was coordinated by Bishop James Rausch, general secretary of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), a strong advocate of social justice and world peace.

When Cardinal Dearden's ad hoc committee met for the first time in July 1973, it endorsed a planning document prepared by Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, director of the USCC Division of International Justice and Peace. Hehir urged the committee to counter the tendency of other national bicentennial celebrations to offer , Ian uncritical consecration of the American system" by insisting that the justice theme inform the church's bicentennial program throughout. As for the 1976 conference, he hoped it could be an event comparable to that which had taken place at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, when the bishops of Latin America had set new goals aimed at closer identification with the poor. Medellin, Hehir claimed, had been "a watershed in the development of the church's life between quite different understandings of the church's nature and mission." If the justice conference was to have a similar impact, it would have to be the "beginning of an institutional process of reflection, planning, witness, and action" for the church in the United States. The product would be a statement to the nation through a series of documents containing analysis and pastoral plans of action, While the total program should aim at wide participation, the key people would be experts who would prepare and revise the documents.

It was an ambitious vision, but one the Dearden committee approved and directed Bernardin's subcommittee to flesh out. In December 1973 that committee met with a group of consultants on international issues. Hehir emphasized the need for wide participation in the process, saying American Catholics would not accept a plan imposed on them from the top down. They would have to share in the process of defining goals if they were to share in implementing them. The consultants agreed and went further. They insisted that popular participation would turn on whether people were convinced that the bishops would in fact act upon the advice they received. But Berriardin was more cautious, pointing out that the hierarchy was committed to nothing more than holding a conference in 1976.

In March 1974 when the committee met on domestic issues, the problems of participation and credibility once again dominated the discussion. Michael Novak went furthest, insisting that the program should provide the Catholic people with the opportunity to set their own agenda for justice. By now the movement of the committee was clearly away from Hehir's emphasis on the product - an organized agenda for institutional reflection - and toward process and participation. At a two-day meeting in April, Novak further proposed that the title of the program be "Liberty and Justice for All," and that it be organized around social "organisms" which he named as church, family, neighborhood, ethnicity and race, personhood, nationhood, and humankind (later work was added to these topics). The procedure would involve grass-roots participation through parish discussions, aided by a study guide prepared under the committee's sponsorship, and regional hearings at which panels of bishops would take testimony from experts and ordinary Catholics. The results of this consultative process, the committee agreed, would be gathered into a set of preliminary recommendations to be considered by the 1976 conference, which would be as representative as possible.

The planning process highlighted several crucial facts about the church in the United States. For one thing it had become more voluntary; everyone agreed that if any pastoral plan of action was to have broad support, it would have to arise out of popular participation. Second, if the program were to gain this support, it would have to examine justice within the church itself as well as in society. Finally, everyone recognized that a high degree of skepticism existed about the bishops' intentions, and their willingness to act upon the advice they would receive in response to their invitation to speak up.

Controversy arose even before the program began. Father Andrew Greeley attacked the discussion guide prepared by the committee as the work of a new breed of radical social activists bent on turning the church in the revolutionary direction associated with liberation theology. The program's supporters, he charged, were antiAmerican and had little appreciation of the needs and experiences of ordinary Catholics. This gave conservative Catholics, worried about the church's increasing involvement in social issues, powerful support in resisting the program from the start.

Nevertheless, almost half the nation's dioceses organized parish discussions in connection with the Call to Action. Some, like Memphis, Hartford, and Los Angeles, held diocesan conventions to act upon their results. Seventy-nine of the country's 162 dioceses submitted "feedback sheets" which indicated that over 800,000 people had participated. Material of some kind came back from over 100 dioceses.

It was the regional hearings, however, which brought the program to national attention. The first of the hearings was held in Washington, D.C., where local protests against the list of invited guests led to a decision to place the planning of future hearings in the hands of local committees, and to insist that time be made available for testimony from anyone who requested to appear. In addition, written testimony was welcomed, and booklets containing a transcript of all the advice received were printed and made generally available.

The hearings demonstrated the power of the church as forum. Individuals came before the bishops to present often moving accounts of injustice in deeply personal terms. In Washington, Bishop Donal Lamont, recently exiled by the white government of Rhodesia, captured media attention with his description of conditions in that embattled nation. In San Antonio, Hispanic parents told of the hardships of their lives and the power of their faith. In Minneapolis, there was testimony from small farmers, American Indians, and Catholic parents worried about the education of their children. In Newark, working-class Catholics described the problems of changing neighborhoods, and Dr. Leona Edwards told of the discrimination visited upon her family in a lifetime of devotion to the Catholic church. In Atlanta, after a day of hearings, the bishops traveled to Tidy Creek, Georgia, where they listened under a revival tent as dozens of mountain people spoke of unemployment, soil erosion, brown and black lung, all before network television cameras and representatives of the national press.

Not only did these hearings model an open and listening church, but they demonstrated the ability of the church to offer poor and oppressed people access to the national conscience. The hearings also demonstrated that the process of speaking and listening could change hearts and minds. In Atlanta, for example, a representative of families in the Military Ordinariate chatted with a member of Dignity. A prisoner and a prison warden offered joint testimony about the suffering they witnessed every day. It was the personalized testimony of ordinary people which put flesh on the themes of theology, and demonstrated both the persistence of injustice in American society and the presence of grace among its people.

The results of these "consultations" were turned over to eight writing committees chaired by bishops. The committees prepared reports which summarized what had been said, reflected on the results in light of Scripture and church teaching, and presented a detailed set of recommendations. Remarkably, seven of the eight committees achieved unanimity, raising serious questions about later charges that the recommendations departed from the mainstream of Catholic life. Only the committee on personhood failed to reach consensus. On such controversial issues as birth control, clerical celibacy, and homosexuality, its recommendations were shrouded in ambiguous language of "concern" and "the need for further study. "

While the committees were writing these reports, the bicentennial staff collected the names of delegates from local bishops and national organizations. Once nominations were made, training sessions were arranged to familiarize participants with the process to be used at what was now known as the "Call to Action" conference. There the delegates would divide into eight working groups. Each of these would then subdivide into smaller sections around each of the three or four recommendations contained in the reports from the writing committees. Each recommendation would be considered and voted upon three times: in the small group assigned to that area, in the larger working group, and finally on the floor of the full assembly. To avoid intimidation of delegates, members of the staff and the writing committees were barred from serving as delegates or participating in discussion.

When Cardinal Dearden called the Detroit conference to order on Thursday, October 21, 1976, 1351 delegates sat under placards naming their dioceses, while over 1000 observers sat on bleachers at either end of Cobo Hall. After some skirmishing about inadequate representation of Poles and Hispanics, Dearden delivered the only major address of the conference. The goal of this "extraordinary assembly," he stated, was to '.rcspond to the needs of our people," to "translate their sincere commitment to liberty and justice into concrete prorams of action. "

All of us in this hall are against racism and war and hypocrisy and violence; all of us are committed to the Gospel. . . . The tough part is translating all that into action, translating it into a community of faith . . . translating it into a moral position on questions of public significance . . . None of us knows for sure how best to do these things . . . so we have no choice if we are to be a community of both faith and freedom except to meet, debate, and make some decisions. This is what we are trying to do here. We are trying to begin a new way of doing the work of the church in America.

Following Dearden's address, the work of the conference began. Delegates gathered in the topic groups to question the writing committees and clarify their task. Smaller groups then gathered around each resolution, spending the rest of the day and well into Thursday night in intense discussion. Friday morning, eight section meetings debated, revised, and again voted on resolutions. On Friday afternoon the plenary assembly reconvened, voting once again on each of the recommendations considered for seven to ten hours in the small groups, and for another six to eight hours in the section meetings. Friday night the delegates adjourned for a marvelous liturgy, followed by a reception.

Saturday morning the delegates were back in their seats for a full day of lively debate, which lasted until 5 P.m. when the last and most difficult report on personhood was given final approval.

On the platform, Dearden and Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot seemed to enjoy the sometimes emotional proceedings. Outside in the corridors, however, some bishops were expressing dismay at the scope of the resolutions, the pace of debate, and the apparent influence of "interest groups" such as Dignity and the Women's Ordination Conference. They stated their concerns to Bernardin and Rausch. Rausch was seen by many bishops a s responsible for the event, and those who were not happy let him know it. On the floor, in contrast, other bishops, including Cardinal Krol, shared in the proceedings with grace as delegates voted on matters of church policy, up to then the exclusive concern of the hierarchy. Like Dearden, Krol was too strong a man to be easily shaken by such events. At one point in a small group meeting he told his fellow delegates with a smile: "You can vote for it, but you're not going to get it." At another point he surprised a progressive IHM sister by proposing insertion of Vatican II language on shared responsibility into a resolution. Later that night his party dined at the same restaurant as a group which included the sister. The cardinal sent her table a bottle of wine and together they toasted their church.

At five, Dearden closed the conference, telling the tired but exhilarated delegates that they had made some good decisions and some with which he and others might disagree. It was the first deliberative assembly of American Catholics. In the past they "had not often listened well to one another." Now they had all listened and tried their best to respond to the needs they had heard. But the real work had only begun.

Some months after A Call to Action, Joseph Cunneen, the editor of Cross Currents, noted that "the image of an event can easily displace the event itself." This general rule was never better illustrated than in the months which followed the warm, enthusiastic meeting in Cobo Hall. Before returning home, Archbishop Bernardin told reporters that "too much was attempted at the meeting" and "special interest groups advocating particular causes [had] dominated the conference as a whole." The National Catholic Reporter's first issue following Detroit headlined Bernardin's criticism rather than the results of the meeting. The secular press gave almost exclusive attention to resolutions on birth control, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, and women's ordination, all but ignoring recommendations on racism, neighborhood development, housing, employment, family life, and religious vocations. (Almost no one pointed out that the first national assembly in American Catholic history had approved a near-pacifist resolution on disarmament.) Father Greeley described the participants as a "ragtag assembly of kooks, crazies, flakes, militants, lesbians, homosexuals, ex-priests, incompetents, castrating witches, would-be messiahs, sickies, and other assorted malcontents." He told the bishops they should "reassert their control over what goes on in the church."

There could be little doubt that the agenda had been crowded; the open-ended process of consultation, combined with the organizers' convictions that widely shared concerns should be heard at Detroit, had insured that there would be too many issues to be fully analyzed in ways suitable to experts and bureaucrats. Yet, with very few exceptions, the resolutions had been carefully constructed, first by the writing committees, and then, with surprisingly few changes, approved by the delegates. Despite claims that the assembly had been pro-birth control or pro-women's ordination, resolutions on those and other subjects had simply called for pastoral attention, further study, and openness to change.

Organizers had been careful to insist throughout that the process was designed to represent the concerns of those who had had the opportunity to participate and had chosen to do so. Realistically they had concluded that the Detroit assembly could only be composed of people named by the bishops, along with a minority of delegates from national organizations. The most striking fact gathered from a questionnaire of those who attended the Detroit conference was that 64 percent of those who responded were employed by the church. As one commentator noted, the assembly was representative of the church's "middle management" and of those priests, sisters, and lay people most active at the level of the diocese.

As for the so-called disproportionate role played by interest groups at Detroit, the most effective of which was the Hispanics, the number and influence of such groups was no greater than those at any open, democratic assembly. Given the institutional involvement of the delegates, their level of education, and their appointment by their bishops, one can only conclude that the influence of such groups depended heavily on the quality of their arguments and the justice of their causes. While no one could argue that the short, intense debates of Detroit were the best way to determine church policy on complex matters, it was unfair to describe the groups as self-interested and the delegates as people easily manipulated or swayed by emotional arguments. Nevertheless, that image of A Call to Action persisted.

In some ways, the conference was almost too successful. The later surveys of delegates indicated that most arrived skeptical and left convinced that they had experienced the church in its fullness. But when they returned home, they often found their local bishop confused. He thought he had sent delegates to a conference on social justice; now he faced a cadre of enthusiasts anxious to reform diocesan procedures and broaden the religious agenda. Nationally, delegates thought they had begun a process of continuing consultation and cooperation. But the bishops had no mechanism available to continue such a process.

The reaction of the press aroused the suspicion of many bishops. In May 1977, Bishop Rausch faced a number of highly placed bishops quite angry at what he had brought about. He too became more cautious. Worst of all, Dearden's ad hoc committee which had been established to deal with the bicentennial had gone out of existence the previous December. Dearden's personal support was unwavering, but he had no position from which to influence the USCC bureaucracy unless he could persuade the bishops to take action at their May meeting. Before that meeting he became seriously ill. Along the way, the USCC bicentennial staff also disappeared.

Before it disbanded, the Dearden committee had drafted a plan of action which would assign the recommendations from the Detroit meeting to existing committees, and establish a new implementation committee of bishops to prepare the promised five-year plan of action. Bernardin, however, appointed a task force dominated by powerful conservative bishops to receive the Dearden committee's report and prepare for the May meeting. That body scrapped the new implementation committee and assigned the overview responsibility to the weak Advisory Council, which had no staff. They dropped the Dearden committee's draft message, wrote one of their own which emphasized the teaching authority of the bishops, and rejected out of hand many of the more controversial proposals.

When the bishops did meet in Chicago in May 1977, Bernardin warned of the dangers of "polarization and factionalism" arising from A Call to Action. The bishops divided into eight groups to discuss the Call to Action resolutions. Those who discussed the church and personhood overwhelmingly rejected suggestions for reconsideration of church teaching and discipline. The tone in the other six meetings was far more positive. When they reassembled, the bishops approved a proposal to replace the weak Advisory Council's overseer role, and appointed a new implementation committee. This committee eventually produced a plan of action which encouraged further work on well established efforts at social action and parish renewal.

In subsequent years the bishops would write pastoral letters on racism, cultural diversity, Hispanic concerns, nuclear weapons, and economic justice, incorporating stances taken by the Call to Action conference. But the problem which gave rise to the national consultation of the mid-seventies remained: the problem of shared responsibility and implementation.

The results of A Call to Action also indicated the still uncertain character of the episcopal conference. Established after Vatican II, the NCCB was still unclear about its relationship with Rome and with its own local dioceses. With no sense of a national church, with lack of clarity about the ecclesiological role of episcopal conferences, the organization's capacity to respond to a large reform agenda was distinctly limited. Furthermore, a decade after the Call to Action, the bishops are still far from being ready to accept the degree of collaboration involved in the Call to Action, while the need for building structures of shared responsibility remains clear to all who care to look.

Finally, however, A Call to Action had one undeniable and enduring legacy for those who participated in it. For them it was and remains an experience of church, an exciting moment when one caught a glimpse of what it might mean to be an American Catholic, a revelation of new possibilities. At the "Liberty and Justice for All" hearings and in Cobo Hall, there were rich and middle class and some poor; committed parishioners, and angry and alienated minorities; women and young people, blacks, Hispanics, and whites; lay people, sisters, brothers, and priests. Some years later, after working with a program of parish renewal, priest- sociologist Philip Murnion noted with only slight exaggeration that he had never attended a meeting of bishops, priests, religious, or laity meeting separately that accomplished very much; he had rarely attended one at which they met together that some progress was not made. At the former, the group tended to blame those who were not there for their problems; at the latter, people had to listen to one another, acknowledge their own shortcomings, and admit that they could do more working together than they could do fighting each other. A Call to Action, for those who took part, was that kind of meeting. At the opening session in Detroit, Cardinal Dearden had referred to the church as "a community of faith and friendship." Almost all who heard him that day knew what he meant by the time the conference was over. This was indeed a church filled with people of good will, great faith, compassion, and commitment.

DAVID J. O'BRIEN teaches history at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He participated extensively in the Call to Action regional meetings and worked full-time preparing the background documents for the Detroit conference. He is the author of a full-length, unpublished study of the Call to Action.

 

This Special Supplement, dated December 26, 1986 has been reprinted with permission of Commonweal Magazine.