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

Commonweal Special Supplement
One Who Rides the Roller Coaster

FRANCIS J. BUTLER

 

I cannot think of anyone less likely to coordinate a major national consultation on social policy than myself. But Bishop James Rausch - improvisator extraordinaire and General Secretary of the NCCB in the early seventies thought otherwise.

Fresh from a job on Capitol Hill and currently working as a lobbyist for Catholic hospitals, I happened to meet Bishop Rausch at the U.S. Catholic Conference's annual picnic. The following day he summoned me to his office. He asked me if I'd like to direct a new campaign to stir up interest in a Constitutional amendment banning abortion. Rausch insisted that I'd be perfect for the job. After all, he reminded me, I knew my way around Capitol Hill - a qualification, I reminded him, even Washington cab drivers could meet. I told the bishop I was flattered by his confidence in me, especially since he had known me less than twenty-four hours, but my need for diversity, not to mention my inexperience, suggested that I'd be the wrong choice.

Days later I was back in Rausch's office. This time Jim was burning with excitement and madly puffing away on his Kents. He greeted me with, "You want diversity, I'll give you diversity. " And like some fiery Hollywood director, he offered me a major supporting role in his blockbuster commemoration of the American Bicentennial. "You'll be perfect for this job," said Rausch. "You don't eat lettuce or grapes do you?" No, I responded, imagining that this had something to do with George Higgins or Cesar Chavez. "You've read Rerum Novarum and Pacem in Terris, haven't you?" asked Rausch. Why, yes, I declared. "Well, that's just superb," said Jim. "You'll be our new director for the bicentennial." Bicentennial? "Listen," he said, suspecting that I was going to turn down this offer, too, "you are only going to get a chance like this every two hundred years . . . so take the job."

Thus began a three-year term of service that I associate with the inexpressible feeling that comes over me whenever I board a very large roller coaster with my kids. I am inevitably sorry that I let them talk me into the ride but I know I'll savor life more when the trip is over.

One night early on, when my anxiety level was high and I had been awakened by a bad dream of busloads of monsignors surrounding my house, I started worrying about how we would begin the bicentennial consultation. Yes, I had read the papal encyclicals, but I had never organized anything in my life before - besides hearings.... That's it! And thus was born the listening process for the Catholic church in the United States. Want to put that pastoral letter together? Try a hearing! Don't know what to do about that clergy shortage in your diocese? Crank up a listening process! Just installed as a bishop of a diocese and aren't sure how to get moving? Discernment, my friend! Yes, that's right, hearings are educational, therapeutic, and best of all they get you started doing something.

Our hearings were all this and more. No wonder Archbishop Peter Gerety spent much of 1975 outside of the archdiocese of Newark. He was overseeing the most vivid and amusing road show since the Canterbury Tales. Central casting could not have improved upon the colorful and contrasting personalities we discovered in the every-other- month series of three-day hearings. From Ted Hesburgh to Nia Ica Umba, from Bayard Rustin to Dorothy Day, from Cesar Chavez to DePaul Genska, from Walter Mondale to Henry Greencrow, from Andy Greeley to Simus Kudirka, the Lithuanian sailor who jumped a Russian ship off Martha's Vineyard just to be with the bishops.

And if the witnesses were not entertaining enough, we had little floor shows. Like the three-hour "dance of the circle" performed by American Indians in the Twin Cities. Little did we suspect that this was actually a form of retribution for past injustice to Indians on the part of the church.

The pace quickened. I was convinced that the Bataan March was a picnic compared to our program. A pilot discussion program had been conducted - a full blown program adopted in most of the nation's dioceses. There was now a ten-member panel of graduate students reading truckloads of parish discussion reports under the watchful eye of Sr. Alice Gallin, Ursuline professor turned activist. There were eight writing teams assembling; facilitators were being trained by Sr. Margaret Cafferty, convent school marm turned community organizer.

Suddenly it was October 1976, and thousands of Catholics descended upon Detroit.

As well organized as we were, some things we just didn't anticipate. We asked for registration fees, for example, but no one ever realized the consequences. I remember walking to my hotel after the first evening with $25,000 in the Murder Capital of the World at 2:00 A.M.

And there was Breakthrough. No. Not a breakthrough, but Breakthrough - an ultra-right gate-crashing crowd as endearing as the National Socialist Youth Party - who kept the Detroit police very busy during our conference. I took a left hook from one of these nasty people when I naively suggested after they had been thrown out of Cobo Hall that perhaps they would like to join us for Mass.

One of the best surprises about the Detroit conference was the press. No one was ready for them. On the opening evening, Bob Wonderly pulled me away from the xerox machine to tell me that I had better come quickly. There were no bishops about and the press wanted to talk to an official of the NCCB. So, I and a few others found ourselves in front of a bank of microphones and a whole planeload of reporters who were anxious to talk about what all this activity had to do with Catholic sexual ethics.

With the close of the conference I looked forward to the peace that I thought would follow. But the drama was not over. A theological debate was raging about the text of a response to the Detroit meeting. Tempers were now short even among friends. Our chairman, Cardinal Dearden, ended up in the hospital; our general secretary was shipped off to Phoenix; our staff was virtually shut down save for a paper exercise that would make any bureaucrat proud squeezing the results of what was probably the most dynamic movement in the American church into twenty-six episcopal committees for evaluation. Yet six months later, in May 1977, came an NCCB statement on Call to Action which in the main was positive.

Had I not accepted Jim Rausch's invitation, I might still be walking the halls of the Capitol for Catholic hospitals. Four years later, as I was leaving the NCCB, I received a very beautiful letter from Cardinal Dearden, who said that he shared the confident belief that, when judged through the perspective of history, the bishops' bicentennial project will be seen to have been a very significant moment indeed in the history of the U.S. church.

I too have no doubt about that.

FRANCIS J. BUTLER is president ofFADICA (Foundations and Donors interested in Catholic Activities,inc.). He was executive director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for the Bicentennial.

 

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