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

Commonweal Special Supplement
An Explosion of Possibilities

KENNETH A. BRIGGS

 

Somewhere a pile of notes testifies to my presence as a reporter in Cobo Hall during those scintillating Call to Action days in Detroit. Even if those lost notepads did materialize from my unfiling system, they would tell only part of the story that remains vivid in my memory.

Press coverage of the event was given low marks by many serious students of the process. I can understand their distress. A complex and multi-faceted bicentennial project was often reduced to the usual sexual politics of the church. Those who had labored so long and hard to strike prudent balances and weave delicate thematic tapestries had reason, I suppose, to be chagrined to see the work of their hands symbolized as a clenched fist raised against Rome.

Granting that, there was good reason for the response of myself and many of my press colleagues. We had never seen anything, quite like it and may never again.

In conducting an exhaustive study of justice in America, the bishops had exercised the American tradition of free-flowing consultation and fact-finding. By the time Call to Action culminated in Detroit, the business of the church was no longer being done in normal fashion. The vision of a democratic church hovered over the place. That was remarkable. It was astounding. It was one of those rare moments in which an institution like the church gets out of control. I mean that as a compliment.

Little wonder that the press seized on sex. As important as many of the other topics were, they reflected church positions that had gained some currency. But Catholics speaking up about sex, in the broadest sense, and having their attitudes somehow ratified by a sort of quasi-official national convention? I dare say the press was not alone in seeing as extraordinary this expression of national character, both deeply Catholic and highly American.

The fact that such a large number of the delegates were hired hands of the church, hence not representative of the masses per se, was a telling criticism of the organizers but hardly a sufficient weapon to undermine the results. My instincts, whatever they are worth, tell me that a scientific cross section might have produced even stronger dissent. But that is only my hunch. Congress is less representative of rank-and-file Americans, and its members act much less like their constituents than did the Call to Action delegates.

Yes, Call to Action was flawed. But for me it was an exciting explosion of untethered possibilities.

 

Kenneth A. Briggs, formerly religion editor of the New York Times, is an author and columnist.

 

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