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

Commonweal Special Supplement
Recalling Call To Action: Lessons for the Future

THE EDITORS

 

We remember glorious triumphs. We remember tragic defeats. We are all too apt to forget the episodes that fall in between, which are, after all, most of life: the modest successes, the brave failures, the moments when individuals or institutions strive to stretch beyond themselves with results that are bittersweet mixtures of achievement and disappointment.

The Call to Action was one such brave effort, and it had that kind of bittersweet outcome. When Commonweal sponsored a symposium last October, with the help of the Catholic Communication Campaign, to mark the tenth anniversary of Call to Action, about two-thirds of the participants had played significant roles in the events they were recalling. Archbishop Peter L. Gerety, recently retired archbishop of Newark, had presided, as chairman of the bishops' bicentennial conference subcommittee, over the regional hearings; he underlined the powerful impact those hearings had made on the bishops who worked with him. Sociologist Sister Marie Augusta Neal, who had seen the transforming power of Pope Paul VI's 1966 Call to Action and the 1971 episcopal synod's Justice in the World at work in South Africa and Latin America, recalled her hope that the American church might move beyond the paralysis which had frequently marked its response to the challenges of social movements in the sixties and seventies. Jane Wolford Hughes, who worked closely with Cardinal Dearden and headed the steering committee for diocesan coordinators, reported on the intricate process for developing materials and training leadership so that Catholics at the parish and diocesan level could genuinely participate and have their views registered in the national program. Pablo Sedillo of the USCC Secretariat for the Spanish Speaking noted the parallels between the Call to Action and Hispanic Catholics' experience with their national encuentros.

The symposium's participants did not gather just to remember and celebrate, however. They analyzed Call to Action's strengths and weaknesses to draw lessons for today's (and tomorrow's) church.

Much about Call to Action was paradoxical. Consider the very real shortcomings of the Detroit assembly in Cobo Hall. Two-thirds of the delegates were church workers, leading critics to consider the meeting a reflection of "middle management. " Appointed by bishops or by national Catholic organizations, over half the delegates were priests or women religious, while the laity were people already known and trusted by local church officials.

At Detroit, it was conceded, too many tried to do too much in too short a time. Again, the reasons had more to do with the underdevelopment of democratic mechanisms in the church than with their excess. First, the massive results of two years of regional hearings, parish discussions, and other consultations had to be channeled into a short-lived conference rather than handed over to a representative body of a more permanent nature.

Second, in order to assure that this conference's outcome would be assimilated into local planning, the organizers had decided that one-third of the diocesan delegates should be selected from the diocesan offices and agencies which would eventually be responsible for implementation. Another third were chosen from those in situations of social need (the poor, minorities, etc.) and a final third were chosen by parishes. With three delegates in each category-a total of nine from each participating diocese-plus representatives of national Catholic organizations -the Detroit conference was destined to be too large for the kind of plenary debate that might have refined and ranked proposals issuing from the detailed yet more narrowly focused committee discussions.

Third, the delegates voted without the constraints of real responsibility. There were no limited budgets to keep in mind, no trade-offs about available resources to confront. It was easy to construct a "wish list" of all the church should be and do, without making tough decisions about priorities.

Fourth, delegates strongly interested in getting support for one particular "plant" were less likely to submit others' resolutions to exacting scrutiny. In a few cases, the brief, one-time nature of the assembly reduced the pressure to negotiate differences and hammer out compromises. a pressure that had operated very strongly in the writing committees which synthesized the regional and parish proposals.

The shortcomings of Detroit should be neither glossed over nor exaggerated. At the Commonweal symposium, John Carr said of the conference, "You can say two things about it. It was the most representative group of Catholics assembled under the auspices of the national church, and it wasn't very representative at all. Both are true." According to David O'Brien, the Detroit meeting and the process leading up to it were unusual examples of real education. "I have been in education a long time; I have rarely seen people change their minds. But I saw people change their minds then." Still, giving Call to Action a passing or failing grade is not the point. The question is what can be learned from this experience?

One lesson is encouraging. A similar effort in the 1980s would probably not end up relying so heavily on participants directly working for the church. The intervening decade has seen the continued growth of local consultative bodies from which a wider range of lay representatives could emerge. On the other hand, what Cardinal Dearden candidly described in 1976 as the widespread doubts of many Catholics about "the ability of church leaders to take them seriously" have not been allayed; or, rather, if what Cardinal Dearden termed the "deepening fatalism" of the seventies was somewhat reversed by efforts like Call to Action and a more consultative pastoral style of church leadership, the doubts are on the rise once more. A decade's time, as Sister Alice Gallin pointed out at the symposium and Sally Cunneen of Cross Currents seconded, has only increased the skepticism many women feel toward official consultations. Nor has the church yet managed to welcome the growing number of Hispanic Catholics into effective conversation with the rest of the Catholic population.

The kind of national dialogue Call to Action attempted simply cannot be sporadic-or squeezed into a few days of debates and voting. Contrasting the accomplishments of Vatican II with those of some later synods, Msgr. George Higgins pointed to the dynamic that developed only as the Council fathers worked together over time. "If you are going to talk about collegiality, you are going to have to pay the price. And one of the prices is that it takes a lot of time and sweat."

The outstanding lesson of the Call to Action, however, has to do with the relationship between justice in society and justice in the church: Call to Action was originally addressed primarily to the former; it encountered its greatest difficulties when it addressed the latter. There is a good argument to be made for directing the church's justice efforts toward society at large: that is where the need appears most crying, that is where the church's leadership may enjoy the greatest consensus and face the fewest theological impasses. At the same time, it is tempting to interpret the concern with internal church issues as a distraction from the difficult social choices and personal sacrifices that the struggle for social justice generally might demand. Why not concentrate on a social justice agenda and trust that internal church issues will be resolved in the process.

The argument may be plausible, but history rebuts it. The prominence of internal church issues at Detroit was not simply a reflection of the. delegates' backgrounds. "Church" was the area of concern that had elicited most responses in parish discussions as well. People will start with issues that affect them indirectly and with issues that they can affect directly. The needs of the poor, the challenge of peace, the protection of life, liberty, and justice for all simply will not be separated from the questions of how the community of Jesus' disciples treats each individual gathered around the table. "We cannot preach a justice to the world that we do not practice ourselves," said Cardinal Dearden in Detroit. Again and again. the church learns that liberty and justice begin at home.

Assessing the Call to Action in 1977. Commonweal called it "a social justice success but a theological disappointment." An ecclesiastical disappointment might have been a better way of expressing it. It was a disappointment that the church, as always, survived-but at the cost of lost energies and lost opportunities for overcoming the malaise and divisiveness that Msgr. John Tracy Ellis has frequently and eloquently lamented. Perhaps the time has come to repeat some part of the experiment of 1976. Call to Action's regional hearings were almost unanimously recognized as a success, and a similar broad form of consultation was incorporated into the drafting of recent pastoral letters. It is not, however, the testimony of I experts," so important for the pastorals, that is remembered from 1976, but the testimony of the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of ordinary people trying to live their faith. Perhaps a new set of such hearings would allow Catholics on all sides of the questions which divide us to articulate their hopes and anxieties about the church today. It would be done not only so that the bishops might hear us but that we might hear one another. We should not wait another two hundred years-or even another decade.

 

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