April 26, 2020 - "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops"

Christ is risen, alleluia!  He is risen indeed, alleluia!  Even though the Coronavirus pandemic continues, I have decided not to write about it today or in the next several columns.  I have chanced upon a presentation of the history of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which celebrated its one hundredth anniversary in 1917.  There are some little known facts about American Catholic history in its founding.  It is worth telling some of those stories of that history in this column.  It will be a good diversion for all of us.
 
In 1917, the United States entered the First World War.  Because American Catholics were suspected in some quarters of not being patriotic citizens, James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, wrote to President Woodrow Wilson.  In his letter Cardinal Gibbons pledged the loyalty of the American Catholic Church.  He offered its resources telling President Wilson “Our people, as ever, will rise as one man to serve the nation.”
 
When the US Catholic Bishops gathered for a meeting at Catholic University in 1917, they selected Paulist Father John Burke to serve as the first general secretary of the National Catholic War Council (NCWC).  The NCWC’s Catholic Chaplaincy program recruited nearly 1,500 chaplains by the end of the First World War.  The NCWC Chaplaincy program worked closely with the Knights of Columbus to provide spiritual and recreational activities for U.S. soldiers heading off to war.  As you can well imagine, the chaplains were in great demand owing to the huge mobilization of troops.
 
In 1919, the special war work of the NCWC included overseas workers who were sent to war-ravaged Europe to help the local populations and to provide community centers for soldiers waiting for transport back to the U.S.A.  Many women served as these overseas workers.  These overseas workers taught work skills to war widows and young women.  They also fed them and housed them in various cities in Poland, Belgium, Italy, and France. These overseas workers also assisted orphans and refugees whose homes and livelihoods had been destroyed by the long war.  This post-war work allowed people who had been stricken to be restored spiritually and economically.  The overseas workers and chaplains also honored those Americans killed in battle who were left behind.  By late 1920 they returned stateside.  The contributions of these overseas workers have been documented in a book by Marguerite Boylan entitled They Shall Live Again. 
 
The NCWC’s program of Social Reconstruction was heavily influenced by the teachings of Pope Leo XIII, especially in his very important encyclical Rerum Novarum (“On Capital and Labor”) that was issued in 1891. Pope Benedict XV gave his approval to the NCWC in 1920.  When Pope Benedict XV died in 1922, some important prelates in Rome recommended that the newly elected Pope Pius XI suppress the NCWC as dangerous innovation. In response to this action the group of American Archbishops who formed the executive committee of the Council appealed to Pius XI to reconsider the suppression of the NCWC.  Because canon lawyers in Rome had problems calling the NCWC the National Catholic Welfare Council, the American Bishops agreed to change its name to the National Catholic Welfare Conference. When Pope Pius XI ended the brief suppression of the NCWC in 1922, his letter to the American Bishops included the following points:
 
1. “The National Catholic Welfare Conference is not only useful but necessary.”
2. “It is imperative that by taking counsel together you all agree on one common aim and with one united will strive for its attainment, by employing as you now do, the means which are adequate and adapted to present-day conditions.”
3. “By uniting ever more closely the forces that you have at your command, you will impart to the Christian life in your country a greater and greater vigor in the spirit of justice and charity.”
4. “We praise all who in any way cooperate with you in this great work.”
 
I shall continue this story in next week’s column.  I’ll leave you with this story.  In the early decades of the twentieth century, there were four American Bishops who were members of the College of Cardinals.  Cardinal O’Connell in Boston, Cardinal Hayes in New York, Cardinal Dougherty in Philadelphia, and Cardinal Mundelein in Chicago.  They were considered to be the movers and shakers of the Catholic Church in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s.  The joke that was told at the time was even though NCWC officially means National Catholic Welfare Council, it really means Nothing Counts West (of) Chicago. 
Until next week,   
Fr. John