A Vision, A Voice, A Presence: A History of the First Forty Years of the Michigan Catholic Conference (review)

Abstract

A Vision, A Voice, A Presence: A History of First Forty Years of Michigan Catholic Conference. By Maxine Kollasch, I.H.M.. (Sterling Heights, Michigan: Lesnau Printing Company for Michigan Catholic Conference. 2005. Pp. 105.) The Reverend John J. Burke, General secretary of National Catholic Welfare Conference (the predecessor of our current United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), wrote a doctoral student who described NCWC as a pressure in national politics. Burke objected to this appellation and instead noted that NCWC acted according to Catholic principles to promote integrity of government and in that sense was not a lobby group (Archives of National Catholic Welfare Conference,Administration Files 42, Burke to Henry, Washington, D.C. January 28, 1930). Sister Kollasch articulates same concern as she recounts 1978 efforts of Michigan Catholic Conference to exempt religious groups from a pending state lobbying bill: Unless exempted, MCC and other religious groups working on behalf of common good subject to law just as lobbyists representing special interests were (p. 41). Whether it is national organization of Catholic bishops or various state organizations of Catholic bishops, self-understanding is same: their purpose is common good, a truly Catholic obligation, an essential role for Church in public forum. Marie T. Hilliard (State Catholic Conferences: A Canonical Analysis of Two Constitutions and Bylaws, Licentiate in Canon Law Thesis, The Catholic University of 2003) concludes that current thirty-four Conferences in United States provide a mechanism for [the diocesan bishops in a state] to exercise a collegia! teaching function in matters of public policy (p. 49). David Yamane Catholic Church in Politics: Negotiating Prophetic Demands and Political Realities [Lanham: Rowman and Iittlefleld Publishers, Inc., 2005]) indeed focuses his study on the political advocacy of state Catholic conferences (p. 7), though this emphasis should not be narrowly understood as mere lobbying. Indeed, earliest scholar of these structures, now Archbishop Michael Sheehan (The Catholic Conference: A New Development in Interecclesial Cooperation in United States of America, Doctoral Dissertation in Canon Law, Pontifical University of Lateran, 1971 [see State Catholic Conferences, The Jurist 35 (1975):431454, for summary]) sees them as manifestations of interecclesial communion (p. …