The Spirituality and Vision at the Root of the USCCB

Abstract

The Spirituality and Vision at the Root of the USCCB Douglas J. Slawson (bio) Tuesday, September 24, 2019, marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). When the editors of American Catholic Studies invited this commemorative piece to celebrate the occasion, the lead article in the then-current issue of the journal (Fall 2018) was “Reflecting on the Trajectory of American Catholic History” by David O’Brien. He contends that much of American Catholic history has been “told ‘from the heart of the church,’” that is, stressing the Catholic in American Catholic, thereby reinforcing “identity with and loyalty to the church” through a Catholic subculture. O’Brien notes that “how one tells the American Catholic story really matters.” Emphasis makes a difference. “If the American Catholic story is primarily an American story, told in and with the American people, it may encourage Catholics to draw on their Catholic heritage to find meaning and purpose in their social experience,” writes O’Brien. “That American story of American Catholicism may even open hearts to one or another form of solidarity, even civil religion, endowing the shared experience of Americans with religious meaning.” He decidedly favors a movement toward American Catholic history. “We are all called to help renew American society,” he declares, “and the Catholics among us have a special reason to respond to this call because we are called to transform the world into the Kingdom of God.”1 The man who founded the organization that served as model for the USCCB and whose thinking and spirituality informed and guided the first sixteen years of the bishops’ conference was wholeheartedly American and Catholic: Paulist Father John J. Burke. For him, the two [End Page 99] words were practically interchangeable.2 So, in celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the conference, it will be worthwhile to explore the vision and spirit at the root of the organization. Spirituality A native of New York City, Burke was born to Irish immigrants and grew up almost in the shadow of St. Paul the Apostle Church on Columbus Avenue at 60th Street, established by convert Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers. It was there that Burke became acquainted with the Paulists and likely knew the founder himself, who died at the parish in 1888 when the young Burke was thirteen. Later in life, the latter acknowledged that Hecker and one of his early disciples, Father Walter Elliott, exercised a determinant influence on the person he became. Burke found Hecker’s American spirit and mysticism especially appealing. Hecker’s theology was incarnational: in Jesus, humanity and divinity became one, and humankind was uplifted and transformed. Soul and body were destined for union with God and their every faculty and power had that union as its end and purpose. Rather than set aside or repress human instincts, affections, and desires, the true Christian strove to direct them toward their proper goal. Moreover, Hecker sensed a deep harmony between the Catholic faith and American principles, which led him to develop an apologetic that blended Catholicism with Americanism and gave their combination a millenarian thrust: a Catholic America had a mission to the larger church and world—to guide both in the present age.3 [End Page 100] To convert Americans, the Catholic Church need not argue doctrine, but demonstrate instead how the spirit and institutions of the country were more Catholic than Protestant, by which Hecker meant Calvinist. The Declaration of Independence, for example, posited the goodness of human nature, the freedom of will, and the inalienable rights of persons, principles which were also articles of Catholic faith. The Declaration gave rise to a political system based on “a mere naturalism.” Using the Catholic axiom that grace built on nature, Hecker saw a “necessary bond” between the principles of that document and those of the church because “the truths of the natural order serve as indispensable supports to the body of revealed truths of faith.” Protestantism, on the other hand, held for the total depravity of human nature, the loss of free will, and the forfeiture of natural rights. To be consistent as an American, therefore, a...