Following the Vatican II Council, the bishops reorganized the National Catholic Welfare Council in 1966, transforming it into the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and its standing secretariat, the United States Catholic Conference (USCC). Prior to the restructuring, inter-religious dialog was overseen by the Bishops' Commission for Ecumenical Affairs who managed individual conversations with the various denominations through a series of subcommissions. According to the 1966 NCWC Annual Report, Bishop Flanagan was the liaison to Archbishop Iakovos of the Standing Commission of Orthodox Bishops. Bishop Helmsing was assigned to the Catholic-Anglican conversation with the protestant Episcopal Church, and Bishop Murphy to dialog with the Lutheran Church. It is also worth noting that the Bishop's Commission also conversed with denominations composed of smaller congregations and/or those lacking an episcopate altogether.
One of the more influential subcommissions was a committee of eight, chaired by Bishop John J. Carberry who served as representatives to the National Council of the Churches. Carberry, who had just replaced the outgoing Archbishop Shehan as Chairman of the Bishops' Commission for Ecumenical Affairs, and his team attended a January 25, 1966 meeting with the NCC that signaled for a new framework of coordinated ecumenical partnerships at the diocesan level. This appeared to mobilize the NCC to deepen its commitment to interfaith dialog and to find new ways of involving the US Catholic Church.
This was a significant moment, for in the mid-20th century, the NCC was perhaps the most recognized inter-denominational forum in the US. It had played a prominent role in facilitating the civil rights movement and was well-positioned to meld the assorted ecumenical and inter-religious dialogs into a broader message of peace and social justice. Here it is fairly easy to infer that the various clergy who had worked for civil rights were interested in finding a means to build upon their successes. So the NCC provided a ready-made network and the ideal venue for the Bishop's Commission to implement the Second Vatican Council Decree on Ecumenism in the U.S. While these external relations continued to ramp up, the Bishop's Commission's internal purview would soon feel the impacts of a reorganized NCWC later that year as depicted below.
"As separate organizations with distinct responsibilities, the NCCB focused on internal ecclesiastical concerns while the USCC carried forward work in society at large. The NCCB enabled the bishops to deliberate and respond collectively on a broad range of issues, with work being supervised by the Office of the General Secretary and carried out through various secretariats as well as standing and ad hoc committees." The USCC included clergy, religious, and lay people who developed public policy and programs for approval by the Administrative Board and the bishops for implementation by the various departments."
In hindsight, this excerpt from the finding aid to the USCCB/ Office of the General Secretary provides some indication that the Vatican II decree would expand the scope of ecumenism into something far greater than had been previously understood. While this had global ramifications, in the US it posed a considerable sea-change to the executive authority of the Bishops Commission for Ecumenical Affairs with effects that lasted for years after the 1966 reorganization. Today the NCCB and the USCC have been re-combined to form the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) consisting of the same staff continuing the work formerly done by the NCCB and the USCC. Accordingly the Bishop's Commission for Ecumenical Affairs lives on as the USCCB Committee for Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Affairs.
The USCCB Ecumenical Collection is an informal chronicle of the post-Vatican II trend toward pastoral ministry and renewed interfaith dialog during the 1960's and 1970's. It contains a series of documents, pamphlets and news clippings which collectively provide a view into the worldwide ecumenical movement during a dynamic period in geo-politics when many newly independent countries entered the international stage. That said, the bulk of the material relates to ecumenical activity in the US on the part of Catholic bishops acting in concert with the National Council of Churches. Though there is little that reveals the inner workings of the NCCB, the collection provides some indication that improvements in Catholic-Protestant dialog during the mid to late- 20th century enabled the scope of Christian unity to develop into a force less visibly doctrinaire and increasingly devoted to social action (see boxes 1 -2). For example, continuing interest in the 19th century theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman among Anglicans and Catholics alike provide a view into the broad ecumenical re-alignment that took shape in the 1960's.
As mentioned, the collection reveals a good deal about the structure of inter-religious discourse in the US. One notable example is the file on the removal of faith based restrictions to YMCA membership (located in box 2) which suggests that the 1966 partition of the NCWC yielded some immediate results due to the USCC's role in resolving this longstanding issue. Further evidence of the partition's early success is epitomized by a coordinated effort between the newly empowered NCCB and the National Council of the Churches of Christ to facilitate ecumenical relations. Here, boxes 3 and 4 reveal that the NCCB and the NCC, who also count Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Eastern Orthodox among their membership, were actively fostering a diocesan level ecumenism by 1967. A series of coordinated state-level conferences were held that appear to have been effective in galvanizing various diocesan bishops, both Roman Catholic and non-Roman, to address broader inter-religious concerns. This is reflected though documents that depict a network of state NCC chapters organized through state articles of incorporation. This provided an ecumenical platform that eventually led to the engagement of cooperative service programs to encourage interdenominational lay participation. Though this partnership sowed considerable seed for the ecumenical movement during the 1970's, it is also worth noting that the NCC was not the only corporate body facilitating ecumenism in the US. The World Council of Churches, another well-known inter-religious organization devoted to social action, was also quite active during this time. That said, most indications in the collection suggest that the NCC remained the ecumenical organization of choice for the NCCB, who perhaps saw it as the most acceptable vehicle to propel community relations under the new Vatican II mandate.
It is also worth mentioning that the Anglican Church in England and its affiliated worldwide Anglican Communion was also active in promoting ecumenism. The ACE had sent observers to Rome for the Second Vatican Council which paved the way for future communication in years to come. This may help explain Boxes 5 and 6 which contain the international files on ecumenical activities in approximately one dozen countries. These mainly consist of published bulletins yet offer some insights on pastoral ministry and Catholic - Anglican dialog during the 1970's, including some reference to Ireland. There is also an extensive file on Catholic - Anglican relations in Canada. What is not contained in the collection are any references to Catholic-Anglican dialog in the U.S.
Today, some four decades later, the scope of this collection suggests that the greater legacy of this "new era" of Christian ecumenism and interfaith dialog was a strategic refocusing among Judeo-Christian bodies away from the task of rebuilding post-WWII Europe and toward a sustained effort to seek doctrinal common ground during the lingering Cold War. Further evidence of inter-denominational discourse may be found in the 1989-1990 Lutheran-Catholic Dialog located in Series 2.
The USCCB Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs records consists of 2 Series:
25 years or living persons
Luigi Ligutti - Vatican Council II Collection
Frederick R. McManus Papers
James J. Norris - Vatican Council II Collection
Patrick O'Boyle - Vatican Council II Collection
Ernest J. Primeau - Vatican Council II Collection
USCCB Executive Department/Office of the General Secretary
Hellenic College: http://www.hchc.edu/hellenic/campus_life/library/archbishop_iakovos_collection/gallery.html
Lambeth Palace Library Archives: http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/archbishopspapers
Nashotah Theological Seminary: http://www.nashotah.edu/library/about-the-library/
This record series is indexed under the following controlled access subject terms.
Donated in 2002 by the office's administrative assistant Jamie Reddington.
Processing completed in July 2012 by Carter Rawson. EAD markup completed in July 2012 by Carter Rawson.
Six boxes of administrative files, brochures and news clippings relating to interfaith outreach from the 1960's - 1980's. Boxes 1-2 contain multiple documents pertaining to inter-religious affairs ranging from dialogs with Jewish and Eastern Orthodox Christian groups to Catholic relations with the YMCA. Boxes 3-4 chronicle the development of state-level NCC conferences aimed at facilitating ecumenical dialog in the U.S. at the diocesan level. Boxes 5 and 6 date from the same era and contain numerous international conference pamphlets documenting the evolution of the world-wide ecumenical movement.
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The second series mainly documents a Lutheran-Catholic dialog (1989-1990) for the purposes of drafting a Common Statement. It contains a number of draft iterations subsequent to a 1989 conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.