CTA’s birth conference, Detroit 1976. The process is still working.

The 1976 national Call to Action Conference in Detroit could have been a model for church planning in the future if the process had been followed up. It was not and therefore it failed in its ambitious purpose. Historian David O’Brien, who was deeply involved in that process exactly 30 years ago, said the event was inspired by the U.S. bishops, especially Cardinal John Dearden, who “had been changed by the experience of Vatican II.”

A national advisory council urged a major preparatory consultation, and seven national hearings, well covered by the media, each over a three-day period, were held over many months. Experts and ordinary parishioners, clergy and laity all had an chance to make recommendations and tell their personal stories, said O’Brien. “The conversations were rich and vigorous and they made the bishops nervous,” he added.

Eight committees took the transcripts of the hearings, boiled the recommendations down to eight categories: church, humankind, nationhood, personhood, family, neighborhood, ethnicity/race, and work. On Oct. 23-26, 1976, the 1,351 delegates, divided into eight subgroups, and the 1,000 observers translated all that material into position papers and action recommendations, voting in a very conventional manner. “There was great respect for the process,” said O’Brien. “It was almost too successful, the people were excited, they assumed the bishops were listening.”

Indeed they were, and their grumbling was immediate. Some bishops claimed they had been hijacked, that the delegates tried to do too much, that the delegates were not a representative body, that there were too many self-interested people present. The complaints, O’Brien intimated, showed how unfamiliar the bishops were with a well organized democratic process. It was mostly the concentration on church politics and church-related moral issues, such as freedom of conscience regarding family planning, the rights of homosexuals, minorities and the divorced and remarried that frightened many of the bishops; they did not want to hear that sort of talk, and they knew the Vatican did not want to hear it either. So CTA’s fate was apparently sealed before the delegates finished clapping and congratulating each other on a job well done.

“Yes, there were delegates with an agenda and prophetic speakers and women who lobbied for their issues,” said O’Brien. “That’s normal in representative groups. The process worked.”

The plan was for the bishops to follow up at their November 1977 meeting, more than a year after the event. At that time some recommendations were handed over to the bishops’ administrative committee and promptly buried. Others were delayed until the 1978 meeting and by then had disappeared under the dust. In effect, said O’Brien, “the bishops turned away from the process and the product.”

In only one diocese (guess which) was the CTA initiative taken seriously, not by the bishop but by a handful of laity, nuns and priests. And from that frail planting a rather substantial tree has grown up. The process is still working.

Were you at Detroit ’76? Then you’re a CTA pioneer. We salute you!

At the 2006 conference Bob Heineman asked veterans of the 1976 event to sign an honor roll. Some 40 did so, as follows:

Barbara Van Buren NYC
Mary Nerney NYC
Pat Mullen, CSJ Detroit
Fr Stephen Umhoefer Communications Dir, Diocese of Madison
Annice McClure, OSF Hosp. Springfield (IL) Sisters’ Senate
Fr Lou Anderson St John’s Seminary, Plymouth MI
Mary Margaret Will Crookston, MN
Bill Davis National Jesuit Office of Social Ministry
Fr Gerry Bechard Seminarian at St Johns
Sam Stanton Ft Wayne / South Bend Social Concerns Ofc (now Maryk)
Jeannine Weidner Rockford Office of Social Concerns
Dorothy McCormack, OSF Sacramento, CA
Carol Crowley First year Seminary student (first woman) St Johns
Betty Sundry, CDP Assoc Dir Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh
Ruth Berra Madison, WI
Mary France Reis, Coordinator of Ministry for BVM’s
Casey Lopata Alternate delegate from Rochester, N.Y.
Jean Hettinger, OSU Observer – pastoral assoc, Morgantown,WV
Helen Marie Burns, RSM Representative of Religious Women, Detroit
Janet Peterworth, OSU Observer – pastoral assoc, Morgantown,WV
Jack Murtaugh priest at the time, Chaired the Milwaukee delegation
Terry Dosh Already a married priest, came representing CORPUS
Jack LaGoe Muskegon, MI, pastor of a small parish
Ray Stroik Diocese of LaCrosse, Campaign for Human Development
David Funk, OFM Cap Personnel Dir of Community
Julia Ann Archer Detroit
John Krejci Grand Island, Neb. diocese
Mary Beth Jones Green Bay
Hank Mascotte Ft Wayne / South Bend
Joan Chittister, OSB Erie, Pa.
Carol Kottewitz, RC Student, Mundelein College, Chicago
Nancy Sylvester, IHM Observer, Detroit
Rose Stietz, OP Detroit
Sally Dolan Westchester County, NY
Fr Charlie Doyle Diocese of Gary
Charles & Jean Rooney Detroit area
Bill Quigley New Orleans