1917: The Birth of the Bishops’ Conference

As the United States entered World War I, the nation’s Roman Catholic Bishops established the National Catholic War Council (NCWC), the purpose of which was twofold. Its primary aim was to unify the resources of the American Catholic community in order to more fully aid the war effort. At the same time, the hierarchy hoped to develop the council into an organ capable of asserting the Church’s interests at the national level. After the war, the NCWC remained in place under the title National Catholic Welfare Conference. This organization continued to operate in Washington as a Catholic lobby and was the ancestor of the present day National Conference of Catholic Bishops. On this day in 1917 Paulist Father John J. Burke, editor of The Catholic World, called a two-day meeting on the campus of Catholic University that led to the NCWC’s founding. Until his death in 1936, Father Burke as the NCWC’s secretary general (and guiding force).