50 Years of Church Reform
The history of Call To Action reflects the broader narrative of progressive American Catholics in the latter half of the 20th century—but our story is far from over.
Vatican II: The Tipping Point
Call To Action draws its mission from the US Bishops' 1976 Call To Action Conference. The "Call for Reform in the Catholic Church," a document proclaimed by more than 20,000 signers, articulates the goals of our Church.
The 1976 conference and ensuing proclamation both began as a response to the Second Vatican Council (1962 and 1965), which challenged Catholics to "scrutinize the signs of the times" and respond in the light of the Gospel. The council provided a wake-up call for lay Catholics who had tended to defer initiatives entirely to the clergy. Energized and awakened by Vatican II, lay Catholics sought greater, meaningful roles in their parishes. Social activism grew increasingly important and integral to American Catholic life as laypeople and clergy alike took their social justice values into the public sphere.
In 1971, Pope Paul VI emphasized that the laity received the primary "call to action" to create a more just world. That same year the international synod of the bishops issued an unusually brief and clear document. It declared that "action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world appears to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel." The synod also cautioned: "The church recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes; hence, we must undertake an examination of the modes of action, of the possessions, and of the lifestyle found within the church itself."
“CTA had a dual focus. One eye was on church institutions that needed reform and renewal, and the other eye was on the larger society and issues of justice and peace that ought to have church involvement.”
— Dan Daley, CTA Co-Founder
1976: The Inaugural Call To Action Conference
On their return home from the 1971 synod, the U.S. bishops launched a creative consultation process. Over 800,000 Catholics testified during two years of hearings, culminating in the U.S. bishops' Call to Action Conference in Detroit in 1976, held in conjunction with the American Bicentennial. Over 100 bishops were among the 1,340 voting delegates and the 1,500 observers.
After three momentous days of discussion and debate, the assembly declared the church must stand up to the chronic racism, sexism, militarism, and poverty in modern society. To do so in a credible way, the church must reevaluate its positions on issues like celibacy for priests, the male-only clergy, homosexuality, birth control, and the involvement of every level of the church in important decisions. At the end of the inaugural Call To Action Conference, the assembly recommended that each diocese take the recommendations home and act upon them.
1978: Call To Action is Born in Chicago
Following the 1976 Conference, the leadership of the U.S. Bishops Conference gradually distanced themselves from the event because of some of the church-justice issues raised. In Chicago, however, where Cardinal John Cody's autocratic style had created a high level of tension, several organizations of nuns, priests, Catholic school teachers, and concerned laity urged an ongoing follow-up to the Detroit initiative. A conference of over 400 people was held in October 1978, and Chicago Call To Action was launched as a local organization.
"From its inception, CTA had a dual focus," says Dan Daley, CTA co-coordinator and founding member. "One eye was on church institutions which needed reform and renewal, and the other eye was on the larger society and issues of justice and peace that ought to have church involvement. The emphasis has shifted from time to time."
The first projects in 1978 and 1979 were local: criticizing Cardinal Cody's lack of financial accountability, lobbying for more effective parish councils, and improving benefits for Catholic school teachers. Membership grew, but for years the annual conferences, featuring reform-minded speakers, drew fewer than 600 people. In 1981, CTA received a major boost when the speaker was Hans Küng, the Swiss theologian who had become a kind of Catholic folk hero through his call for a more democratic church and his skirmishes with Vatican authorities. Some 1,800 attended the conference that year, held at McCormick Place. The event is still recalled as a kind of Woodstock for many local Catholics.
After Cardinal Cody's death, CTA in the early 1980s focused largely on societal issues, such as involving Catholics in the nuclear disarmament movement and the campaign against U.S. policy in Latin America. The organization cooperated with the Quixote Center in the Quest for Peace program, gathering tons of clothing and other supplies for the people of Nicaragua. The style of Cody's successor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, was in such marked contrast that there was comparatively little to fret about in the local church. In the middle and late 1980s, Call To Action's Performing Arts Ministry sponsored a group of young, talented members in creating musical productions based on the U.S. bishops' pastoral letters regarding peace and economic justice. The group toured nationally and won a Vatican World Communications Day Award for their efforts.
“Our goal is not to keep people Catholic; it’s to keep the spirit of Catholicism alive.”
— CTA Co-Founder Sheila Daley
The 1990 Call for Reform
While the Chicago church remained calm, dark clouds appeared elsewhere. Pope John Paul II repeatedly dashed hopes for any internal liberalizing during his lifetime, and he prepared for the future by appointing as bishops only men who upheld his views on contraception and the ordination of women. Meanwhile, there were crackdowns on theologians like Küng and an insistence from Rome that diversity of opinion was not to be tolerated.
In 1990 the CTA board developed a Call for Reform in the Catholic Church, a pastoral letter capsulizing the organization's cry for a church responsive to the world's needs and therefore willing to examine its own record on issues of justice, equality, and participation. There was considerable discussion on how--or whether--to disseminate the letter. On their way to a national church conference in Washington, CTA Co-Founders Dan and Sheila Daley decided to ask Hans Küng, a speaker at the affair, to read the document and give his opinion. "We stopped on the road and Dan called Küng's hotel room, catching him as he was walking in," says Sheila Daley. "He agreed to look at it and told us to leave it under his door when we arrived. We arrived close to midnight and followed his instructions."
The next morning, as the climax of his talk to the 800 people assembled, Küng read the CTA Call for Reform verbatim and said he had never seen a better declaration of the motives and goals of the progressive church. Suddenly, CTA was swamped with requests for copies and inquiries from around the country about these unknown Chicago reformers. The statement was printed as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Ash Wednesday, in March 1990, along with the names of 4,500 signers and an invitation for more signatures.
Within a few months, the “Call for Reform in the Catholic Church” document had more than 4,500 signers, and CTA had become a national entity. The “Call for Reform” remains the organization's basic platform.
2022: We are Church
During the summer of 2022, it came to the attention of CTA staff that a radically right-wing organization attempted to co-opt the Call To Action name and model for its own conference in Detroit.
CTA’s Vision Council released a letter to members that reaffirmed the organization’s long-held mission and values and elaborated on the issues of importance and urgency to contemporary U.S. Catholics:
A church that fosters gender justice, including the ordination of women, trans and non-binary folks.
A church that promotes and cultivates dignity among all peoples and families, regardless of their marital status or sexual and/or romantic relationships.
A church whose liturgies embrace the many cultures, histories, and languages of our universal church.
A church that truly lives by all the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching, including the preferential option for the poor; criminal justice reform and the abolition of the death penalty; dignity for labor and workers, especially low-income wage earners and immigrant workers; care for God’s creation; and solidarity among all in this one apostolic church.
Conferences
From 1976-2016, CTA organized a national conference for progressive Catholics. For the first 15 years, it was mostly a regional affair, but in 1990, after running a center page ad in the New York Times with a list of church reform demands, CTA became a national entity known for the annual national conferences where progressive Catholics assembled for a weekend of education, discussion, worship, and camaraderie. CTA conferences feature brilliant speakers, inclusive liturgies, and a tangible sense of community.
Regional Gatherings
In 2017, CTA began organizing regionally focused conferences, convergences, gatherings, and experiences to alternate with the National Conference. 2019 saw three regional gatherings: a West Coast Regional Conference in Sacramento, CA, a Border Experience in McAllen, TX, and a conference for young adults in New York, NY. These gatherings are organized by a combination of chapter members and CTA’s national staff.
Call To Action Archives
Call To Action’s archives are located at DePaul University in Chicago. These archives are open to the public, and include publications created or collected by CTA’s founders, staffers, and members across the United States and abroad.