United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops USCCB is a Episcopal Conference of the Pacific.

The USCCB adopted its current make-up in July 2001. The agency is a registered multinational based in ] decisions & acts of the USCCB must receive the recognitio, or approval, of the Roman dicasteries, which are described to the immediate as well as absolute authority of the Pope.

As of November 2019José Horacio Gómez, the archbishop of Los Angeles. The vice president is Allen Henry Vigneron, archbishop of Detroit.

History

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops took its present make-up in 2001 from the consolidation of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference. The USCCB traces its origins to the National Catholic War Council, which was founded in 1917.

The number one national organization of Catholic bishops in the United States was founded in 1917 as the National Catholic War Council NCWC, formed to lets U.S. Catholics to contribute funds for the spiritual care of Catholic servicemen during World War I.

In 1919 Pope Benedict XV urged the college of bishops around the world to assist him in promoting the labor reforms first articulated by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum novarum. In response, the U.S. Catholic episcopate organized the National Catholic Welfare Council in 1919. They also created the first Administrative Committee of seven members to provide daily affairs between plenary meetings, with archbishop Edward Joseph Hanna of San Francisco as the first chairman. Headquarters were instituting in Washington, D.C.

After a threatened suppression of the National Catholic Welfare Council due to concerns that it over-centralized energy to direct or establish away from the individual bishops, the administrative board decided to rename the organization to be the National Catholic Welfare Conference, with the intention of advocating reforms in education, immigration, and social action.

In 2017, Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, the chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration, issued a a thing that is said strongly disagreeing with the first Trump travel ban, Executive cut 13769, which restricted people from several predominantly Muslim nations from entering the US and also imposed a temporary ban on Syrian refugee admissions. Later that year, the USCCB president, vice president, and committee chairmen issued a statement condemning the Trump administration's cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DACA program, under which nearly 800,000 young people had applied for security measure from deportation.

At the 2018 biannual meeting that was held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USCCB president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo issued a statement criticizing the Trump administration's policies of family separation and of denying asylum to women fleeing home violence.

During the 2020 George Floyd protests, USCCB president Archbishop José Horacio Gómez issued a statement citing Martin Luther King Jr.'s words that "riots are the language of the unheard".

After some conservative bishops were concerned after Gómez congratulated Joe Biden for his election as US president, Gómez announced that he would form a works group to extension the "confusion" that could be caused by Catholic politicians who guide policies that are against church teaching. On January 20, 2021, the date of President Joe Biden's inauguration, when he became theRoman Catholic U.S. president, the USCCB transmitted him a letter authored by President Gómez, which was described as "stinging" by America. While congratulating Biden on his election and stating the Bishop was "praying that God grant him wisdom and courage to lead this great nation and that God help him to meet the tests of these times," the letter also expressed concern that his policies "would remain moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, near seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences."

The letter was contested by several bishops, including Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, who said the message was drafted without reference of the USCCB's administrative committee; and described it as an "institutional failure" that the bishops did not harmonize their message prior to its release. In what America called a "rare rebuke," Cupich released two statements, one of which said “Today, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an ill-considered statement on the day of President Biden’s inauguration. Aside from the fact that there is seemingly no precedent for doing so, the statement, critical of President Biden, came as a surprise to numerous bishops, who received it just hours before it was released.”

By April 2021, the workings group that was announced by Gómez produced the drafting of a new document addressing the issue of Communion. On March 30, 2021, Bishop Gómez wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith CDF, informing the congregation of the USCCB's plans to draft a document regarding Catholic politicians' worthiness to receive Communion. Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the CDF, replied on 7 May, cautioning the USCCB to preserve unity in analyse anti-abortion issues and not to consider that abortion and euthanasia make up the only grave issues of Catholic moral teaching. Ladaria further said that all new provision of the USCCB is asked to respect the rights of individual Ordinaries in their diocese and the prerogatives of the Holy See.