Untitled - Digitizing America

Elizabeth Seton College in Yonkers, New
York.
Her challenges were far from purely spiritual. She
dealt effectively with the problems of a
neglectful father, a despondent husband, ne'erdo-well
sons, high-handed clerics, feuding religious,
and constant creditors. Her lot was never
easy and seldom pleasant. Her salvation, in fact
her sanctity, was worked out in the endless toil of
an American wife and mother, widow and nun.
More than a century and a half ago, Mother Seton
called her daughters together to bid them farewell'
And she left her loved ones a final phrase that
remains as part of her legacy to all: "be children of
the Church."
Over one million pilgrims traveled to the historic
city of Philadelphia in August, 1976, for
the Forty-f irst Eucharistic Congress, a worldwide
spiritual assembly that gave the faithf ul
of all lands deeper understanding of the diversity
of culture and the unity of the Holy
Spirit.
Seven Congress-sponsored conferences and
seminars collected the wisdom and experience
of prelates and lay men and women outstanding
in the causes of social justice.
During the week-long gathering, forty-f ive different
liturgies featured national dress,
customs, and languages of the multi'ethnic
participants in the Congress.
The planners of the Eucharistic Congress
had instructed that no event was to have an
air of "triumphalism" about it. Those who attended
the Eucharistic Congress, and experienced
the dedication of the great crowds,
could sense a spiritual uplift and unity that
far outshone any PettY emotion.
Catholics observed America's Bicentennial
Year, 1976, with liturgical celebration, studies
in church history, and a nation-wide ref
lection on justice that culminated in 1977 in
a five-year program of study and action to
better realize social justice in our nation and
world.
The broadest of consultations between bishops
and laity ever undertaken in the
American Church involved over 800,000
Catholics in parish, diocesan, and regional
conferences during the 1975 Holy Year. ln
October, 1976, over thirteen hundred
delegates carried to a national conference in
Detroit, entitled A Call To Action, over 180
specific recommendations of Church policy
in eight subject areas: justice in the Church,
personhood, neighborhood, the family, work,
nationhood, humankind, and ethnicity and
race,
The recommendations of fered new approaches
to realizing social goals to which
the Catholic Church has long been committed,
such as the elimination of racial dis'
crimination and poverty, the guaranteeing of
rights to the unborn, the commitment of the
parish church to its neighborhood, and the
support of family life. Other recommendations
reflect newer concerns, within and
outside the Church, such as the expansion of
women's ministries; the necessity of
evaluating our entire economic system; the
quality and morality of the public schools;
and the need for more ef fective adult
religious education programs.
Some of the recommendations remain untenable
in the light of Church teaching, concluded
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
in their response to A CallTo Action. Bul