The bishops & politics: has the scandal stilled the church's voice? Don't believe it.

There has been considerable hand-wringing among Catholics about the negative effects of the sexual-abuse scandal--the "Long Lent of 2002"--on the political influence of the church, particularly of the bishops. For some, the low ebb of that influence was seen when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a "Statement on Iraq" last November that was totally eclipsed in the media by their revised Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. "Of course the bishops feel the loss of their status to speak on these [public] issues," the Reverend Canice Connors, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, told the Washington Post (November 15, 2002). "We all feel it." More recently, in an article titled, "Testing the Church's Influence in Politics," the New York Times (January 26, 2003) summarized the sentiments of many inside and outside the church. "The influence of American bishops in the broader political debate stems largely from their moral authority," the article asserted. "This moral authority has almost certainly been diminished by the church's handling of the sex-abuse scandals."

Such statements give me, as a social scientist, pause. Yes, they have a common-sense ring to them. Yet, to my knowledge, none of these claims--that political influence is based on moral authority, that moral authority has been diminished, and therefore that political influence has been diminished--has been empirically substantiated. Until they are, I urge caution in making strong pronouncements about the presumed political implications of the crisis.

The question of the bishops' political influence in the Long Lent of 2002 is an empirical one. I was fortunate to begin a national study of the bishops' role in state-level politics just prior to the publication of the Boston Globe's investigation in January 2002. The early results of my research suggest the axiomatic conclusion that the bishops' political influence has suffered needs to be seriously questioned.

To be sure, the scandal has had specific, identifiable political effects. This is especially true in two areas of policy: adjusting the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse charges and including clergy in mandatory reporting laws. In the most extreme case, California suspended the statute of limitations on civil action to recover damages for childhood sexual abuse until December 31, 2003. Although the legislation clearly targeted the Catholic Church, California's bishops could not oppose the bill, given the hostile climate that prevailed in the legislature. In two committee votes and three on the floor, the legislation passed by a cumulative margin of 160 to 0.

Missouri was among states pressed to include clergy as mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse or neglect. The scandal had come to Missouri most prominently in the form of Bishop Anthony O'Connell, who resigned as bishop of Palm Beach, Florida, after being accused in March 2002 of sexually assaulting underage students in the 1970s while he was a seminary rector in Hannibal, Missouri. Missouri did enact legislation making clergy mandatory reporters, but not until an exemption was secured for "privileged communication made to [a minister] in his or her professional capacity." This exemption--which clearly protects the seal of confession--was the major accomplishment of the legislative session for the Missouri Catholic Conference, something its executive director, Lawrence Weber, is not particularly proud of: "I had to turn my back on a positive legislative package and turn my attention to this." Similar costs of addressing legislation on the statute of limitations and clergy reporting--costs in time, energy, and political capital--were incurred in a number of states. Not all political victories in 2002 were as purely defensive as Missouri's, however.

* Iowa became just the second state in the country to ban both reproductive and therapeutic human cloning. The bill was introduced and advocated in the legislature by the staff of the Iowa Catholic Conference, with considerable assistance from Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB's Secretariat for Prolife Activities.

* In Oregon, health-care payers received a broad conscience exemption in the state's Medicaid waiver from the federal government. A health-care payer providing services under the waiver "is not required to provide, pay for, make available, or make a referral for a service to an individual receiving health care...if the health-care payer objects to the provision of that service on the basis of religious beliefs, moral convictions, or conscience." The exemption was worked into Oregon's Medicaid contract by Robert Castagna of the Oregon Catholic Conference, working closely with the staff of the USCCB's Office of Government Liaison.

* In Pennsylvania, the Catholic conference led the effort to pass the Religious Freedom Protection Act, designed to restore the "compelling state interest" standard to limit exercise of religion, a standard removed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Employment Division v. Smith (1990) and Boerne v. Flores (1997). The bill passed by wide margins in both houses of the legislature despite the fact that the ACLU of Pennsylvania tried to play the scandal card during the debate by accusing the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference of advocating the legislation in order to shield pedophile priests from legal accountability.

These reports from the political front point to what social scientists might call "the variable effects of the scandal." My primary purpose here is to suggest why the political influence of the bishops has not been compromised nearly as much as many commentators assert. It has to do with the structure and operation of state Catholic conferences.

Unfortunately, few people know much about state Catholic conferences. In a report written for Commonweal's Fall 2000 Colloquium on American Catholics in the Public Square (see, www.catholicsinpublicsquare.org), William Bole characterized these conferences as "one of the church's better-kept secrets." Although state Catholic conferences do not have the same canonical status as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, they are its functional equivalents at the state level. With the devolution of political responsibility from the federal government to the states--particularly on issues of concern to the church such as abortion, capital punishment, health care, and welfare--the political importance of the state conferences has increased. Yet their existence and role in the public policy arena is routinely overlooked by scholars and journalists alike.

The only systematic study of state Catholic conferences to date is a 1971 doctoral dissertation in canon law written by Michael J. Sheehan, then a priest of the diocese of Dallas, now the archbishop of Santa Fe. Sheehan offers the following overview: "A state Catholic conference is a permanent, noncanonical church agency, composed of the dioceses within a state to provide the coordination of the church's public policy and communication with state government, non-Catholic churches, and secular agencies. The bishops of the state form the board of directors and set the policy. Laymen, priests, and religious are often members of the board as well, or at least have some consultative role. There is a secretariat, located in the state capital, and usually headed by a lay executive director."

There are currently thirty-four state Catholic conferences. Staff size ranges from one person devoting half time to the conference to the equivalent of eleven full-time staff members. The average staff amounts to a little less than four full-time workers or the equivalent. Annual budgets vary widely, averaging just over $400,000. The oldest conference is New York's, founded in 1916, three years before the National Catholic Welfare Council. The youngest is Nevada's, founded in 2000. The majority of conferences were organized immediately following the Second Vatican Council.

Like the USCCB, state Catholic conferences appear from the outside to be unitary organizational structures. Sociologically, however, it is useful to see state Catholic conferences as dual structures. Although there is some variation, typically the bishops of a state are the board of directors and lay people largely staff the secretariat. This dual structure of bishops and staff is crucial to understanding the continuing political legitimacy of state Catholic conferences despite the scandal.

I owe the concept of dual structures to sociologist Mark Chaves, who observes that many religious denominations "are constituted by two parallel organizational structures: a religious authority structure and an agency structure." According to Chaves, the primary function of the religious authority structure is to control access to religious goods (for example, the means of salvation). Thus, although the church properly seeks to engage the world (Gaudium et spes), the raison d'etre of the hierarchy is internal. Bishops are first and foremost "teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship, and officers of good order" in the church (Lumen gentium, 20).

The external face of the church is organizationally expressed in agency structures. As the name suggests, agency structures "function as the agents of the religious authority structure in the secular world." Examples include missions, social services, publishing, and, yes, political lobbying.

Concern about the declining political influence of the bishops during the scandal has focused exclusively on the church's religious authority structure. Yet the primary vehicle of the bishops' influence at the state level is a dual structure. As agency structures, the conferences have a basis of political legitimacy that is independent of the moral authority of the bishops and, therefore, an ability to continue acting effectively in the political arena through the crisis--and I would suggest that the same is true at the federal level with the USCCB.

The moral voice of the bishops in American political life is certainly important, and I do not want to dismiss it here. Neither do I want to romanticize it. Much of the political influence of the bishops comes not from the authority structure's prophetic voice calling out in the wilderness, but through the agency structure's role in the messier legislative process that Otto von Bismarck compared to making sausages ("Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made").

In his landmark study of religious lobbying, Representing God in Washington (University of Tennessee Press, 1988), political scientist Allen Hertzke observes that religious advocacy groups are often reluctant or ill-equipped to engage in the "detail work" or "sausage making" that is central to the legislative process. Not so the state Catholic conferences. Conference directors realize involvement in legislative sausage making presumes and reinforces a group's political legitimacy.

Political legitimacy can be defined roughly as the right to speak, to be heard, and to be taken seriously in the political process. Political advocates themselves prefer the term credibility. In the legislative process, credibility is built up slowly over time and, in the case of state Catholic conferences, adheres more to the agency than to the authority structure. Conference directors play a particularly important role in this regard.

Three decades ago, Michael Sheehan recognized that the director is key to the successful operation of a conference, observing, "He, more than anyone, is responsible for the success or failure of the conference...[he is] the one whom the board of directors relies on to carry out the policy set by the board....He submits budgets, prepares the agendas for the meetings, arranges committee appointments and work. He does lobbying, either formally or informally, with the state government, coordinates the opinions of the bishops and diocesan officials, gives talks throughout the state on the work of the conference." As in any complex organization, examining the professional background of these key executives is a good indicator of the conferences' modus operandi.

In the early days of the state Catholic conferences, Sheehan found considerable diversity in the professional background of the directors. Since then, however, experience working in state government relations has become increasingly important. A majority of those I surveyed in 2002 named legislative experience as the ideal professional background for their job. This development is evident in the most recent individuals hired for these posts. Sara Eide had served for three years as an aide to the majority leader of the Iowa State Senate before joining the Iowa Catholic Conference in 2000 and being promoted to executive director in 2003. Vincent Senior took over the Catholic Conference of Kentucky in 2002 after a long career with Reynolds Metals Company, including managing its state and local government relations across the United States. In 2000, the bishops of Kansas hired a veteran Kansas state legislator, Michael Farmer, to serve as director of their conference.

The executive director of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, Robert O'Hara, holds a doctorate in government and previously spent nineteen years overseeing state government affairs for a local utility in Pennsylvania. As he explains his situation, "The guy whom I followed was a bit of a legend....He had a good reputation. And I was pretty well-known, too. After nineteen years, people know you." Clearly credibility is often built up over long periods of time. The longevity of conference directors, then, is a great advantage. Even with a recent number of new hires, the average tenure of conference directors is nearly a decade. The average number of years on the same conference staff is even higher, more than twelve, since nearly one-third of directors have been promoted from within their own conferences.

The extensive experience of conference directors is put into action in the practice of lobbying. Hollywood images of influence peddlers in Gucci loafers doling out money and favors to politicians aside, "the major currency lobbyists peddle today is information"--to cite one major text, Dennis Dresang and James Gosling's Politics and Policy in American States and Communities (Allyn & Bacon, 1996). As society has grown more complex and the political responsibilities have increased, legislators rely more and more on interest groups to supply them with the information they need to make policy decisions.

Consequently, the credibility of interest groups is tied to the quality of information they supply. John Huebscher of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference suggests that this may be even truer for religious than for secular interest groups: "I think there is a temptation or tendency to view religious groups as idealistic do-gooders who don't understand the 'real world.' Which is why being thoughtful and informed and being able to come in with data and analysis are so important to me--to quickly disabuse them of the fact that we don't know what we're talking about." Providing quality information is a vehicle for Catholic conferences to solidify their legitimacy as political actors in the eyes of legislators. When Huebscher meets with legislators, his objective is "to either establish or continue to cement their view of the conference as an agency that provides thoughtful, useful information. So even if they're disinclined to go with us on the issue of the moment, they will see in us someone that they would want to hear from again."

The centrality of information peddling in the legislative process suits state Catholic conferences well. Because they are not grass-roots membership organizations, they do not routinely rely on mobilizing individuals to pressure legislators. As 501(c)(3) organizations, they cannot play the campaign-finance and candidate-endorsement game. Because information is their main currency, conference directors frequently tie their credibility to their reputations for "telling the truth." The experience of Robert O'Hara, the former utility lobbyist in Pennsylvania, is typical. "When I first started working for [the utility], I was told that the most important thing you've got up here is your credibility and don't ever lose it. The best way to maintain your credibility is to tell the truth." O'Hara continues: "We're still only armed with a handshake and a smile around here. But credibility over time means more than just about anything because people get to know you and they don't expect that you're going to come in there and tell them something that's wrong. They may not agree with you, but they don't think you're going to lie to them." Some bishops may be suspect in this respect in the wake of the scandal, but this does not directly impugn the reputation of state conference lobbyists like Huebscher and O'Hara.

Understanding Catholic conferences as dual structures helps us to see why the bishops' political influence is not wholly dependent on their moral authority. Whether it is desirable for state Catholic conferences to have bases of political legitimacy independent of the moral integrity and authority of their bishops is, of course, another matter. The fact is, they do, and discussions of the political implications of the scandal ought to recognize this.

That state Catholic conferences have bases of legitimacy independent of the bishops' moral authority does not mean that moral authority is irrelevant to their work. As Castagna of Oregon puts it, "What distinguishes the church's presence in the public policy arena is that it is based on the Gospels and the church's social teaching. Without that, I could be the lobbyist for the United Way." So the authority operating in the work of the conferences does turn out to be more than the personal credibility of their directors. That is essential to the final two reasons that explain, I believe, why the church's moral authority to speak in specific public squares (as distinguished from a fictive public square) may not be as damaged by the scandal as some people assume.

Bishops, not "the bishops": It is important to keep in mind the two dimensions of the scandal. There is the sexual abuse itself, and there are the many cases of episcopal cover-up and mismanagement that perpetuated it. As research by the New York Times has documented (January 12, 2003), at least some cases of sexual abuse have affected nearly every diocese. Yet there is no evidence that the episcopal cover-up is as extensive. To the extent that there has been a loss of moral authority, it may more properly be said to apply to bishops and not to "the bishops."

Many state Catholic conference directors express appreciation of the fact that their own bishops have not been directly implicated in any misconduct. Although suspicion often seems to be cast over the entire church, in reality the consequences for bishops' moral authority in politics due to episcopal malfeasance may be quite localized. After all, in Tip O'Neill's well-worn phrase, "all politics is local."

Voice of the tradition, not the bishops: Although state Catholic conferences are formally the public-policy voice of their own states' bishops, they do not simply represent those particular men. They represent the moral tradition of which those men are important teachers, but one that extends in space and time far beyond them. So, state Catholic conferences are far more likely to invoke conciliar documents like Gaudium et spes, papal documents like Evangelium vitae, U.S. bishops' documents like Economic Justice for All, even the Catechism, than letters and statements produced by their own bishops. This practice reminds us that the church's tradition has a reality and force that are prior to and are only expressed by episcopal conferences. It is the voice of the tradition and not the voice of particular bishops--or even the pope--that will be, and should be, heard in America's various public squares.

Examining the role of state Catholic conferences suggests we could do with less handwringing and more hard-nosed empirical analyses of the variable effects of the scandal on the church's political influence. Such analyses may reveal reasons for some joy and hope to go along with the considerable grief and anxiety felt through the Long Lent of 2002.

David Yamane teaches sociology at the University of Notre Dame, and is currently a fellow at the University of Virginia's Center of Religion and Democracy. He recently edited and wrote the introduction to Richard Schoenherr's posthumous book, Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church (Oxford University Press).