Christian Family Movement - Early Conflict With The Family Life Bureau

Early Conflict With The Family Life Bureau

During the early years of the movement (1948-1956), CFM received some criticism because it did not fall squarely under the clerical authority of the American bishops as a whole. In particular, Father Edgar Schmiedeler, director of the National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC), which later became the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, also accused the lay movement of carrying out the ministerial work that he saw as the rightful work of the Family Life Bureau, which was under the direction of the NCWC. Although CFM had the approval of Samuel Cardinal Stitch, of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the founding diocese of CFM, and while CFM and the FLB might have had many of the same goals and been part of the same apostolate, Schmiedeler argued that the American Bishops had not given it official approval. In the days before the second Vatican Council, such approval was difficult to receive, as Kathryn Johnson notes that "the NCWC had been set up as an advisory conference" and that "bishops proved unwilling to tread on one another's individual diocesan decisions. Much of this early conflict between CFM and the FLB was complicated by the larger changes and questions about the role of the laity in the Catholic Church. Individual groups would have priests serve as spiritual directors, for example, but these chaplains would struggle with the delicate balance of taking responsibility for the group's actions but allowing the group to be driven by the initiative of its lay members. As one priest noted, "Clerical domination will bring to a grinding halt. Later leaders of the NCWC and other church officials of the time, while still insisting that clear lines of authority should be maintained, admitted the grass-roots movement's benefits and felt that the conflicts between the FLB and lay movements, including CFM and the Cana Conference could have been handled better. Archbishop Patrick O'Brien, of the Archdiocese of Washington noted that the FLB could not take on CFM's active ministries, stating that it was "not equipped to go into the active field-- lacking the personnel of the right kind and the sufficient number."

Other groups like CFM, the Young Christian Workers, the Grail Movement, and the Sister Formation Conference forced lay Catholics to reevaluate how they interacted with the Church, mostly in how they dealt with authority of the clergymen.

"The grassroots of CFM--the emphasis on small groups of committed Catholics working to change society--helped to construct an American Catholic identity for suburban, middle-class Catholics that depended in large measure on their own decision-making abilities". -Kathryn Johnson, from An Effort was Made to Get Good Will: Changing Views on CFM