Catholics were there at the start
By ARTHUR JONES
World War II wasnt even over when, in 1944, Western nations
began pushing for a new global body -- a United Nations Organization. Their
representatives met that year at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., to sketch
the details. A Catholic laywoman, Catherine Schaeffer, was on hand.
In San Francisco in 1945, when the U.N. Charter was drafted,
Schaeffer was there again -- representing the Catholic Association for
International Peace. She was part of the Catholic team, the first
Catholic NGOs, or nongovernmental organizations, with a role built-in to the
United Nations Organization body from the start.
Other Catholic team members were the National Catholic Welfare
Council -- predecessor body to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops-U.S.
Catholic Conference; the National Council of Catholic Women; and NC News
(predecessor to todays Catholic News Service). Team leader was Howard J.
Carroll, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Council.
The U.S. bishops decided to have a U.N. office, and Schaeffer was
the natural choice to head it.
In establishing that office, wrote Jean Gartlan (in her 1998 book,
At the United Nations: the Story of the NCWC-USCC Office for U.N. Affairs),
the bishops may have been bolder than they realized or intended.
Schaefer, who had a masters in economics and international
relations, had worked since 1927 at the NCWC social action department, headed
by the now legendary Fr. John A. Ryan, whose deputy was Fr. Raymond
McGowan.
Joined in 1948 by Alma Zizzamia, a professor of Italian
literature, the two women quickly mastered what Gartlan (later a bishops
U.N. office staff member herself) called the essence of NGO work, the
day-in, day-out nitty-gritty presence as representatives of the worlds
people in the worlds business.
McGowan encouraged the bishops U.N. office to become a
Catholic hub -- the office of International Catholic Organizations (ICO) at the
United Nations was based there. When in 1972 the U.S. bishops cited budgetary
restraints and closed their U.N. office, the ICO shifted quarters. These days
theyre at the U.N. parish, Holy Family Church on E. 47th
Street. The parish, with its great external wall plaques featuring the popes
most closely associated with the United Nations -- John XXIII, Paul VI and John
Paul II -- also has a garden of tranquility, a peace garden, on its
west side.
Dominican Sr. Dorothy Farley directs the ICO information center on
the third floor and organizes discussions and briefings. Many of the U.S. NGO
nuns are regulars. Current ICO membership ranges from Pax Christi
International, to the International Catholic Union of the Press, to Pax Romano.
Associate members include the Columban Fathers, the National Catholic
Educational Association and many orders of women religious.
National Catholic Reporter, October 1,
1999
|