THE BISHOPS & POLITICS

...Yet their existence and role in the public policy arena is routinely overlooked by scholars and journalists alike...

...The moral voice of the bishops in American political life is certainly important, and I do not want to dismiss it here...

...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...

...Yet there is no evidence that the episcopal cover-up is as extensive...

...The majority of conferences were organized immediately following the Second Vatican Council...

...The experience of Robert O'Hara, the former utility lobbyist in Pennsylvania, is typical...

...The external face of the church is organizationally expressed in agency structures...

...As in any complex organization, examining the professional background of these key executives is a good indicator of the conferences' modus operandi...

...They represent the moral tradition of which those men are important teachers, but one that extends in space and time far beyond them...

...There is a secretariat, located in the state capital, and usually headed by a lay executive director...

...Conference directors realize involvement in legislative sausage making presumes and reinforces a group's political legitimacy...

...The best way to maintain your credibility is to tell the truth...

...To be sure, the scandal has had specific, identifiable political effects...

...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...

...O'Hara continues: "We're still only armed with a handshake and a smile around here...

...Understanding Catholic conferences as dual structures helps us to see why the bishops' political influence is not wholly dependent on their moral authority...

...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...

...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...

...Unfortunately, few people know much about state Catholic conferences...

...So, state Catholic conferences are far more likely to invoke conciliar documents like Gaudium et spes, papal documents like Evangelium vitae, U.S...

...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...

...Because they are not grass-roots membership organizations, they do not routinely rely on mobilizing individuals to pressure legislators...

...The bishops of the state form the board of directors and set the policy...

...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...

...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...

...The youngest is Nevada's, founded in 2000...

...As he explains his situation, "The guy whom I followed was a bit of a legend....He had a good reputation...

...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...

...Without that, I could be the lobbyist for the United Way...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...The question of the bishops' political influence in the Long Lent of 2002 is an empirical one...

...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...

...As the name suggests, agency structures "function as the agents of the religious authority structure in the secular world...

...The longevity of conference directors, then, is a great advantage...

...Laymen, priests, and religious are often members of the board as well, or at least have some consultative role...

...Political legitimacy can be defined roughly as the right to speak, to be heard, and to be taken seriously in the political process...

...In Oregon, health-care payers received a broad con science exemption in the state's Medicaid waiver from the federal government...

...As research by the New York Times has documented (January 12, 2003), at least some cases of sexual abuse have affected nearly every diocese...

...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...

...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...

...These reports from the political front point to what social scientists might call "the variable effects of the scandal...

...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...

...Since then, however, experience working in state government relations has become increasingly important...

...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...

...The early results of my research suggest the axiomatic conclusion that the bishops' political influence has suffered needs to be seriously questioned...

...Like the USCCB, state Catholic conferences appear from the outside to be unitary organizational structures...

...Even with a recent number of new hires, the average tenure of conference directors is nearly a decade...

...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...

...A majority of those I surveyed in 2002 named legislative experience as the ideal professional background for their job...

...Such statements give me, as a social scientist, pause...

...It has to do with the structure and operation of state Catholic conferences...

...Providing quality information is a vehicle for Catholic conferences to solidify their legitimacy as political actors in the eyes of legislators...

...The influence of American bishops in the broader political debate stems largely from their moral authority," the article asserted...

...In 2000, the bishops of Kansas hired a veteran Kansas state legislator, Michael Farmer, to serve as director of their conference...

...Until they are, I urge caution in making strong pronouncements about the presumed political implications of the crisis...

...Not so the state Catholic conferences...

...There are currently thirty-four state Catholic conferences...

...The extensive experience of conference directors is put into action in the practice of lobbying...

...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...

...There is the sexual abuse itself, and there are the many cases of episcopal cover-up and mismanagement that perpetuated it...

...According to Chaves, the primary function of the religious authority structure is to control access to religious goods (for example, the means of salvation...

...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...

...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...

...Iowa became just the second state in the country to ban both reproductive and therapeutic human cloning...

...This moral authority has almost certainly been diminished by the church's handling of the sex-abuse scandals...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...After nineteen years, people know you...

...Supreme Court in Employment Division v. Smith (1990) and Boerne v. Flores (1997...

...Yes, they have a common-sense ring to them...

...Conference directors play a particularly important role in this regard...

...Consequently, the credibility of interest groups is tied to the quality of information they supply...

...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...

...Concern about the declining political influence of the bishops during the scandal has focused exclusively on the church's religious authority structure...

...Many state Catholic conference directors express appreciation of the fact that their own bishops have not been directly implicated in any misconduct...

...Clearly credibility is often built up over long periods of time...

...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...

...The bill was introduced and advocated in the legislature by the staff of the Iowa Catholic Conference, with considerable assis tance from Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB's Secretariat for Prolife Activities...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...As 501(c)(3) organizations, they cannot play the campaign-finance and candidate-endorsement game...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...This is especially true in two areas of policy: ad-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...

...We all feel it...

...This dual structure of bishops and staff is crucial to understanding the continuing political legitimacy of state Catholic conferences despite the scandal...

...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...

...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...

...And I was pretty well-known, too...

...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...

...In the early days of the state Catholic conferences, Sheehan found considerable diversity in the professional background of the directors...

...Bishops, not "the bishops": It is important to keep in mind the two dimensions of the scandal...

...Annual budgets vary widely, averaging just over $400,000...

...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...

...Not all political victories in 2002 were as purely defensive as Missouri's, however...

...Yet the primary vehicle of the bishops' influence at the state level is a dual structure...

...Don't believe it David Yamane 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...

...The centrality of information peddling in the legislative process suits state Catholic conferences well...

...erable grief and anxiety felt through the Long Lent of 2002...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...They may not agree with you, but they don't think you're going to lie to them...

...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...

...The oldest conference is New York's, founded in 1916, three years before the National Catholic Welfare Council...

...justing the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse charges and including clergy in mandatory reporting laws...

...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...

...So the authority operating in the work of the conferences does turn out to be more than the personal credibility of their directors...

...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 ex ercise of religion, a standard removed by the U.S...

...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...

...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...

...Bishops are first and foremost "teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship, and officers of good order" in the church (Lumen gentium, 20...

...Examples include missions, social services, publishing, and, yes, political lobbying...

...Staff size ranges from one person devoting half time to the conference to the equivalent of eleven full-time staff members...

...The fact is, they do, and discussions of the political implications of the scandal ought to recognize this...

...The bill passed by wide margins in both hous es of the legislature despite the fact that the ACLU of Penn sylvania tried to play the scandal card during the debate by accusing the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference of advocat ing the legislation in order to shield pedophile priests from legal accountability...

...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...

...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...

...Thus, although the church properly seeks to engage the world {Gaudium et spes), the rai-son d'etre of the hierarchy is internal...

...Political advocates themselves prefer the term credibility...

...Although there is some variation, typically the bishops of a state are the board of directors and lay people largely staff the secretariat...

...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...

...Because information is their main currency, conference directors frequently tie their credibility to their reputations for "telling the truth...

...Neither do I want to romanticize it...

...This development is evident in the most recent individuals hired for these posts...

...Sociologically, however, it is useful to see state Catholic conferences as dual structures...

...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...

...bishops' documents like Economic Justice for All, even the Catechism, than letters and statements produced by their own bishops...

...The average staff amounts to a little less than four full-time workers or the equivalent...

...It is better not to see them being made...