USCCB National Advisory Council Appointment

Oct. 15, 2012 - PRLog -- The United States Provincial Superior of the Xaverian Missionaries, Fr. Carl Chudy SX, has accepted the appointment by the Conference of the Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) to be a representative on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) National Advisory Council. The NAC was formed three years after Vatican II in order to assist the bishops by representing the national picture of the Church in various ways. The National Advisory Council includes bishops, men and women religious, diocesan priests, deacons and lay persons representing the fifteen geographical regions of the USCCB. Appointments are usually for a four-year term. Fr. Chudy’s first meeting with them will be in Baltimore in March 2013.

The National Advisory Council meets twice a year to review and offer recommendations about matters before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Members of the Council are free to present any concern of the Church to the Bishops. Following each meeting, recommendations put forth by the Council may be forwarded to the USCCB Administrative Board or to the appropriate USCCB Committee for review and/or action. The US bishops’ National Advisory Council is taking on an increasingly more public role in making recommendations about documents the bishops are considering and topics they might address in the future.

The council could be seen as a “national pastoral council,” said Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh in 2006 when he was Bishop of Green Bay and a member of the council representing the US bishops’ Administrative Committee. In an interview with Catholic News Service Bishop Zubik said that council members represent “the adult Catholic population by age, occupation, ethnicity, geography, vocation and avocation,” and described it as “the church in miniature.”

Fr. Chudy states: “I find this an enormously important opportunity to be of service to the Church in a unique way. I hope to bring the concerns of religious congregations and our commitment of global solidarity to our bishops who are continually seeking to understand the pulse of the Catholic Church in the USA today.

Eight hundred Xaverian missionaries currently serve in: Bangladesh, Burundi, Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, Columbia, Dem. Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Mozambique, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan, the UK and the USA

Mission: “We share the Love of Christ with people across different faiths and cultures, by proclaiming the Good News of Jesus in new Christian churches. Inspired by St. Francis Xavier and Saint Guido M. Conforti, we are a Catholic religious community committed to serving God in the poor.”