Bishop James T. McHugh was called to his Maker some twenty years ago on December 10, 2000, but his deadly legacy lives on in the current three-tiered USCCB-Washington D.C.-based “pro-life” bureaucracy composed of (1)The Committee on Pro-Life Activities (2) The “Secretariat” for Pro-Life Activities and 3) The National Committee for a Human Life Amendment. State Catholic Conferences and an army of Diocesan Pro-Life Directors make up the rest of the prolife bureaucratic contingent at the lower levels of the USCCB.
As previously noted in this series, when the American bishops reorganized and expanded their prolife offices at the NCCB/USCC in the late fall of 1972, Msgr. McHugh became the Secretary and Executive Director of the Ad Hoc Committee for Pro-Life Affairs (1972-1978), that later became a formal Standing Committee of the NCCB – the USCCB Committee for [on, of] Pro-Life Activities.
The hackneyed Respect Life Program held every October for the last 45 years and the hair brain scam of People of Life Action Campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States[1] are two of the Committee’s expensive signature programs.
The current chair of the Committee is the Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann, Archbishop of Kansas City, KS. Archbishop Naumann is also a Board member of the NCHLA.
While the USCCB Pro-Life Committee was theoretically controlled by a cardinal chair and a large number of bishops, in practice, the routine work and development of new prolife programs and strategies were handled almost exclusively by the staff of the new USCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, originally headed by Msgr. McHugh.
For several decades after McHugh left for Rome in 1978 to obtain advanced theological degrees, the Secretariat has been operated by his permanent bureaucratic clones including his personal family friend and former secretary, Gail P. Quinn, a 39-year veteran of the USCCB; Michael Taylor, who helped McHugh set up the original National Right to Life Committee at the USCC in the 1970s and later went on to head the NCHLA; and McHugh’s long-time gofer, Richard Doerflinger, who served as Associate Deputy Director of the Secretariat for 36 years until he retired in August 2016. (more...)
Bishop James T. McHugh – The Forgotten Man in the McCarrick Equation – Part 5
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