FLORIDA CATHOLIC CONFERENCE:
30 Years Of Dealing With Social Concerns

by

Thomas A. Horkan, Jr.

February 4, 1999

   Thirty years ago, on Feb. 1, the Florida Catholic Conference began its existence.  Various events in 1968 and before led up to the decision of the Florida bishops to establish a state conference.  In 1965, the Second Vatican Council in its "Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office in the Church," suggested that bishops join together in regional conferences.

   State governments in the United States were increasingly involved in many areas of concern to the Church, such as abortion, education and social welfare.

   Before 1965, there were about five states in which the bishops had formed conferences; by 1971, there were more than 25. States with only one diocese have no need for a conference, and only a few with two dioceses have one.

   In 1968, Bishop Paul Tanner was appointed bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine.  Two new dioceses were established in Florida - Orlando and St. Petersburg.  The Diocese of Miami was made an archdiocese and Bishop Coleman F. Carroll an archbishop.  Bishop William D. Borders was made bishop in Orlando and Bishop Charles B. McLaughlin in St. Petersburg. Archbishop Carroll became the metropolitan of the new province of Miami, comprising all the territory in the state of Florida.

   One of the first decisions of these bishops was to establish a Florida Catholic Conference.  Archbishop Carroll and Bishop Tanner had extensive experience with the U. S. Catholic Conference.  The bishops seemed raring to go.

   How yours truly was ever chosen to organize this conference I'll never know.  The first two times I was approached for the job, I turned it down.  Only the Holy Spirit can explain why I finally accepted, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me and my family.

   Archbishop Carroll was clearly the driving force behind the creation of the conference.  He had a strong social conscience and had taken the lead in attacking many social problems in Miami.  Earlier, in 1967, he had directed Joe Fitzgerald and me to file a legal brief in the Florida Senate against the state's first legalized abortion bill.  This followed the adoption of such a bill in Colorado, the first in the country, earlier that year.  The Catholic Church was the only organized opposition to the abortion rights movement, and Archbishop Carroll insisted on a strong defense of the right to life.  He loved a fight, and he took the lead in directing the early work of the conference.

   At my first meeting with the bishops, I asked what such a conference was and what it did.  No real answer was forthcoming, but I was told to go to a meeting in Washington of other state conference directors and learn the answers.  The meeting took place Dec. 1, 1968, and started a long relationship with what became the National Association of State Catholic Conference Directors, without which there is no telling where the conference or I would have ended up.

   The first formal meeting of the bishops as the board of directors of the conference made two strong impressions on me.  One was their businesslike approach to matters before the board.

   Detailed and effective staff work and discussion preceded decisions.  The other was the insistence of the bishops that the magisterium, the teachings of the Church, be determined and followed.  Much of this was new to me, sometimes the subject of long discussions and debates that occasionally frustrated me (due to my ignorance, perhaps).  These two practices continued as long as I was director and I am sure continue to this day.

   The conference office in Tallahassee opened on Feb. 1.  Bishop Tanner had been assured that the abortion issue would not come up that year, as the speaker of the House of Representatives, Fred Schultz, a Catholic, had said he would not allow it.

   On Feb. 14, Speaker Schultz announced that he would not impose his moral views on the members of the House, and that the abortion bill would be heard in the General Legislation Committee. (Only later would I learn that that committee, no longer in existence, was recognized as the speaker's "killer committee.")

   Dr. Ed Lauth, an articulate Miami physician and an accomplished speaker on abortion, was chosen to speak for the conference on the subject.  Dr. Lauth, however, died suddenly in late March, two weeks before the legislative session was due to open.

   I'll never forget my first committee hearing that year, which was on the issue of abortion.  The hearing opened with about eight graduate students from Florida State University testifying that the fetus was nothing but a "glob of cells."  That was a new argument to me, and I wasn't sure how to respond.  But a nurse named Mary Finnan, from Orlando, stood up and said that although she had not intended to speak to this bill but to another, she had to point out that "I am a blob of cells, each member of this committee is a blob of cells, and everyone in this room is a blob of cells." We had never met before that, and only met briefly after, but I will always remember her.

   The abortion issue has remained a major focus of the conference.  The only way we were able to struggle through those first years was with the guidance of some great legislators, including Don Reed, House minority leader, whose stirring debate reversed the vote on one bill when preliminary votes had been going against us; and Senators Dick Fincher, Louis DeLaParte, Ken Plante, Fred Karl, and Jerry Thomas.  Also arising that first year was the so-called Death with Dignity bill filed annually by Dr. Walter Sackett, a representative from Miami.  Florida was the first state to face this issue, and there was little written about it at that time.  By its nature, the issue has progressed to assisted suicide and euthanasia, and continues to occupy a major part of the conference's time to this day.

   Education was the other matter thrust upon us in those early days.  There were state proposals to regulate all nonpublic schools, and federal proposals for tuition tax credits for nonpublic school students.  In order to meet potential requirements of each, an accreditation process was accelerated.  Actually, accreditation was needed for many reasons.  Florida was somewhat unique.  The state had accredited nonpublic schools, but that practice had been ruled illegal in the mid '60s.

   Some of our schools were very good, but some were not.  Many teachers were qualified, but not all.  The decision to establish a Florida Catholic Conference Accreditation Committee, and to require parochial schools to be accredited by it, was made early on. If there is one function of the conference's work of which I am most proud, it would be the accreditation program.  In addition to that, the conference helped found the Florida Association on Academic Nonpublic Schools, which has been instrumental in advocating for and protecting private K-12 education in Florida.

   In those first years, the conference responded to issues that were thrust on it. Later on, it was able to move into social concerns, particularly farmworker issues, poverty and the death penalty. Whatever the issue, it was always exciting.