National Catholic Welfare Council

The National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC) was the annual meeting of the American Catholic hierarchy and its standing secretariat; it was established in 1919 as the successor to the emergency organization, the National Catholic War Council.

It consisted of a staff of clergy as well as committees of bishops who discussed and sometimes issued statements on matters of national policy such as education, welfare, and health care.

In order to better address challenges posed by World War I, the American Catholic hierarchy in 1917 chose to meet collectively for the first time since 1884. In June, two months after America's entry into the European war, Paulist Father and Catholic World editor John J. Burke, Catholic University sociology professor William Kerby, Paulist Father Lewis O'Hern, and the former Secretary of Labor, Charles O'Neill, met in Washington, D.C. to formulate an official Catholic response to the war.

As the group's spokesman, Burke consulted with Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, who approved an August meeting of the hierarchy. Representatives from sixty-eight dioceses and twenty-seven Catholic societies met at the Catholic University of America and formed the National Catholic War Council, "to study, coordinate, unify and put in operation all Catholic activities incidental to the war." An executive committee, chaired by Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago, was formed in December 1917, to oversee the work of the Council.

After World War I ended, Burke and Gibbons led a campaign to establish a permanent bishops' council. The issue of prohibition and the threat of federalization of education necessitated a united Catholic response that only an episcopal conference could provide. Thus, on 24 September 1919, ninety-five prelates from eighty-seven of the country's one hundred dioceses came together at The Catholic University; the result was the formation of the National Catholic Welfare Council.

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