Something New

The Board of Directors believes the Spirit is doing “something new” in and through USCMA. Sr. Nancy Schramm, osf reflected on this “something new,” as you can read in her June 2022 article for Encounter. 

The Spirit was doing something new when the US Bishops (National Catholic Welfare Conference) asked 32 mission sending communities to come together in Maryknoll on September 9, 1949. The Spirit did something new when the bishops established the Secretariat of Catholic Societies of the United States Engaged in Foreign Mission Activities (known as the Mission Secretariat) on November 18, 1949.  

The Spirit convened the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 and promulgated Ad Gentes on December 7, 1965. By 1970, the Mission Secretariat became the United States Catholic Mission Council. After a reorganization of the bishop’s conference in 1980, the council became the United States Catholic Mission Association (September 1981). 

Mission has changed over the past 41 years – the rise of lay directed mission organizations, parishes sponsoring mission trips and creating partnerships through twinning, more volunteer organizations, and medical missions. Youth groups, young adult groups, and campus ministry groups are developing long-term relationships with domestic and international missions. Dioceses are sponsoring their own trips and cultivating a greater understanding of what it means to be a missionary church. Pope Francis wrote in the Joy of the Gospel that he wants to reinvigorate the Church’s missionary impulse. 

The pandemic put this onslaught of change in sharp relief. Missionaries responded. What they did changed – from working with HIV patients to bringing food to the villages. Their core purpose – to serve God’s mission – and who they serve did not change. 

USCMA wants to change as well. It wants to be a community of leaders engaged in God’s mission. These leaders come together for networking, formation, and advocacy. Anything new in mission will be highlighted on this page. The Holy Spirit is the “protagonist” for mission. Every dimension of human life needs the saving love of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. His Spirit – the Spirit of the Living God – is renewing the face of the earth.