Kansas City, Missouri Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Conference of Catholic Charities.

Bishop Sullivan, Father Dunn, Monsignor Corcoran, Governor Carlin, Congressman Skelton, distinguished volunteers who combine together, and have for 251 years, in our Nation to make us proud of benevolence and unselfishness through Catholic charities:

I was at Sunday school yesterday morning, and someone said to me, "Mr. President, you're spending an awful lot of time with Catholics lately." [Laughter] And one of my Baptist friends, who was standing there said, "It hasn't hurt you a bit." [Laughter]

After inviting Pope John Paul to come to the United States and, 10 days ago, having the great honor to receive him as my personal guest, I thought for the Nation how unprecedented an event it was to have the President of the United States welcome the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholics to our Nation's Capital for the first time, to the White House, the symbolic home of all Americans. For me personally, this occasion ranked as one of the best experiences of my Presidency.

There was a glow of warmth and friendship with the outstretched arms of millions of Americans to welcome our distinguished visitor. He and I had a delightful private conversation, quite extended. I told him I was surprised. He said he was, too. I knew that the welcome would be warm, but the overwhelming nature of it was indeed one of the most remarkable events of the entire world.

He and I talked about many things. We talked about weapons. We talked about peace. We talked about Ireland, and we talked about the Middle East. We talked about China. We talked about hunger. We talked about charity. We talked about abortion. We talked about families. We talked about communism. We talked about freedom. We talked about the role of the church in this hemisphere and the spread of the gospel in countries where missionaries are now excluded. We talked about the relationship between the church and the state and how the efforts of public and private lives might be harnessed in common causes.

Pope John Paul's visit merits our continuing thoughts and reflections. His message to America was first and foremost a spiritual message. In his address to Catholic University, he said, "Materialistic concerns are never sufficient to fill the heart and mind of a human person. A life reduced to the sole dimension of possession of consumer goods, of temporal concerns will never let you discover and enjoy the full richness of your humanity."

The Pope's message and his visit stirred our Nation's Capital and, indeed, the entire world, and it stirred particularly the lives of our countrymen whenever he visited a streetcorner or a community or a small or a large church.

Looking for truth in a time of doubt, people have found in this good man a reaffirmation of those values that hold our society together—the fundamental values of love, unity, charity, family. In normal circumstances, we Americans have a very difficult time expressing our sentiments about these kinds of things. But they are as real as any of our more tangible concerns. John Paul's visit showed that these feelings are always within us.

People were waiting for someone to say, "God bless America." And it sounded, I believe, particularly good coming from the lips of a world leader whose life is devoted to the service of God—Pope John Paul II.

I spoke to the Nation about this great underlying sense of community and patriotic values in my July address on Sunday evening, following a long period of consultation and meditation at Camp David. I believe such values are as important now as they were to our mothers and fathers and our ancestors when they first arrived in this country—either 3 years ago, 30 years ago, or perhaps 300 years ago—immigrants to a new land, determined to build a new life in what Pope John Paul has christened our "continent of hope."

If Pope John Paul left our Nation with one central message, it was this: We need to put our deep moral beliefs into action. And that's what you do, and I'm proud of you for it. "The poor," he said, "are our brothers and sisters." Instead of throwing them "crumbs," we should treat them like "guests at our family table."

Your great organization, the National Conference of Catholic Charities, personifies this standard of compassion. For 250 years, you've put your faith and your values into action. You've translated your vision of mankind and your philosophy into a working, living reality.

It's hard to imagine how differently our Nation would have grown had it not been for your own historic commitment. Generations ago, when government welfare programs were scarce or nonexistent, it was your organization and others like it that provided welcome and initial nourishment to millions of immigrants who reached our shores. To the huddled masses, it was not the government, but the church and voluntary charitable groups that one had to look to for help.

And for many immigrant groups-from Ireland and Italy and Poland and Latin America—it was the Catholic Church that stood as the one institution that gave them an immediate sense of belonging to American society. The church helped new arrivals put down roots socially and economically, as well as spiritually. In the process it helped not only to build lives, but it helped to build our Nation.

Today your organization remains at the cutting edge of our Nation's great social commitment. Without your voluntary action, without generous participation of other private citizens in communities, churches, and organizations, we would live in a society without a soul.

All the grants-in-aid, all the income maintenance programs of the Federal Government, and all the well-intentioned and effective efforts of dedicated Federal and other government employees could never replace this heartfelt, voluntary effort that covers our Nation like they do. But neither can voluntary agencies do the job alone. To meet our society's needs, we need to foster a true partnership, one which involves government at all levels, private enterprise, and unselfish volunteers.

This partnership of public and private interest is a major element in my own administration's domestic policy. It's also .been illustrated vividly in the resettlement ,n our country of many thousands of Indochinese refugees. This step would not have been possible without the help of the voluntary agencies and, especially, Catholic charities.

There is now developing, to the horror of the world, a tragedy of profound consequence in Cambodia, known now as Kampuchea. Today I announced a United States pledge of $7 million, which will be increased in the future, to help feed the tens of thousands of starving human beings.

We have difficult obstacles to overcome in the distribution of this food. And this effort will be carried out by private charities and by organizations of the United Nations, and together we must succeed. If obstacles arise between the starving and the food we offer, those obstacles need to be highly publicized so that the officials of south Vietnam will not dare perpetuate the horrible circumstances which they themselves have created.

These steps in Southeast Asia and in other places around the world would not have been possible without the help of the voluntary agencies. On behalf of all Americans, I thank you for your service and salute your tremendous humanitarian work in this area.

I might mention here another example of successful public and private partnership—in the fine work that your own president-elect, Monsignor Fahey, has been doing as my appointee on the Federal Council on the Aging.

There's one aspect of our national life where we need to put our partnership to even better use—and I talked about it when I was with you 3 years ago, in 1976—that is the problem of the families. This is a subject of pivotal concern to all of us and was especially during Pope John Paul's American visit. Families are the foundation of a healthy and a vibrant society. They carry out the timeless tasks of nurturing, supporting, and caring for their own members, in many different cultures and many different communities. They provide irreplaceable strength and shelter for one another.

Today, what Pope John XXIII called "the first and essential cell of human society"—that is, a family—is in trouble. Many families have already been strained to the breaking point by social and economic forces beyond their own control. Some families indeed have broken. The tragic results are all around us, in alcoholism, drug addiction, social alienation, and crime.

Three years ago in Denver, I told you there was a gap in the way our country makes public policy—the lack of an explicit, conscious concern for how government policies and activities affect families. I said at the time that a nonpolicy toward families by government has the same adverse consequences as an antifamily policy would have.

I promised that my administration would make a conscious commitment to strengthen the American family, and I promised to consult with you and your own officials so that I might have the proper guidance. We set to work on that commitment, and in every policy area, economic and otherwise, we have sought to assist and to support families. We recognize that spiritual uplift for a person can only follow if the bare necessities of life are provided.

I'm proud of my administration's record in pursuing this approach. We've added, for instance, more than 8 million new jobs to combat perhaps the greatest twin threats to the family—unemployment and poverty.

We've undertaken to reform our Nation's ineffective, inefficient welfare programs, programs that for too long have been antiwork and antifamily. We've finally gotten this legislation out of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, and I need for you to help me get it the rest of the way through the Congress. Only by building up public awareness and public support for a proposal like this can it overcome the inertia of the Congress and arouse the support that will encourage the Members of Congress give it their support.

We've greatly increased funding for social services, for health, for housing, and for education, and we are today working to pass comprehensive health insurance, another long overdue aid to families. I also hope to implement major improvements in our policies and programs concerning foster care and adoption. Such programs, if poorly administered, have often hurt rather than helped children and families.

In dozens of other ways, we've sought to build a strong commitment to preserve and protect American families in all their diversity.

We've worked for the passage of important new legislation to combat child abuse, sexual exploitation of children, and discrimination in employment because of pregnancy. We've extended Head Start, we've begun new programs to deal with adolescent pregnancies, and we've expanded the Foster Grandparents program.

With your help, we've reformed the food stamp program to eliminate fraud and to make it more available to poor families by eliminating the requirement to pay cash for food stamps.

We've strengthened the social security system and put it on a sound basis, and we've removed some of its antimarriage features.

We've enacted new laws and regulations to promote part-time employment and flexible time schedules, both of which will permit employees to adjust their workday to fit today's family responsibilities.

I've also asked Congress to appropriate $1.6 billion this year to ease the burden of rising energy costs on poor people, who most need this assistance, and then I've also asked the Congress to provide $2.4 billion annually for the next years for this purpose. With your help, we can win approval of the windfall profits tax on the profits of the oil companies, which will help to finance this and other programs to help the low-income families.

We've worked on all of these projects in partnership and shoulder to shoulder with you.

We're making final plans now, after a very careful and, I think, well-placed preparation, for a White House Conference on the Families. This conference will involve the public in long overdue assessment of how actions by the government, and major private institutions as well, sometimes help or hurt or neglect American families.

The White House conference will not limit itself to what Washington officials think is important, but we will learn what American families believe is important to them. We'll look at the real and important changes that have taken place in American family life and discuss what we as a nation can do to support and to strengthen families.

Instead of a single Washington event, which has always in the past been the case, we will have three separate White House conferences on families next summer-one in Baltimore, one in Minneapolis, and one in Los Angeles. These conferences will bring together families, or those who speak for them, in the widest possible geographic diversity and will encourage the broadest participation in setting an agenda for action on behalf of America's families.

Just as previous White House conferences have really helped to generate ideas and to prepare an agenda on behalf of the young, the old, the handicapped, and others, this set of conferences—the first of its kind scan help bring concern for families to the center of national policymaking, where it deserves.

I might emphasize here that the problems of American families cover almost the entire gamut of responsibilities of public and private service. Some of the issues are extremely sensitive and controversial, as you well know, but I believe that they should no longer be ignored. And only if we are all willing to come together to discuss in a frank fashion the acknowledged problems of the family, to let those who are affected speak up and be heard throughout the country, and then in a common way seek solutions to those problems, can we ever hope to arrest the downward slide of the strength of families in our country. And as you know, the strength of families is equivalent exactly to the strength of the moral character of our Nation.

And I urge you and the people whom you serve to get involved in this important initiative, in the hearings that are now going on in the State conferences and the three White House conferences next summer. I hope that you will be there.

You and Catholic charities have already a great voice in the direction of the conference on the families. Your past president, the man who greeted me so warmly when I spoke to you in 1976, Rashey Moten, is on the Conference Advisory Committee. And if you don't like the way the conference is doing, see Rashey Moten. After getting to know him at your conference 3 years ago and since then, at my request he is engaged, along with others, in one of the most important and challenging tasks ever undertaken by a group of Americans.

I can assure you that this conference on the family will not simply produce another one of those government reports which all too often go on the shelf and then becomes forgotten. Because the needs of families is so deeply ingrained in my own consciousness and within the lives and hearts of people like you and others around the country, this report cannot be forgotten.

The conference will serve as a catalyst for continuing and expanding action on family issues in the Federal Government. To ensure this development, I've today directed all Federal departments and agencies to support and to cooperate with the conference's activities.

And I'm also announcing today that Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary Patricia Harris is creating for the first time an office for families within HEW. I know you agree with me that this is long overdue.

But I want to make sure that this office is not only involved in the preparation for the conference and helping to make the conference a success, but after the conference work is completed, this office, a permanent entity within HEW, will be there as a focal point to carry out the recommendations of the conference itself. It will be deeply involved in implementing those recommendations and also generating new thoughts and new ideas on a continuing basis after the conference adjourns, because Americans' social life and the problems of the families changes from one year to another.

I'd like to add that Rosalynn shares my interest in the success of the administration's program for the American family, and my whole family will be involved in making sure that this entire effort is successful. Once my mother and Rosalynn and Amy get involved in something all together, you can be sure that we will not permit this effort to fail. [Laughter]

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, family values are not the only reason for national concern. In my July speech to the Nation, I spoke about the crisis of the spirit that I saw brewing in America. I listened carefully to the prayer a few minutes ago, and this message to God, this request for help by God, mirrored the same concern.

I warned in July, and I have been saying ever since, that we are threatened with the loss of that fundamental trait which has characterized Americans since the foundation of our country—optimism, confidence in one another, and confidence in the future.

The response to that speech was overwhelming. Those who have worked in the White House for 25 or 30 years say the response was unprecedented. We received tens of thousands of letters and hundreds of telephone calls, all sounding similar themes. "You're right," they said, "now tell us what we can do to help."

My answer to those thousands of Americans is the same as my message to you. The answer to the crisis of confidence is action. The answer to alienation from one another or from government is participation. The way we solve our problems is through unity and partnership.

You in this room typify, personify the best in America. Your network of social services, the largest in our country, is composed of tens of thousands of Americans united by faith, dedicated to the ideal of serving others, and determined to translate that ideal into action for the benefit of others. You've chosen to light a candle and not to curse the darkness, and the flame of compassion lights the road for all of us to follow.

Let us carry on our own the tasks outlined so eloquently by Pope John Paul. Let us preserve and enhance the partnership between government and the private sector, which serves our people well, and let us make every effort to strengthen our families.

Finally, let us share the prayer of the American poet Stephen Vincent Benet: "Grant us brotherhood," he said, "not only for this day, but for all our years—a brotherhood not of words, but of acts and deeds." With this kind of generous spirit, we can strengthen our Nation and bring new enrichment in every way to the lives of the people we love.