In Ireland the Catholic bishops meet in Maynooth, but in the US they meet in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington.
This week for their autumn meeting the bishops took over the 20 conference rooms of the three-star luxury hotel within sight of the US Capitol. Maynooth would have had a job accommodating the 285 bishops who minister to 61 million American Catholics, but the Hyatt's Regency Ballroom could hold them all, their aides and the media.
Some conference rooms were turned into temporary chapels where Mass was celebrated early each morning.
In the vestibule there was a recruiting drive for chaplains for the army, navy and air force. There are only 103 Catholic chaplains in the army, or 8 per cent of a total of 1,300, although 25 per cent of the soldiers are Catholics.
An unforgettable sight was 300 black-clad bishops surging out of the basement ballroom and taking the escalators up to the main lobby chattering happily like schoolboys when classes end. Coming up for air, as Orwell might have said.
None of your Maynooth closed-door meetings here. The Eternal Word Television Network broadcast the proceedings, and reporters were free to sit in or look for interviews with any of the seven cardinals and several hundred bishops. There was a closed session for some internal church matters.
In Ireland, Armagh presides over the bishops' meetings by tradition, but here the bishops elect their president and vice-president every three years, and a mere bishop can be selected over a competing archbishop, as happened this year. It was interesting to see a cardinal at one of the sessions being gently put down by an archbishop in a discussion on restructuring their conference.
And some bishops don't mind speaking their minds to the media on the documents that the conference approves, such as the one this week on Everyday Christianity on the social mission of the church.
"It's totally innocuous, not the least bit challenging," said auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit. "If we're really going to get serious why not challenge ourselves? We have Catholic hospitals still fighting labour unions," despite church social teaching on the right to organise.
"When I try to talk to bishops about what's going on in sweatshops . . . their eyes fog over," Bishop Gumbleton added.
The document of the week which attracted most media attention dealt with abortion. It is called Living the Gospel of Life: a Challenge to American Catholics. Controversy immediately sprang up over the bishops' strictures on Catholic politicians who fail to take a strong anti-abortion stance. The language is certainly stronger than that used by the Irish bishops during referendums on the abortion issue.
For the US bishops it is wrong for some Catholic politicians to argue that "while they personally oppose evils like abortion, they cannot force their religious views on to the wider society. This is seriously mistaken on several key points," the bishops say.
The bishops say they have "the responsibility to call Americans to conversion, including political leaders, and especially those publicly identified as Catholic."
They go further: "As chief teachers in the church, we must therefore explain, persuade, correct and admonish those in leadership positions who contradict the Gospel of life through their actions and policies. Catholic public officials who disregard church teaching on the inviolability of the human person indirectly collude in the taking of innocent life.
"We urge those Catholic officials who choose to depart from church teaching on the inviolability of human life in their public life to consider the consequences for their own spiritual well-being as well as the scandal they risk by leading others into serious sin."
This is strong stuff in a country which is deeply attached to the separation of church and state. The New York Times religious correspondent reflected on the effect on Catholic politicians of the bishops' clarion call and referred to John F. Kennedy declaring in 1960 that if elected president he would not take directives from the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who was a prime mover in drafting the document, was blunt about the politicians in his own diocese, including Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerrey. "Both senators in my state are Catholic and wrong in the way they approach abortion."
The cardinal added that the Governor, Paul Celluci, "is from a different party and he is wrong. Only I am right," the cardinal said at a news conference.
Reactions came quickly. "Senator Kennedy has great respect for Cardinal Law and the Catholic conference [of bishops] but he continues to support a woman's right to choose," a Kennedy spokesman said.
The presentation of the bishops' anti-abortion document in the Washington Post as "an aggressive new campaign to lobby against abortion and to mobilise parishes across the country into a powerful new voting bloc against candidates who support abortion rights" is already causing unease in church circles. The church's tax-free status as a charitable institution could be in jeopardy if it could be shown to be getting involved in politics.
If pulpits are used to influence Catholics on how to vote as a result of the official position taken up by the bishops in this document, there could be trouble ahead. Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany warned: "We run the risk of creating another anti-Catholic backlash, of creating the impression that the Catholic bishops are trying to dictate how a politician must vote. From the public's point of view, it looks like undue coercion."
Next January Pope John Paul II will travel to the US for what may be his last visit. He for one will not complain about the hierarchy's strong anti-abortion stance.