The appropriate role of the laity within the worldwide Roman Catholic Church has challenged its members for much of its recent history. The roots of the Roman Catholic laity in the United States of America, a group referred to as 'The Faithful" in a recent seminal book by historian James O'Toole, goes back to the European colonization beginning in the fifteenth century with Spanish missions in regions such as Florida and the deep south, California and the west coast, and New Mexico and the southwest. The French came later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with missions in areas that now include Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan. The English, who also came in the seventeenth century, established colonies on the eastern seaboard stretching from New England to Georgia. Their established churches were not Catholic, though Maryland, founded in the 1630s, was the first to tolerate Catholics, although this situation later changed. In fact, it was only in Pennsylvania, founded by the Quaker sect in the 1680s, that Catholics were never officially persecuted. These Catholics of mostly English background generally lived in small and isolated communities and only numbered a modest one percent of the population on the eve of the American Revolution. They practiced their religion as they were able with the occasional help of itinerant priests until a more orderly church of both laity and clerics developed, with the first American bishop, John Carroll of Baltimore, being appointed in 1789. As the nineteenth century progressed, standardized discipline in the American Church was advanced by the convocation of the plenary councils of Baltimore that resulted in the promulgation of the Baltimore Catechism and the establishment of The Catholic University of America.

In the decades before the American Civil War, and continuing thereafter, the numbers of Catholic immigrants, mostly Irish and German, to the United States increased. As they assimilated and became more established, they became eager to emulate the types of charity work being done by their Protestant countrymen. This included such activities as temperance, poor relief, and resettlement by the founding of organizations such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians in NYC in 1836 and the establishment of wings of such existing groups as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in 1845. Catholics also wanted to show that while much Protestant charity, in their view, came from upper class largesse, Catholic efforts were the result of working class sacrifices inspired by faith in time tested papal encyclicals and other old world values. They were, however, desirous to be accepted by American society and to demonstrate that Catholics were not largely foreign and intemperate paupers. They took part in the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois, with a Columbian Exposition designed to demonstrate the Catholic place in American history (after all America was 'discovered' by the Catholic explorer Christopher Columbus). These lay Catholics efforts also took place at a time when internal conflicts arose among ethnic groups like the Irish and the Germans while new waves of immigrants, primarily Italians and Poles, from southern and Eastern Europe respectively fomented renewed anti-Catholic sentiments among non-Catholic Americans. There was also the Vatican suspicion about American ideas in the Church that resulted in the 1899 condemnation of 'Americanism.' It is not surprising then that the Vatican had special concerns about the United States and formally considered it a mission country until 1908.

As the twentieth century dawned there were increasing efforts at national Catholic unity and a greater role for the laity. This is evidenced by the organization of the American Federation of Catholic Societies in 1901, the Daughters of Isabella (later the Catholic Daughters of America) in 1903, the Catholic Education Association (later the National Catholic Education Association) in 1904, and the National Conference of Catholic Charities (later Catholic Charities USA) in 1910. This trend continued after the outbreak of the First World War, with Catholic leaders, hoping to demonstrate Catholic loyalty, created the National Catholic War Council (NCWC) in 1917, an emergency organization based in Washington, D.C., representing Catholic interests by addressing the needs of soldiers at home and overseas, promoting the Americanization of recent immigrants, and developing a Program for the Social Reconstruction of American society. After the end of hostilities, the War Council was succeeded by the National Catholic Welfare Council (known since 2001 as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) which was composed of the American hierarchy and its standing secretariat. Thereafter, the NCWC blossomed into the single most important national organization in the American Catholic Church through the middle years of the twentieth century. It became the principal lobbying arm for Catholics with the federal government, initially fighting against federal aid to education bills for fear such laws would impose government controls on private schools though later it would fight for funding for parochial schools. The NCWC issued national guidelines and provided training and national coordination for hosts of local Catholic societies.

This was especially true for the Lay Organizations Department that oversaw the activities of the fledgling National Council of Catholic Men (NCCM) and National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW). It served as a channel for the interchange of information and service between the bishops and the laity in their common Church work, especially in promoting Catholic principles and ideals in education, social and civic life. The NCCM was a federation of Catholic men's groups that operated through a committee system on national, diocesan, and parish levels. They operated a New York radio and television office from which The Catholic Hour was produced 1929-1968. The NCCW was a breakthrough for Catholic lay women which coincided with the winning of suffrage for American women. They operated as a federation of Catholic women's organization through a system of national committees having counterparts on the diocesan and parish level. These committees included Immigration, Social Action, and Rural Life. They also held national conventions, assemblies, and regional training. The National Council of Catholic Laity (NCCL) was a brief union of the NCCM and NCCW arising out of celebrations of their joint fiftieth anniversaries in 1970. A joint committee had recommended the merger as a way to promote greater lay unity but the short lived organization went defunct when the NCCM folded in 1975 and the NCCW went its own way thereafter.