Preface
xi Preface This book is a history of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC) and its relations to American society from its founding in 1923 to 2007. Previous work in American Catholic history has concentrated on the urban Church to the virtual exclusion of its rural component. This study gives due attention to this neglected rural component by providing the first scholarly history of the twentieth-century American Catholic rural movement, as embodied by the NCRLC. The major thesis of this book is that the NCRLC maintained its basic principles throughout its history, but also changed the focus of its activities over the years in response to changes in American society as a whole. By these accumulated changes, the NCRLC “Americanized” or accommodated itself to its milieu, in much the same way as historian Philip Gleason described the assimilation of Catholics to American society over the course of the twentieth century. Yet the accommodation process was not all one way. For the NCRLC also tried to persuade American society to adopt its own principles concerning rural life. The Conference assumed the prophetic role of the Church and urged Americans to adopt rural life policies that it believed were called for by Christian values. It had success in certain areas, although in the main the powerful forces shaping rural America in the twentieth century proved impervious to the efforts of the tiny NCRLC. Thus the Conference was more changed than changer—a not unusual result for a small group trying to influence a complex society. This work is an institutional and intellectual, not a social, study of twentieth-century rural Catholicism. It focuses on the ideas, purposes, and accomplishments of a comparatively small group of rural Catholic leaders, rather than on the masses of rural Catholics. It is history primarily “from the top down,” not “from the bottom up.” It could well be complemented by a “people’s history” of the rural Catholic laity written “from the bottom up,” like Jay P. Dolan’s history of American Catholics, The xii Preface American Catholic Experience. My book is somewhat different from Jeffrey D. Marlett’s recent work on twentieth-century American Catholic agrarianism , Saving the Heartland. Marlett’s book takes a wider look at rural Catholicism than I do—beyond the NCRLC to include the Catholic Worker, literary figures, and related non-Catholic people, movements, and organizations —but over a shorter time span (1920–60). Since my story concerns rural Catholics’ “Americanization,” it will be proper here to briefly explain what I presuppose that process to entail. I take the view that in becoming more “American” the NCRLC was conforming more and more to the dominant values of the United States. In the twentieth century, America was urbanizing and secularizing. Organization of interest groups was becoming the key to functioning successfully in a more diverse society. The United States became a world power in the twentieth century and claimed the mission of projecting its democratic and humane values, economic abundance, and technology to the rest of the globe along with its military might. Toward the end of the twentieth century, Americans developed a concern for the earth’s environment, which they began to view in a more holistic way. The NCRLC was influenced by all of these trends. The book is generally structured chronologically. The first chapter provides the background by discussing the settlement of Catholics in rural America up to 1920 and their characteristics. The next two chapters cover mainly the 1920s—the formation of the NCRLC and its preoccupation at that time with the Catholic rural population problem. Chapter 3, however, goes beyond the 1920s to complete the examination of the NCRLC’s dwindling concern for the population problem. Chapters 4 through 6 are mostly on the 1930s—the impact of the Great Depression in turning the Conference ’s attention to the rural economy (with a flashback on the NCRLC’s positions on economic issues during the 1920s), the Conference’s programs to meet the crisis, and its internal workings during that decade. The next four chapters concentrate on the era of Monsignor Luigi G. Ligutti’s leadership of the NCRLC from 1940 to 1960. Chapter 7 covers Ligutti’s changes in the organization of the NCRLC. Chapters 8 and 9 chronicle the Conference ’s interest in international rural life that started under Ligutti and persisted into the twenty-first century. These two chapters somewhat violate chronological order by continuing the narrative of the Conference’s international concerns beyond...
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