In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

336 Chapter 14 Stewardship of the Planet In the late twentieth century, the meaning of rural life in the United States changed significantly. As the number of family farms decreased greatly, the rural area was seen less as connected to the family farming lifestyle than as an environment that affected urban and rural people alike. The NCRLC adapted its priorities to address the new issues arising out of this altered view of late twentieth-century rural life. Addressing Problems of Modern Rural Life As early as the 1930s, the NCRLC perceived that many of the psychosocial problems of modern life were connected to the transition from a predominantly rural to a mainly urban lifestyle. In commenting on these problems, the Conference at first—from the 1930s through the 1950s—usually viewed them as favorable rural traits being replaced by unhealthy urban ways of living. In 1938, Catholic ruralist Emerson Hynes contrasted the conviction of urban society that work was “evil” and that people must seek happiness in their leisure activities with the traditional rural attitude that people found happiness and fulfillment through their work. Another NCRLC member put it this way: the rural attitude was that “work was a part of life,” whereas in the modern “leisure state,” “the reason one worked was only in order not to work.” Another writer commented on the transition from rural forms of recreation based on community participation to the urban modes of mass entertainment that caused people to suffer from “spectatoritis.” Extensive travel and other stressful kinds of leisure activities led many modern people to being not recreated but “wreck-reated.” A nun lamented the modern tendency of schools to perform educational functions that could be done better within the family. In 1956, an article by NCRLC president Bishop Peter W. Bartholome of St. Cloud listed education among other modern institutions that weakened the family: Stewardship of the Planet 337 government, which legalized divorce; industry, which employed mothers and children; social welfare, which made families dependent upon relief; and even the Church, which, “for very laudable purposes,” established organizations that took the place of family functions. This urban vs. rural attitude even persisted to some extent into the O’Rourke era: O’Rourke claimed that the lack of a stable, natural life on the land caused much of the restlessness of “The Under-25 Generation,” and the Conference lamented that mechanization had taken modern culture away from nature and proposed to bring it back to nature through rural arts.1 In more recent years, the NCRLC seemed to accept the changes of modern society more on their own terms and recommended coping with them rather than trying to totally reverse them. Instead of proposing a back-to-the-land movement, the Conference said that the recent increase in the rural nonfarm population might be encouraged as providing a better living environment for urban workers. By the 1990s, the rural population as a whole was increasing, due to an influx of commuters, retirees, and people in the recreation and service industries. Executive Director David Andrews said hopefully, “People prefer living in small towns. That’s why they’re moving to rural areas.” The rural population just was not “predominantly tied to agriculture” anymore.2 Instead of solely championing rural producers, the NCRLC supported establishing the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. It accepted the feminist movement, consistently supporting a greater role for women in the leadership of rural communities. It urged dealing with the new problems of drug abuse, stress among farmers, and the rural elderly. Rural America had a number of health concerns: affordability of health insurance ; the trend toward managed-care plans harming access to health care; closings of rural hospitals; a high percentage of elderly; toxic chemical use, waste dumps, and water pollution; and work accidents (farming was 1. Hynes, “Dignity and Joy of Work,” 16–18, 24–26; Joseph Hufner, “Youth and Recreation,” ibid. 4 (February 20, 1941): 20–21; Sister Anne, O.S.B., “What’s Wrong with Education Today?” ibid. 4 (May 20, 1941): 31–34; “Chores and Delinquency” (“Notes and Comments”), Land and Home 7 (March 1944): 14; “I Am a Country Pastor ..... “ ibid. 8 (March 1945): 12; Peter W. Bartholome, “First the Family,” insert in Rural Life Conference 5 (December 1956); “Art Culture and the Rural Community —A Policy Statement of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference—First Draft,” in “Art, Culture and the Rural Community, 1963,” NCRLC 8A-1; “The Under-25 Generation,” in “Youth...

Share