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With the re-release of two pastoral letters from the bishops of Appalachia, the Catholic
Committee of Appalachia hopes to reinvigorate a sense of mission and ministry to the
Appalachian mountains, a region that Glenmary missioners have served since 1939
Father John S. Rausch
In the fall when leaves from oak and maple scream vivid colors of yellow and red and the understory of the forest blends its scarlets and browns, the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) sponsors a tour called the Pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Appalachia.
The tour leads participants through the coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains, perhaps the oldest mountain range on earth. These mountains reforested North America for thousands of years and represent the seedbed for the most diverse hardwood forest on the continent with over 80 species of trees. Tour participants see firsthand ways that forest is being assaulted, an assault caused by America’s insatiable demand for cheap energy—regardless of the ecological costs.
Two pastoral letters from the bishops of Appalachia, This Land Is Home to Me (1975) and At Home in the Web of Life (1995) have recently been reprinted by CCA in a single volume. These pastoral letters, according to Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio, and episcopal advisor to CCA, “provide an indispensable foundation for our future work.”
The pastoral letters are the basis for CCA’s tours and programs and continue, these many years later, to speak prophetic words to our world about pursuing happiness from materialism. To our world, threatened by global warming and strangled by frivolous consumption, the principles from these Appalachian pastorals continue to offer a moral direction.
The First Appalachian Pastoral
The evolution of This Land Is Home to Me began when CCA commissioned Glenmary Father Les Schmidt and Notre Dame Sister Beth Davies to travel throughout the Appalachian region, gathering information from over 100 listening sessions where local individuals, community groups and church workers told their stories about the forces present in the mountains. From these sessions came a document that ultimately became This Land Is Home to Me, a pastoral letter signed by 25 bishops of the Appalachian region.
The recurrent theme in the pastoral was powerlessness in the presence of corporate giants. The theme gained currency when the findings of the Appalachian Land Ownership Study (1983) were published in Who Owns Appalachia (University of Kentucky Press, 1983). The study concluded from its sampling that the valuable land and minerals of Appalachia were largely controlled by absentee and corporate ownership. The study showed that 53 percent of the surface land was controlled by one percent of the owners, with an even greater ownership concentration of the mineral rights.
These ownership patterns, still existing today, helped explain the inadequate local tax revenues and services in the region plus the lack of diversified economic growth and opportunity. The pastoral encouraged establishing centers of reflection and prayer where rich and poor alike could discuss replacing the patterns of exploitation with a new social order based on the ethical and social teachings of the Church.
The Second Appalachian Pastoral
Twenty years later, the economy shifted from a few multinational corporations to the forces of globalization promoting export-based economies.
What few economic gains Appalachia achieved through light manufacturing and small fabrication plants were gradually outsourced, deepening the gap between the powerful and those who were powerless.
At Home in the Web of Life, the second Appalachian bishops’ pastoral letter, posed the choice between the culture of death that promotes hyperconsumption and devours human and natural resources, and the web of life that allows humans and all creation to live together respectfully. The moral voice of the bishops promoted sustainable communities and asked readers to contrast the materialism of globalization and its pollution with the spirituality of simpler living and the beauty of creation.
How Much Different Today?
In May 2007, faithful to the spirit of the pastorals, CCA convened 22 participants for the Interfaith Religious Leaders Tour of Mountaintop Removal to publicize the injustice of this mining method.
At the climax of the tour media coverage captured the religious leaders praying on a ridge 200 feet above a strip mine site. While front-end loaders with their dust and noise worked below to scoop the loosened coal into trucks and while God’s glorious mountains silently stood as a contrasting backdrop, the religious leaders concluded their prayer by blessing the mountains and praying for everyone affected.
The workers below the ridge were mixing ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel—the same explosive Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing—preparing to blow off the top of the mountain.
Mountaintop removal (MTR) creates blasts so powerful that foundations of homes, sometimes two miles away, crack. After the blast, large earthmovers dump the overburden into valleys. The EPA estimates that over 700 miles of streams in Appalachia have been covered, causing the destruction of headwaters that feed the local ecosystem and exacerbating flooding. Though MTR remains the cheapest method of mining coal, communities and the environment suffer.
We’re All Downstream
In April 2007, CCA conducted its first teleconference—with sites in four states—with a focus on “Climate Change: Our Faith Response.” Experts say that 95 percent of North America’s mixed mesophytic forests have suffered species loss and over two-thirds of the songbirds on the Cumberland Plateau are in decline. On the human side, the poor living on the flood plains in inadequate housing could especially feel the impact of violent storms that experts predict will be created by climate change caused by global warming.
CCA is addressing the issue of climate change by producing a 12-minute film. The film is based on the presentations of the teleconference that mixed science, medical concerns and theological reflections with practical suggestions about “green” building and organic farming. The film’s target audience: local parishes.
Making the Universal Church Regional
The spirit of the Appalachian pastorals addresses issues that no single parish or diocese can easily handle. Whether in the northern Appalachians of New York and Pennsylvania or in the southern Appalachians of Alabama and Georgia, the common concerns about the poor, the environment, energy, prison populations, the drug culture and community violence beg a systemic response.
Though written years ago, the Appalachian pastorals continue to challenge the Church regionally to listen to the people, do critical thinking and invoke the power of the Holy Spirit to bring justice to the land.
Copies of the re-released pastoral letters can be obtained for $10 from the Catholic Committee of Appalachia: ccappal@citynet.net or 304.927.5798.
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The story above first appeared in the Autumn 2007 Glenmary Challenge.
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Catholic Committee of Appalachia
The Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) represents a network of religious women and men, priests and laity working in parishes and ministries focusing on health care, community concerns and environmental issues in Appalachia. The group, with about 400 members, studies social problems confronting the Church in this region—and helps find viable solutions. All or part of 26 dioceses in the Eastern United States are part of the Appalachian region.
Glenmary was instrumental in the creation of CCA in 1970 with Glenmary Father Charlie Hughes as its first convener. Within two years Glenmary Father John Barry ramped up CCA’s outreach in areas of poverty and labor as its first full-time director. Glenmary Father John Rausch currently serves as its director.
Over the years CCA has listened to the folks up the hollows and in the small towns of Appalachia and has established itself as their voice to the bishops of the region. |
