Posted on 10/05/2003 6:55:37 AM PDT by SJackson
BRACKETT -- Stating that “we no longer know what we are eating,” Archbishop Raymond L. Burke delivered a blistering homily against large-scale agriculture Sept. 24 during the 23rd Annual Rural Life Day of the archdiocese of La Crosse.
Speaking during Mass at the church of St. Raymond of Penafort in Brackett, Archbishop Burke said “through globalization, resulting in the gradual and relentless concentration of agriculture into the hands of a few multinational firms, the sin has become exceedingly grave, with an ineluctable and immense wake of destruction of nature and of death.
“Globalization is not a distant phenomenon. It is seen in the trend which tells farmers that they must become bigger and bigger. Why? To use God’s creation to become wealthier and wealthier. They must become bigger and bigger, so that eventually the kind of farming which they are doing can only be supported economically by large international businesses.
“It is evident in the abandonment of the good farm country of our diocese, while animals and plants are manipulated by artificial means, without respect to the requirements of their nature and of the land and water, to produce, to an unnatural degree, a harvest which is poisonous.”
As a longtime member and past president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, Archibishop Burke has been a champion of small farms through his career.
In recent years the Catholic Church in Rome has also taken an increasing interest in agricultural issues and their relation to “social justice.” In its 1998 publication “A Time To Act,” the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome declared the preservation of small farms and rural communities a moral issue, declaring that “we renew our dedication to the prominence of small farms in the renewal of American communities in the 21st century … it is our resolve that small farms will be stronger and will thrive … providing a cultural and traditional way of life as well as nurturing places to raise families.”
Speaking at the luncheon following Mass, Dale Hennen, director of the Rural Life Office of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, said that in the Catholic church “there are serious issues and concerns about the direction our agricultural system is taking.”
He defined that system as “agriculture of astonishing production, with absurdly high hidden costs,” which include a concentration of land ownership and the disintegration of rural communities.
U.S. agriculture, Mr. Hennen said, “generates great wealth from the countryside, and returns poverty and dispossession to the farmers and laborers. Without our concerted thought and action, it is the future.” In his homily, Archbishop Burke concluded by saying “we pray for the reform of the farming economy, and we commit ourselves to work to do all that we can to promote sound agriculture.”
While not a fan of the NWO, I do see that the economies of scale achieved by farm consolidation have made huge amounts of food available to people all over the world at prices that could never be achieved with "forty acres and a mule."
Also, on a more cynical level, there may be a tad of institutional jealousy here inasmuch as the smaller the farm (and the community (family) associated with it, the less powerful it is and the more susceptible it is to a larger power - in this case, the Church.
There is a very simple reason why the small farm is disappearing - it has become economically unfeasible. Taxes that are imposed on small farms are more than the farm can produce.
There's a popular saying amongst us EX-farmers - "Never have a farm that's too large for your job in town to support!"
Globalization is not a past phenomenon. It is seen in the trend, which tells priests they must reach out and proselytize the Universal Truth, Catholicism. Why? To use God’s creation to make the Church wealthier leading to a pampered life in the upper echelons of the Church. They must become bigger, so that eventually the only kind of religion is them and only able to be supported by large congregation donations. We must return to our Glory of the Medieval Ages.
If Catholics find this offensive, that’s too bad. I’m so sick of the constant carping against Capitalism that runs through the Catholic Church from Pope down to the Revolutionary Theologists.
He then urged the dismantling of all religious entities, to be followed by a return to tribal shamanism.
The archbishop is a luddite. I suspect he despises Wal-Mart for the same reasons.
I wonder how it fits in with his Christian mission to feed the hungry that food prices would soar and shortages would be wide-spread.
Yes, but that's not the point I was trying to make.
Can you sell the vegetables and other things you raise on your property for enough to pay its taxes and still have enough to live on?
I agree that it's a tragedy that the small family farm has disappeared, but it's the greedy government that is the problem, not the big agribusinesses.
I turned to flowers for a while just for the quiet time.
Now, I try to smell the flowers, having fulfilled my career and family goals and halted only by the physical limitations of my age.
I support all our local farmers and stop at all the roadstands I can, giving each a bit of my business.
I don't suppose that Bishop Burke's militant example of actual Catholicism in his daily life and ministry in direct opposition to the AmChurch liberal doctrinal and practical wreckage has anything to do with the knee-jerk opposition to his sensible economic views? Do you really prefer that people be systematically strip-mined of their economic independence by Archer-Daniels-Midland and the like?
As to Wal-Mart, did that corporation not have Hillary!!!! as a director? Does it not enthusiastically patronize the Red Chinese enemies of our nation and of our civilization (mandatory abortion and whatnot?)
Has the diocese of Fort Worth a position on "luddism"? Has it a position on Catholicism? Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Marmena, you are beginning to grow on me along with Formerlib.
Bishop Burke is the bishop of LaCrosse, Wisconsin. This cited article has promoted him to a position that he does not hold but may someday hold. He is part of a growing core of contiguous actually Catholic bishops on the Northern Prairie (Doran of Rockford, the bishop of Peoria, et al.) dedicated to the elimination of our regrettably leftist and amoral AmChurch.
Is David Rockefeller behind this, in your imagination?
Not anymore. "Stoop labor" is no longer necessary, with large farm machines and modern planting methods. In our capitalist country, inefficiencies go by the wayside, due to competition.
What you're advocating is gone, forever.
Burke is a perfect representative of the liberal American Church's social views. The Church seems to be opposed to technology, which has improved the lives of billions of people.
What's "Catholic" about longing for the days of stoop labor and the "dust bowl" when families were ruined by a couple of bad years?
On the contrary, the American Catholic bishops are allergic to capitalism, and the tempering words of John Paul II have undermined their 20-year effort to socialize every aspect of American life.
Do you really prefer that people be systematically strip-mined of their economic independence by Archer-Daniels-Midland and the like?
Nobody starves in America, which was not the case in the days of the "family farm."
No one in the world would be starving if some of the socialist governments propped up by Maryknoll and Jesuit liberation theologians were more forcefully condemned by the Church.
The fact is that the small family farm can't compete economically with the corporate factory farms. However, I'm convinced that such farms produce healthier products so I buy from them whenever possible. There are a number of farmer's markets not too far from where I live, including some Amish farmers.
The marketplace will always provide niches for products which may be in demand by select groups of people.
But dreaming about the "family farm" when it is clear that agribusiness has improved the quality, the quantity, and the availability of food worldwide is, to borrow a phrase, "kumbayaesque."
The farmer has it worse as the laborer can always go do something else, while the small farmer has pledged everything he is worth (and often a bit more) to the bank. Weather, bugs or blight can wipe out even the best small farmer, so he bets all he has every year, not on a longshot that will make him rich, but on a bet that where the best can "win" is the opportunity to do it all again next year.
People in this country didn't leave the small farm because they were stupid, but because they had better opprotunites elsewhere. The only way most Americans (including me) are going back out in the field with a hoe and small tractor (or maybe this guys advocates a return to mules?) trying to make a living in the sun is at gun point.
1 out of 12 ADM shares is held by State Farm. State Farm has lots of policyholders. Through State Farm's ownership of ADM shares, the wealth created by ADM is spread around rather widely to the millions of persons insured by State Farm.
Each of ADM and State Farm, as a corporation or association, is a legal fiction. You may question whether the companies' executives make good decisions, but when corporations as such are criticized, the true object of the expressed ire is the owner of the corporation. The typical beneficial owner is an aging pensioner whose fund manager was wise enough to buy shares in a company with a bit of foresight, since the biggest holders of large multinationals tend to be institutions (TIAA/CREF and CALPERS come to mind, notwithstanding my likely uncharitable opinion of them) whose duty to their stakeholders is to maximize fund value, within, these days, growing, politically-imposed, constraints.
To decry consumerism, for its effect on faith and morals, and specifically for its diversion of human attention away from loving the Almighty and neighbor, is one thing; absent more, to assert that it is a grave sin to contract for fair consideration at arm's-length with multiple farmers who wish to grow a certain lawful crop, with the expectation that the harvest can be distributed widely and at relatively low cost, seems quite another.
I disagree with nothing you've written, and I especially agree with this.
Like the Democrat Party, the American Catholic hierarchy loves employees, but has a contempt for employers.
Even in other business like manufacturing there should be room for the big corporations and small businessmen. That way people have a choice ---- they can work for the big union shops or the small independent shop where the workplace is very different. The same should go for farming. I live where there are still small independent farmers and I think they're better.
Do any of you know how much these multi-nationals receive in farm subsidies from the US government for not planting,etc.? While I know it is clear that a couple of these posters know exactly what is happening and approve,I think many of them are not connecting the dots.
Not even always more people to work them --- but there are more owners and the owner is often working the farm pretty much alone or with family members or side by side with his employees.
The older hens go for $5/each after they are finished laying, for fresh chicken to local families. And to top it all off, my chickens enjoy their life and have room to run. Some of the lucky ones get to retire at a place down the road where a woman likes to have them around to eat bugs.
Not one penny spent in advertising or marketing either.
I have some serious questions about the quality part of that statement, particularly when it comes to certain meat products (chicken and pork, primarily).
Fortunately, I have the option of buying elsewhere as I deem fit.
If large farms used all available land, there'd be even MORE food available; as it is, enormous amounts of food are thrown away, every day.
Why do you automatically assume that an American bishop knows anything about economics?
These guys love the progressive income tax.
IMO, you're jumping on the poor befuddled bishop for the very thing that everyone's been jumping all over Rush for the last week: having an opinion and a right to state it. The Bishop may be 100% wrong in his opinion, and I agree with you, Mark, that he is wrong, but he shouldn't be considered presumptuous in the least.
Religion and politics are inextricably entwined and clerics played an important, sometimes pivital role in the Revolution and the Civil War (on both sides of the M/D line). Liberalism and socialism are merely masked attempts to supress the political role of religion, while communism is the naked, unmasked suppression of religions political sphere, which always ends in murder.
While not a fan of the NWO, I do see that the economies of scale achieved by farm consolidation have made huge amounts of food available to people all over the world at prices that could never be achieved with "forty acres and a mule."
I agree. Some people like to grow tomatoes. Me? I like to go the supermarket or the seasonal farmers market and spend $2.50(less than a quarter in pre-FDR real gringo dollars) for more tomatoes than I could eat in a week.
The problems start when snotty little %@$#@%^& "planners" dream up this "highest and best use" scheme and start taxing the subsistence farmers, the people who actually like living on the family property and growing their own food, as if their land was producing the same as Farmer Big down the road. And Farmer Little can hardly put up with or pay for the same EPA, USDA, OSHA, ICC regulations (Chime in, by the way, if you have alpabet agencies to add to the list.) that Farmer Big can, even before Farmer Big gets his gub'mint subsidy.
Most Farmer Littles, if left to their own devices, could muddle through, which is all some country folk ask. But the combination of the ruinous "highest and best use" land taxing scheme and onerous, expensive government regulation drives out even the fewer and fewer people who both like and want to live this way.
Also, on a more cynical level, there may be a tad of institutional jealousy here inasmuch as the smaller the farm (and the community (family) associated with it, the less powerful it is and the more susceptible it is to a larger power - in this case, the Church.
On a more cynical level, ain't it always about the money?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, they certainly produce a healthier culture. That is what is forgotten in our exclusive focus on the (inarguably superior) economics of big farming. Urbanization has been a disaster, culturally speaking.
I am doing my best to bring up my son in a rural culture, to set him on the right path.
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