“THIS LAND IS HOME TO ME”

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  On February 1, 1975, the Catholic Committee on Appalachia (CCA) published a pastoral statement of solidarity with the poor and powerless in Appalachia, entitled “This Land is Home to Me.”  This statement came to fruition under the guidance of the first Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Char- lotte, the late Michael J. Begley, who served as the president of the CCA.  In 1985, Begley received the NC Council of Churches’ Distinguished Service Award for his many years of working for Christian unity and for peace and justice.  Now over 30 years old, “This Land is Home to Me” continues to give eloquent voice to the enduring witness of the church among the poor and marginalized.  Particularly for those in Western North Carolina, its prescient analysis and prophetic style continue to resonate to this day.

 

The statement begins with these words: “Many of our Catholic people especially church workers have asked us to respond to the cries of powerlessness from the region called Appalachia.  We have listened to these cries and now we lend our own voice.  The cries come now from Appalachia, but they are echoed across the land, across the earth, in the suffering of too many people.  Together these many sufferings form a single cry.”

 

The full text of the statement is available online (www.osjspm.org/majordoc_this_is_home_to_me.aspx).   Excerpts are below:

 

Without judging anyone, it has become clear to us that the present economic order does not care for its people.  In fact, profit and people frequently are contradictory.  Profit over people is an idol.  And it is not a new idol, for Jesus long ago warned us, No one can be the slave of two slave-drivers; the first will be hated and the second loved, or the first treated with respect, and the second with scorn.  You cannot be the slave both of God and money (Matthew 6:24).  This is not a problem only for mountain folk; it is everybody's problem. 

 

In a country whose productive force is greater than anything the world has ever known, the destructive idol shows its ugly face in places like Appalachia.  The suffering of Appalachia's poor is a symbol of so much other suffering - in our land, in our world.  It is also a symbol of the suffering which awaits the majority of plain people in our society - if they are laid off, if major illness occurs, if a wage earner dies, or if anything else goes wrong.  In this land of ours, jobs are often scarce.

 

Too many people are forced to accept unjust conditions or else lose their jobs.  Human services for the poor, and for the almost poor, are inadequate.  Safety standards are often too weak or ignored.  Workers are injured unnecessarily.  Legal and medical recourse for claims against occupational injury or occupational disease are often too difficult or unavailable.  Sometimes those who should be helping people in their claims seem to stand in the way….

 

It's strange, for instance, that despite earlier reforms, a country which took such richness from Appalachia left so little for the people.  Great fortunes were built on the exploitation of Appalachian workers and Appalachian resources; yet the land was left without revenues to care for its social needs, like education, welfare, old age, and illness….

 

Once we all knew how to dance and sing, sat in mystery before the poet's spell, felt our hearts rise to nature's cathedral.  Now an alien culture battles to shape us into plastic forms empty of Spirit, into beasts of burden without mystery.  If the struggle's dream can be defended, and we believe it can, then perhaps the great instruments of attack, cable TV, satellite communications, ribbons of highway, can become like so many arms, which instead of crushing life, reach out to make it fuller, to bring to others beyond the mountains, the promise of their vision….

 

God has challenged us to take up as holy whatever is good and beautiful in the modern world as in all of creation.  But God has also challenged us to resist what is evil, especially injustice.  Since the industrial age, we have been active, speaking and acting on behalf of the casualties of the new economic spirit….

 

Thus, there must be no doubt, that we, who must speak the message of God who summoned Moses, and whose mouth was opened in Jesus of Nazareth, and who keeps the Spirit alive on behalf of justice for so many centuries, can only become advocates of the poor.  This is not to be simplistic, to see all in black and white, to be ignorant of economics and the contributions of other

human sciences, but in a profound sense the choices are simple and stark: death or life; injustice or justice; idolatry or the Living God.  We must choose life.  We must choose justice.  We must choose the Living God….

 

We must continually take time and invest creativity into listening to our people, especially the poor.  For it is they who, out of their frustrations, dreams, and struggles, must lead the way for all of us.  Next we must listen to the vast majority of plain people who would not be called poor, but who are not rich, and who increasingly share in the powerlessness of the poor.  Finally, strange as it may seem, we must also challenge the rich.  For although Jesus himself has told us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for the rich to enter heaven (Matthew 19:24), and although one rich young man went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth (Luke 19:22), there is also the story of Zacchaeus who accepted the demands of justice, who returned his property to the poor and paid back four fold whatever was stolen.  That day salvation came to his house; the Messiah has come to seek out and save what was lost (Luke 19:10).  Throughout this whole process of listening to the people, the goal which underlies our concern is fundamental in the justice struggle, namely, citizen control, or community control.  The people themselves must shape their own destiny.  Despite the theme of powerlessness, we know that Appalachia is already rich here in the cooperative power of its own people….

 

Dear sisters and brothers, we urge all of you not to stop living, to be a part of the rebirth of utopias, to recover and defend the struggling dream of Appalachia itself.  For it is the weak things of this world which seem like folly, that the Spirit takes up and makes its own.  The dream of the mountains' struggle, the dream of simplicity and of justice, like so many other repressed visions is, we believe, the voice of Yahweh among us.

 

BY THE CATHOLIC COMMITTEE ON APPALACHIA