What
we hope for, ultimately, is nothing less than the
transformation of society. We yearn to help build a culture
which
nurtures a more reflective life, which encourages heart and
mind
to open in contemplation of God and the sacramentality of
creation, where justice and moral
truth again inform the economic
and
political spheres.... The new Christian
culture will not
come
by Church proclamation or political action.
It will arise
when enough of us begin building it
in our lives, in our
families, and among our friends.
- Dan Nichols in Caelum et Terra, vol. 1, no. 1
At
the present time there is no possibility of the large-scale restoration of a
Catholic culture in the United States.
In fact, a Catholic culture has never existed in this country, with the
limited and partial exceptions of a few heavily Catholic rural areas, where, to
the extent permitted by the general culture and its political regime, corporate
Catholic life really was lived. But
though I myself am very interested in these vestiges, and think that a
militantly Catholic bishop and a dozen similar minded priests might be able to
do a great work of restoration here, that kind of large ecclesiastical activity
is not ours to undertake. What is
proper for us to do must be done at the level of the family and of groups of
families and individuals. We may be
able to have an impact in our own lives and in those of our families and
friends, but on the larger world only indirectly. But this is surely enough.
Therefore with this in mind, we can ask ourselves why we desire to build
a Catholic community and suggest some reasons.
Our
revival of a Catholic culture or community would exist for two reasons at
least. First, to make a home for us and
our children, a home not simply in the sense of a physical place to live, but a
home in a larger sense. For though, as
St. Paul wrote, "here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which
is to come" (Heb. 13:14), nevertheless, I think there is a sense in which
it is entirely proper to search for, even on earth, a place to dwell which is
at peace with God its Father and with the earth, our common mother by nature.
Man
seems to want a place on this earth with which he has more than an accidental
relationship. In modern thought, of
which both Cartesian coordinate geometry and free market capitalism are
representative examples, nothing has a real place. That is, though obviously everything is somewhere or the other,
no thing has any reason why it is here rather than there. In Cartesian geometry, for example, the
location of any point is determined by its relationship to the X and Y axes. All such relationships can be measured and
described quantitatively, but all are entirely arbitrary and accidental. There are no intrinsic relationships- on the
uniform plane of Cartesian geometry no place is qualitatively different from
any other place and any point might just as well be elsewhere. In Aristotle's philosophy, on the other
hand, the place or where of a thing is one of the important aspects of
the thing, just as its size and weight and other qualities. One can argue, then, that for Aristotle and
generally for the ancients and medievals, something, whether a man or a
inanimate thing, had more than just an accidental relationship with its
place. And though some might think that
such ruminations of philosophers have little effect on the lives of individuals
or of civilizations, in fact such philosophizing is probably the chief factor
in shaping our everyday lives. And
among the many areas in which the above ideas can be seen working themselves out,
our economic system is an interesting example.
The
economic life of the pre-modern world was much more rooted in place than is the
case today. For capitalism and the kind
of life that it has created place matters little. One of the basic premises of capitalism is that the only aspects
of economic activity that matter is what can be quantified. Otherwise it is all the same- whether you
work with wood in the workshop that your great-grandfather built or whether you
write advertising copy to sell cigarettes.
Both can be measured and quantitatively described by the amount of money
involved and only that differentiates between them. Those who measure the gross domestic product are not interested
in what is produced or by whom - only in how much. If drugs were legalized tomorrow this would give a big boost to
the GDP since all the drug sales could now be counted as economic
activity. And this same principle of
undifferentiated quantity can be extended to our own lives too. You might just as well live in some new
high-rise in the suburbs as in the village where your ancestors lived for
generations. In fact, it is better for
you to do so, for there are no jobs for you in the village anymore. Our modern outlook is predicated on the
notion of the free movement of things in undifferentiated Cartesian space - of
goods, money and jobs, but this depends on the underlying free movement of
people. People no longer have any
organic connection with any place, but are now supposed to move around from
place to place, chasing after the goods and the money, and especially after the
jobs. Even the physical arrangements of
our life, our roads and towns, for example, assume the more or less random
movement of men from place to place in pursuit of the necessities of life, much
as gas molecules are said to move excitedly about when heated. Consider in contrast these words, spoken in
1793 by a Catholic traditionalist opponent of the French Revolution:
For
us, our country is our villages, our altars, our graves,
all
that our fathers loved before us. Our
country is our Faith,
our land, our King. But what is their country? Do you
understand? Do you? They have it in
their brains; we have it
under our feet.
As long as we understand that whatever
"city" we build here on this earth can be only a sign and
prefiguration of our true city that is to come, as long as we understand this,
we are not likely to make an idol of our land or our community. But, on the other hand, we cannot have a
"city" that is a sort of sacrament of the true city of God if we use
and view land the way the typical modern does- something only to be measured
and then, worse still, valued in dollars per acre and sold to a developer. That is no prefiguration of God's Kingdom,
rather a bitter foretaste of Hell.
In
connection with this though, all of us need to ask ourselves a question: to what extent are we committed to a sense
of place and to what extent are we ourselves rootless moderns. I am afraid that many of us - speaking at
least for myself - have absorbed many of the principles of Catholic life from
books, not from a living tradition, in fact we have it in our brains rather
than under our feet. Though I do feel a
real connection and sense of place associated with the region in which I was
mostly raised, northwest Ohio, yet in my limited wanderings around the globe I
have always looked at places with an eye for finding the ideal location to
live. And so I have come to love Santa
Fe and northern New Mexico, central and western Pennsylvania, and the west of
Ireland. But all of these places are
places of choice, not places that I have any organic relationship with. In the traditional Catholic world it was
"our villages, our altars, our graves;" now it is what pleases
me. If any of us do found a community,
will we and will our descendants come to love it because of the land itself,
its altars - its graves? Will our
children hesitate to leave that place where we are buried or will they, like so
many of us, think nothing of leaving the places of their fathers' graves?
Yes,
we do have to start somewhere, but if the community is simply our place of
choice - much as others might pick L.A. or Florida - then I question whether we
really understand the land and our right use of it.
The second reason we would seek to build
a community is to provide a concrete statement and embodiment of what is
true. That is, in the midst, and as a
kind of counterpoint of, our secularized and denatured way of life, such a
culture would try to be, as much as possible, the fullness of a life of nature
and grace. Even if the world never
noticed it, and apart from the good that it did for us ourselves, it would be a
good thing for it to exist, just as one flower between two rocks is a good,
even if no one ever sees it.
But, paradoxically, the more we would
concentrate on trying to faithfully live a life centered on Christ and built on
the nature that He created, the more apt we would be (I think) to draw others
to ourselves. As an army cannot go
forth to fight without a fortress or base, so we would in one way or another
venture forth, and conversions will result, both to the Catholic faith and to
the fullness of a Catholic life, because of the existence of the
community. Most people, even most
believers, do not suspect there is anything more to living a Christian life
than simply keeping one's nose clean.
Though it will not be perfect, if a community is able to achieve even a
measure of a Christian life, that in itself will be such a contrast to our
ordinary way of life that it cannot fail to attract some to Christ Himself, who
will be understood as the real unseen center of the community.
II. Organization of the community
A
few families and single people would move near each other in some rural area,
perhaps in or near a small village.
Each family and individual would be responsible for its own housing and
financial arrangements, as at present.
That is, each individual or head of family would have some kind of job,
or, in some cases, men might be full-time farmers. But what one did in this case would be up to each individual or
family. There would be no pooling of
resources or owning all land in common.
All
the members of the community might meet together once or twice a week to say
the divine office. But in addition to
this, I think there would arise a rich life of the group on a less formal
basis. Besides individual and family
friendships, very likely some would meet more often to pray together, perhaps
our Lady's Rosary; probably one or more study groups would arise among the
members, some on intellectual matters, some perhaps on practical agricultural
questions, etc. The reason that I think
it is a mistake for the community to undertake joint land ownership is that
many communities in the past have broken up, sometimes with great
bitterness. If members have pooled
funds, then I fear bitterness would be accompanied by lawsuits, making even
greater scandal and giving greater pleasure to Satan. But some things could be undertaken jointly. For example, farmers or gardeners or
craftsmen might sell their produce cooperatively; perhaps two or three
craftsmen might jointly buy an expensive piece of equipment, but here it would
not be the property of the "community," but of those individuals who
jointly purchased it. And of course there is nothing to prevent some
individuals from buying common land, much as this might take place at
present. But it would not belong to the
community as a whole, just to those who purchased it for whatever purposes.
III.
Location of the community
For
myself, I think it would be good to locate the community in an area that is
heavily Catholic. Though Catholic faith
and life have decayed to an unbelievable degree in the last twenty-five years,
there is still something nourishing about being surrounded by fellow members of
the Mystical Body. And maybe, if the
members of the community extend charity of both heart and hand toward others, they
can be a leaven in the lump, and help to revitalize a dying Catholic
region. I think it is usually easier to
restore what is decaying than to build something fresh. Catholics, somewhere deep inside, will have
some memory of concepts that Protestants will never have heard of. For Protestants - and secularists who are
culturally Protestant - Christianity is an external religion that is not fully
integrated into human life. Even if
they give the doctrine of the Incarnation verbal acceptance, its profound
implications are barely felt and understood by them.
On
a more immediate note, in an area with many Catholics, even in a rural area,
there is likely to be more than one parish around. This is almost necessary today when so many priests are, if not,
modernist, at least unconscious of the necessity of either a sane liturgy or a
reasonably faithful presentation of the Faith.
Even if one finds an excellent priest and parish, there is always the
possibility that he will be transferred.
So I think the existence of more than one parish is very important.
Many
of us think that a rural area is also important. I think this is not due to some rural romanticism or yearning to
become the noble savage, but because objectively a rural area (and I include
small towns or villages in that definition) is better. Why is this? In part because our cities are
not traditional cities at all, but huge agglomerations that have no natural
limits to their growth and size. In Christopher Dawson's phrase, a modern city
is "a cosmopolitan ergastulum for the production of wealth." (See his essay, "The Evolution of the
Modern City" in The Dynamics of World History.) These cities have little or no relationship
to the countryside around them, except to take the food raised in the country
and, too often, the people too. They
give back nothing of value, because they have no interest except in their own
city and in other large urban masses.
There
have to be, though, sufficient jobs to support the families of our community,
decent medical care and provision for schooling. Rural America has been
declining economically for decades, and in some places jobs are very hard to
find. Sometimes there is little choice
in medical care, and moreover, it is likely that some members of the community
will be users of what we quaintly call alternative medicine, which can be
exceedingly hard to find outside of big cities.
In
regard to education, many families will probably be interested in home
schooling, but some might not be, and for them good Catholic schools are a
must. Possibly members of the community
could start their own school, which might attract Catholics outside the group,
especially if other nearby Catholic schools were not orthodox. Otherwise it will be necessary to use
existing Catholic schools, and here what I said above about the existence of
more than one parish is important, since not every parish school will be
orthodox. Rural areas are even more
likely to lack Catholic high schools than grade schools, though I know of more
than one rural area that has both Catholic elementary and high schools, and I
am sure there are other places as well.
Obviously,
with all these considerations to take into account, as well as others that
could be mentioned, a group of people interested in starting a community would
need to plan carefully and pray fervently.
Doubtless it will be impossible to please everyone, and some will have
to decide whether they wish to become part of a community that is being formed,
even though one or more things that they consider important are lacking. As in other pioneer ventures, the
fainthearted need not apply.
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