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The National Catholic Rural Life Conference was founded on November 11, 1923, the third day of a gathering of Bishops, priests, lay women and men in the St. Louis University Library who shared concerns about Catholic rural life and determined that it was time to form a permanent organization. Father Edwin V. O'Hara, Director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference's Rural Life Bureau, was the man who called this group of people together. He was the spirit behind this conference and became the energetic guide of the new organization during its first decade.
After a stint as Chaplain in World War I O'Hara was asked to conduct a study of rural Catholic education. This study confirmed his belief that the Catholic Church was weak in rural areas. He found that the rural Church was under served in terms of priests, churches, hospitals and Catholic schools -- part of a pattern of overall neglect in which Church authorities gave little attention to the social, economic or religious problems of rural Catholics. Father O'Hara made recommendations to the Bishops to remedy the problem.
By November, 1923, he had generated enough interest in Catholic rural life to call for the first Catholic Rural Life Conference referred to above. When the organization of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference came into being, he became its executive secretary and brought his energetic abilities with him.
During the 20s the Conference was primarily interested in the Catholic Rural Problem: religious education for rural Catholics, anchoring Catholics on the land, and the conversion of rural non-Catholics. |