Artisans of a New Humanity, Defenders of Nature

[Presented at Vatican City, March 16-18, 2005, during "The Call to Justice: The Legacy of Gaudium et Spes: 40 Years After". Close to 300 participants – including several Cardinals, dozens of dignitaries and ambassadors and hundreds of university professors – gathered at the Vatican to discuss the importance of the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes ("The Church in the Modern World"). Participants from over 35 different countries presented, responded and debated on the theological, economic and political implications of the document for our modern world.]

[Visit the conference web site (www.stthomas.edu/gaudium/) to view many of the papers that were presented. It is also possible to view summaries of the papers presented, several plenary talks, photos and a homily given at a conference Mass celebrated by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).]

Artisans of a New Humanity, Defenders of Nature
Catholic Social Teaching on Agriculture and the Environment in the Context of Globalization

For more than 80 years, the National Catholic Rural Life Conference has been the lead voice for the United States Catholic Bishops on food, environmental and agricultural policy. In January 2004, the Bishops published a new statement of policy entitled: "For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food." This statement reconfirmed past policies of support for family farm agriculture, concern about corporate control and concentration of land ownership, and greater attention to the conservation of the air, land and water for the well being of rural communities. The bishops’ statement also articulated new policy positions on agricultural trade and genetically modified organisms. They called for targets in support of small and medium sized farms in the United States, and special and differential approaches to developing countries in the global arena and adopted the precautionary principle in the use of genetic engineering in food.

In many ways the new official policy of the United States Catholic Bishops draws upon its own long history of reflection on Catholic Social Teaching and its application to the rural world, now understood as part of a global and integrated dynamic. Many conferences of Catholic bishops around the world (such as the South African Bishops', Philippine Bishops, Latin Americans, and the United Kingdom's Bishops) have articulated recent positions on Catholic Social Teaching on globalization, agricultural trade, on the environment and on the consumers right to food. Always there is a concern for the impact of large-scale, globalizing economic forces on communities, the environment and the dignity of the human person.

In addition to statements by conferences of bishops, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace recently published a "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church." That publication provides perspective on my theme since it treats extensively of food, agriculture and the environment in the context of globalization. Gaudium et Spes is a primary source for the Compendium. Seminal perspectives from Gaudium et Spes are utilized as well in "From Stockholm to Johannesburg" published also by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The World Food Summits, the meetings of the World Trade Organization, the World Summit on Sustainable Development have been occasions for the articulation of Catholic statements on the right to food, support for small farmers, a preference for integral development and environmental matters.

From the publication "From Stockholm to Johannesburg" (2002), we read that the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium (LG) made reference to a series of biblical texts concerning the redemption not only of the human person, but also of all creation.

LG. No.48: Acts 3: 21; Eph 1: 10; Col 1: 20; 2 Pt 3:10-13.
See also LG No. 36; Rm 8:21; 1 Cor 15:27-28.

It also clearly stated the value of all creation in its own right. (LG No. 36)

The human person was, moreover, to order creation to the praise of God through work that would contribute to the bettering not only of society but also of the whole of creation. (LG No. 41)

While the goods of the earth were to be used rationally, there was also an urgent need to assure their better distribution. (LG No. 36)

The Pastoral Constitution Guadium et Spes also stressed that created things had their own laws and values, adding that the human person must learn them. All persons bear the heavy responsibility of completing the work of creation. Believers, no matter what their religion, have moreover "always recognized the voice and revelation of God in the language of creatures." (CF. GS No.36; GS No.34 and 69.)

Finally, the thought of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes reiterated that God had destined the goods of the earth for all, and that they must be distributed in a way 'regulated by justice and accompanied by charity." (GS No.69)

But care for the earth goes still further. The human person can, and indeed must, love the goods of God's creation. "It is as a flowing from God's hand that he looks upon them and reveres them" and uses them in a spirit of poverty and freedom. (GS No. 37, 3 )

These short but highly significant references constituted a solid theological framework for the Church as it started more consciously and consistently to address the growing environmental crisis and to relate the environment to human culture, to the role of agriculture, food production, distribution and consumption and a concern for the poor.

The Apostolic Constitution on High Education promulgated as Ex Corde Ecclesia has a significant mandate concerning ecological concerns: it calls for programs in defense of nature, development, and cultural understanding:

"In its service to society, a Catholic university will relate especially to the academic, cultural and scientific world of the region in which it is located. Original forms of dialogue and collaboration are to be encouraged between the Catholic universities and other universities of a nation on behalf of development, of understanding between cultures and of the defense of nature in accordance with an awareness of the international ecological situation." (#37)

Gaudium et Spes sees the earth as the object of God's love and the human response to be love as well, of the earth and of God. That love in our time calls for not only care for creation, but also a defense of nature. Such a posture in the United States has resulted in a call by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops a policy of supporting small and medium sized farmers and agriculture, which is sustainable. Sustainable agriculture is one which is ecological, profitable, socially just and humane. Sustainability is a vision that invites us to think not only of ourselves but also of generations yet to come. As the statement "For I Was Hungry And You Gave Me Food" contends, farmers need to work in a sustainable manner, protecting the air, land and water in their farming practices. Farmers are called to be, with others, artisans of a new humanity and defenders of nature.

The United States bishops agree with the Holy Father and Patriarch Bartholomew when they called for a new culture, including what we believe is a new culture in agriculture:

"A new approach and a new culture are needed, based on the centrality of the human person within creation and inspired by environmentally ethical behavior stemming from our triple relationship to God, to self, and to creation. Such an ethic fosters interdependence and stresses the principles of universal solidarity, social justice and responsibility, in order to promote a true culture of life." (P. 150, Common Declaration of Pope John Paul II and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Rome - Venice, 10 June 2002)

In his encyclical Popularum Progressio, Paul VI articulated a vision of development which he called "integral development" that was directed at the whole person. That focus on the whole person challenged limited, incomplete and inadequate perspectives on human anthropology. Popularum Progressio called for an integral scale of values (a theme that is repeated in the Compendium). Theologian Bernard F. J. Lonergan speaks of this "integral scale of values" as being in a hierarchy: vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious. Vital values are the values conducive to health and strength, grace and vigor. Food, healthy land, air and water would be vital values. Social values consist of a social order whose schemes of recurrence guarantee vital values to the whole community. Removing hunger from a community, food security, food sovereignty would be schemes of recurrence that would be addressed in a well ordered society. Cultural values are the meanings and values, orientations informing the living and operating of the community. Personal value is the authentic subject as originating value in the community. And religious value is the grace that enables the subject, the culture and the community to be authentic and to have integrity. Integral and authentic development would attend to each element in the hierarchy of vlaues.

In their pastoral letter, Renewing the Earth, the United States Catholic Bishops affirm that the web of life is one: social ecologies and natural ecologies belong together. The harmonious unfolding of the scale of values result in a civilization of love, founded on the structures of the common good. Confounding these are structures of sin. As the Compedium states:

"The consequences of sin perpetuate the structures of sin. These are rooted in personal sin and, therefore, are always connected to concrete acts of the individuals who commit them, consolidate them and make it difficult to remove them. It is thus that they grow stronger, spread and become sources of other sins, conditioning human conduct. These are obstacles and conditioning that go well beyond the actions and brief life span of the individual and interfere also in the process of the development of peoples, the delay and slow pace of which must be judged in this light. The actions and attitudes opposed to the will of God and the good of neighbor, as well as the structures arising from such behavior, appear to fall into two categories today: "on the one hand, the all-consuming desire for profit, and on the other, the thirst for power, with the intention of imposing one's will upon others. In order to characterize better each of these attitudes, one can add the expression: 'at any price.'" (#119, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church)

The structures of sin are expressed in the dynamic of concentration in agriculture, in the problematic activity of transnational agri-food corporations, and in the movement toward a greater industrialization of agriculture. At the World Food Summit in 1996, the Holy See's representative made the following statement: "There are also many large-scale "structures of sin" which deliberately steer the goods of the earth away from their true purpose, that of serving the good of all, towards private and sterile ends in a process which spreads contagiously." (p. 333, Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" World Hunger, Origins, November 7, 1996 Vol. 26:No.21)

To assist in the analysis of food, agriculture and the environment, consistent with Catholic Social Teaching, I have developed a typology of cultures of agriculture: subsistence, entrepreneurial, investment and sustainable. Each culture of agriculture pivots on both values and technologies. I am claiming that the integral scale of values in the context of globalization calls for a new culture of agriculture – what many call sustainable agriculture. The typology places the cultures of agriculture on a timeline, as an analysis of history. The emergence of each culture is particular to time and place, to history and to geography. Globally there is a contest for dominance, but also for equilibrium.

Subsistence/Peasant Agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is focused on the family and local community. In this culture, cooperation prevails over competition. The family members each cooperate with each other. Parents and children each have their respective roles and domains of labor and recreation, with a lot of interrelatedness. If one neighbor needs help, the others are there to assist. Whether one speaks of harvesting or home building, share enlivens the community. The Compendium rightly argues the need to protect and preserve the way of life of indigenous persons:
"These peoples offer an example of a life lived in harmony with the environment that they have come to know well and to preserve. Their extraordinary experience, which is an irreplaceable resource for all humanity, runs the risk of being lost altogether with the environment from which they originate." (#471 Compendium)

The technology available to subsistence farmers is often simple, hand held implements (machetes, hoes and plows) (saved seed), animals, and forms of wind energy, nets, and the like. What matters most is the feeling for land and the family labor which organizes the productive capacity of the land in co-operation with others and frequently in a context of religious ritual and meaning. Local economies develop into regional economies and increasingly these economies have become global supply regions in the context of an export agenda, increasing debt and increasing food insecurity in the locale.

Entrepreneurial Agriculture
Entrepreneurial agriculture is related to the influence of the small-town business methods onto the rural life-style. Entrepreneurial agriculture arises in situation in which family boundaries are extended in networks of association such as business societies, fraternal orders or women's associations. The cultural hope is expressed in "climbing the agricultural ladder". This meant that if one did not inherit a farm one might aspire to own one by moving up the ladder from sharecropper to tenant farmer and from tenant farmer to owner-operator. Rather than family and local community, the culture fosters strong self-reliance and individualism. Co-operative activity is encouraged in order to increase the opportunities for profit of the producers. The temporal horizon is the annual budget with seasonal processes demarking periods in the production sequence.

Entrepreneurial agriculture depends upon the industrialized modes of farming: tractors, chemicals, distinct and staged opportunities for production of livestock from gestation to feeding to slaughter and processing…each stage being an opportunity for a distinct agricultural operation with distinct business entities taking responsibility for a part of the process of bringing a product to the market. Distinct legal entities are developed for each part of the process, capital too is developed in the context of the organized effort. A focus on prices and on open markets are significant to this culture of agriculture. Often this agriculture depends upon a family system to support it. But that system is at risk in the changing globalized marketplace. Scale economies promote standardization, efficiencies of supply, bigger agricultural operations. Increasingly where farmers of a middle range found themselves contracting for export, they also found themselves unable to feed themselves from their own production. In the United States, for example, the largest decline in farm homesteads is from the middle range of farmers. Hunger and poverty have increased in the regions marked by these farms. Very small farms and very large farms have continued their growth. The farms in the middle range in the United States are the most at risk. There are efforts to find ways to develop their capacity as niche fillers and suppliers for unique food interests of consumers such as organic foods and diversified products/

Investment Agriculture
This form of agriculture seeks to systematically incorporate all individual and discretely distinct economic and productive activity into a larger whole for a globalized market. Profit is the goal. There are horitzontal and vertical structures developed in the food processing, food retail, food distribution businesses. The temporal horizon has shrunk from generations, to annual accounts, to now a focus on quarterly or monthly stock reports. It is a culture driven by globalization of capitalThis type of agriculture brings with it a concentration of land ownership, economic control, and consolidation of power. It has developed an agriculture focused more on contracts than on open markets. It has managed to find ways to externalize environmental and social costs onto local and regional if not national communities. Sometimes illegal means are chosen such as price fixing (ADM) or toxic dumping (Monsanto) to secure advantages in the marketplace. Huge processing, retailing, distribution capacity mark these operations. They have technologies that build require large scale suppliers for their processing facilities, warehousing and retail operations. They have power and wealth greater than many countries. They are the source of regulations on the international level through their influence on governments, on trade policy, on government institutions. A recent study in the United States documented the revolving door that goes from private agribusiness industry to the government offices in the USDA. The people doing the regulating are the people who worked for the regulated. (USDA, Inc.)

Sustainable Agriculture
Sustainable agriculture attempts to restore a lost connectedness between the earth and the human community. Proponents foster the encouragement of intentional communities and smaller human-scale operations in agriculture. The farmers explore microenterprise development and value-added activities like local processing, local marketing, local distribution networks.. They have sought to develop organic food opportunities and are moving toward more local and regional food systems as organizational strategies with certification processes by third parties that brand them as healthy, or natural, or produced with a farmer's face. They place a priority on people and the earth rather than on profit. This is a culture of relational marketing, of networking and developing a knowledge system build on a sense of community and familiarity. But profit is necessary to stay alive. In this culture, we see greater efforts at cooperation among members seeking a new system. There are as well correlative efforts at the formation of credit systems, mediating structures of counseling, information sharing, and crisis intervention, new marketing, processing and distribution systems are being developed, sometimes under the aegis of "fair trade" products, other times under the aegis of economies of solidarity or civic economies.

Sustainable agriculture is an environmentally friendly agriculture that appreciates the challenges of global warming and fossil fuel dependency. It tends to encourage an appreciation of the distinctive features of the place where farming occurs and the potential provided by the place in terms of geography: the air, land, water of a local shape the agriculture. Grass fed livestock, rotational grazing practices, integrated pest management, weed control by observation rather than by chemicals: each of these are distinctive elements of the sustainable agriculture movement. This movement is complemented by a larger, sometimes more urban food movement. This past fall 5,000 people participated in the Terre Madre in Turin, Italy. This was the "Slow Food Movement" coming together and celebrating alternatives to "fast food nations" and fast food globalizing systems.

Cultural Trends in Agriculture

A major source of difficulty in contemporary discussion has to do with the derivative models of development and trade based upon economic theory. The dominant economic theory of the twentieth century developed by John Maynard Keynes has given way to a theory called neo-liberalism. Stephen Martin of Seton Hall University calls the two approaches: developmentalism and globalization, both he characterizes as "top down paradigms." Keynsian "development" trade theory and "globalization" trade theory associated with the Chicago School are contrasted with the alternative theories of trade and development of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan, S.J. The latter two thinkers have developed theories of economic development that most truly allow nations to practice democratic capitalism as a political culture "from below" more consonant with the notion of "integral development" featured in Paul VI's Popularum Progressio.

The conclusion that Stephen Martin comes to is that "the only way to authentic development is through the entrepreneurship and encouraging import-replacing economies where a country learns to product its own surplus (producer ) goods and develops sources of expansion and credit in its own country. (Stephen Martin, Catholic Rural Life, Spring 2004, p. 30) As Bruce Anderson said: "Economic success would be seen in terms of inventing, starting and cultivating local industries that are relevant to local problems rather than using developing countries as outlets for the export business of developed countries." (Bruce Anderson, Trade and the Failure of Economic Theory, Catholic Rural Life, Fall 2002, p. 11)

What kind of futures can we envisage with the cultures of agriculture? The first cultural trend we see is the growth of investment agriculture, the control by a few companies of the world's food system. A second cultural trend for the future might be described as the declining mixed middle ground. This will be made up of traditional peasant and entrepreneurial family farms trying to compete or to hold their own in an increasing investment culture. A common characteristic of these farmers might be uncertainty about their future in agriculture. The question many of these farmers will face is: do I take the leap? do I become bigger? or, do I get out now? The older farmers may be hoping to ride out the remaining years of their farming by holding out until retirement.

A third direction will be found by sustainable agriculture. It has a historical grounding in the peasant culture around the world and in the history of farming in the United States -- with its agrarian, Jeffersonian ethos. The culture promoted by civic republicanism was most at home on the farm in local community. Not Locke, Hobbes or Adam Smith, but the Greek Polis and Humanism were the philosophical roots of this agrarianism. Around the world it has support in the slow food movement, the organic food movement, and in efforts to develop a more decentralized or localized food system.

What will lead the voice of agriculture? Will the forces leading to industrialization pose a treat to our ability to protect a dispersed land ownership system, broad participation in farming, active, local democratic processes, stewardship of the land and of local communities - a sense of responsibility to future generations? What legal policies will promote sustainability?

Catholic Social Teaching and Sustainable Agriculture
John Paul II has given us a good standard by which to examine our own performance. In his 1987 encyclical, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, he named three considerations for close exmination:

First, development must recognize the nature of each being and its mutual connection with everything else in an ordered world. Animals, for example, should not be used simply for economic gain. They have their own place in the cosmos and as the Catholic Catechism say, "deserve respect and dignity".

Second, natural resources are limited; we have a responsibility to our own and to future generations to care for them in a responsible stewardship.

Third, local people deserve respect and a healthy, wholesome quality of life.

When applied to the culture of agriculture, these perspectives give us valuable guidance in appraising the direction of future economic and social dynamics.

In closing, I will articulate a spirituality for sustainability as a call for new artisans for humanity and defenders of nature, consistent with the call of Gaudiam et Spes. We begin with asking, what is spirituality? Spirituality is a way of living. Spirituality is not the end or purpose of living, the goal for which one lives. It is a manner, a style, process or method by which one lives in light of the goal. It is the stuff of character by which one creates character. Spirituality shows itself in the seasoning, which accompanies one's way of being. It is the seasoning which gives character to one's spirituality. How are you seasoned? Are you seasoned into some tradition, a way of life and being which has informed your thoughts, your words, your choices and actions? Seasoning is a matter of the mind and heart, body and behavior.

Spirituality is a deepening, like a descent into a cool, refreshing spring.
Spirituality is a thickening, like the fashioning of a community.

We are not alone in our endeavors. We are participants in a communal venture or search. That search for direction in life is something that may be found or missed. It can be part of an intellectual search, an aesthetic search, a moral search, and a religious search. I propose that our finding is one where we discover that we have partners along the way. The search for direction is a partnership: with the energic rhythms of the cosmos; with the transcendent measure drawing us, luring us, to attunement with itself.

(For Christians this is the world-transcendent measure incarnate, crucified, and raised from the dead, where the search for the truth about existence finds the searcher becoming the one searched for. "You would not be seeking me had you not already found me." Saint Augustine)

A spirituality is a being-in-love. Being in love with nature. Being in love with God.

The cosmological way is the way of the earth, the way of kinship with the earth, with the springs, the fountains, the water courses; with the flowers, birds, two and four footed creatures. This is the way of an original blessing, a partnership with the cosmos by which we are part of the garden and learn to "care for and to tend the garden." (Genesis) Such a way is at one with the Transcendent Being: authentic partnership with Nature is partnership with God.

The transcendent way is the way of going beyond the senses, the imagination, concepts, judgements to a realm beyond, mystery properly so called. The cosmological way and the transcendent way are not contradictory. Transcendence can encompass the cosmos without disruption. The cosmos is God's word. Such absorption and love of earth at one point gave rise to a poem that spoke itself through me nearly 20 years ago:

Song for a New Creation

I am earth, brown, orange and black.
I am red clay.
The grass is my mantle; lilies form my bridal bouquet.
I want to sing a wedding song, a song of a new creation.

I am earth, mother of all the living.
Spirit, Great One, I desire you.
In our abiding together we can give birth to Beauty.
The energy that flows through me drives also the stars.
Spirit, Great One, seek not only the heights.
Come with me from mountain tops, into the cracks and crevices of creation, among the poor ones, long forgotten.
Come into my unsettled depths.
I will show you the friendliness and companionship of the earth.

I am earth, humble, neglected, bruised and broken.
I am your lover, Spirit, though you fear me.
I want to be your companion. Together we can live one full life.
The energy that drives the stars flows also through me.

Come with me, Spirit, join with Humilis, the earth.
Come, Great One, abide with me.
Let us build together a home.

Broadly speaking, I understand religion as a conscious orientation by human beings toward an incomprehensible, gracious and saving mystery which in our cultural context we usually call "God," but which others may call by different names. Muslims call it Allah, Hindus Brahman, Buddists nirvana or dharma, Lakota Indians wakan, Taoists the Tao. My own preference is to think of religions generally as ways of orienting us toward the inexhaustable, enlivening, and liberating depth of reality that we may call by the name "mystery." Here is the context of steepening. There is in the world a charged field of love and meaning which we enter through some such steepening process. For some of us, the contemplation of nature is God's silent communion with us. So that the cosmos becomes a portal for mystery, while retaining its own beauty and attraction. Our care for creation is linked to the Creator's care for the community of the cosmos that is Habitat, home. We Christians speak of a sacramental vision of the universe. The web of life is one. Partnership with nature and partnership with God are related elements in an integral spiritual vision.

Elements of spirituality for sustainability include the following:

Long term perspectives: a spirituality of sustainability looks toward the long term as the focus of one's perspective. Such a consciousness can be immersed in the here and now, but only for the time being, it's general orientation is for the long haul, and the perspective is generational.

Self-Transcendent: a spirituality of sustainability is oriented to personal and communal growth, toward self transcendence and group transcendence, not the exponential growth of markets, but the growth that allows insight and emotion to shift with the broadening perspective of what is for the common good.

Communal: communion with nature, communion with God. The rhythms of cosmic process lose our allegiance completely when our partnership with them is transmuted beyond recognition by our passion for mastery, control, and instrumental exploitation. We need to nurture a meditative spirit which balances calculating reason's will to power.

Gentleness: this is captured in the notion that we should walk lightly upon the earth, or live simply so that others may simply live.

Such a spirituality of sustainability can inform our perspectives on agriculture, development and community. Consider the words of the Catholic Bishops of the U.S. region called Appalachia, who wrote "At Home in the Web of Life":

"Sustainable communities:

In our present times, we believe,
the mighty wind of God's Spirit is stirring up
people's imaginations
to find new ways of living together,
based especially on the full community
of all life, including
love of nature, and
love of the poor.

We call these new ways
The rooted path of sustainable communities.

These sustainable communities will
Conserve and not waste,
Be simpler but better,
Keep most resources circulating locally,
Create sustainable livelihoods,
Support family life,
Protect the richness of nature,
Develop people spiritually,
And follow God's values.

Sustainable Development:

In the judgment of many people,
A sustainable society would build primarily
On the rooted informal local economy,
All in communion with the local ecosystem.

In sustainable development,
All businesses new or old,
Local or from the outside,
Need to respect the divine order
Of social and natural ecology.

Sustainable Agriculture:

While agriculture should protect nature,
It should also protect humans.
We believe that agriculture needs
To follow social ecology as well.
So agriculture needs to be
Not only ecologically sustainable
But also socially sustainable."

To accept responsibility for a new heaven and new earth we need to learn how to be partners with nature and God; to have a spirituality seasoned in an integral communion that sees no contradiction between the wedding of Spirit and Earth, a spirituality of sustainability.

A spirituality of sustainability recognizes that food has moral significance. The way we raise food, retail food, process food – in a word, the way we eat, has moral significance. Do you eat food raised on factory farms where animals are forced to abide in close quarters, fed antibiotics to survive and thus risking lessened antibiotic effectiveness for future generations? Do you eat food which has traveled thousands of miles thus adding to fossil fuel depletion and contributing to global climate change? Do you eat food which has been grown and processed by farm workers paid low wages, treated themselves like commodities, suffering risks of pesticide induced illness? Do you eat food which comes from cartel control?

Eating is a moral act. A spirituality of sustainability will effect food choices. Public health issues are being raised about the problems of obesity in the United States. Internationally hunger is a growing problem. Both issues relate to sustainability. An integrated appreciation of food and faith relationships help us appreciate how a spirituality of sustainability will help shape cultures of sustainable communities and to protect cultures which have already steeped themselves in a deeper wisdom than globalized homogeneity of superficial economic domination.

Rome, Italy
March 2005