I grew up in Franklin County, NY, a poor and sparsely-populated part of the Empire State. In 2017 my wife and I moved back here from the Pacific Northwest, a move we do not regret. But this region (the “North Country” to those of us from here) is facing problems from within (demographic and cultural), and without (border and micromanagement and over-regulation from Albany and D.C.) Catholicism is in freefall here…except amongst traditionalists. I’ll get back to these issues, but first a little book talk.
St. Patrick’s Church in Chateaugay, N.Y. is typical of buildings and parishes throughout the region. For now it is hanging on. This spiral-bound booklet was put out by the parish as they work to make some necessary repairs: Rosemary Green, The Building of St. Patrick’s Church, 1916-1936. Contact the church for information/purchase. There is some interesting local history here. As far as I can tell, only two Chateaugay men have ever been ordained to the priesthood: Fr. Hyland (more on him below) and Fr. Howard Venette, still in active ministry, now chaplain at Clinton Correctional in Dannemora, and a champion of the Latin Mass. (He was for a time with the FSSP before returning to the Diocese of Ogdensburg.)
Fr. Ambrose Hyland was the driving force behind the construction of the Chapel of St. Dismas at Dannemora prison. That story was told in the book by John Bonn, now available in a re-written version by Vincent Michaels. Two notes: first, I bought and sold two copies of the Bonn book (one signed by Fr. Hyland) when I was in the business, but I do not currently have a copy. Second: I will brag a bit—my brother Jay played a crucial part in ending the 2015 prison escape from Dannemora.
Carmelo Soraci writes about some of his time in prison and his involvement in designing and installing the stained glass at St. Dismas in Dannemora during Fr. Hyland’s tenure: The Convict and the Stained Glass Windows (NY: Dell Chapel, 1962, pb).
Finally: St. Andre Bessette is well-known in the North Country due to its proximity to Quebec and Montreal; Brother Andre visited the region a number of times. Henri-Paul Bergeron, C.S.C., Brother Andre, the Wonder Man of Mount Royal (Montreal: Fides, 1969 fourth printing, pb, 1958 imprimatur). I have been to St. Joseph’s Oratory one (seven years ago), and it did not leave much of an impression on me.
The North Country: A Place, Its Problems, and Possibilities
(This essay contains material first published at Crisis on 12/27/22: https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-plea-from-an-american-periphery; 8/28/23: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/how-to-destroy-a-state-with-the-help-of-the-church; and, 5/4/23: https://www.crisismagazine.com/opinion/should-catholics-return-to-the-land.)
I am from a specific and special place: New York’s North Country. Delineations of the region vary, but mine consists of this: St. Lawrence, Franklin, and Clinton counties, poised between Adirondacks in the south and the St. Lawrence River valley to the north and west and Champlain Valley on the east. It is a lightly-populated, rural area first settled by New Englanders and later bolstered by Canadians and the Irish. There is still a Mohawk presence here. Farming remains important; state prisons dot the area. Catholicism and all organized religion is dying in this obscure corner of the Empire State.
One constant refrain throughout the pontificate of Pope Francis has been to go to the peripheries. “The church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents and of all misery.” To that I think many can add “Amen!” But…what, or where, counts as a periphery? I propose to answer by looking at one small part of the U.S.
It is true, Holy Father, that I am a citizen of a rich nation and reside in a wealthy and still dominant state, but where I live is poor in many ways according to official government census data. A headline about the county where I was born and live is “County in northern New York ranked with one of the state's highest poverty rates.” According to the data almost sixteen percent of our families are impoverished and large numbers of children here live in financial and material need. Why? According to John Bernardi, president of the charity organization United Way, “rural areas, like the North Country specifically, face poverty at higher rates than suburban areas due to a number of challenges: transportation, an availability of resources, and proximity of good paying jobs, among other reasons.” Does that qualify us as a periphery? What about the fact that in just ten years our population declined from 51,000 to 47,000?
Beyond those statistics, I can see how life here has changed in sixty-one years. As I was writing this a new headline from where I lived popped up, signaling how debased the culture has become: “3 Malone residents charged with kidnapping for allegedly beating and dumping teen on road.” The details are horrifying. The sixteen-year-old victim was “allegedly attacked and beaten by three people over the course of 12 hours,” then dropped off out in the country. Nothing like that has ever been reported here before.
You decry existential problems such as “the mystery of sin.” In my lifetime I have seen fewer and fewer restraints on sin in my beloved geographically peripheral home. When I was a youth, if a young unmarried woman became pregnant, it was considered a transgression and no cause for celebration. Today, it is common for men and women to live unmarried together and have children with little or no stigma. Birth announcements (especially for unwed parents) far outnumber wedding announcements in our local newspapers. The number of obituaries far surpasses both. I am fortunate to live in a village neighborhood with families and young children, but the voices of the young are fading from our homes and schools and churches.
Holy Father, you rightly identify the “existential peripher[y]…of pain” as needing attention. So many here are in varying kinds of pain. This past year two of my classmates died from alcohol abuse. People younger than me are dying of drug abuse or even suicide. You bring up “injustice…intellectual currents…all misery.” My ancestors came here from Canada and New England and were farmers and craftsmen. They took pride in their well-ordered homes and in working hard. Today that work ethic is mostly gone and good employees are hard to find. Families are smaller and farming is now done on a mammoth scale. I see unprecedented amounts of litter on our streets and roads and widespread disregard for the environment. You tout our “common home,” Pope Francis, but that has the effect of removing responsibility from individuals and communities. The result of collectivism is that no one cares saying, “it’s not my problem.” Likewise, the beauty of the earth here on the periphery is being devalued. Young people are eager to leave and take their talents elsewhere. None of my close friends from childhood have stayed here—they are dispersed to places like California and Texas, taking their skills and dreams with them, never to return.
So what is the Church doing here on the periphery? Closing and consolidating parishes and schools. My wife and I returned here in 2017 after living for many years on the West Coast. Since 2017 the local Catholic school closed for lack of students and two of the local church buildings were closed. One was sold to a Protestant group and the other is still on the market. The churchgoing population is in demographic freefall, and most of the congregations are at or above retirement age. Our local priests are also mostly older and a priest is considered “young” if he is in his forties. The religious sisters who used to run the schools are gone. The only places where large families are seen any more are at the two locations where the Latin Mass is offered: one is part of the diocese, the other run by the SSPX. (And we appreciate your granting faculties to them, Holy Father.) We have some priests from other countries: Haiti, Nigeria, the Philippines. They do admirable work in a sometimes cold land far from their home and family. According to a fund-raising letter from our bishop, last year one priest was ordained along with thirteen deacons, with nine seminarians still studying. But the rate of retirement and death may outpace that.
Holy Father, there are now two or three generations of people my age and younger who have little or no exposure to the teachings of the Faith. They may get miniscule amounts as they witness the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and funerals, but regular Mass attendance and prayer, as well as nourishing faith practices like the Rosary, are foreign to them. My own first cousins were raised Catholic but none went on practicing the Faith on reaching adulthood. Thankfully my cousin R___, who was in his fifties, was able to receive the sacrament of Extreme Unction before his death earlier this year from cancer. However, none of his four siblings or their children practice the Faith. Who will pray for the sick, the dying, and the dead? Who will serve as godparents? Where will the next generation of priests and religious come from?
One bright spot is a Catholic school for girls run by traditional Dominican nuns in a town almost on the border with Canada. Students come from the region but also from Canada and Mexico. Those consecrated religious have been well-received by local people who seem overjoyed to see habited nuns. Holy Father, this periphery hungers and thirsts for God and His visible servants. We can hear bromides and trivialities anywhere, but the people want truth. They want certainty. They want to know the rich leaders have not forgotten them. They want to know that their children and grandchildren can choose to stay here and not become internal refugees forced to live elsewhere in this country. They want to know that Catholicism will survive in the decades ahead, providing the sacraments and a message of hope, binding communities together as in the past.
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We certainly don’t get a message of hope from the state in which we reside. Sadly, the Church has not been much help. Instead, Catholicism may have assisted in our state’s demise.
New York has attained a deserved status as a failing and broken state. Residents are fleeing the Empire State for sunnier climes like Florida, and the state’s dominant center, the formerly world-class New York City, faces problems of crime and immigration. Media headlines showcase the state’s sad plight. LifeSite News reported on New York’s enshrinement of Wokeness (DEI, LQBTQ+, etc.) in schools, making dissent a potentially punishable offense. The second story is from The New York Post, reporting that “nearly 160 Wall Street firms have moved their headquarters out of New York since the end of 2019, taking nearly $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a ‘T’ — in assets under management with them, according to data from 17,000 companies compiled by Bloomberg.” As a native New Yorker who eagerly returned to the state after fifteen purgatorial years in the Pacific Northwest, I don’t find these newer trends scary enough to make me move away again, because there’s really no place safe anymore.
While I want to look at religious and spiritual reasons for New York’s current predicament, let’s first consider those not primarily spiritual in nature. How do you destroy a state? Politicize everything and install one party rule. Tax tax tax. Treat every problem from an unnaturally huge urban perspective and use one-size-fits-all solutions to everything. Keep increasing the size of government and the state work force. Keep finding ways to interfere with the rights of property owners to use their own property as they see fit. Inculcate learned helplessness in vast numbers of the state’s residents and push policies guaranteed to corrode and tear families apart. Destroy one of the greatest cities in the world by over-regulation, permissiveness, social engineering, and neglect.
But the death blow to this great state comes with the help of what should be our ally against all these attacks, the Catholic Church. The biography of retired Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard will serve as a suitable introduction to this sad fact that New York has been betrayed by Catholic authorities. (For coverage of Hubbard’s career see here, here, and here.) Hubbard was proud of his stances against Church teaching, as indicated in his obituary he paid a PR firm to publish. It said in part, “For 50 years Hubbard was a leader of the liberal wing of the American Catholic Church and a leading voice in public life in New York, an activist and outspoken advocate for peace and social justice, respect for life, care for the poor and marginalized, and friendship with other faiths, particularly the Jewish community.” He vociferously advocated for ordaining women and for the Church to confess to racism and anti-Semitism. In his early days as a “street priest” he helped establish Hope House (crisis intervention) and Providence House (drug rehabilitation). Consecrated a bishop in 1977 at age 38, he ruled the Diocese of Albany (New York’s capital city) for thirty-seven years. During that time he controlled the state’s Catholic policy and was also prominent on national committees and the Vatican’s Secretariat for Nonbelievers. Notably absent from the testimony of his life in the obituary is any mention of Christ or the Gospel. In the past few years Hubbard was investigated for neglectful oversight of predator priests and himself engaging in abuse. His petition for release from the priesthood in 2022 was denied; and he attempted civil marriage shortly before his 2023 death. In the life of one prominent New York prelate, we have a summary of all the ills of post-conciliar Catholicism and a primer on the malpractice of Catholic leadership which contributed to New York’s downfall. But Hubbard’s wayward trajectory could be a case study for other states.
To mention a few other examples of this Catholic malpractice, we could quickly name several high-profile New Yorkers who ascended the ladder to the heights of the state’s Democratic Party while claiming they were faithful to the Church. The current governor, Kathy Hochul, is one. Her immediate predecessor, the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, is another. Unlike his father, Mario, Andrew made no pretense of agonizing over moral aspects of policy and law, and defiantly installed his mistress in the Governor’s Mansion. Even the pugnacious Daniel Patrick Moynihan bought into the Democrat agenda.
Lawmakers have targeted the Church in legislation such as extending the statute of limitations on sex abuse allegations, which has resulted in hundreds of new cases against the Church in New York. Subsequently, most of the state’s dioceses have declared Chapter Eleven bankruptcy.
In addition to previously-mentioned demographic problems, other developments work against participation in the Church. Weekend activities such as playing sports for children and watching sports for adults prove more attractive than Mass. “Anticipated” masses at four or five o’clock are popular because they are “convenient,” but they also further the notion that Sunday is optional for Church but mandatory for leisure or shopping. For two years Covid restrictions kept most Catholics away from Mass, and of those many never returned.
All those problems would be enough, but they are compounded by loss of a sense of mission, of proclaiming Jesus Christ crucified. In June, the month of the Sacred Heart, a “Pride” celebration was held at the village’s main park, which happens to sit directly in front of the Catholic Church (Notre Dame). Neither the pastor nor parishioners responded, but a group of local traditional Catholics did. An organizer badgered the pastor’s office until he finally replied, begrudgingly consenting to a Rosary gathering inside the Church building. He averred that the Pride celebration was “just about mental health.” The group prayed all fifteen decades of the Rosary in reparation for the offenses against the Sacred Heart occurring nearby.
Furthermore, in August my wife and visited the annual county fair. I noticed at least two faith groups with volunteers on site reaching out to fairgoers. In one area the local parish had an unmanned exhibit that promoted outreach services, not the Gospel. And at the local historical society’s display of uniforms, we happened on a beautiful set of vestments (“fiddle-back”) from 1939. The message seemed to be that Catholicism here in my hometown is either just another social service or a museum piece. A letter to the bishop was responded to by the Vicar for Clergy with a defense of first feeding body and not soul that echoed Dostoevsky’s damning “Grand Inquisitor.” “It reminds me of the lessons learned by Catholic missionaries years ago,” he wrote, that you cannot share the Faith with a starving and naked person until you feed and clothe them! Only then can that lead to conversion.” That would surely be news to the North American Martyrs, St. Boniface, or St. Paul.
However dismal the politics of my state may be, the role of Catholic malpractice is the final nail in the coffin. I only pray readers in other states may pay attention where they live, because it can happen to them too. The history of life under totalitarianism shows that people can persevere when the Church is with them, but when the Church’s leadership and priests are largely co-opted, what chance do we have? Perhaps the only choice left is to find the right spot for a final stand.
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If (or when) there is a final stand in the North Country, farmers will surely take part in it. Although the land and climate are not optimal for agriculture, farmers have been eking out a living here for over two hundred years. Many of us who live in rural parts of the U.S. have witnessed discouraging trends in recent decades: the increase in size of farming and ranching operations; the destruction of small town life; de-population; a growing disregard for natural beauty; and the erosion of the work ethic. Those corrosive trends add up to the dissolution of a cohesive society. Human connection, human scale, and human aspirations, all snatched away by inhuman forces.
We rural dwellers have seen efforts to counteract the spreading dissolution: I recall hippies “going back to the land” but not lasting long. Even when the Age of Aquarius vanguard successfully settled in rural places, it brought along its anti-traditional values. (Exhibit A: Vermont.) And successive waves of progressive voters have built on the hippie foundations and attempted to dismantle all the parts of rural culture anathema to the post-modernists. Catholic activists have not fared much better in their agricultural efforts. Catholic Worker (CW) co-founders Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day frequently supported starting farm projects, but that impetus has never born much fruit. The well-intentioned but idiosyncratic CW movement has fallen short in many of its efforts due to an absence of hierarchical structure and, I would argue, its founding orientation of leftist political action. The answer to rural decline is found not in romanticism, activism, or nostalgia. None of those mindsets lead to an authentic Catholic renewal of rural life.
Thus, a rural dweller could be forgiven a skeptical stance regarding the “Catholic Land Movement” (CLM) with its narrative of homesteading and rediscovered crafts and skills. Urban dwellers—if they notice anything occurring in the hinterlands and flyover country at all—might wonder why anyone would forsake certain comforts and the anonymity of city life. Is the CLM another lifestyle choice option for the post-modern-minded? Or is it a broad approach to rediscovering God’s gracious gifts to us, especially in the soil? Its advocates enthusiastically claim it is the latter.
Ideas come and go. Variants of the CLM have been around for at least a century, dating back to Fr. Vincent McNabb. He saw that urban life corrupted and degraded city-dwelling Catholics, and his answer was to urge those Catholics to get back to their agricultural roots so as to regain their work ethic and thrive in a healthier—physically and morally—environment. McNabb built on Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism. While McNabb has not faded completely from the world of Catholic ideas, there never has been his hoped-for large-scale exodus from cities to reconnect with the land. Distinctly Catholic efforts to promote rural life have centered on existing agriculture and non-urban areas. There were also activist campaigns to assist migrant farm workers and better their lives, most notably by Caesar Chavez, but subsequent work in that domain became disconnected from Catholicism and moved in a more overtly leftist direction.
The skeptic, learning all this, might conclude that the CLM is yet another idea taken captive by politics. Or that it is another set of impractical theories. Might the CLM be outdated and resting upon no longer true assumptions of the urban-rural divide? As a final consideration, can the CLM be implemented in a way to support large traditional Catholic families?
To answer those questions we can listen to what present-day CLM advocates and practitioners have to say. Michael Thomas, who homesteads with his family in Sharon Springs in New York’s rural Mohawk Valley, is a leading figure in the CLM. In 2022 he hosted a gathering at his farm and nearby North American Martyrs Shrine at Auriesville, and he has been a guest on different podcasts. A second CLM gathering in 2023 drew large crowds of burgeoning practitioners and the curious.
Thomas explains the CLM and its decidedly traditional Catholic orientation as part of our faith’s fundamental teaching of properly ordering all aspects of life toward God. The map for that proper ordering follows the path of humility and rediscovering God’s gracious gifts to us in creation, especially the soil. Humility is an apt word for the attitude of the CLM, since it derives from the Latin for ground or soil. Under the headings of restoration of property and restoration of tradition, Thomas emphasizes skills and fellowship as equally important. Skills enable us to move from a passive to an active role in life, while fellowship keeps us from being lonely and also to share skills and activities with others. That answers in part the skeptic’s appraisal of rural life as frequently daunting in its demands.
Thomas enumerates four areas he sees as key points to successfully implementing the CLM: education, especially in primary traditions and skills; connecting Catholics with the land, whether in an urban rooftop or courtyard garden or fifty acres of tillable rural land; fellowship and the social aspects of life; and, a distinctive emphasis on Christ, Catholic sacraments, and God. (The CLM seems to be built on the Vetus Ordo and the older rites; it seems worth pondering whether or not the Novus Ordo and other post-conciliar elements are suitable for the CLM.) Very quickly one sees that this iteration of the CLM is a serious exegesis of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and other bedrock documents of Catholic Social Teaching. Thomas also mentions the anthology Flee to the Fields as a useful introduction to the topic.
So, it appears the CLM has answers to a skeptic’s doubts, though there are always more questions. Here are a few. Does the CLM attract dilettantes? Does the CLM play to an American antinomianism and anti-authoritarianism? How will there be enough priests to serve rural areas, especially priests who can and will celebrate the Vetus Ordo? Is the CLM just a variant of the Benedict Option, which has been criticized as merely running away from problems and not really solving anything? Is there a danger of cultishness? Are intentional rural communities desirable or necessary?
Some things are clear. Rural areas like the North Country are facing wholesale collapse in their economies and networks. Bill Gates and others with unclear motives are buying up American farmland. The recent pandemic showed the weakness of the supply chain and the possibility of food shortages. And the government and Church hierarchy are increasingly acting against traditional values. So the question is perhaps not why the Catholic Land Movement, but why not.
It remains to be seen whether or not a set of ideas and practices built on agriculture at a practical scale will take hold on the periphery. Scoffing is easy, but God apparently likes defeating the easy bet and blessing the weak and foolish. I hope I live to see such a time of blessing here in the place I love.