The Middle Way: The National Catholic Rural Life Conference and Rural Issues in the 20-super-th and 21-super-st Centuries

This article explains how the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC), from its founding in 1923 to the present, applied basic Catholic principles in response to a succession of changes in American rural society. In doing so, it proposed a middle way between capitalism and socialism and between the Democratic and Republican parties. In the 1920s, the Reverend Edwin V. O'Hara founded the NCRLC mainly to bolster the demographically weak rural Church. In the 1930s, the NCRLC turned to economic concerns in response to the Great Depression. It supported many New Deal programs that helped farmers as well as cooperatives and a “back-to-the-land” movement. The Conference consistently supported the family farm as the basic institution of a morally and economically sound rural society. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Conference entered the realm of international affairs under Monsignor Luigi G. Ligutti and addressed problems of world hunger, land reform, and underdeveloped countries. Under Monsignor Edward W. O'Rourke, who became director in 1960, the NCRLC joined in the movement for social justice and campaigned for the rights of the rural poor and migrant farm workers. Starting around 1970, the Conference became increasingly interested in environmental and energy issues. The NCRLC is in harmony with the 21-super-st-century pope, Francis, on rural and ecological issues.