Abstract:

Under the leadership of Virgil Michel, OSB, the American liturgical movement had at least two central goals in the period prior to Vatican II: to restore to the faithful a participative role in the liturgy and to make a clearer connection between liturgy and life. The latter aim indicated that a rupture had taken place between the two, a problem which endures to the present day. To realize these goals, the liturgical movement collaborated with various Catholic social movements. The National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC) was one of them that made the liturgy the spiritual foundation of its social program for Catholic agrarians. During the Eucharistic liturgy, bread and wine were offered which the farmers themselves grew. The agricultural blessings found in the Roman Ritual also joined liturgy and life. The liturgical year, so closely allied to nature's cycles, afforded farmers further opportunity to meld liturgy and life. In other NCRLC programs--religious schools, farmers retreats, study clubs--liturgical catechesis which employed agrarian imagery was constitutive of its overall program. The NCRLC maintained that there was a sacramental quality to rural culture as it whole. Soil, especially, had this quality, in that it brought forth both the material elements of sacramental liturgy (and other sacramentals) and food to feed a hungry world. Soil conservation was a matter of justice. Rural arts and hand crafts also manifested this sacramental trait--things of the earth combined with human ingenuity. This study demonstrates that the NCRLC fostered a thoroughly sacramental worldview which joined land, liturgy, and life. In doing so, and in light of Catholic social teaching, a just social order was achieved. The research, primarily archival in nature, brought to light the close relationship shared between the liturgical movement and the NCRLC. The study reveals that in the pre-conciliar period rural Catholics attempted to integrate their agrarian lives with the mysteries celebrated in the liturgy.