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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (July 23, 1987)
PAGE 5 — The Georgia Bulletin, July 23, 1987 Father Gerald Peterson Rural Reflections Losing Our Rootedness In Land In April I wrote about my brother, Robert, and his family losing their 409-acre farm. Heavy indebtedness forced him to sell his 100-cow dairy herd, all farm equipment and all their land. After 25 years of farming, Bob is left with no land, no home, about $15,000 worth of debts and, at the age of 51, is seeking new employment. I wish I could say, “He’s the only farmer who has suffered .this kind of loss.” Such is far from the truth. In Georgia, 4,000 farms were lost in 1984. And, according to the state Commis sioner of Agriculture, Tommy Irvin, “Land in farms has also decreased from 15 million acres in 1980 to 13.5 million in 1984.” In the past three years, instead of improving, the situa tion has only worsened. As I see it, our goal in the use and ownership of the land should beJo create a sustainable agriculture through a family farming system. It seems to me that the attitude of the federal government at this time is one of complacency: “Cur rently we have a surplus of farm commodities, and if we lose a third of the family-size farms, it doesn’t matter; agri business will take over.” If we search the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, we see that it is essentially a story about a people’s struggle to attain, and to live justly in, their own land. We have forgot ten that the terms of God’s Covenant with Israel were rooted in land and that justice was practiced in the distribution of the land and its fruits. Only by honoring such conditions would the Israelites know true peace. In our country, which becomes more and more industrializ ed, it seems to me a very real part of our contemporary dilem ma is that we Americans have lost perspective. We have been sundered from the land both physically and attitudinally. We no longer sense our rootedness in the land. We are a society enamored of “efficiency” which we equate with bigness, power and wealth. But our efficiency formulae do not include human costs. In a society in which the economy is the ultimate determinant, such human fac tors literally “do not compute.” As people searching for a Christian view on economics and the farm crisis, we need to keep in mind the underlying princi ple of the U.S. bishops’ statement: Economic Justice For All. “Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral, and Christian must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it?” I'm proud of our American bishops for having the foresight to insert in their pastoral on the economy the section on “Food and Agriculture." It indicates the importance of land ownership and use in any country’s economy. The statement strongly supports the family farm system as the backbone of American agriculture. The concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few is unhealthy for a stable economy and in opposition to sound farm practices. As Catholic people struggling to form a Christian con science on the farm crisis, I strongly urge you to note well this section of the bishops’ statement on the economy regarding “Food and Agriculture,” paragraphs 216 to 250. The Church, and we as individual members, must dare to speak the truth. First, we need the clarity of vision. Economic Justice for All will help us form a Christian vision. Secondly we need to let our legislators know our views when farm issues are at stake in legal decisions. Laws regulating farm subsidies, the distribution of surplus farm commodities and local as well as national laws regarding the use of land and water have long range consequences on the future of the farm family. Will you join me in the struggle of the present farm crisis to do what we can individually and as a Church so that other young farmers like my brother, Robert, will not have to move off the land? Antoinette Bosco The Bottom Line Teens Need Help To Choose Lite A rash of disturbing statistics fhcluded in a report on teen health in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association raises an alarm about American adolescents. The picture reported by University of Minnesota pediatri cian, Robert Blum, is grim. All the emphasis on health in the past decade doesn't seem to have filtered down to youth. Teen-agers have not gotten healthier. On the contrary, they are dying more violent deaths from accidents, homicide and suicide. They are using drugs and alcohol at a younger age. And they are being diagnosed with more depression and chronic illnesses than in the past. Blum says that the statistics should be a call to action for doctors and health-care workers. His statistics indicate that 77 percent of adolescent deaths are caused by accident, suicide or homicide. In 1980 almost 62 out of every 100,000 youths between the ages of 15 and 24 died from car crashes, drownings, poisonings, burns, falls or other accidents. Sixty percent, 18,800, were caused by car crashes. Blum's facts on suicide are more than alarming. Self- inflicted death among youths 15 to 24 years old have more than quadrupled, from 3 per 100,000 in 1950 to 12.4 per 100,000 in 1980. Homicides among youths in the same age range increased by 300 percent from 1950 to 1980, reaching 15.6 of every 100,000 youths. Blum reports that one-tenth of adolescent females become pregnant every year. Citing 1983 figures, he indicates that of the 1 million reported pregnancies among 15 to 19 year olds, 38.7 percent ended in abortion, 13.4 percent were estimated to have ended in miscarriage, and 47.9 percent were carried to term. The drug and alcohol picture boggles the mind. One in seven 12th-graders report getting drunk at least once each week. In 1982, 60 percent of high school seniors reported us ing drugs other than marijuana, including cocaine and am phetamines, the AMA journal report said. I talked to a number of young people after reading that report to get their opinions on why American youth are play ing Russian roulette with their lives. I got a variety of answers, from the breakup of the family to a lack of spirituali ty, from the availability of money for drugs to boredom to a love of fast cars. A few felt that what was left out, as always, was how many youth are healthy and optimistic about life. Trouble, one teen said, always has a way of ending up as a statistic. Then I covered a talk by Dr. Bernie Siegel, a surgeon at Yale University and author of “Love, Medicine and Miracles.” Siegel brings spirituality to healing. He mentioned a teacher who had given a homework assign ment to her students to write themselves a suicide note and a love note. The results showed that students had many reasons for not living, but very few reasons for loving themselves. This, it strikes me, is the real clue in the bleak picture of the health of U.S. teen-agers. If they can find no reasons to believe they are lovable and important and headed for a future in which their particular contribution to the world is needed, why should they care about their health? Why not escape in whatever way is available? Siegel added that being brought up by loving parents, as he was, is a legacy that we all need if we are to be equipped for "choosing life." I couldn't agree more. (Copyright (c) 1987 by NC News Service) Father Peter A. Dora Using The VCR To Evangelize Catholic Images The Catholic Church is charged with the mission of bring ing the good news of Jesus Christ to people everywhere. The apostles traveled far and wide to proclaim the message. Mis sionaries go to the ends of the earth, pastors preach to their congregations; the written word, beginning with the Sacred Scriptures, extends through pastoral letters, decrees, catechisms, theological studies, tracts and children’s books to name just a few. Beyond the written word, the message of faith has been ex pressed in music, painting, sculpture and architecture; and recent years have seen experiments in film and television. Never has the Church neglected the available means of ex pression, and it’s a good thing since these same media are used by others to pervert truth and beauty through lies, deception and pornography. Today the Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) is found increas ingly in institutions and homes. Initially this device was used to play material produced for other purposes such as feature films and television programs. As the number of machines grew, however, it eventually became practical to produce original material just for the VCR audience; and producers came to realize that they were dealing with a new type of au dience as well as a new medium of expression. Video tapes can be produced economically for a relatively small audience with a specific interest. Gone forever is the need to address the lowest common denominator just to secure a large enough audience to cover production and broadcast bills. For various technical reasons the cost of home video tape production is only a fraction of the cost of broadcast production, and it is getting cheaper every day. This means that ever smaller groups can produce for smaller, select audiences. For example, high school students have produced video yearbooks, and manufacturers of sophisti cated machinery are putting their service manuals on video tape to demonstrate visually how to fix problems. These mun dane examples point the way to the more sublime work of the propagation of the faith. The VCR is an interactive machine — the viewer can con trol the presentation rather than passively submitting to an imposed structure and pace. Start and stop the tape, lay it aside and pick up at the same point later, skip around from one part of the program to another, control information ac cess almost like with a book. The next generation of VCRs will even include “electronic bookmarks” to mark places on the tape for later review. The message of the Church is just as applicable to this age as to any other, but it must be expressed in understandable forms. The message is there, the media are in place, all that remains is to make a start and master the technique. While the home video tape can never replace the written word, it certainly can be used to address many of the same topics now treated in books, but in a different way. The archdiocese of Atlanta has begun working in this new medium with tapes on vocations and on the recent fiftieth an niversary of the Cathedral. The next effort likely will be in the area of evangelization, with material directed toward persons with an initial curiosity about the Catholic faith. Beyond these immediate productions the communications depart ment of the archdiocese is preparing to work with parishes and organizations on video projects of their own. (Father Dora is director of communications for the archdiocese of Atlanta.)
