Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 5 — The Georgia Bulletin, November 5, 1987
Father Gerald Peterson
A Just Food System
I might begin by saying that “Rural Reflections" deals with
issues that are important only to people who eat! Occasional
ly I do tackle other problems of a rural pastor. However, today
I've decided to share a few thoughts on a just food system in
our country. Recent issues of “Catholic Rural Life" have turn
ed my interest in this direction.
As an individual, you should be concerned about a just
food system, first of all, because you are concerned about
the food you eat. Secondly I hope at the same time you are in
terested in the basic dignity of the human person. This is the
root of Catholic social teaching.
On the dignity of the individual, Pope Johm XXIII said:
"Every person has a right...to bodily integrity and to the
means which are necessary and suitable for the proper
development of life.” (cf. Catholic Rural Life, July 1984, pg 4)
And the first of these means, according to him, is food. For
all of us, food is a basic human need and a basic human right.
But, according to Catholic Rural Life, "We are living with cur
rent world and national conditions that keep our food supply
from reaching the most needy. Most threatening to American
consumers is the fact that these conditions may soon restrict
the food supply we now enjoy.”
Quite to my surprise, I learned that in El Salvador, 14
families own 90 percent of the land. This means most of the
people are landless and poor. In our own country, 50 percent
of all farm land is owned by one percent of all farm land
owners. And with land priced beyond what it can produce,
many farmers since 1970 rent the land instead of buying it.
They can't afford to buy it. Large insurance companies and
other corporations can.
At present we have an abundance of food in our country
and it is produced by a little less than three percent of the
work force. Twenty-two percent of all jobs are related to food
production and processing and 20 percent of our Gross Na
tional Product comes from the food sector.
At the same time, according to Catholic Rural Life, "there
are several alarming trends in today's American agriculture:
• One percent of all farmers generate 30 percent of all farm
sales;
• The largest 10 percent of all farms receive over 50 percent
of all direct government payments;
• Farm credit has tripled since 1970, leading to increased
farm liquidations and payments in arrears in the current farm
recession. Cumulative farm debt now totals over $200 billion;
Rural Reflections
• The market for domestic food sales is not growing."
The National Catholic Rural Life Conference has con
sistently encouraged the family farm system of agriculture
for 60 years. I personally believe that the family farm is the
best means of developing the just food system.
The issue of food and agriculture interlinks rural and urban
people as never before. What happens to the family farmer
will determine whether or not a landowning elite will increas
ingly control our basic human right to food.
When a prison inmate is executed, a prayer vigil is formed
as people express their opposition to the death penalty. Now
is the time for Catholics to join other Christians in the active
fight to stop the death sentence being imposed on the 50,000
people who die each day in the world because of hunger.
Do we want to stand by and allow 14 corporations to con
trol our food supply? If we do, chances are good that includ
ed in the ranks of the hungry will be your family and mine. I
don't want to have happen here what has happened in El
Salvador. Help stop it, won't you, by letting your voice be
heard in Washington when farm issues are being debated and
voted upon by our legislators? Thanks for joining in the fight
to save the family farm and a just food system.
SI. Ivan J. Kauffman
Making Peace
m- Costa Rica: The Power Of Peace
“There have been significant instances in which people
have successfully resisted oppression without recourse to
arms...Such movements have seldom gained headlines,
even though they have left their mark on history."
-The Bishops Pastoral Letter
"The Challenge of Peace"
When President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year he said he con
sidered it not so rnbch a personal honor as an honor to his na
tion.
"This prize is a recognition of Costa Rica, of the way we are
and the way we think,” he told reporters. "It has been given to
a magnificent country and to the values we share — freedom,
peace and democracy.”
those are the kind of words politicians often use, but in
this case there is some real history behincMhem.
In 1949 this tiny country in Central America had just
defeated an attempted Communist takeover. It was a time
when most nations including the United States were building
up their armies, but the people of Costa Rica instead voted to
disband their armed forces, and since then have been one of
the few nations in the world which has no regular armed
forces. They rely only on their national police force for securi
ty-
Anywhere in the world this would have been regarded as a
risky step, but in a region dominated by armies and civil wars,
it must have seemed especially risky. By the usual reasoning
— which holds that national security only comes from
military power — Costa Rica should long ago have been gob
bled up by one of its heavily armed neighbors.
Instead Costa Rica has thrived, becoming the only suc
cessful democracy in the region, and is today by any stand
ard much stronger than any of its heavily armed neighbors.
The public health picture in Costa Rica is a good example.
While the neighboring nations of Guatemala and Honduras
were spending more than 15 percent of their gross national
product on the military, Costa Rica was spending only about
3.5 percent of its GNP on its police force. Costa Rica instead
spent its limited funds on health and education — about 11
percent of its GNP, comf. ed to about 3.5 percent in
Guatemala.
As a result infant mortality in Costa Rica fell from 85
deaths per thousand infants in 1960 to only 19 deaths in 1983.
During the same period serious malnutrition among Costa
Rica’s children fell by 80 percent. Although infant death rates
also fell in Guatemala and Honduras, they remain much
higher than in Costa Rica.
The Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, the nation which
borders Costa Rica to the north, has put the Costa Rican
policy of disarmament to a severe test in recent years. The
Costa Rican people do not want a Marxist government across
the border, and many of them felt the nation had no real
choice but to rearm. The United States government strongly
urged the Costa Rican government to accept increased
military aid.
This was the major issue in the most recent Costa Rican
presidential election, and President Arias, although a
political long-shot, won it by campaigning on a platform of
staying with the Costa Rican tradition of peace. When Arias
was elected he had to do something about the civil wars in
Central American which threatened to spread to Costa Rica,
and that led to the peace plan which made him this year's
Nobel Peace Prize winner.
He now joins a list of other prominent Catholics who have
won the prize in recent years — including Lech Walesa and
Mother Teresa. But as he said when he won the prize, what he
accomplished as a political leader was made possible only by
his nation’s people.
They have proven that strength does not come from arms.
National strength comes from people, and the people who
are the strongest are those who know how to live without
destroying other people.
Father John Catoir
Light One Candle
Pope Is Fundamental On Jesus
Some Christian fundamentalists are a puzzle to me. If they
want to believe that the Pope is the anti-Christ, as many
among them openly proclaimed during the papal visit, then
so be it. What a person believes is entirely his or her own
business. What I can’t grasp is the logic of it. The fact that
the Pope puts Jesus at the center of every talk he gives
seems to make no difference to them.
Here are a few quotes from John Paul ll s recent trip to
America:
(To priests 9-10-87) "I am convinced that there is no better
way to start than to direct our thoughts to that shepherd we
all know — the Good Shepherd, the one High Priest, our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ...we priests are Christ to all those to
whom we minister. Dear brothers, at these times it is more
important than ever that we heed the advice of the letter to
the Hebrews: ‘Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who in
spires us and perfects our faith. For the sake of the joy which
lay before Him. He endured the cross, heedless of its
shame’.”
(To Jewish leaders 9-11-87) "At the same time, our common
heritage, task and hope do not eliminate our distinctive iden
tities. Because of her specific Christian witness, ‘the church
must preach Jesus Christ to the world’.”
(To Hispanics 9-13-87) "Jesus Christ was born poor, lived
poor and died poor. He loved the poor. In His Kingdom the
poor have a special place. The church cannot be any dif
ferent.”
(To black Catholics 9-12-87) "It is important to realize that
there is no black church, no white church, no American
church: but there is and must be in the one church of Jesus
Christ, a home for blacks, whites, Americans, every culture
and race — the church is Catholic.”
(To hospital workers 9-14-87) "The church, through the
sacraments, continues to care for the sick ana dying as
Jesus did.”
This is a small sample of the recent sayings of John Paul II.
For the life of me I cannot imagine how anyone can call such
a dedicated servant of Jesus the anti-Christ. I’m sure that if
asked they would give you a long explanation, but I wonder if
they honestly believe it.
Let us pray for one another, “that all may be one.”