Catholic Land Movement video screengrab / YouTube
CV NEWS FEED // Several leaders in the growing Catholic Land Movement are set to present their organization’s mission at the Vatican Dec. 3-4.
One of the leaders, Catholic father and homesteader Michael Thomas, explained in a recent interview with CatholicVote how he helped revitalize the early 20th-century movement and became part of the group presenting at the Vatican.
The group, which includes Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of Albany, will discuss how the agrarian movement helps Catholics work with the land, through gardening, farming, or homesteading while focusing on the harmony between the agricultural and liturgical calendars.
As Thomas said, the movement “encourage[s] Catholics to a full participation with the dominion and stewardship of creation that God has given us.”
“Through the process of homesteading and humbling myself … I found the truth of the faith that my ancestors carried,” Thomas added, “and it shined at me like a giant spotlight and returned me to that faith.”
Learn how Thomas came to embrace the Catholic Land Movement, integrating his faith and his lifestyle as a homesteading farmer.
CatholicVote: Could you share some history of the Catholic Land Movement?
Thomas: The Catholic Land Movement started over 100 years ago in England as a reaction to rapid industrialism and post-World War I conditions. Led by Fr. Vincent McNabb and several political and social commentators, the Catholic Land Movement began a practical effort of what coalesces as Distributist theory in economics.
At the peak of this, there are six different land associations — several different demonstration farms that are both figuring out how to get Catholics resettled into rural property and equipping them with the skills to be successful when they make that transition. The farms taught skills like farming, carpentry, and crafting. The initial Land Movement was very engaged in both the theoretical and the practical work of getting Catholics back onto productive property.
One hundred years later, we find the contemporary Land Movement in a very similar temporal situation, one in which capital, property, and political power are rapidly consolidating into a global, technocratic order.
People are having a very natural response to that saying, “Hey, we don’t want to lose our farms. We don’t want to lose our houses. We don’t want to lose our stake in the economy or capital. We don’t want to lose the means of production. From the bottom up, how do we return to a social order that guarantees that for the common person?”
Many people are rediscovering the Land Movement, rediscovering homesteading, localism and small-scale economy and agriculture, and wanting to engage in it again. But that engagement necessitates organization, it necessitates education in very basic and practical skills. In that, we find the mission work of the Land Movement is once again very important.
CV: How did you discover the movement?
Thomas: I’ve been homesteading for about 10 years. My family and I have been growing in our faith and in our participation with the landscape and growing our food and raising animals and interacting with our community. I saw a natural pairing between my Catholic faith and that very practical impulse of agrarian localism. I asked myself, “Where else does this exist in the history of Catholicism? Can I find people who have spoken to the synergy that I’m seeing between agrarian localism and my Catholic faith?” And in that, I found the Land Movement from 100 years ago and said, “Wow, this is a whole model of how fellowship and education and integration of Catholicism and agrarianism in response to the modern condition can happen. It should exist now.”
So, with a handful of other people, I put together a contemporary effort to resurrect the original Land Movement and do the work of helping other Catholic homesteaders, helping other people who are engaged in local economy, helping other Catholics who want to deepen their understanding of the integration between our traditional liturgical calendar and our practical agrarian calendar and live that. The movement was born again about five years ago, and it has been wildly successful in its growth and in its effect on people’s lives.
CV: How has embracing this movement affected your family and community?
Thomas: St. Aquinas says it beautifully: “Natural order prepares itself for the reception of the perfection of grace.”
Christ often instructs us to be humble. If we look at the root word of “humble,” we find “humus.” We find earth. Broken down in an etymology way, in a root language way, being humble is being “close to the earth.” When I orient my family close to the earth, when I orient my relationship to my neighbors and other things with an attention to that closeness, I prepare myself, my family, and my greater community for a reception of grace. That’s how it’s affected me.
Quite literally, I was a cradle Catholic, but I didn’t really take my faith too seriously for many years. Through the process of homesteading and humbling myself and growing all my own food and really focusing on that, I found the truth of the faith that my ancestors carried. It shined at me like a giant spotlight and returned me to that faith. What I’m looking to do is, from the bottom up, help the temporal order through families and through good stewardship, return themselves to an orientation around natural order that prepares people for the reception of divine grace. That’s what the Land Movement’s all about.
CV: What kind of skills do you teach at the Catholic Land Movement movement conferences?
Thomas: The conferences tend to focus on very practical skills. How do I slaughter a pig? How do I introduce a milk cow into my family? How do I overwinter a wheat crop? How do I do simple carpentry? How do I make a candle? How do I… on and on and on. The Land Movement is very, very much about restoring those practical skills to people through workshops and conferences but within the context of it informing a deepening of their faith.
So, at our conferences, you’ll also find workshops that talk about the liturgical calendar and its relationship to the agricultural calendar or saints that relate to the agricultural history of Catholicism, or just a chant workshop so people can pray the Daily Office more effectively and more competently.
All of our conferences are both the practical skills of very, very base temporal order things and also the liturgical and sacraments integrated into an attention to the destination of our spiritual life.
CV: Congratulations on your invitation to the Vatican! What were you invited to speak about there and how can people help bring the movement to Rome?
Thomas: So that whole process is somewhat miraculous, even to me, or an expression of the fruit of the good work of the Land Movement. My local bishop witnessed the Land Movement through participation in one of our conferences and invited us on a mission with him to present the Land Movement mission work to the Vatican. The Dicastery of Integrated Human Flourishing will listen to a presentation of the contemporary Land Movement’s mission work and what we’re trying to do.
We will present the mission work of the Land Movement to several other dicasteries, cardinals, bishops, and institutes, too. Our hope in that effort is that the Holy Father — who we also at one point [will] have an audience with — that the Holy Father will recognize our contemporary Land Movement is in harmony with the original Land Movement 100 years ago, which carried with it an apostolic blessing from Pope Pius XII. Our hope in our mission to Rome is that the contemporary hierarchy recognizes our contemporary efforts in the Land Movement as a continuation of the apostolically blessed work, the original Land Movement.
CV: How can people living in cities or suburbs who are unable to move start implementing this spirituality into their day-to-day lives?
Thomas: The Land Movement’s impulse is to encourage Catholics to a full participation with the dominion and stewardship of creation that God has given us. And that means a deep compassion, a deep attention to where our temporal needs are satisfied and how they integrate into creation and the natural order and the social order.
Even if you’re in an apartment, you can begin to ask the questions “Where does my food come from?” “Where does my light come from?” “Where does my heat come from?” and let those questions sit with you.
In whatever small way you can, take a greater step into participation with your dominion. Maybe that’s participating with a farmer’s market, volunteering at a farm or community garden, or even growing herbs on your windowsill. Whatever small way you can, take that next step. The Land Movement is here to not just encourage you, but also to support you practically — to say, “Hey, if you need someone to help learn this stuff, we have a network that you can engage.” The Land Movement is also there to encourage Catholics who want to deepen their participation with the liturgy and the sacraments.
You could be in a prison cell and watch grass grow in the crack of a window frame and feel a connection to nature. That connection and how it turns your soul toward God’s purpose for you is what the Land Movement is hoping that you connect with. However small it is, that’s our work.
Note: This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
