II. THE LIFE OF FATHER BISHOP, 1915-1939 (con't)

(Numbered notes, indicated in parenthesis, are listed at the end of this Web page.)

Survey of the Period (con't)

1923-1935: The National Rural Life Conference

Five weeks after opening his parochial school in Clarkesville, Father Bishop attended the first meeting of the National Rural Life Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty-five years after that inaugural convention, Father Bishop reflected on the reasons that had motivated his attendance.

The problem of rural education had been the issue out of which the entire rural movement in the United States Catholic developed.(48) Fr. Edwin B. O’Hara who was the head of the recently created Rural Life Bureau of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference articulated the three main goals of rural movement. The first goal was to make farming a better business: it sought to make farming profitable enough to support families. The second goal was to enhance for the multitudes the joy of living in the country. For too long isolation, drudgery, and lack of educational opportunities had been a way of life in rural areas. Finally, there was the rural movement’s goal to extend the kingdom of God on earth. This third goal was based on the belief that the best and most effective way the Church could aid in the solution of the rural problems was by promoting religion in rural communities.(49)

The St. Louis Conference adopted six resolutions in response to these goals. While it is not important to list the resolutions, their emphasis was on education as the primary weapon to be employed in combating the problems of rural America. This educational emphasis had two prongs. First, there was the need to educate the general Catholic population on the unique set of problems that were faced by their fellow believers living in rural areas; and secondly, there was the need to improve Catholic education in rural areas.(50) The tenor of this first Conference was “predominantly missionary”(51) with “social and economic studies. . .entirely subordinated to the main thought which was the extension of religious help to rural people.”(52)

The St. Louis meeting of the N.R.L.C. marks a significant moment in Father Bishop’s life and development. The N.R.L.C. expanded his horizons and as a member of the Board of Directors, and later president of the Conference, Father Bishop was provided with a national forum for his ideas. Being in contact on a national level with other priests who shared similar concerns and problems, encouraged Father Bishop to think in terms of national responses and solutions to the issues and problems that were confronting rural America.(53)

Perhaps more importantly the N.R.L.C. supported and fueled Father Bishop’s missionary enthusiasm by expanding his vision of rural education. “Religious vacations schools” now joined Catholic schools as the primary vehicles for missionizing rural America. After the St Louis Conference the missionary dimensions of the Church occupied a permanent and important part of Father Bishop’s conviction and rhetoric and he increasingly saw the Church’s role in rural areas through “missionary colored glasses.”

The dividends of Father Bishop’s expanded vision appeared almost immediately. Since November of 1922 the League of St. Louis had aided the parochial school in Clarkesville. In June of 1924 Father Bishop extended the vision of the League to aid all rural parochial schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The name of the League was changed to the League of the Little Flower and according to an agreement between Father Bishop and Archbishop Curley the newly formed League would “unite all diocesan activities in behalf of the Country Missions and schools under the head of the League of the Little Flower.”(54)

Two years later, in April of 1926, Father Bishop published the first issue of The Little Flower. The purpose of “the little paper” was to promote "the big message” of the League of the Little Flower: the aid and support of Catholic education in the rural areas of the archdiocese. The paper appeared five times a year and, in addition to being its publisher, Father Bishop was also the paper’s compiler and editor. Skilled in using the printed word for persuasion he now had a diocesan wide audience for his “big message.”(55)

One of Father Bishop’s more important talents was his ability, via the printed word, to communicate his message in a clear, simple, and understandable manner. The first issue of The Little Flower is illustrative of this point. On the first page he lucidly outlines the purpose of the League in terms of problem and solution: “the malady we face is that the faith has been losing its hold upon our country people and the remedy is to build Catholic schools wherever possible.” League members will participate in the “remedy” by “offering masses, communions, novenas, and prayers” and by aiding in “the gathering of funds in the Annual Diocesan Collection.”(56)

The dominant theme of The Little Flower during the ten years that Father Bishop was its editor was that the rural areas of Maryland were mission territory and deserved the help and aid of all of the people of that Archdiocese of Baltimore:

He believed that the harvest that would be reaped from such an effort would be a “strong and sturdy Catholic citizenry.”(58)

Father Bishop was convinced that a missionary effort in the rural sections of Maryland would provide the antidote to the many problems that harassed Catholicism in both rural and urban areas alike. “Leakage” from the faith, anti-Catholic bigotry, communism, capitalism, and a declining Catholic population in the cities were a number of the questions he believed plagued the Church.(59) Perhaps Father Bishop’s greatest success in the League of the Little Flower did not lie in solving or alleviating the multitude of problems facing the Church in rural Maryland, but rather in making the people of the archdiocese “home mission conscious.”(60)

In order to make the priest of the archdiocese more “home mission conscious” Father Bishop organized the first diocesan rural life conference in the United States in October of 1925. Modeled after its national counterpart, the N.R.L.C., Father Bishop hoped to bring together both country and city priests who were interested in the problems and issues that confronted the rural priest. Also, like its national counterpart, the Baltimore Diocesan Conference stressed education as the means to deal with these problems.(61)

During this time when Father Bishop was deeply involved in The League of the Little Flower and the N.R.L.C. he was also attending the local problems that beset his parishioners and the Clarkesville community. He was constantly exploring methods and ways to improve the lives of those who earned their living from the land. He tried to upgrade the livestock in Clarksville area.(62) He organized a co-operative to market local eggs.(63) He started a 4-H club.(64) The credit union that he organized is probably his most enduring accomplishment.(65) Although Father Bishop had been born and raised in a city, and consequently had acquired a majority of his knowledge about farming from books, he nonetheless was an adamant “friend of the farmers, the poor farmers.”(66) His ideas at times were grandiose and naïve in their conception, but is motivation could not be faulted. Moved by a love for the farmers and the land they worked, Father Bishop labored tirelessly to improve their lot.(67)

The year 1928 was significant in Father Bishop’s life, and in the lives of all the Catholics in the United States because it marked Herbert Hoover’s victory over Governor Al Smith of New York for the presidency of the United States. Anti-Catholic hatred and bigotry had smoldered in American society since the nation’s inception and Smith’s Catholicism had fanned those coals of prejudice and ignorance.(68)

Smith’s defeat once again focused the attention of Catholic leaders on the problem of the Church’s integration into American society. Almost from the first day that Catholics had arrived in America they had been viewed with suspicion: was it possible for the to be a “good” Catholic and a “good” citizen at the same time? Many Americans thought not, believing the two were incompatible. Father Bishop addressed this problem in an article entitled “Intolerance in Rural Communities” which was published in The Ecclesiastical Review in June of 1929. He began the article by mentioning a letter he had circulated among the hierarchy, priests, and laypeople, in which he had asked for their opinions and suggestions concerning anti-Catholic bigotry, in rural areas.(69) After summarizing these suggestions he made a statement that reflects an important development in his thought:

From this point Father Bishop conceived of missionary activity in the rural areas in terms of “being on the attack.” Consequently many of the “defensive” methods that he had used in the past (e.g., building parochial schools) were no longer viable. New ways must now be discovered to conform to the new “offensive” battle plan and program.

Less than one year after Smith’s defeat, a second dramatic event occurred that also profoundly influenced Father Bishop’s life and thought. With the advent of the Great Depression in the fall of 1929, and the economic chaos that ensued, issues of “bread and butter” were swiftly thrust to the forefront of the nation’s attention.(71) Father Bishop’s “new offensive battle plan” which was gradually beginning to take shape was now modified to include an even greater concern for the temporal welfare of those living in rural America.

This shift is clearly evident in Father Bishop’s six-year tenure as the president of the N.R.L.C. Elected to that position at the Atchison, Kansas meeting in September of 1928 he, along with a small group of other priests, ran the Conference during the early critical years of the Depression. The question they faced was how to bring economic relief to millions that were suffering in the United States. Father Bishop and his colleagues firmly believed that agrarianism, a return to the land, would be the basis for establishing a new order for the shambles that had been wrought by the Depression.(72)

The recurring theme of Father Bishop’s six years as president of N.R.L.C. was that Catholic Church is “chiefly interested in the religious difficulties of our rural people, but she does not close her eyes to their temporal hardships.”(73) It was a delicate balance that Father Bishop sought to maintain:(74)

It is important to analyze Father Bishop’s approach to this balance between a concern for the spiritual welfare of the people and a concern for their temporal welfare not in terms of either/or but from a perspective of emphasis. Father Bishop made it clear where he believed the emphasis should be placed: “the chief object of the Church in the country as everywhere else is to save souls.”(76) In his mind Catholics Rural Movement was fundamentally religious, “more fundamentally religious, if that is possible, then it is rural.”(77)

In tipping the scale on the side of the “spiritual good” of the people in rural America, Father Bishop did not close his eyes to the “temporal hardships” of the farmer. He states in his 1932 presidential speech that “farms are for man and not man for the farms”; and that “human values are the real objects worth striving for” and not “the values of big of big business and government.”(78) He believed that farming should first be a way of making a living, that is, a way of life; and only secondly a source of cash income.(79) Attacking the ever expanding acreage of farms and the practice of replacing human beings with “efficient” machines he maintained:

He staunchly held that true efficiency is always measured by human values; it is the greatest good for the greatest number.(81)

Father Bishop expanded upon this theme in Landward.(82) He tenaciously attacked “a now discredited capitalistic system” which he believed had been built “upon individualistic greed.”(83) An editorial entitled “Tenantry or Ownership” is illustrative of the intensity with which Father Bishop crusaded on behalf of “human values”:

Father Bishop’s style of leadership during the years of his presidency of the N.R.L.C. was typical of his approach to any such endeavor. It can best be described as autocratic and produced both positive and negative results. As a result of his style of leadership he probably “saved the Conference from a slow death” but also alienated many of the younger members of the N.R.L.C. who felt it was being run as a clique. At the meeting in Milwaukee in 1933 Father Bishop was elected to his final one-year term as president but at the same time the recommendation was made to the Board of Directors that they consider rotating the office of the presidency.(85)

One of the programs that Father Bishop strongly advocated in response to the economic woes of the nation was the rehabilitation of the unemployed on the land, the settling of the displaced people on small farms in clusters of colonies.(86) He had hoped to begin such a colony in Clarkesville but after months of garnering support from state and local leaders the project collapsed.(87)

With the failure of his colonization project in early 1935 Father Bishop now focused his entire attention on an idea he had harbored for the past few years: to found a religious community to do missionary work in the rural areas of the United States. On Pentecost Sunday of that year he traveled to the Motherhouse of the Maryknoll Missioners to discuss his proposed religious community with Bishop Walsh.(88) He posed the same question that had dominated his thought and writings the previous eight years:

Bishop Walsh’s response was both supportive and prophetic: “It must be done.”(90)

To continue with this Survey of the Period...
1936-1939: "Under the inspiration of Christ's love for mankind and the guidance of the Holy Spirit we
are privileged to begin a great work."