The following story first appeared in the Spring 2004 Glenmary Challenge.
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Caring for Creation
Rural=Nature=Environment: This equation leads Glenmary missioners
to an increasing focus on ecological issues.
By Father John S. Rausch

MOONSCAPE: Landscape near McRoberts, Ky., after mountaintop removal, a form of surface mining.

On a grassy triangle in the town of Kistler, W.Va. (part of Glenmary’s mission territory of Logan County), a pavilion shelters a bench for meditation adjacent to a three-foot-high memorial stone. On that stone, over columns of names, the inscription reads: “In Memory of Those Who Died in the Buffalo Creek Flood, February 26, 1972.”

On that day more than 30 years ago, an earthen dam built by the Pittston Corporation on the middle fork of Buffalo Creek broke, spewing more than 175 million gallons of water and coal waste through a 17-mile valley. Within a mere half hour, the spill killed 125 people, wiped away three communities, injured 523 people and left 4,000 homeless.

Traditionally, the economic system has justified pollution of water and air, devastation of land, and risks to health and safety as the inevitable price a community pays for jobs and tax revenues generated by extractive industries. But, as the Kentucky bishops wrote in their 2002 statement about the aggressive mining practice known as mountaintop removal: “Society must reject the false dichotomy of jobs versus the environment and creatively find ways allowing workers to earn their livelihoods while respecting creation.”

Glenmary serves rural areas that sit in the lap of nature and feel the direct effects of either good or abusive environmental practices. From its beginning Glenmary nurtured a deep interest in the care of creation. Father William Howard Bishop, Glenmary’s founder, championed rural living and agrarian reform as president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference from 1928-35. He chose St. Francis of Assisi, a missioner and lover of creation, as a Glenmary patron. Even before developing today’s conscious awareness of ecological issues, Glenmary intuitively saw the interconnection between God’s creation and the people with their land.

In 1974 and 1975 Glenmary Father Les Schmidt joined Sister Beth Davies, a community worker, to convene over 100 meetings with people in Appalachia to discover the needs of the area. They found many low-income people living in the flood plain, miners suffering from black lung and landowners enduring the effects of strip mining because they lacked ownership of the minerals beneath their land. They also discovered people with bad water and destabilized land caused by underground mining. All these problems stemmed from environmental causes and the people’s powerlessness to change things.

Father Les and Sister Beth’s research formed the basis for the Appalachian bishops’ first pastoral letter, This Land Is Home to Me. Twenty years later a second Appalachian pastoral, At Home in the Web of Life, sketched a vision for a sustainable economy, one that puts back as much as it takes out. By listening to rural people, Glenmarians have continued to become aware of ecological justice as we begin to link the vulnerable poor with environmental hazards.

McRoberts, Ky., a small coal camp in Letcher County, had not experienced a major flood since 1957. But within 18 months beginning in 2000, it suffered five—after a mining company began denuding the hills all around the town through mountaintop removal.

Glenmary Father Bob Rademacher and I supported the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) in convening two prayer events to publicize this abuse. The first Prayer on the Mountain took place in December 2002, overlooking McRoberts amidst the moonscape created by mountaintop removal.

The ecumenical gathering of 60 people read Scripture and said prayers echoing the sentiments of Psalm 148: “Praise the Lord, you mountains and all hills.” Then folks scattered wildflower seeds over the rocks and dirt to symbolize God’s power to renew the gift of creation.

Six months later our second prayer event resembled the Stations of the Cross. Twenty-five participants visited homes and buildings affected by the flooding throughout McRoberts and nearby Fleming-Neon, pausing at each “station” to pray and plant a flower. Through beauty God regenerates the human spirit. The ministry of the Church, symbolized by planting begonias, marigolds and other flowers, responded to the ugliness of greed and indifference with the beauty of creation.

As Glenmary continues to serve small towns and rural areas, its awareness of indifference to the earth and the need for environmental justice keeps growing. In Lewis County, Ky., the Glenmary Farm faced devastating floods in 1997 and 2000 that many believe resulted from clear-cut logging. In Dickenson County, Va., landowners deal with large fissures caused by underground mining. Other Glenmary mission areas list ecological dangers such as industrial farm waste, toxic waste dumping and environmental effects of weapons production.

Ecological problems seldom stay in one small geographic area. People, even counties and states away, live down wind and down stream. A tragic slurry spill of 250 million gallons in Martin County, Ky., in October 2000 alarmed Cincinnati and Louisville as the sludge slick eventually emptied into the Ohio River and threatened the drinking water supply of these river cities.

Pope John Paul II teaches: “Respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation.” (World Day of Peace Message, 1990). Care of creation represents a spiritual vision that means living for the common good. Through its rural ministry, Glenmary has a unique opportunity to understand the interdependence of all life and to continue speaking up for creation.