The Rural Solution
Modern Catholic Voices on Going "Back to the Land"
(click to browse other titles)
About This Book [ what the critics are saying | table of contents | about the author(s) ]
Is a Return to the Land utopian folly or outdated futility? Or is it rather the sine qua non for a Catholic Renaissance in every aspect of our temporal, intellectual, cultural and religious lives? The writers in this book are unanimous in declaring that a return to the land is the Catholic solution: one that is desirable, practical and urgently needed. It is neither nostalgia nor daydreaming, but rather the necessary foundation for a society based on the life of Nazareth and nourished by the sacrifice of Calvary. Including essays by Msgr. Richard Williamson, Dr. Peter Chojnowski, Christopher McCann, Integrity Magazine author and Catholic University sociologist Walter John Marx, Ph.D., and Willis Nutting, Ph.D., a member of the "Green Revolutionary" circle around Fr. Leo Ward of Notre Dame University, The Rural Solution offers an inspiring and uplifting sketch of the merits of rural life, and provides the motivation and impetus for everyone seeking a sane solution to the real problems of modern life to give it a try.
What the Critics are Saying
No documents found.
No documents found.
Table of Contents
Introduction —Traditionalist Press
Ruralism Versus Urbanism —Bishop Richard Williamson
Two Pigs and a Cow —Christopher McCann
The Better Life —Willis D. Nutting
The Economics of the Catholic Family —Walter John Marx
Two Articles on Distributism —Peter E. Chojnowski
Distributism: Economics as if People Mattered
Why and How for a Parallel Economy
About the Author(s)
Christopher McCann
Christopher McCann is the Director of Marketing at Angelus Press in Kansas City, Missouri. He has written for The Angelus magazine and studied modern Chinese history and language at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests include the notion of a natural-law “right to arms’” with a view towards the common good contra a libertarian individual-rights approach, and the Solidarismus of Dr. Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine. In his spare time, he tinkers with a 22-year-old diesel car. He lives and works in Kansas City with his wife, his six children, two German Shepherds, and a Siberian Husky.
Msgr. Richard Williamson
Richard Williamson is a bishop of the Catholic Church, affiliated with the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X. He is currently rector of the Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces Seminary, in La Reja, Argentina. He served for some two decades of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn. He was ordained a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1976 and consecrated bishop in 1988.
Peter Chojnowski, Ph.D.
Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has degrees in political science and philosophy from Christendom College, Va., and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University. He specializes in the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and Catholic Social Thought and has written over 100 articles and reviews on Catholic topics. He currently teaches at Gonzaga University and Immaculate Conception Academy. He lives with his wife and six children on a three-acre farm in Washington State.
Walter John Marx, Ph.D.
Dr. Marx was a sociologist at the Catholic University of America, prior to his taking an assignment with the U.S. State Department. He graduated from the University of Washington, attended the Louvain and the University of Brussels as a CRB (Commission for Relief in Belgium) Fellow with the Belgian American Educational Foundation (1923–34), and took his doctorate at Columbia University, writing The Development of Charity in Medieval Louvain for his dissertation, which he later self-published (1936). He also taught in social sciences at Yonkers Collegiate Center and served as Assistant Professor of History at Mt. St. Joseph’s College (Penn.). By the time he was fourteen he was editing and publishing his own newspaper in Teller, Alaska, and served for a time in the Army Air Corps. His articles appeared in most major Catholic publications, such as The Sign (published by the Passionist Fathers of New Jersey), and he is the author of Mechanization and Culture and The Twilight of Capitalism and the War.
Willis D. Nutting, Ph.D.
Willis Nutting (1900-1975) was raised a Presbyterian in Iowa City, Iowa. In his late teens, he joined the Episcopal Church and eventually became an Anglican priest. In 1921 he graduated from the University of Iowa, and then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and an Anglican seminarian. After his graduation and ordination in 1924, he became the pastor of a parish in Antigua. He later returned to the United States, due to illness, to become a pastor of an Episcopal church in Evergreen, Colorado, where he also helped a small group of seminarians prepare for ordination. In preparing these seminarians, Nutting found himself confronting many of his opinions about the faith that were not in line with his church’s beliefs – a process that resulted in his eventual conversion to the Catholic Church. Though he studied in Rome for the Catholic priesthood for a while in 1930, he discerned his lay vocation and returned to the University of Iowa to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, which he completed in 1933. He began teaching German and Greek at the College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minn, and in 1936 accepted a position at the University of Notre Dame as an assistant professor of history in 1936. He and his wife moved to Notre Dame and settled on two acres of land north of the university. He authored many books and articles on the subject of education, including Schools and the Means of Education and The Free City, published in 1967. In 1950 he became one of the founding members of Notre Dame’s General Program, a program that continues today as the Program of Liberal Studies. The General Program was modeled after the Great Books program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. Nutting was a beloved teacher in the General Program. He valued the contributions of his students to each other’s learning and to his own. A 1968 article in the Dome jokingly stated, “Dr. Willis D. Nutting is a student at the University of Notre Dame. He confesses that he feels a bit strange taking a salary for learning. He sits back as moderator in a Great Books Seminar and allows students to teach each other and, of course, himself. He teaches too, sometimes.”
In addition to the educational initiative with the undergraduates of Notre Dame, he developed a successful adult education program for Florida’s University of Melbourne, and he began a program of adult education at Notre Dame, called the “Seminar on the Great Human Problems.” He was also a leading figure in a Notre Dame specific version of the “back-to-the-land movement” that he and his collaborator, Fr. Leo R. Ward, C.S.C., termed the “Green Revolution.”
Nutting officially retired from Notre Dame in 1970. While no longer on the faculty, Nutting continued to teach side-by-side with younger teachers and held directed readings courses for students at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s. He also taught scripture classes to adults at Christ the King Parish. Nutting believed in “no retirement age for thinking people.” In fact, upon his retirement, a group of Nutting’s supporters organized a campaign to have Nutting appointed president and Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, then president of the university, elevated to the new rank of chancellor. The university’s charter states that only a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross may be president of the university. However, Nutting’s supports wanted him to direct the administration. They collected signatures on petitions to change the charter and were of the mind that Fr. Hesburgh would have more time to concentrate on his activities outside the confines of Notre Dame if he were chancellor.
Willis Nutting continued teaching – and learning – until his death in 1975, leaving behind a legacy of dedication to education, the faith, family and the land. To commemorate his legacy, an award is given in his name each year to a professor in the Program of Liberal Studies who demonstrates Nutting’s commitment to teaching and learning (adapted from “Willis D. Nutting (1900–1975),” from the “Who Inspires Us” webpage at the University of Notre Dame (http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/inspires/nutting.shtml).
