From a recent piece by Fr. John Rausch published in the Glenmary Challenge:
In the fall when leaves from oak and maple scream vivid colors of yellow and red and the understory of the forest blends its scarlets and browns, the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) sponsors a tour called the Pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Appalachia.
The tour leads participants through the coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains, perhaps the oldest mountain range on earth. These mountains reforested North America for thousands of years and represent the seedbed for the most diverse hardwood forest on the continent with over 80 species of trees. Tour participants see firsthand ways that forest is being assaulted, an assault caused by America’s insatiable demand for cheap energy—regardless of the ecological costs.
Two pastoral letters from the bishops of Appalachia, This Land Is Home to Me (1975) and At Home in the Web of Life (1995) have recently been reprinted by CCA in a single volume. These pastoral letters, according to Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio, and episcopal advisor to CCA, “provide an indispensable foundation for our future work.”
The pastoral letters are the basis for CCA’s tours and programs and continue, these many years later, to speak prophetic words to our world about pursuing happiness from materialism. To our world, threatened by global warming and strangled by frivolous consumption, the principles from these Appalachian pastorals continue to offer a moral direction.
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