The National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Stewardship of the Land- A Catholic Perspective
In the Christian tradition, the biblically-based concept of stewardship describes what people’s relationship should be with the land and with each other. In the Bible and the teaching tradition of the Church, these principles of earth stewardship are evident.
The land is God’s.
We believe that we and the earth we inhabit are "the work of God’s hands" (cf. Gen.1-2). We affirm the principle expressed so clearly in Psalms 24: "The earth is the Lord’s and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it."
People are God’s stewards on the land.
Stewardship mean caring for God’s creation. It implies that civil title to a portion of the earth does not confer absolute ownership of it. That belongs to God alone. Civil title does confer responsibility for the land: for the use to which it is put and the care with which it is treated.
The land’s benefits are for everyone.
The land is given by God for all people, not just for those who hold civil title to it. The land is God’s gift for present and future generations of humanity. As the earth’s finite resources are used, provision must be made for people’s future needs. The consumption patterns of the present generation must be adjusted so that future generations might also partake of the land’s bounty.
The land should be distributed equally.
Land ownership should be as widely distributed as is necessary and feasible to meet the needs of the local and national communities and of the human family as a whole. In the words of Pope Leo XIII, the policy of the law with regard to ownership "should be to induce as many people as possible to become owners." The concentration of land in fewer and fewer private hands directly contradicts the biblical concept of equitable land distribution.
The land should be conserved and restored.
Stewardship implies conservation of the land. Farm land is to be nurtured carefully so that it might retain its topsoil and its nutrients, and so the productive power given to it by the Creator. It is to be cared for in this way so that succeeding generations of farmers might produce food and fiber on it and so that succeeding generations of humanity might be fed and clothed from it.
Land use planning must consider social & environmental impacts.
As we appropriate the earth’s resources for our use, as we alter the land to satisfy our needs and as we change the way in which we use different segments of the land, we must be conscious of the social and environmental consequences of our actions. The people most affected by proposed land use changes should have the principal right, where possible, to decide whether or not such changes should occur.
Land use should be appropriate to land quality.
The land should be utilized according to its "best and highest" use. That is, because land is a limited resource, any determination of how a given portion of it will be used should take into consideration the quality of the land and how it might best serve the community as a whole.
The land should provide a moderate livelihood.
Those who work on the land should be able to earn through their labors sufficient money to provide for theirs needs and the needs of their family. In the area of agriculture, for example, farmers should receive a financial return sufficient at least to meet their expenses and provide some reserve for the future.
The land’s workers should be able to become the land’s owners.
People who work on the land that is owned by others should have some means of gradual entry into ownership of the land or corporation, either as individual owners or as shareholders. Farm renters and farmworkers should have the opportunity to become owner-operators of modest-sized family farms; and logging, mine and factory workers should be able to share directly in the management and profits of the corporations for which they work.
The land’s mineral wealth should be shared.
The benefit that people in a region derive from their natural resources should outlive the availability of those resources. Mining companies should not reap high profits over the short term to the disadvantage of the area’s inhabitants over the long term. The profits resulting from mineral resources extracted from the land should be shared in part by the people of the state in which mining occurs.
The idea that the land was entrusted to us by God as our common inheritance, for which we must be stewards, is perhaps most clearly outlined in the Chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus. When the Jewish people finally arrived at their new homeland, and apportioned the land among themselves, God described for them what their attitude should be toward the land as property: "Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the land belongs to me. And to me you are only strangers and guests" (25:23).
We, too, must "strangers and guests" upon the land. We must keep in mind the land’s inherent status as a gift from God for the human family – God’s children – and our own responsibility to be God’s stewards upon it for the benefit of all people.
[Excerpted from Strangers and Guests, Toward Community in the Heartland: A Regional Catholic Bishops’ Statement on Land Issues. The bishops who signed and issued the statement on May 1, 1980 represented Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.]
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Statement on Takings
October 18, 1995
Bishop John McRaith
We offer from our Catholic tradition a moral framework for considering the rights and responsibilities of private property owners to other owners and to the common good. In this regard, we wish to make three major points:
- Private property is a moral good, though a limited one entailing responsibilities as well as rights;
- In promoting the common good, government plays a necessary and legitimate role in balancing the private and public dimensions of the common good for the benefit of the entire society, the wider human family and future generations; and
- With respect to public health and welfare, safety, and the environment, government has special responsibilities because unrestrained private efforts and market forces sometimes do not promote the common good, especially as it relates to regional and global problems and our responsibilities to future generations.
Environment as a Common Good Concern.
The environment serves as a classic case of a clear common good issue. It is a gift from God to everyone, not something owned or controlled by any one nation or privately by any individual or group. A healthy or an unhealthy environment accrues to the benefit or harm of everyone. Everyone has a right to a healthy environment. Care for land, water, and air is everyone's responsibility. No one sector of society — individuals, neighborhoods, markets, mediating communities or institutions, or the government — has the sole responsibility for caring for the environment. If the rights of individual property owners are out of balance with the rights of other owners or the rights of others in the broader society, it undermines the common good. Conversely, if environmental concerns are exaggerated to the detriment of the legitimate needs of individuals and groups, those individuals, groups, and society cannot progress. The need is to strike the requisite balance between private property interests and the legitimate role of government in regulating for the common good, especially for the environment.
From a religious and moral perspective, what seems to be lacking in the current discussion is talk about notions of stewardship which imply not only responsibility for the care of those things in our possession, but even notions of voluntary restraint and sacrifices of our uses of private property for the sake of the common good. In his most recent encyclical, "The Gospel of Life," Pope John Paul II states that:
... Man has a specific responsibility towards the environment in which he lives, towards the creation which God has put at the service of his personal dignity, of his life, not only for the present but also for future generations. It is the ecological question — ranging from the preservation of the natural habitats of the different species of animals and other forms of life to “human ecology” properly speaking which finds in the Bible clear and strong ethical direction, leading to a solution which respects the great good of life, of every life. In fact, “the dominion” granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to “use and misuse,” or to dispose of things as one pleases...
Faithful to Otero Mesa
Ricardo Ramirez, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces
Albuquerque Tribune, March 16, 2004
(Excerpts)
I have watched with great interest the public debate over whether the publicly owned land known as Otero Mesa should be leased to private companies for the purpose of extracting natural gas...
It is my firm belief the protection and stewardship of our natural resources are important mandates for human society, and the management we do of our environment should be informed by the lessons of Christian doctrine...
Significantly, Pope John Paul II has spoken to these issues frequently. In a 2001 address, the pope stated: "The human creature receives a mission of governance over creation to make all of its potential shine.... Unfortunately, if one casts a gaze over the regions of our planet, one notices immediately that humanity has not fulfilled the divine expectation.
"Especially in our times," the pope continued, "man has devastated without hesitation plains and forested valleys, polluted the waters, deformed the Earth's habitats, made the air un-breathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems and turned green spaces into deserts."
In this and other cases, the Catholic faith and other traditions show our present management of our environment, focusing on short-term extraction of nonrenewable resources at the long-term expense of other living creatures, is not in accordance with stewardship of the creation....
The ongoing controversy regarding environmental issues in general, and public lands in particular, is an issue of which I am acutely aware, and I doubt such controversy will recede in the near future. However, I reiterate that a careful reflection and study of the profound moral messages of the Christian faith leads to an inescapable conclusion that a reorientation of our approach toward the environment is strongly needed....
It is my hope that, with deeper reflection and more careful reading of Scripture in its proper context, human society might come to a more thorough and appropriate understanding of the need to protect our environment, including Otero Mesa.
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