Catholics Shouldn’t Flee the Cities

In A.D. 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and became the undisputed Roman Emperor. A few years later, he issued the Edict of Milan, guaranteeing toleration of Christianity in the Roman Empire and ending the last major persecutions. While the end of the persecutions was doubtless welcomed in the early Church, that end did come with a challenge. Those who were willing to die for their Faith—called the red martyrs because they shed their blood for the Faith—had been the great heroes and saints of the Faith. But with the persecutions now ended, who were the new heroes of the Faith? Who was to live a life of heroic Christianity with the age of the martyrs apparently ended?

With the decline of the red martyrdom arose a new form of heroic self-sacrifice: the white martyrdom. The white martyrs sacrificed their lives in a new way. They left the cities, their families, the comforts of home and civilization and food security, and fled to the desert. St. Anthony the Great was the most famous of these. 

These white martyrs often saw cities as places of temptation and spiritual danger; and so they were. Cities contained crime, theft, prostitution, business fraud, and an entire host of temptations. In contrast, the desert was a place of privation, even severe privation, certainly, but also a place where one fled from the dangers and temptations of the cities. They were places to see more clearly and to grow in holiness.

As they became known and attracted followers, desert hermits became monks, living in religious communities. Word of this form of religious life spread to the West, leading to the development of Benedictine monasticism. Benedictine monks fled the cities, setting up monasteries in the countryside where they worked and prayed. They became skilled farmers, responsible for many farming advances in the Middle Ages. For the Benedictine monks, though, the cities were irredeemably evil; the best a man could do was to flee them while building up a holy community in the countryside.  

The desire for land and farming runs deep not only in Catholic culture but in American culture. From the beginning, immigrants poured into America, drawn by the promise of cheap and available land. In the 1870s, Americans left homes, families, and communities and headed west, drawn by the Homestead Act’s promise of 160 acres of land if they could only live on it for five years. Failed farms forced many back to the cities in the 1880s and ’90s, but the later mass production of the automobile led many again to flee cities, looking for homes in the suburbs. The middle-class flight from cities to suburbs seems to have continued since.  

I couldn’t help but think of this history as I read a recent Crisis article on the modern “homesteading” movement, which speaks of Catholics, many of traditional inclinations, moving from cities and even from suburbs to try to set up new farming communities in the countryside. 

There is something entirely understandable in this desire. Late-19th-century industrialization forced workers and families into inhumane jobs, housing, and conditions, and more of the results of that are still with us today than we might think. In addition, years of left-wing governance have made cities, large and small alike, more concerning. They seem to attract more illegal immigration, have more violent crime, and have higher taxes. Against this, the farm in the country seems to offer a place of safety, a retreat from the corruption and danger of the cities. 

But there is also something wrong with this impulse. For there is another important spiritual strain in the Church. Alongside the Benedictine view of city and country appeared a new spiritual movement in the early 13th century: the Franciscan and Dominican friars. 

St. Francis is celebrated, rightly, for his deep love of nature, but his main area of ministry and interest was the cities. Medieval Italian cities were violent places, probably far more so than today’s modern cities. Cities then were indeed seen as places of danger and temptation. 

Instead of fleeing them, however, Dominicans and Franciscans ministered to the cities and those living in them with extraordinary devotion. They preached peace, penance, and moral reform, preaching against the temptations and evils of city life. But they never suggested that cities were irredeemable or that it was necessary to flee cities. In a sense, they sanctified city life, showing that it was possible to live the life of a good Christian in the cities.   Instead of fleeing them, however, Dominicans and Franciscans ministered to the cities and those living in them with extraordinary devotion.Tweet This

And from this developed a thriving Catholic city life. Dominican and Franciscan parishes, and other city churches, became the centers of thriving lay religious confraternities, religious processions, and a whole range of devotions. Preaching tours by popular preachers drew enormous crowds, while Franciscans and Dominicans built large urban churches to accommodate the crowds that came to hear even ordinary preachers.  

Likewise, Catholics should not flee the cities today. Some Catholics cannot and some should not. Many simply cannot because of responsibilities to family or local community that they cannot leave. Many cannot afford to. There is a reason for the decline of small farms today; they rarely pay. Acquiring land and a farm in the country may require money some families simply don’t have and may often require a separate source of income to permit the move and sustain the farm.  

Some Catholics should not flee the cities because as they do so, what is left behind? Urban parishes, parish communities, and schools can all be left behind as Catholics leave the cities for the country. More urban parishes face decline or closure, or struggle financially. A new community may be formed in the country, but what about the breakdown of the community left behind? Why not work to establish traditional Catholic communities and devotions in the cities? Why not consider the Franciscan and Dominican option alongside the Benedictine one? 

Rather than holding out the rural farm as the Catholic ideal, a better approach sees farming as only one of many options to enrich family life and industry and learn durable skills. Jacob Wood, for instance, praised his family’s move to the farm, but he also wrote: “farming is just one durable trade. There are plenty others to learn, and through which to grow closer to God, your family, and your community.” Among them are sewing, pottery, building, brewing, woodworking, and midwifery. And these are well within the reach of those who cannot or should not leave the cities and move to the rural farm.  

I do not mean to denigrate the Catholic Land Movement or other modern homesteading movements. I have friends attached to such movements, which have grown out of understandable and defensible impulses. But neither should modern homesteading be seen as the necessary ideal or choice of faithful or traditional Catholics. Communities in the cities need them too.