Voices and Choices includes a summary of 100 years of Catholic social teaching prepared by the United States Catholic Conference in 1990. But the pastoral letter challenges us to confront the complexity. The ramifications are too numerous to treat here, but according to the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, factory farming impacts prices, wages, natural resources and the future of family farming, placing enormous power in the boardrooms of a few companies. V oices and Choices notes that legal tasks and structural change are necessary to address the intricate and interconnected web of environmental, technological, political, financial and international issues involved. The group is made up of individuals.
Structural change begins with the conversion of each heart.
We must struggle in holiness with the competing values of the workplace, with the contradictory and complex choices with which we are faced. We have within us the capacities for wisdom and virtue. With these gifts, and with the help of God s grace, we can build in the next century and the next millennium a civilization worthy of the human person, a true culture of freedom. Based in Atlanta, she is a freelance writer who has worked for the Catholic Committee of the South and Glenmary Home Missioners. Copyright 2000 Glenmary Home Missioners.