Written by one Fr. Andrew O'Connor of the Bronx, New York. Because this page is a horribly-designed semi-iframe content wrapper piece of junk, I’ve taken the liberty of copying it to this page here. A lot of people are talking this way nowadays—getting back to local, sustainable economies; fostering community and charity by making stuff; recovering a crucial part of our humanity by working with our bodies. But only Christianity—in its denial of self and its teleology of uniting soul and body, heaven and earth, God and man—actually has the weight to ballast this sort of endeavor. I might niggle with one or two things O'Connor has written here, but altogether, I’m really digging this.
Some American parishes dabble in T-shirts and cause-related goods, but this is more of a reflection of affluence and leisure than necessity. These ventures are not brave enough. We need to begin living in a new way tapping into our ancient beliefs and practices: making something out of little or nothing, building sacred dependency on one another, imbuing the ordinary desiderata of life with intelligence and the savor of love.