A Catholic Community?

Jeff Culbreath has been discussing Catholic Communities on his blog for a couple of weeks, where Catholic Families buy property and live together in a community.

It sounds good in theory but I’m not sure I would want to live there. My sister and her family lived next door to me for a year or so and it was awful!! Not at all what I expected and instead of bringing us closer together, it drove a wedge between us. I like the alcoholic handyman that lives there now. We barely speak and we have nothing in common. It’s perfect.

About 15 years ago or so, there was a community in my town of very devout Catholics who sort of tried out this experiment. They moved into the same part of town, they went to the same church, they had meetings etc. But then it started to get kind of cultish. Leaders of the group, I am told, started to pressure people to live their lives in a certain way above and beyond the call of Catholicism. Like women were encouraged to wear skirts and dresses only. No slacks. The men were told to leave the diaper changing etc to the wives because they were the spiritual leaders not the childcare givers, arranged marriages within the group. Weird stuff like that.

Eventually the bishop stepped in, the leaders left town in disgrace and eventually people sold their homes and moved out of the area. So I remain a bit skeptical that a community of just devout Catholics is necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.

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