A Benedictine Connection?

Tonight I met with a woman who is a Benedictine oblate through St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and I gained some interesting insight about the Benedictine charism that may eventually tie in with my ideas about designing homes for real, Catholic family life.

My thesis, in a nutshell, suggests that there are three main principles (but a number of ancillary principles) by which residential architecture might best support the domestic church, and these are hospitality, solidarity, and sacramentality. In the Benedictine life, as I understand it, hospitality, community, and balance form part of the charism for both those in monasteries and the oblates living a lay life. Although I know very little about Benedictine spirituality, I am inclined to think there is a link here between what I propose in my thesis, and what has been an ongoing way of life for monastic communities for centuries.

Anyone who can shed additional light on Benedictine spirituality, particularly centered around the ideas of hospitality, community, and balance, please feel free to post! It would be good to flesh out these terms as they apply to the Rule of St. Benedict (pray for us!).

Welcome Home

Okay, perhaps not literally. But you are welcome to this site nonetheless. This site, on which I hope to build a conversation about designing homes that truly foster the "domestic church," and to which I invite your participation.

So what is this thrice-repeated term, domestic church? you ask. It is the way that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, following the lead of Lumen Gentium, has chosen to describe how the Catholic family IS in the world. It is a vision of the family as a "church in miniature." In other words, what the Church (big C) does on a large scale, the family is called to do on a smaller scale. What's even more crazy than this is that countless families have taken this seriously enough to do something about it.

I hope to highlight some of those families on this blog. And I hope to flesh out a bit more what it means to live as a domestic church. At which point it will be time to talk about how homes can best be designed and built to nurture and protect the family in its extraordinary role to assist the Church in leading souls to Heaven.