Why shop Catholic?
I’d like to speak to this topic in a series of blog posts because they are so many different angles from which to approach it!
The idea that we as Catholics should “shop Catholic,” even for secular goods, seems like a forgone conclusion. Afterall, it is “nice” to buy from a Catholic-owned shop. You and I probably feel slightly better whilst making a purchase from a Catholic- or even publicly Christian- seller than we do making another quasi-anonymous purchase at whichever chain retailer we’ve become accustomed to purchasing from.
The question as to why we should prefer or even have an obligation to shop Catholic required a bit of digging. I knew it must go beyond “because it is a nice thing to do” when I realized that I would happily buy a handmade scarf from a struggling widow, or a cold drink from a child’s lemonade stand. There are lots of purchases you could make in order to be nice and that would make you feel good. Patronizing businesses that share your faith, as a member of that faith, on the other hand, confers a lot more lasting value and forward direction than mere niceness.
Buying from Catholic shops means contributing to the greater Catholic community. Whether the vendor is from your parish or halfway across the world, your purchase supports a Catholic way of life for the individuals, religious communities, and families running these businesses. In a market that seems to favor deceptive generic convenience on a global scale, our Catholic identity is more at stake than ever. If our purchases reflect that Catholics across the world are the Body of Christ, on the other hand, we would realize that we can nourish that body by “shopping Catholic.”
Maybe this is our wake-up call to prioritize our spending in a way that nurtures our Church as the body of Christ- as opposed to watching little bits of our earnings disappear into disparate, faceless entities who actually want us to lose touch with our Catholic identity in favor of a disconnected secular one that spends without principle. Afterall, our money is frequently earned with time spent away from our families- how much more value does our time itself have if its wages are spent building up the Kingdom?
Catholic Minimalist takeaway: Our time is precious, and how we spend our money directly speaks to the value we hold for our time. Seeing ourselves as part of the Body of Christ calls for an attitude towards spending that speaks to our Catholic identity, which makes us more discerning shoppers, and can help us grow in fellowship with Catholics all around the world!
