Is there a Catholic Worker Community near you?

The idea for today's Crumb of Comfort comes from the Herald-Times in Bloomington, IN, where two of my newsroom friends, reporter Lauren Slavin and photographer Chris Howell, discovered a Catholic Worker Community with great generosity, but no Catholics. In a nutshell, a Bloomington couple with three children have opened their home to people with no place to stay. So far, two other homes on their street also welcome the homeless in this Catholic Worker Community where all members are Christian but none (at present) are Catholic and guests are  never proselytized. More than 100 guests have been helped since the Community began seven years ago. The three homes can accommodate up to 21 guests. Some stay overnight; some for years.

                                                                                                                                       Photo by Chris Howell / Herald-Times

How does the community work? One grateful guest puts it this way. "If you ain't got something, and they've got it, they're more than willing to give it to you. If it wasn't for these people, I'd be froze to death or something. To bring homeless people off the streets, to help them, to give them a chance, it's wonderful."

To read the fascinating history of Catholic Worker Communities (going back to the Great Depression) and access a directory of 236 communities across the United States, visit http://www.catholicworker.org/