CST and the City: Redirecting the Conversation

Thanks to all who have picked up on my invitation to discuss "CST and the City." The conversation has taken an interesting turn, but not the one I intended, and not necessarily the most important one. To be sure, the question of whether the suburbs or the city are more "Catholic" is worth thinking about, but it is largely of intramural concern, and hard to answer outside of the historical context of the demise of "thick" urban Catholicism in places such as the northeast and the big midwestern cities. There seems to me a larger question to consider: does CST have a conception of how our physical communities express the values that make up the common good? That conception presumably would address the needs of all people, and not just Catholics. It may have something to do with the concept of "sacred space" -- but more to do with an understanding of how physical settings contibute to the formation of solidarity, to the creation of vital subsidiary institutions, to strengthening the family as a social and spitual institution, the sense of reciprocal obligation and so on. And what do the CST texts have to say about all this? What are the connections between these CST concepts and secular movements such as the New Urbanism?

-- Mark