"Men Rich in Virtue Studying Beautifulness..."

One way to celebrate Saint Joseph, whose feast is today, as well as to connect him to the concerns of this blog, is to reflect on the ideas that inspired the formation of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, a community of artists and craftsmen established in 1920 in the town of Ditchling in Sussex, England.

The guild was inspired by an economic and political philosophy known as Distributism—not to be confused with the idea of re-distributing wealth—whose major proponents were the Catholic thinkers G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P.

Distributism is an attempt to put into practice the principles of Catholic social teaching. Distributism’s core belief is that society flourishes best when there is as wide a distribution of property as possible. One product of the Distributist movement in the early part of the 20^th century was the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, which sought to retrieve a common life for artists modeled on the medieval guilds. Learn more about Distributism here  and here. 

The motto of the guild was “Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses.”

Sancte Joseph, ora pro nobis.