Owning private property is an inherent right in our democracy. However, the current problem seems to be: who owns the property.

That is, for instance, the: ‘average American’ homeowner.

Your average American homeowner lives on his land in a house. (How’s that for the power of observation?)

Some of the houses are bigger, and some are smaller.

Many have, basically, the same components.

There are, for instance, bedrooms. Some bedrooms, actually many bedrooms these days, sleep one child. Then there’s the master (or big) bedroom that sleeps Mom and Dad, if they’re still together.

Most of the houses these days have TVs, sometimes wide-screen TVs, sometimes smaller-screen TVs. Many houses have dishwashers, central heat and air conditioning, comfortable furniture and a garage.

This is all considered “private property,” unless of course you still owe Visa or Master Card for them – in which case they’re considered: ‘almost private property.’

In all this, however, there seems one thing that is woefully missing. Other people.

Sure, there’s often immediate family members. But what about non-family members – who are sleeping on city streets, or trying to dodge hunger, drugs, violence… in squalid tenement houses all over the inner cities of America?

According to Pete Quilligan, this is a travesty (and very much opposite the gospel message). Quilligan, a recent graduate of Ohio’s Walsh College (he majored in English, with minors in History and Religion), decided to start his ‘career’ living in community with the homeless at the Catholic Worker House on Cleveland’s near west side.

He, and three other Catholic Workers, live packed in with 15 people (who would otherwise be homeless) in an old, converted convent.

Most everyone works, either full time or part time. And they also share most things in common at the house. What’s more, there is no “hierarchy,” but rather the utmost respect for each other’s dignity.

And on a recent tour of the house, it showed.

During the tour, Pete told me the Catholic Worker ethos is to follow Jesus’s consistent call to feed and shelter the poor.

And with this in mind, and in one of the more spiritually mature statements I’ve heard in awhile, Pete said people who are homeowners actually have “more responsibility.” That is if you own a home and know about homelessness or sub-standard inner city housing -- you have more of a responsibility to help.

Simply because, well, you’ve got the space.

People, for instance, can double up in bedrooms. A den, or dining room (that you only use on Thanksgiving anyway) can be converted to a bedroom. A garage, for goodness sake, could be converted to an efficiency apartment.

Likewise, if your “private property” consists of TVs, dishwashers, central air-conditioning units… knowing that two-thirds of the people in the Third World are chronically hungry (24,000 people starve to death worldwide every day), or are sleeping in cobbled together shacks with no electricity and no running water, well: What would God think?

Actually, we already know based on a parable his Son relayed one time.

It was the parable about a farmer who had a good crop one year. He filled his barn with everything he needed. Then, instead of giving the rest of the food away to the needy – he built another barn to store the rest.

God calls him a “fool.” What’s more, He tells the farmer that that night (not the next year) his soul would be required. And based on what Jesus says about people storing up treasure for themselves, it’s apparently not going to bode well with the farmer, for eternity.

So, what of us who take our crop (read: pay check), buy an “average American home,” and then don’t share our extra space with the needy? Or what of us for that matter, who “store up” dishwashers, TVs, comfortable furniture, central air-conditioning units, expensive cars with all the options (and other non-essential things)… while scores of people swelter in refugee camps and rural Third World villages with hardly any of the basics in food, clothing, electricity, or medicine?

What’s the bet, when us “average American” homeowners get to judgment, God will say:

“You fools…”

"average Joe" Schriner writes about common sense from the back roads (and Detroit Ave.) of America.