There is a wealth of opportunity for Catholics looking to put their money where their faith is.

Ray Boshara fondly remembers his grandmother washing and re-using plastic sandwich baggies. Her frugality has inspired him to champion a new era of thrift and stewardship for America.

His timing couldn't be better. The troubled economy has led many Americans to trim the fat and contemplate the larger role money plays in their lives. To Boshara, vice president and senior research fellow at the New American Foundation, this is an opportunity for spiritual growth. "The recession has forced us to think about resources, and there is a moral and spiritual element to how we manage our resources on earth," he says.

In light of the downturn, Boshara, who has advised Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, has called for a rejuvenation of ideals held by early 20th-century progressives. He says Americans should recalibrate their economic focus away from consuming material goods and toward entrepreneurship, stewardship, and thrift.

Excess should be identified and cut, he says, and practicing what he preaches, this meant he had to grapple with the time, money, and energy he spent on music. His love of music led him to purchase pricey recording equipment and a bigger home to house his extensive collection of records and CDs, and it caused him to devote large amounts of time researching music. "The original progressives considered wasting time a poor use of the time God has granted us on earth," Boshara says.

He's found different, less costly ways to enjoy what he loves. Boshara says he listens to the radio more often, and by investing in an MP3 player he's minimized the desire to purchase more expensive hardware.

Cutting back should be an easy task for most Americans. Studies indicate that as the 20th century has progressed, Americans have had more disposable income. While households in 1901 spent nearly 80 percent of their earnings on essential goods, by 1950 that number dropped to around 70 percent, and in 2003 only about half of a household's income was used to purchase necessities.

By slowing their spending, consumers could better study the money spent and its role in their spiritual health, according to Father Seamus Finn, O.M.I., who represents his order at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. How money is spent, attained, and invested is directly tied to the spender's spirit and faith, he says.

"Our faith teaches us very clearly that what we do in terms of work and our extensions of ourselves reflects on us and the ways we interact with the world and the way we interact with other human beings," Finn says. "It is important in order to live a full, faithful life that all those things are aligned to what we believe."

Pope Benedict XVI has noted that Catholic social teaching includes financial relationships. In his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, he writes, "The church's social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity, and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or ‘after' it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner."

Finn states it more simply. "Money is spirit-activated and entrusted to another." Whether spending, investing, or giving, the actions associated with money are rife with spiritual ramifications, but resources and guidance exist to help the busy Catholic stay on the straight and narrow.

Living in a material world

Often, aligning spending with spiritual values is a negative undertaking, directed by boycotts, whether because a company has ties to Planned Parenthood or doesn't pay a living wage.

However, church teaching and tradition suggest that the purchase of material goods is not opposed to building spiritual harmony. "It is not wealth itself that is evil but the inner attitude (greed or avarice) and the outer behavior (selfishness, lack of almsgiving, hoarding, wastefulness) associated with wealth that are problematic," said Father Ken Himes, O.F.M., a professor at Boston College, in a 2002 speech about early church teachings on wealth. "Material things are good because they are made by God and are meant to be shared with all."

Kathy McGourty's family in Arlington Heights, Illinois exemplifies this trait. McGourty, a stay-at-home parent, and her family have survived the loss of her husband's job, the downturn in the housing market, and the economic recession without having to cut a family vacation or the large number of donations they make yearly.

She points to her family's resistance to chasing material wealth as a reason they weathered the storm. "We're an average Catholic family, but we're a family that's aware that we're not the center of the world," McGourty says. "Everything that comes to us doesn't come to us because we're owed it, it's a gift."

During the housing bubble McGourty and her husband resisted the temptation to sell the three-bedroom ranch home they share with their four kids. "We didn't build on, we didn't expand," McGourty says. "It was a conscious choice; it's just the way we live."