The Tower - University of Dallas Magazine

July 20, 2011

Fr. Andrew O’Connor: Attending to the Social Fabric

At the University of Dallas, students of the liberal arts are taught in a manna that illustrates the interconnectedness of diverse fields of study – art, history, spirituality, literature and more. This education provides a powerful foundation for good, as evidence in the work of Fr. Andrew O’Connor ’94.

Fr. O’Connor studied English at the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts, and received his master’s degree in literature in 1994, studying art with Heri Bert Bartscht while at UD and living at Cistercian Abbey. He is a priest at Holy Family parish in the Bronx, a well respected artist, social innovator and now a fashion designer.

“Church and art have to go together like subject and verb, more so now because our paradigms of the sacred shift along with our lives. The intuitions of contemporary artists can be trusted and should mingle with the life of the church in the city where the world is watching” said Fr. O’Connor.

His travels brought him to Guatemala where he was inspired by the late Fr. Stan Rother, who was brutally murdered in 1981. Fr. Rother has been a strong proponent of the local weaving, a tradition dating back to the Mayans and producing a cloth of exceptional beauty and simplicity.

Fr. O’Connor developed a line of religious goods using the cloth be dubbed “Social Fabric.” With the encouragement of his parishioners, he soon switched to high fashion and developed a line of clothing called Goods of Conscience. Happy to find eco-friendly clothing, actress Cameron Diaz wore a pain or his shorts on the cover of Vogue, which also earned attention from Anna Wintour, the magazine’s editor.

Goods of Conscience is a social innovation at its best-an apparel line preserving indigenous back-strap weaving, providing the Mayan Indian weavers a living wage and promoting economic development for underemployed sewers in the Bronx. Together they produce clothing that looks good, feels good and does good.

“My idea is to create a system of small workshops in needy parishes in the United States and pair them with the parishes in the Third World in order to use the existing parish system as the next step in the world of globalization. We should think of globalization as an opportunity for communication and not exploitation,” says Fr. O’Connor.