home buttoncontact us buttonsitemap buttonsearch button


FAITH FORMATION: Care and Concern for the Poor and Vulnerable

Last revised: February 7, 2011 4:42 PM

Catholic Social Teaching:
Special Care and Concern for the Poor and Vulnerable
A basic moral test of society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. We must join our works of charity with works of justice, meeting the immediate needs of the poor and vulnerable while we evaluate public policies in terms of how they affect the poor and the vulnerable - and advocate for policies that are just and promote human dignity.

On this Page:
Budgeting for Poverty | Option for the Poor and Vulnerable | Lessons from Katrina
Bread for the World: ONE SPIRIT. ONE WILL. ZERO POVERTY | Consider assisting...

Budgeting for Poverty

What was it really like to be poor in America? The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently ran an interesting ad called "Budgeting for Poverty." We have reprinted some poverty facts from the USCCB, along with the text of the ad. Before you read this, please think about the fact that, if $18,810 is the poverty threshold for a family of four, this means that a family of four with an income of $18, 811 is NOT living in poverty. Would you agree with that?

  • "The official poverty rate in 2003...was 12.5%, up from 12.1% in 2002. Total Americans below the poverty thresholds numbered 35.9 million, a figure 1.3 million higher than...2002."
  • "The number of Americans living in severe poverty - with incomes below half of the poverty line - increased by 1.2 million in 2003, to 15.3 million."
  • "In 2002, 34.9 million people lived in households experiencing food insecurity - that is, not enough food for basic nourishment."
  • "A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes - a wage $3,968 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government."
  • From the USCCB charts - Detroit has the third highest poverty rate in the country, with 30.1% of the population living below the poverty level.

The federal government says that a family of four making $18,810 a year is living in poverty. But how far does $18,810 go in America today? How do you budget? What do you leave out? You make the hard choices:


Housing?

In America, a family of four making less than $19,000 a year will spend on average $5274 annually for the most basic of shelter.
$18,810
   -5,274
$13,536

Utilities?
To keep a family of four warm and secure, the average expense for utilities and public services runs $2,350 a year.
$13,536
   -2,350
$11,186
Transportation?

A family at the poverty line will spend $4,852 a year to own and maintain a used car, and fill it with the gas and oil needed to go to work, to day care, to the store, wherever.
$11.186
   -4,852
$  6,334

Food?

Even with public assistance such as food stamps, families making less than $19,000 will spend $4,815 a year for food at home and away.
$  6,334
   -4,815
$  1,519

Healthcare?
Even if an employer contributes part of the costs of health insurance, a family of four at the poverty line would still pay on average $793 a year for health and medical insurance. The cost of not having health insurance, however, could be devastating.
$  1,519
   -   793
$     726
Child Care?
The cost in a metropolitan-area child care center for two children five and under, can reach over $13,000 a year. Even with child care subsidies, low income families with two small children will spend on average $2,030 a year on child care annually.
$     726
   -2,030
$- 1,304

So now you're $1,304 over budget, and you still don't have everything you need.

What Do You Leave Out?
Toiletries, School Supplies, Shoes, Clothes, Holiday Gifts, Education, Life Insurance, Furnishings, Recreation, Cleaning Supplies, Entertainment and Birthday Gifts.

These are the decisions that people are forced to make every day when they live in the state of poverty.

Visit www.povertyusa.org to learn more.

©2004 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Please visit our website at www.povertyusa.org


Catholic Social Teaching Major Theme: Option for the Poor and Vulnerable

Catholic Social Teaching is full of references to "the poor and vulnerable." By "vulnerable", we mean all who are powerless in society, all who are in need of our protection - the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, and children. While most people would agree that the poor and vulnerable need some assistance, CST goes far beyond that basic premise. Our popes and bishops have consistently stressed that the poor and vulnerable should have priority over all others in society. In "Economic Justice for ALL (1986)" the U.S. Bishops state:

"The obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single most urgent economic claim on the conscience of the nation."

AND

"Decisions must be judged in light of what they do for the poor, what they do to the poor, and what they enable the poor to do for themselves. The fundamental moral criterion for all economic decisions, policies, and institutions is this: They must be at the service of all people, especially the poor."

These teachings flow from the belief that God gave the earth and its resources to all of us to share. The uneven distribution of resources that results in poverty is man-made, not God-given. Pope Paul VI, in his 1967 encyclical "On the Development of People" states:

"To quote St. Ambrose: "You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handling over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, not only to the rich."

Vatican II, in 1965, went even further with a statement that my shock some:

"Therefore everyone has the right to possess a sufficient amount of the earth's goods for themselves and their family. This has been the opinion of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who taught that people are bound to come to the aid of the poor and to do so not merely out of their superfluous goods. Persons in extreme necessity are entitled to take what they need from the riches of others."

This means that a starving person who steals food may be guilty under the law, but they have not committed a sin. This does NOT mean that the Church supports a communist or socialist model of government. However, the Church does realize that some controls must be placed on a free-market economy to ensure justice and a more even distribution of resources. As Pope John Paul II states in his 1991 pastoral letter, "The Hundredth Year":

"There are needs and common goods that cannot be satisfied in the market system. It is the task of the state and of all society to defend them. An idolatry of the market alone cannot do all that should be done."

Clearly, the poor and vulnerable have a very special place in the teachings of the Catholic Church. How do they fit into our lives?

For more information on CST on the poor, please go to www.osjspm.org/cst.


Catholic Social Teaching: Lessons From Katrina

Update: Please note that since this article was first published on September 25, 2005 the national debt has climbed to almost 8.4 trillion dollars; we are adding 1.74 billion dollars a day to the debt; and if we each owed our share, it would be $28,065 per person. Of course, we don't have to pay it - we will leave that to our children and grandchildren.

Like politics and economics, Catholic Social Teaching is easy to dismiss as something completely removed from our day-to-day lives. What do documents written by popes and bishops, many from a different century and culture; have to do with our lives today? We go to church, we read the Bible - why do we need Catholic Social Teaching?

To answer that question, we could say that Catholic Social Teaching is the sum of the wisdom of our church leaders, written in response to the unique challenges of each period in time. The first major social teaching document, "Rerum Novarum," was written in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, to confront the new concerns posed by the Industrial Revolution. Since 1891, our church leaders have looked at each new challenge in the light of the Gospel and given us guidelines to follow. This is why we now have documents that address abortion, nuclear war, global climate change, labor unions, etc. - even though none of these topics are specifically covered in scripture.

However, an event like Hurricane Katrina sometimes allows us to see the importance of the themes of Catholic Social Teaching on a much more personal level. Perhaps the most obvious theme that relates to Katrina is the theme that calls us to have "Special Care and Concern for the Poor and Vulnerable." If we truly believe in Christ's mandate to care for the poor - what have the last few weeks shown us about our society?

Hurricane Katrina was the result of the perfectly wrong mix of climate conditions - but the tragedy that resulted was compounded by years of seldom considering the poor in our public policies. What were our thoughts as we watched the tragedy unfold? How many of us really knew that poverty like this existed so close to home? How many of us realize that New Orleans is not even as poor as our own Detroit? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Detroit is now the poorest city in the country with 33.6% of the citizens living below the poverty line. We can give you lots of horrifying poverty statistics. Yet, if it is true that one picture is worth a thousand words, then statistics will never have the impact that the images on TV had. Was that New Orleans or a Third World city under all that water?

Why did it take the National Guard five days to reach our citizens? Sr. Joan Chittister, in the National Catholic Reporter, wondered why MSNBC News, CNN, and ABC all got there within hours of the flooding - but the National Guard took five days? Why did we keep hearing officials say that they could not understand why people had not heeded the evacuation orders? Are we so out of touch with the poor that we don't understand that the poor cannot just gas up the SUV and check into a nice hotel with their MasterCard?

The real tragedy of Katrina is not that we feel any malice towards the poor. The tragedy is that we so seldom think about the poor. We have allowed our government to make tax cuts a major theme of this administration - and we have not asked "where will the money for these tax cuts come from - and how will they affect the poor?" The Free Press reported that Congress is scheduled to vote very soon on cutting $10 billion in Medicaid, $3 billion in food stamps and on reductions to WIC (Women, Infants and Children, the nutrition program for pregnant women and infants). They will also vote this month on another $70 billion in tax cuts. When the U.S. National Debt Clock in Times Square tells us that our national debt is now $7.9 trillion, and the Associated Press reports that the latest federal deficit is projected to be $333 billion, with another $200 billion added to rebuild New Orleans, how do we justify this? (The National Debt is the accumulated debt that we owe from all our years of borrowing. The Federal Deficit is the difference between how much our government spends annually and how much it brings in from revenue such as taxes.) The debt and the deficit are significant because they seriously impede our ability to fund the social programs that the poor so desperately need.

Catholic Social Teaching tells us that the poor should be a priority in our lives. Has the experience of Katrina shown that to be true? Hopefully, Katrina will be a wake-up call for us as a nation. President Bush said that "we have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action." We must continue to provide charity to the victims - and our "bold action" must address the justice issues that have allowed the tragedy of poverty in this country to continue and grow. It is tragic that it took an event of the magnitude of Katrina to put a face on the poor among us, but let us pray that, having seen that face - we will never forget.


ONE SPIRIT. ONE WILL. ZERO POVERTY

Bread for the World is a nationwide, nonpartisan organization that for 32 years has been a Christian voice for ending hunger. BFW members help hungry people by lobbying our nation’s decision makers on legislation that addresses hunger in our communities and around the world.

In recent years, a movement of the Spirit has rallied people of faith to raise their voices on behalf of hungry people around the world. These voices have been heard. Our nation, along with others, has increased development assistance to reduce hunger in the world’s poorest countries.

Still, more than 1 billion people struggle to survive on less than $1 per day. In sub-Saharan Africa, one third of the population suffers from chronic malnutrition, and more than 6,000 Africans die every day from AIDS.

Members of St. Blase are invited to take part in Bread for the World. We will join thousands of others who are writing letters to urge our elected leaders to fulfill their promises to the world’s hungry people. This offering will seek significant increases in poverty-focused development assistance to Africa and other poor parts of the world. We believe the Spirit moves, people act, and meaningful changes start to happen.

HUNGER & POVERTY FACTS

  • Thirty seven percent of children worldwide are NOT immunized
  • About 4 million children died in 2003 from diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles
  • Malaria accounts for about one-fourth of all child deaths in Africa, or about one million deaths a year
  • Vast majority of the 300 million children who go to bed hungry every night suffer long-term malnourishment
  • Disease transmitted through water or human waste is the second leading cause of death in the world.
  • Around the world, more than 850 million people suffer from hunger
  • Six million children die each year from hunger related causes
  • Forty percent of the world live on less than $2.00 a day
  • Sub-Saharan Africa is the only part of the world that has experienced an increase in the proportion of people living on $1.00 a day
  • In 2004, an estimated 3 million people died of HIV/AIDS and another 5 million were infected
  • As of 2003, more than 115 million children were unable to attend primary school. 45 million in sub-Saharan Africa

What is ONE percent?

  • It’s the little girl in Africa who gets to go to school
  • It’s the African entrepreneur who can start a small family business
  • It’s digging waterholes to provide clean water
  • It’s the AIDS patient who gets her medicine
  • It’s bed nets that can significantly reduce the incidence of malaria
  • It’s building roads and improving access to markets, schools and medical care
  • It’s immunization from diseases such as measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus and polio
  • It’s vitamins for African women and children

America gives less than one percent now. We are asking for an extra ONE percent
to change the world, to transform lives.

ONE Spirit ONE Will ZERO Poverty

Facts taken from The US Government and The World Health Organization

For more information on this campaign, see the Bread for the World website...


Consider assisting...

Home   Contact Us   Sitemap   Search
About Us   Stewardship   Faith Formation  Christian Service   Parish Life   Liturgy
Pastoral Services Sacraments

The web team would love to hear your comments or feedback about this site. Send your thoughts to: webmaster@stblase.org

St. Blase   12151 E. Fifteen Mile Rd.   Sterling Heights, MI 48312   Phone: (586) 268-2244