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FAITH FORMATION: Care and Concern for the Poor
and Vulnerable
Last revised:
February 7, 2011 4:42 PM
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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.
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| 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...
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