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FAITH
FORMATION: Care and Concern for the Poor and Vulnerable
Last revised:
July 19, 2008 12:15 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.
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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
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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?
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- "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.
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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:
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| Housing?
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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
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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.
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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.
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©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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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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