- People in any kind of need deserve our help. We know that as Christians we are obligated to practice the corporal works of mercy. Acts of charity, helping people meet their immediate needs, are a necessary way of living out our faith. They are tasks of our faith but they are not enough. While charity is essential, it is not a sufficient response to the poor and the needy within our diocese or anywhere else.
Beyond charity, our faith calls us to work for justice. We are to serve those in need, to pursue peace, and to defend the life, dignity and rights of all our sisters and brothers. But more than this we are called to work for structural changes – changes in economic and social institutions that will make it easier for everyone to care for themselves and contribute to society. It was said, “Give people fish to eat”. Then it was affirmed, “Giving someone a fish enables them to live for a day. Teach them to fish and they can live for life”. Now we need to say, “Stand up for changes to stop the water pollution that is killing the fish”. - The Catholic Church has always shown a special concern for persons who are poor and vulnerable. The Hebrew prophets remind us that fidelity to God is tested by our attitude toward the weaker members of society. (Isaiah 1:11-20; 58:1-12; Jeremiah 7:1-7). Jesus’ parable of the Last Judgement teaches us that Christian discipleship requires caring for those in need, especially those in economic poverty. Over the past century papal and episcopal documents have named this obligation the “preferential option for the poor”.
This option for the poor does not mean that the church should neglect the many needs of those who are not poor, but calls us to give particular attention to the needs of the economically poor.
This preferential option means that as individuals, parishes, diocese, we address these needs in our communities and beyond. It means that we strengthen already existing programs like food shelves, meals for the needy, shelters for the homeless. It means that when we contribute to programs or to individual needy persons, we do so out of our substance rather than from the spare change in our pockets. Again this preferential option for the poor means that we not only respond in charity to the needs of the poor through our contributions of money, time or through programs we initiate. It also requires that we bring about changes in our society that will make it easier for people who are poor to move out of their poverty. It means supporting legislation, programs, public policy changes that are of particular benefit to those who are most in need, even when these changes might not benefit ourselves. This is a serious test of our Christian faith and love: “As long as you did it to one of these, the least of my sisters and brothers, you did it to me.”
People find themselves in poverty for many reasons. Lack of work or adequate income from one’s job, a health crisis, a major financial setback, divorce, lack of education – and the list continues.
Poverty has many other forms and people have many other needs. Some of these we find particularly difficult to acknowledge and to receive into our communities – persons with mental illness or chemical dependencies, individuals or families who are homeless, former prison inmates now on parole – on and on goes the list.
Having outlined the general principles of the church’s social teaching, I have tried to help us reflect on the application of these principles on the local scene. As Catholics we belong to a universal church. In that same way we must see our connectedness to all members of the human community. We are one family, regardless of our national, racial, ethnic, economic and ideological differences. Whether it is our neighbour next door or our neighbour across the globe – we all share the same Creator; all of us are redeemed in Jesus Christ; all of us are called to communion with God. We all possess the same dignity as God’s children and the same rights and responsibilities that protect this dignity.
One way of attempting to respond to this is by committing ourselves and our communities to reclaiming the Three R’s (not reading and riting and rithmatic), the three biblical themes of release from bondage, redistribution of wealth and renewal of creation.
- Release from Bondage
A theme flowing throughout Leviticus 25 is the remission of debt. In most countries of the world, including Canada, the control of the national debt by faceless and publicly unaccountable international financiers, leaves people with less control over social and economic policies.
Especially in the poorer countries of the South, debt repayments demanded by various financial institutions are many times higher than spending on health care. Southern countries now pay the rich West and North three times more in debt repayment than they receive in aid. Large populations are forced into poverty each year because we have refused to change this unjust situation.
Several religious organizations, including the Vatican, have already called on financial institutions and the wealthy countries of the world to declare release from debt, especially for severely indebted low income countries.
We need to commit ourselves to the efforts of others to have the backlog of unpayable debts owed by the world’s poorest countries, and to work to make effective international reforms that can help avoid this structural injustice from reoccurring. What is essential in the cancellation of debt is that it must affect the poor.
Another important Leviticus theme was release from slavery. To proclaim liberty for captives today requires us join the campaigns of the international labor and human rights movements to end child labour practices and the inhuman working conditions of women workers. Part of this is the task of pressuring transnational corporations to adopt codes of conduct with respect to their labour practices – NIKE, LEVI-STRAUSE. - Redistribution of wealth
Deuteronomy affirms, “There must then be no poor among you” (15:4). Still,even in this modern world, we experience a world with rapidly-growing disparities between rich and poor.
The share of the poorest 20 per cent of the world’s people in global income is decreasing. Some 1.3 billion human beings survive on less than the equivalent of $1 US a day. Nearly a billion people are illiterate. Well over a billion lack access to safe water. Some 840 million go hungry or face food insecurity. Nearly a third of the people in the least developed countries are not expected to survive the age of 40.
That those who have give a little (like: equitable food distribution, end wasteful spending on military hardware, declare a moratorium on nuclear weapons) – in order that other may have a little.
In Canada, where one child in five lives in poverty, and where the major political parties have pledged to eliminate child poverty. What a joy it would be to celebrate that “they and their children with them shall go free” (Leviticus 25:4). - Renewal of Creation
In the covenant with Noah (Genesis 6:9-11) we remember that human beings are relationally interdependent with all of creation. In Leviticus, the land was to lie fallow every Sabbath year, and was seen as a sacred gift that could not be sold in perpetuity (25:23). In fact the way to keep the covenant with God and benefit from the goodness of creation that was intended for all, was to practice Jubilee.
Today, as the degradations of environmental destruction surround us and threaten our very survival, a new covenant of caring for the earth and sharing its bounty is sorely needed.
At times throughout history, a pilgrimage was a means of travelling respectfully and prayerfully over another person’s land in a quest for spiritual growth. Today we commit ourselves to a pilgrimage that means travelling light without all the consumer items that unnecessarily burden us and prevent care for each other, other forms of life and the earth. (How we abuse Mother Earth! Imagine if Mother Earth stopped conserving!).
The description of charity in the Bible made pointed demands not only to care for the land, but also its return to its original owners whenever they had been dispossessed of it. The call for land reform today is not just relevant in countries of the South, where peasants have been displaced from the best lands by huge land owners and huge projects designed to produce for export. In Canada today, recognizing the original owners of the land and their need for redress of their rights would mean much more serious efforts to settle Aboriginal land claims in a just manner. Many prairie farm families have lost their farms. Governments and the public need to consider and act upon the serious recommendations for deep-rooted change enunciated in the report of the Royal Commission for Aboriginal Peoples. To be a Christian means that we love our neighbour both near and far. Love of neighbour includes doing what we can to ease one’s suffering. It means giving what we can to meet someone’s immediate needs. It also means trying to understand why people today have such serious unmet needs. It means acknowledging our own contribution – as individuals and as a nation – to the suffering of others. It means, finally, acting to change whatever causes people to be dependent upon another’s charity. This love and this action must be shown to people in need here in our own diocese and throughout the world. For this is what it means to be Christian, to be the church, to be a parish.