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Bishop's Statements
To be Catholic is to be called to love the poor
A statement by Bishop John M. Smith
Thursday, November 22, 2007
We are approaching a time of year when, in the midst of giving thanks for our many blessings and preparing to celebrate God's gift of the Christ Child, we are asked to remember and help those who are less fortunate. Through our parishes, schools and workplaces we may choose to support food and clothing drives, help prepare holiday meals at our local homeless shelters or organize Giving Trees or Toys for Tots. We lift up our needy brothers and sisters in prayer, and hope for the day when we see an end to poverty on our streets and around the world.
After the holidays, life returns to normal. Our efforts might have made the holidays a little more pleasant for a small number of poor families. And then, for many people, poverty returns to the faceless "issue" about which sociologists theorize and politicians debate; too big for any one person to really do anything about.
But this year, the Catholic Church in the United States is striving to prove otherwise by taking the lead in a national initiative to actually reduce poverty. Every one of us is being asked to take a stand against poverty and build awareness in our communities about the need to work together as a nation to dramatically reduce the number of men, women and children who do not have enough money to cover their most basic needs.
The Campaign to Reduce Poverty in America, sponsored by Catholic Charities USA, was launched earlier this year in conjunction with the agency's policy paper entitled Poverty in America, A Threat to the Common Good. Calling poverty in America a moral and social crisis, the campaign seeks to cut poverty in half by the year 2020. That is no small task, but the goal of the campaign is that we will work consistently and collaboratively in our various and respective roles until we have achieved it.
The first step of the campaign is to build awareness about poverty. It seems that there is an awful lot we don't know about it. For instance, there is the startling fact that 37 million people in the United States - about 12.6 percent of the population - live below the federal poverty level, which was set at only $20,000 in 2006 for a family of four. Realistically, we know that a much higher income is needed for a family to be able to afford housing, health care, child care and the many other basic living expenses that seem to be growing out of control.
Right here in our Diocese of Trenton, there are more than 140,000 people living at or below the federal poverty line, and almost 40,000 of them are children. And despite the myth that the poor are swelling the welfare rolls, the truth is that the vast majority of the poor are, in fact, employed. Only 17 percent of poor families receive Welfare assistance.
Even these staggering numbers don't tell the whole story. To fully understand the impact of poverty, we need to look to our children. A recent survey has shown that the number of poor children in New Jersey – one of the wealthiest states in the nation -- has increased at a higher pace than the national average. And while the poverty rate overall fell slightly nationwide from 2005 to 2006, the number of uninsured children increased to 8.7 million or 11.7 percent in 2006 from 8 million the previous year. Indeed, the struggle in Congress to pass a children's healthcare funding bill serves as a glaring example of the growing crisis in our country to protect the health and well-being of the most vulnerable among us.
These alarming trends undermine the very framework of our society and should be a significant concern for every citizen in the nation. But we in the Catholic community are especially called to make a real and lasting difference in the effort to reduce poverty. For us, responding to the needs of the poor is an integral part of our faith and deeply rooted in our social doctrine on human dignity, human rights, the common good and the option for the poor. To be Catholic is to be called to love the poor.
The U.S. Bishops may have put this best in their 1986 pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All: As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a fundamental "option for the poor" – to speak for the voiceless, to defend the defenseless, to assess life styles, policies, and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor...As Christians, we are called to respond to the needs of all our brothers and sisters, but those with the greatest needs require the greatest response.
Rather than asking "What can one person do?", we need to ask "Who can I work with to make a difference?" All of us can begin by learning about the campaign and officially endorsing it on its website: www.CatholicCharitiesUSA.org/poverty. The Diocese of Trenton has taken this step, and I'm asking each and every one of you to take a stand against poverty with us. And ask your families, friends and co-workers to stand with us as well.
Our local Catholic Charities agency will be making information available through parish bulletins and our diocesan website (www.dioceseoftrenton.org). Let's start talking about poverty in our parishes, schools and ministry groups and let's pray together for God's strength and wisdom as we strive to bring about positive and lasting changes in the lives of the poor.
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