Allies for the Poor

It would appear that needs are best met by people closest to those in need.

—Pope John Paul II

Christian communities are not unlike nations. Both are made up of human beings who have mortgages, marry and raise families, develop and maintain forms of government, work, eat, play, and worship. And like national entities, Christian communities can embrace their many differences while joining forces to make common cause.

In the 1970s after one of this country’s most abominable Supreme Court decisions, Roe v. Wade, created a constitutional “right” for a woman to murder her unborn baby, a new alliance was forged from a similar necessity to combat evil as had presented itself forty years earlier during World War II. This new terror was not manifest in one human being, neither were its victims exterminated in death camps visible to journalistic scrutiny. Rather, it was simply a philosophy that chose hedonism and death over responsibility and life.

The allies of this war for the culture were not nations, but Christian communities. Catholics and Protestants working with pro-life Jews and people of general goodwill joined in an alliance that birthed one of the most important movements of this century: the pro-life cause. Out of these shared foxholes emerged an ecumenism and interreligious cooperation powerfully at work today. Pope John Paul II captured the heart of this ecumenical cooperation in his 1995 encyclical, That They May Be One. The pope writes:

Relations between Christians are not aimed merely at mutual knowledge, common prayer and dialogue. They presuppose and from now on call for every possible form of practical cooperation at all levels: pastoral, cultural and social, as well as that of witnessing the Gospel message.

Cooperating Against Poverty

Recently, our nation has been presented with a new challenge that once again can only be achieved through the formation of a new alliance of like-minded believers and other people of goodwill. This challenge is a social obligation to the poor and the needy. Voices on both sides of the aisle are exclaiming that the era of big government is over. America is witnessing the beginning of a new assertiveness in promoting both the ideas and the institutions that restore the natural order of liberty and true freedom. Private charities are picking up where public ones leave off, private enterprise is flourishing, religious faith is making a striking comeback, and local institutions are claiming new loyalties. This “new” form of civil life has begun to replace the old.

Such movement, however, represents more than a political movement—it represents an alternative public creed. Its goal is the restoration of civil and social cooperation against the division wrought by decades of ineffective social, political, and economic policy. The re-empowering of the marketplace, the private sector, charities, voluntary associations, philanthropic organizations, and families in a partnership for progress and care needs new allies for the third millennium.

These new allies are emerging all around us and on both sides of the political fence. One unlikely ally is Jim Wallis, a member of the religious Left. In his article, “The Church Steps Forward from Welfare Reform to Overcoming Poverty,” Wallis calls for everyone “across the conservative and liberal spectrum to step forward and offer moral leadership for the sake of the nation’s poor.”

Wallis refers to what I’ve been calling a “new alliance” as a “new paradigm.” This new paradigm is essential to restoring true social justice to our society. Yet, it is a new paradigm that is better seen as a new alliance, for an alliance is made up of acting persons. Ironically, this new alliance is anything but new. The Church has long recognized that excessive intervention by higher governmental entities can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” (Centesimus Annus)

Subsidiarity is a fundamental principle of Catholic social teaching. The principle of subsidiarity as a model for social ordering can come about only by the empowering of “mediating institutions.” Mediating institutions, first and foremost, include the family. Others are churches, political parties, voluntary organizations, business enterprises, unions, trade and professional groups, and the media. The importance of the family in society was recognized by the president of the 1783 Continental Congress, Elias Boudinot, in his famous quotation, “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.”

The family is the first church, the first school, the first economy, the first government, the first hospital, and the first place of refuge. Flowing from that family are all other mediating institutions and levels of government. Citizens are born in the family and it is within the family that they are first taught the social virtues that are the animating principle of civil society. The Church has also recognized that “since the Creator of all things has established the conjugal partnership as the beginning and basis of human society,” the family is society’s first and vital cell.

The End of Statism

The “faith” of our current age is coming to a close. That faith was too often an exaggerated confidence in centralized government. In America, the broad reach of federal government programs sometimes even negated the need for individual, church, and associational responsibility. In its worst forms it has replaced traditional faith with something alien to our tradition: the worship of an all-powerful, all-knowing state, capable of eliminating all our natural loyalties to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our peculiar history.

For a nation that now seeks some form of limited government, it is absolutely necessary that we also recognize the obligations and responsibilities that accompany such a reduced government structure. Now that the era of big government is over, America is pregnant with possibility. Her greatest challenge is perhaps her greatest opportunity: how she will care for the needy.

Caring for the needy is a human obligation. It crosses political lines and unifies all races. Indeed, it is the work of God. Upon his inauguration, John Fitzgerald Kennedy reminded us that “here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” How then do we accomplish this work of God?

The third millennium beckons each of us to assume our individual role in becoming the answer. As we deconstruct big government, we jeopardize what has been called for generations a “social safety net.” By now most of us recognize that, unfortunately, this safety net has become a trap leading many into dependency and bondage. The welfare state has failed. Yet we do need a safety net. We must become that safety net. With the end of the era of big government, what is needed are creative private sector solutions that promote capitalism with a conscience. There need be no conflict between compassion and free enterprise.

In his passionate and prophetic message to the nation, John Paul II recently reminded America that “freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” At the present time, our primary social obligation is to care for the needy. And in order to address this social concern, we must return to that first and vital cell of society: the family.

Practicing Hospitality

Families, either singly or in association, should devote themselves to social services, especially in favor of the poor. In particular, we must show hospitality in all forms, opening both the doors of our homes and our hearts, in order to ensure that every family has a home to preserve it and make it grow. When effective and appropriate, we need to work with local government.

In a special way the Christian family is called to heed Paul’s word and “practice hospitality,” imitating Christ’s example and sharing in his love: “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.”

As Christian citizens we are called to witness a “preferential option” for the poor and disadvantaged. John Paul II reminds us that in following our Lord we must have a special concern for the hungry, the poor, the old, the sick, and those who have no family. A true understanding of solidarity recognizes our call as followers of Jesus to identify with those most in need.

The need demands a response. How will it be done? Who will do it? In the eighteenth century a great statesman and leader, Edmund Burke, noted for his quotation, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men do nothing,” spoke of the “little platoons.” These were the churches, neighborhoods, community groups, charities, and voluntary associations through whom “God’s work,” the care of the needy, was best accomplished. If they are still the means, the question now is, how to use them?

America must establish an encouragement vehicle for the needy through a partnership for progress and care. This can be done through creative partnerships that take resources already in the marketplace and distribute them to the little platoons of the third millennium—partnerships that flow from the grassroots up and out; partnerships that produce a new safety net made up of living, breathing human beings with hearts that care for the needy. In order to encourage just such partnerships, however, public policy and legislation must be drafted, or in some cases changed, to facilitate this new approach.

A Slow Pace

In the six months since Congress and the White House agreed to a historic overhaul of public aid to the poor, everyone from President Clinton to Governors Parris Glendening of Maryland and George Allen of Virginia have thrown down the gauntlet to business executives and entrepreneurs: Unless they put the jobless poor to work, welfare reform will fail. Yet despite the exhortations and the promises of tax breaks, the efforts of many business communities to recruit and hire workers off welfare thus far have moved at a glacial pace.

Preparing the unskilled, dependent poor is never easy, but it can be done. This dedication to the poor may require an employer to become uncomfortably close to the employee in order to help navigate the inevitable problems of child care, abusive spouses, low self-esteem, and the many effects of poverty.

Marriott restaurants have answered the call of the Church and our civil leaders by hiring and training people on welfare. So far, the corporation has put six hundred workers through its six-week, government-funded training program called Pathway to Independence. Now people like Sabrina White, a former welfare mother, is a $9-an-hour cook and a recent employee of the month at the hotel. Marriott executives have found that this program is not just philanthropic, it’s also good for business. Many trainees work for their welfare checks so the company, in essence, gets free training. Once those individuals have been properly trained, a company has a team of great employees. This is a primary example of how an alliance of people working within the new paradigm can help promote the economy while respecting, indeed enhancing, the dignity of the human person.

New alliances are being called to formation. We have an obligation to include the poor and needy in every walk of life. As the Allies of World War II realized, our united efforts can make a greater difference than our isolated voices. Having more in common than anything that can divide them, Christians not only can but must join forces if our culture of death is to be transformed into a culture of life.

I am not proposing a “lowest common denominator” approach within such alliances, but rather a true ecumenism based on the common belief in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, a common creed, a common book, and a common commission. We stand now together in Christ, called to incarnate his presence in our culture. We can stand together on the essentials of the Christian faith without denying the genuine distinctions in our doctrine and practice. This is our high calling, our mission, and civilization’s greatest hope.

Our common social obligation to the poor and needy will not compromise other important truths or prevent us from cooperating together. For we do not own truth; truth owns us. And if we are owned by the truth as faithful followers of Christ, we should not be afraid to engage our culture.

Bringing the good news to the darkness of our time will be difficult, but none of us has to do it alone. The West can be turned from its collision course with disaster, but it will not be accomplished without an allied effort. The task is too great and the enemy too strong. The reclamation of the West will require a missionary strategy that builds on the foundations so well enunciated by St. Paul: “I have become all things to all, to save at least one.” The way to best achieve this is by building active, effective, and principled alliances. The result will be true ecumenism at work.

The time has come for all of us who, linked arm in arm, constitute this grand experiment called America, to look with hope and vision toward the future. This is the same hope and vision that drove our ancestors to build a new nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The future need not be met with fear, but with faith; faith in the innate goodness of the American character; faith in the conviction within all of us that, even in difficult times, those helped with a hand up, rather than a handout, will turn their lives around; faith in the God whose work on earth must truly be our own. We must now make the choice for a future of freedom.

Author

  • Keith A. Fournier

    At the time this article was written, Keith A. Fournier, Esq., was a contributing editor to Crisis.

tagged as:

Join the Conversation

in our Telegram Chat

Or find us on
Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...