Poverty Is More Than Lack of Money by Bill Droel

Unconditional cash assistance to the poor may not do any good. That is a conclusion from a rigorous study, Baby’s First Years (www.babysfirstyears.com).  An experiment, supervised by eight researchers, gave $333 per month for 48months to 1,000 needy families from the Twin Cities, Omaha, New Orleans and New York City. A control group received $20 per month. Results were additionally compared with the population at large. (No government money was involved.)

The experiment yielded no evident improvement in children’s language skills or their cognitive development. Neither the child’s health nor social and emotional behavior was any better than in families lacking the subsidy. The parents receiving the $333 experienced no reduction in stress. Most of these parents were single mothers. Most were Black, Mexican-American or recent immigrants.

The researchers were disappointed in the lack of improvement because they had read positive accounts about the federal cash subsidies given during the worst of Covid-19.Contrary to some interpretations, it is important to point out what the study doesnot show:

 There is no evidence whatsoever in this study nor in many others that Medicaid, SNAP and other federal programs are worthless.

 There is no evidence in this study that the participants were lazy or that they spent the cash foolishly.

 There is no evidence in this study that a work requirement would improve family life.Critics do raise reasonable questions about the study:

 Might inflation and higher rents make its 2025 outcome less encouraging than the reported results of the earlier Covid-19 subsidies?

 Might the sample size have been too small, or the duration of the benefits too short, or might measurement of the children look better as those children grow older?

Columnist David Brooks (N.Y. Times, 8/3/25) refers to the First Years study to conclude that “if a child’s social order is broken, federal money will not help.” To properly flourish, he continues, “all humans need to grow up in a secure container, within which they can craft their lives. The social order consists of a stable family, a safe and coherent neighborhood, a vibrant congregational and civic life, a reliable body of laws, a set of shared values that neighbors can use to build healthy communities and a conviction that there exists moral truth.” Instead, looking at our society we “see families splinter or never form, neighborhood life decay, churches go empty, friends die of addictions, downtowns become vacant, a national elite grow socially and morally detached.”

How to combat poverty? We must refute our culture’s presumption that all problems are caused by an individual’s defect. It is equally erroneous to assume that most individuals have the capacity to improve if they simply so choose. “To understand the cause of poverty we must look beyond the poor,” writes Matthew Desmond in Poverty, By America (Penguin Random, 2023).

The most significant factor for a child to have a “secure container” is a two-parent household. It can be any configuration—two married parents, either different gender or the same gender, likewise two stable unmarried parents or foster parents or grandparents. But a simplistic conclusion about single parenthood is wrong. If, for example, everyone was to get married, poverty would not disappear. Single parenthood is not in itself “a major cause of poverty in America,” as Desmond puts it. Marriage alone does not create the orderliness that children need. Marriage is a big positive for families in the context of other securities. When the poor have real economic opportunity and other buffers, “marriage typically follows,” Desmond concludes.

The other significant factor for a child’s security and growth is parental involvement in their education, no matter in this case if that parent is single or in a stable relationship. Thus, society’s job is to allow parents the wherewithal to supervise homework and to meaningfully interact with teachers. Society withers when economic inequality with its large sector of precarious employment makes a healthy home life too difficult. Our economy and culture must thus be reformed in ways that permit parents to network with one another through school sports or student clubs, through relational congregations, through effective community organizations, through bona fide unions and the like.

Droel is editor at National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL

60629).

THE SHEMA: A FORGOTTEN GUIDE

 By Bill Lange

The Shema is the basic Hebrew prayer cited by Jesus of Nazareth in the synoptic Gospels. It is a self-evident prayer for all. 

"שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְיָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ יְיָ אֶחָד"

(Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad)

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. -Deuteronomy 6:4

Love your neighbor as yourself:  I am the Lord. -Leviticus 19:18

Would we have the tragedies in Gaza if the Shema were remembered, understood, and felt?

Two Sides of a Coin: Milwaukee #1 in 2 Very Different Ways By Dean Muller, President, Wisconsin for Environmental Justice

Milwaukee is currently celebrating a unique and complex position, holding the top spot in two

very different and significant areas. On the one hand, the city is basking in the glory of its

beloved baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers, who have achieved an outstanding record and

stand in first place in their division, a testament to their hard work and skill. On the other hand,

Milwaukee is also experiencing a less desirable "first place" ranking: having some of the worst

air quality in the world.

The Milwaukee Brewers have been a source of pride for the city, with a phenomenal season that

places them at the top of their division. Their success has brought a sense of community and

excitement to the area, with fans eagerly following every game. Their record is not just a

divisional best, but an achievement that puts them among the elite teams in all of baseball. This

is a moment to celebrate the dedication of the players, coaches, and the unwavering support of

their fans.

However, a stark contrast to this positive news has enveloped the city in a literal sense. A heavy

blanket of smoke from Canadian wildfires has descended upon Milwaukee, pushing the Air

Quality Index (AQI) into the "Very Unhealthy" range. As the smoke has settled, Milwaukee has

found itself with air quality levels that have been, at times, among the worst in the entire world.

This is a far less welcome distinction, and one that poses a serious health risk to all residents,

especially those with pre-existing conditions.

This air quality crisis is not a local phenomenon; it's a direct consequence of a larger, global

issue. The Canadian wildfires that are producing this smoke are themselves a symptom of

climate change. Scientists and meteorologists attribute the increased frequency and intensity of

these fires to a combination of factors, including warmer temperatures, extended droughts, and

less significant winter snows. These conditions create the perfect environment for fires to ignite

and spread. Even "zombie fires"—wildfires that smolder underground all winter long—are being

cited as a factor, as they can reignite on the surface with the onset of dry spring and summer

conditions.

While the smoke may eventually clear and be carried away by the wind to affect other regions,

the underlying cause remains. The excessive use of fossil fuels and the resulting climate change

are creating a world where such extreme weather events become more common. This dual

reality—celebrating a championship-caliber baseball team while simultaneously facing a public

health crisis caused by climate change—presents Milwaukee with a critical opportunity. It's a

chance to acknowledge the interconnectedness of our actions and their consequences.

The first step in addressing this issue is understanding it. The smoke in our air is not just a

temporary inconvenience; it is a clear and present signal that we must take action on climate

change. As we cheer for our team's success, we must also recognize the urgency of a different

kind of challenge, one that requires a collective effort to secure a healthier, more breathable

future for our city and beyond.

Catholic Churches Do Not Endorse Candidates by Bill Droel

 Catholic churches will not take advantage of a new provision in the U.S. tax code.

Since 1894 all charitable groups that obtained a 501 (c) 3 tax letter have been excused from paying federal taxes, and usually local taxes. In 1954 there was an addition to that IRS policy. Named the Johnson Amendment after its sponsor, Senator Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), the change specified that tax-exempt groups could not endorse partisan candidates. Critics in recent years, including President Donald Trump, have called for the elimination of the Johnson Amendment. Early this July the IRS said that churches (though not other non-profit groups) can indeed endorse candidates.

The new provision is symbolic. Reading between the lines, it is meant to make legal what evangelicals do anyway. Evangelical pastors and congregational leaders routinely give pulpit time to candidates during local and national campaigns. Many evangelical media outlets comment on the desirability of candidates and elected officials.

Catholic churches will continue to adhere to the Johnson Amendment for reasons practical, pastoral, and theological.

The practice of Catholic churches staying out of elections is not because “politics has no place in church.” Just the opposite. Can you think of anything more political than the ancient Roman administration executingthe Creator and Redeemer of the entire universe? 

Catholic churches, newspapers, and internet media, guided by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enter politics without favoring particular candidates. Catholicism and the Constitution agree: a separation of religious institutions and government institutions is beneficial to both. The engagement between Catholicism and politics in our country occurs in the voluntary give-and-take between Catholic groups and society, and more significantly between individual Catholic citizens and our democratic processes. In practice this means that Catholic churches and Catholic officials teach morality as it pertains to issues like the environment, the sanctity of each life, or the tragedy of war. They must do so. They are not, however, by their ecclesial standing competent to instruct the laity on candidate preferences or on the intricacies of specific pieces of legislation. When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they violate Catholic ecclesiology.

Bishops and most Catholic priests in our country are U.S. citizens. They lose no rights or duties or privileges of citizenship because of their job. For example, a priest at the ballpark among his friends can grouse all he wants about any politician, or he can praise a specific bill in the legislature. Clergy and religious should freely vote in elections. The mistake occurs when, in the church or at a parish function, a priest asserts his partisan opinion as if it were the Catholic teaching.

When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they upend the order of Catholic sacraments. The sacrament of baptism gives a person the responsibility to practice the beatitudes, to exercise the works of mercy and to live a vocation as homemaker, neighbor, spouse, citizen or worker. A baptized person needs no further permission from the rectory or chancery to improve society. Just as the sacrament of ordination adds nothing to a person’s competency to teach mathematics, so too a priest or religious can lobbya legislator based on his or her own citizenship. One’s education and experience might yield competency in worldly affairs, but ordination in itself does not.

When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they squander their moral standing. Yes, Catholicism has absolutes. At the same time, the wise Catholic—both Church officials and laity—knows that no one appreciates righteousness. Principled, yes. Arrogant, never.

The spirit of the Johnson Amendment well suits Catholicism. Our democratic process, though strained nowadays, still contains avenues for influencing the common good. There is no need for clergy to take shortcuts that likely do more harm than good.

 

Droel is with the National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

The Working Catholic by Bill Droel

It was called Americanism. Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) condemned it.

In 1899 Leo XIII sent a three-page letter to the U.S. bishops in care of Cardinal

James Gibbons (1834-1921) of Baltimore. It is titled Witness to Our Good or sometimes

On New Opinions of Virtue, Nature and Grace. Leo XIII’s admonishment was aimed at

progressive U.S. Catholics. Its general theme speaks to today’s U.S.

Catholics—conservatives and liberals.

The second paragraph of Witness to Our Good mentions Fr. Isaac Hecker, CSP

(1819-1888), the principal founder of the Paulists. Hecker himself was not Leo XIII’s

villain. In fact, Hecker died more than ten years before the papal letter. Rather, as Leo

XIII says, a translated biography of Hecker, written in 1891 by Fr. Walter Elliott, CSP

(1842-1928), “has caused no little controversy” in Europe. Leo XIII goes on to name the

erroneous traits of Americanism as conveyed in the biography, more specifically in its

French introduction by Fr. Felix Klein (1862-1953), a professor of philosophy and

literature in Paris.

Hecker desired a Catholicism appealing to North Americans, rather than one

dependent upon European languages, customs, theological formulae and rituals.

Hecker was optimistic that our country’s pluralism, religious freedom, voluntary

associations, layered authority and individual striving are harmonious with Catholicism.

Hecker’s disposition toward the U.S. emerged amid a strong anti-Catholic

movement among nativists. Contrary to their attitude, Hecker believed that Catholicism

makes a positive contribution to our country. Further, the church learns from give-and-

take in our modern world. Thus to live the gospel within the specific conditions of North

America requires Christians to engage, humanize and civilize their surroundings, said

Hecker.

Of course, Hecker’s view can go too far. When Christianity is fused with any one

culture or political regime, religion is debased. Public figures, as we know, can coopt

religion for their own ambitions.

What is it like in the U.S. today? Our libertarian culture makes individual choice

the highest value. Freedom is equated with options, devoid of pre-set, firm obligations.

Decisions in our culture are always circumstantial, not directed by any absolutes. A term

like alternative facts is accepted as rational. Thus some—conservatives and

liberals—are cafeteria Catholics. That is, their faith being captured by our individualistic

culture, they select some Catholic markers of identity while ignoring some basics. A

cafeteria Catholic might say, for example, that any individual woman has an

unencumbered, autonomous right to abortion. Or a cafeteria Catholic might say that

assisting refugees, immigrants or others in need is an individual’s choice, not obligatory

in any way.

Leo XIII’s main concern in Witness to Our Good is the danger of religion over-

embracing a particular culture, society or political order. Yes, patriotism is healthy. In the

U.S. our patriotism is devotion to and respect of our experiment in democracy,

regardless of anyone’s religion or birthplace. Be aware, however, that healthy patriotism

differs from nationalism: The attitude that our country is ipso facto superior, that it

stands alone, that it is destined to expand with never an apology. A Christian nationalist

uses religion to distort history, to excuse the serious shortcomings of their political

favorites, to claim the superiority of their type of Christian over other denominations and

to favor their race or ethnicity over others.

Perhaps Leo XIII’s Witness to Our Good would have better made the point

without dragging Hecker or an obscure introduction to a biography into it. Like his

predecessor, Chicago’s-own Pope Leo XIV must deal with the position of Catholicism

within U.S. culture, and other cultures as well. He knows that some U.S. Catholics,

including its leaders, have bought big time into our extreme style of individualistic

capitalism and the political policies supporting it. There are also a few Catholics who,

reacting to the defects in our culture, opt for sectarianism, a trip to an imagined golden

age. This retreat is no better.

A genuine Catholic life “in our age,” says Hecker, must take its place “in busy

marts, in counting rooms, in workshops, in homes and in the varied relations that form

human society, and it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced… [We are to] seek

occasions to practice virtue, to do something for God, and these occasions are, if I may

use the expression, right under our noses.”

Fr. Isaac Hecker, CSP (1819-1888)

Droel is associated with National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL

60629). It distributes a new edition of Leo XIII’s encyclical, On the Condition of Labor

($7).

The Other Pope Leo by Bill Droel for Catholic Labor Network (www.catholiclabor.org); 6/16/25

 

Pope Leo XIV, originally of Chicago, chose his papal name to recall Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), particularly his critique of the industrial revolution, titled On the Condition of Labor. The current Pope Leo is likewise interested in today’s social questions, including the looming effects of AI. “In our own day,” says Leo XIV, “the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

The downside of the industrial revolution was increasingly evident during the 19^th century. For example, there was in the early 1800s a movement among textile workers in Great Britian, called Luddites, who rebelled against specific machines that threatened their wages and the quality of their craft. Their protest sometimes included destruction of machines. Soon enough, however, factory owners and law enforcement put an end to the movement.

Social critics Karl Mark (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) advocated for a different economic system, famously in their 1848 Communist Manifesto.  Meanwhile, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) portrayed the terrible negatives of the industrial revolution in his popular novels. Pope Leo XIII added Catholicism’s voice in his May 1891 encyclical, On the Condition of Labor.

Although Leo XIII is credited as the pioneer of modern Catholic social thought, he was not the first. For example, Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler (1811-1877) of Mainz was an outstanding social, political and spiritual leader of the 19^th century. In highlighting concepts like the common good, like employees as stakeholders and like solidarity, he laid the groundwork for a mature Catholic reflection on modernity.

The same year as the Communist Manifesto (1848) von Ketteler gave his analysis in six Advent sermons on poverty and inequality. These were refined in an 1864 book, The Laborer Question and Christianity.

Von Ketteler, member of an aristocratic family, opposed materialistic communism but was deeply troubled by the harsh effects of industrial capitalism. Von Ketteler thought some state regulation plus action by labor and charitable groups could temper extreme capitalism. Thus, von Ketteler advocated for the end of child labor, for limiting hours in a factory, for Sunday as a true day of rest, for disability insurance and temporary unemployment insurance, for state health and safety inspectors and for more cooperative enterprises. The key to a better capitalism was to break the belief that an individual is “the absolute master of things that he [or she] owns,” he preached.

Catholicism says private property is a right. But drawing upon St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), von Ketteler explained that only God has “full and genuine property rights… When making use of his [or her] property a person has the duty to bow to the God-given order of things.” It “is a perpetual sin against nature [to hold] the false doctrine that property confers strict rights.” Catholicism “protects property,” von Ketteler said, “but wealth must be distributed…for the sake of the general welfare.”

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892), the second Catholic archbishop of Westminster, was long interested in family life, education, church-state relations, the working class and more. He was ordained as an Anglican in 1833 and later that year married Caroline Sargent (1812-1837). He was only 27-years old when she died. Manning became disillusioned with the Anglican Church in part because it was oblivious to the working poor. In 1850 Manning was received as a Roman Catholic.

Marx and Engels published their Manifesto in 1848. Von Kettler gave his Advent sermons in 1848. And in 1848 Manning added his objections to the industrial economy. He said that Christians need to be with the “poor of Christ, the multitude which have been this long time with us and now faint by the way…in mines and factories.” Manning, like von Ketteler, anticipated Leo XIII.

Manning was sympathetic to the situation among dockworkers. He mediated during the famous 1889 strike at the Port of London, stating that the employers’ refusal to negotiate was not a private matter but a “public evil.” Union members considered the outcome of their job action a grand victory, which in turn gave momentum to the British labor movement and particularly to organizing lower-wage workers. Manning’s impact on the Catholic social conscience was not limited to the union members. Many Catholics in the middle-class and upper-class of that time became attentive to urban/industrial poverty because of Manning.

Von Ketteler and Manning were spiritual ghostwriters for Leo XIII’s On the Condition of Labor. They and others may provide the same service to Leo XIV when, I predict, he soon issues a major document about the condition of post-industrial workers.

Droel is editor at National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629). It distributes a new edition of On the Condition of Labor by Pope Leo XIII; $8 includes postage.

 

Camino of the Santa Fe Trail

 

The Camino to the shrine of Santiago, the Moorslayer, commemorates the events during Spain's Reconquista (9th - 15th Century) when thousands of Moors were killed in the name of 'Santiago.'

 

      Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Just

This is against the faith of Jesus of Nazareth who said, "Love your enemies."  The shrine shows Saint James the Just, Santiago Matamoros, on his horse killing Moors.  The Baroque Cathedral has lavish gold and silver decorations. 

                       The Moorslayer's Shrine

 Ironically scripture scholars note that Saint James the Just was one of the brothers of Jesus of Nazareth.  

Wouldn't it be more suitable to have a trail that contrasts with the Camino in Spain?  It could be called the Trail of Faith.  i suggest it be the Santa Fe Trail (Holy Faith Trail). 

                                             The Santa Fe Trail

The Trail in southwestern United States leads to Santa Fe, New Mexico from Missouri.  The main plaza in Santa Fe once had a monument to the American army which slaughtered Indigenous people.  The monument was toppled on October 12, 2020 because of its disrespect for Native Americans.  The text on the monument described Native Americans as 'savages.' In contrast, Santa Fe's Cathedral, a few blocks away, features a statue of Saint Francis, the advocate of peace.