Too many people seem too
sure about the causes and the cure for poverty. I hear it in the barbershop, at
my favorite lunch spot and frequently at the bar. “If only they would get a job
and quit living off my hard-earned money.” The adjectival hard-earned is always used.
I also hear: “My family made it on their own. Why can’t those people?” Plus
other riffs on the same theme.
These
longstanding complaints are not confined to barroom banter. They are part of
public discourse. Elected officials, foundation executives, talk-show hosts and
others routinely make a distinction (maybe not in those exact words) between
the deserving poor and the undeserving poor. By popular opinion, for
example, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (which everyone calls food stamps) is an undeserved handout
while Medicare and Social Security are—here’s that phrase again—hard-earned benefits.
Have the
poor always fallen into these two categories? Or is the distinction something
new?
We will
soon celebrate the 500-year anniversary of the great Protestant Reformation. Along
with the significant improvements it made to Christianity, the Reformation
created unintended consequences. Prior
to the Reformation Christian love or caritas
looked upon the poor as worthy in and of themselves. They were not despised but
assisted to the degree Christians were able to do so. At the same time, please
note, the poor of long ago were not romanticized. The poor who made appearances
in the New Testament, for example, were not held up as exemplars of virtue.
After
the Reformation sympathy or humanitarianism replaced nonjudgmental
caritas. This is a subtle shift that hardened into the distinction between
deserving and undeserving. It solidified in our country in the 1850s as the
poor became synonymous with immigrant Catholics. The orphan trains sponsored by
humanitarian groups in New York serve to illustrate the newer approach. Many children
wandering the streets were taken-in by an aid society and placed in “a
healthier environment” with a rural family in the Midwest. The aid society
judged the child’s natural family to be unfit, particularly because it was
assumed the natural father (probably Irish-American) drank beer and/or whiskey.
The Sisters of Charity and other Catholics in New York tried to retain the
older approach: Avoid making judgments; open urban orphanages that kept the
child in proximity to the natural family. (Babe Ruth in Baltimore was one
example.)
The term
Protestant approach or Protestant ethic in this blog is not the
same as Protestant religion as
practiced in a Methodist or Lutheran church. Nearly everyone in our country,
including the Catholics, is Protestant in how they understand poverty, its
causes and its remedy. Congressman Paul Ryan, for example, says that he thinks
about poverty using Catholic social philosophy. Ryan might devoutly worship in
a Catholic church, but his ideas about poverty are not traditional, old-school,
mainstream Catholic ideas.
Do some
people cheat on their food stamp application? Of course. Are some people who
receive assistance lazy? Of course. Are some of those who appear at the door of
a parish’s St. Vincent de Paul Society simply con-artists? Of course. Does a
St. Vincent de Paul volunteer have a duty to use donated money and food wisely?
Indeed, yes. Does a parish volunteer have a fiduciary responsibility to turn
away someone who repeatedly asks for help and yet who looks like, with a fresh
haircut and a clean shirt, could get a job? That is a tough call for a real world
Catholic.
Droel edits
a free newsletter on faith and work for National Center for the Laity (PO Box
291102, Chicago, IL 60629).
No comments:
Post a Comment