Anyone else believe we're too focused on helping the poor and neglecting other issues?

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Deo_Gratias42

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This is going to make me sound really bad, but hear me out. I find my diocese is too concerned with helping the poor to the detriment of neglecting the other corporal and spiritual works of mercy. I find it almost nauseating, and don’t want to do it. Not because I don’t think the poor need to be helped or shouldn’t be helped, but I am called to focus my time, energy, and talents on other issues in the diocese that are diocesan specific (ie:fallen away Catholics, conversion of sinners, supporting the clergy and helping to counter the attack on them, etc.). It seems like everyone (not just Catholics) are so tied up with helping the poor, everyone/thing else is neglected.

Anyone else see this?
 
To an extent I agree.

There is certainly too much emphasis being placed on providing poor people with things pertaining to comfort, especially from lliberal catholic modernists.

The thing that I think the Catholic Church is slowly forgetting, is that the number one necessity, the number one need and desire of our souls is salvation. Money, food, shelter, cell phones, internet, and television are worthless if the person is not going to be saved. Jesus did not come into this world to provide poor people with monetary offerings. He came into this world to provide poor people with salvation. Charity is merciful, but the enforcement of morality is the most important, most merciful, foremost duty of the Church. THIS is what the main focus should be. Saving people’s souls, not making their lives “comfortable” and “happy.”

This is why it is more important to oppose the hallmarks of depravity, sinfulness, and lack of faith in our society, namely abortion, gay marriage, feminism, euthenasia, destruction of the family, removal of public displays of faith, etc, than it is to work for a “more fair” (which is a load of non-sense anyway) distribution of wealth.

It is not intolerant or bigoted to preach the Gospel of Christ and impose our Catholic values on society. It is merciful. If you truly have love for the least of thee, you will not sit idly by as they destroy their eternal lives with sin. Instead you will bend over backwards to reconcile that individual with Lord Jesus Christ.
 
We are the body of Christ with many talents and skills.
One of us does not have to do it all every time.
 
CollegeStinks said:
To an extent I agree.

There is certainly too much emphasis being placed on providing poor people with things pertaining to comfort, especially from lliberal catholic modernists.

The thing that I think the Catholic Church is slowly forgetting, is that the number one necessity, the number one need and desire of our souls is salvation. Money, food, shelter, cell phones, internet, and television are worthless if the person is not going to be saved. Jesus did not come into this world to provide poor people with monetary offerings. He came into this world to provide poor people with salvation. Charity is merciful, but the enforcement of morality is the most important, most merciful, foremost duty of the Church. THIS is what the main focus should be. Saving people’s souls, not making their lives “comfortable” and “happy.”

This is why it is more important to oppose the hallmarks of depravity, sinfulness, and lack of faith in our society, namely abortion, gay marriage, feminism, euthenasia, destruction of the family, removal of public displays of faith, etc, than it is to work for a “more fair” (which is a load of non-sense anyway) distribution of wealth.

It is not intolerant or bigoted to preach the Gospel of Christ and impose our Catholic values on society. It is merciful. If you truly have love for the least of thee, you will not sit idly by as they destroy their eternal lives with sin. Instead you will bend over backwards to reconcile that individual with Lord Jesus Christ.
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At the other end of the spectrum, though, are those who think they’re great Catholics simply because they have the right, orthodox answers to all these hot-button issues (which should just be a given), ignoring how adamant Jesus was about the corporal works of mercy. That’s also a tendency to be avoided.
 
May I suggest a re-reading of Matthew:

The Judgment of the Nations.* 31f “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, 32g and all the nations* will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35h For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, 36naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ 37Then the righteous* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ 40i And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 41* j Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42k For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ 44* Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ 45He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ 46l And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
 
Deo_Gratias42 said:
This is going to make me sound really bad, but hear me out. I find my diocese is too concerned with helping the poor to the detriment of neglecting the other corporal and spiritual works of mercy. I find it almost nauseating, and don’t want to do it. Not because I don’t think the poor need to be helped or shouldn’t be helped, but I am called to focus my time, energy, and talents on other issues in the diocese that are diocesan specific (ie:fallen away Catholics, conversion of sinners, supporting the clergy and helping to counter the attack on them, etc.). It seems like everyone (not just Catholics) are so tied up with helping the poor, everyone/thing else is neglected.

Anyone else see this?
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Also,the term"poor" can be applied to the other charitable acts you mentioned.Someonewho is fallen away from their faith or has no faith is poor in spirit. So focusing your energy towards those issues is still admirable.🤷
 
Deo_Gratias42 said:
This is going to make me sound really bad, but hear me out. I find my diocese is too concerned with helping the poor to the detriment of neglecting the other corporal and spiritual works of mercy. I find it almost nauseating, and don’t want to do it. Not because I don’t think the poor need to be helped or shouldn’t be helped, but I am called to focus my time, energy, and talents on other issues in the diocese that are diocesan specific (ie:fallen away Catholics, conversion of sinners, supporting the clergy and helping to counter the attack on them, etc.). It seems like everyone (not just Catholics) are so tied up with helping the poor, everyone/thing else is neglected.

Anyone else see this?
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Helping the poor is the very fabric of Catholicism and Judaism. This would also include helping the sick, the orphaned, the widowed, the downtrodden, the outcast. It is called charity, or love. If this should not be the bedrock of our faiths, then what should? By doing such, we are putting faith into action, making the world a better place, and doing G-d’s will. Having said this, I realize the salvation of souls is a most essential part of Christianity and that suffering is considered a means of atonement, i.e. at-one-ment, with Jesus. Therefore there may be more of a conflict within Christians about focusing on material needs in this world than there is within Jews, who, while believing in an afterlife, do not emphasize it so much as a principal goal of the present life.
 
I applaud your bold post but I have to admit that I do not see the same situation in our diocese or parish. It is also understandable that your issues would frustrate you, they would me if I saw them exist in our area. However, it may be that you live in an area even harder hit by this economy than I do and it could be possible that choices have to be made by your diocese due to sheer numbers of poor needing to be served. I am blessed with enough to eat and a warm place to live and I thank God for these blessings. Hopefully in the next few years our economy will recover and the huge numbers of the newly poor can regain work and restore their lives.
 
Jeanne_S said:
Also,the term"poor" can be applied to the other charitable acts you mentioned.Someonewho is fallen away from their faith or has no faith is poor in spirit. So focusing your energy towards those issues is still admirable.🤷
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Exactly, the most desperate poverty often exists in the people with sufficient material wealth.

A person who does not know the Gospel is in greater poverty than someone who lives in a cardboard box by a freeway underpass.

Material wealth is fleeting, Spiritual wealth is eternal, this the lack of spiritual wealth is the greater loss.
 
People often forget that “poor” can be more than someone who is getting by on meager means and “help” can be alot more than writing a check. Helping the poor can be visiting those who are sick or homebound, providing help for those who have a problem without charge, being a good friend when someone is going through a hard time, telling someone one something they don’t want to hear, raising your children to be rightous people, providing yardwork, housework, childcare, etc to someone who is in a tight spot. I think the reason that we don’t hear as much about these works is twofold. One, doing these acts of mercy is hard than writing out a check. Two, those who do these things generally have a quality of charity so firmly installed that they don’t even realize what they are doing. I suppose, if I was a person given to cynicism, I could also point out that there is no way for someone to take their cut off the top if they are encouraging people to help each other in ways that don’t require an exchange of funds. Sadly, this could be a reason why most “charity” in the secular world involves money and not service.
 
Isn’t this just like today’s gospel?

You need your hands, AND you need your feet.

You need your eyes, AND you need your nose.

But the same body cells don’t both do the seeing and smelling, or the walking and grasping.

We must all do what we can do, and as best we can. But when a message comes down the “neck” (Church hierarchy) about a specific need, we should strive to meet that, too.

ICXC NIKA
 
Re: Anyone else believe we’re too focused on helping the poor and neglecting other issues?

Categorically yes. When the Social Justice Catholic Type elect rabidly pro** death**, Pro - Abortionst politicians, they simply cross the line. It is rather incomprehensible to me that people actully believe that Social Justice will flourish when our Nation kills it’s own children.🤷

Go fugure that one out.

Why do people think God will bless America with a wonderful economy when we commit such atrociaous sin?
 
Deo_Gratias42 said:
This is going to make me sound really bad, but hear me out. I find my diocese is too concerned with helping the poor to the detriment of neglecting the other corporal and spiritual works of mercy. I find it almost nauseating, and don’t want to do it. Not because I don’t think the poor need to be helped or shouldn’t be helped, but I am called to focus my time, energy, and talents on other issues in the diocese that are diocesan specific (ie:fallen away Catholics, conversion of sinners, supporting the clergy and helping to counter the attack on them, etc.). It seems like everyone (not just Catholics) are so tied up with helping the poor, everyone/thing else is neglected.

Anyone else see this?
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I’m not sure I agree with your premise, though I understand where you are coming from. My opinion, after quite a bit of thought and prayer on the matter, is that it is more about how and why we are helping the poor that is the problem, not the amount of focus. We seem to have had a trend over the last decades of Catholic social justice turning into little more than social work. This is a problem. In addition, we have been more focused on social work than witnessing to the Gospel, which has probably contributed significantly to the issues we have seen. There are too many examples where some Catholics have taken positions against the Faith in the name of social justice, this is a major problem.

It was Dorothy Day who said:
Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.
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areluctantsinner.blogspot.com/2012/12/popes-latest-motu-proprio-signals-end.html

crisismagazine.com/2012/catholic-social-teaching-its-time-to-end-the-misrepresentations

lifesitenews.com/news/pope-to-charities-refuse-partnerships-that-even-indirectly-support-acts-opp

Peace,
 
Brendan said:
Exactly, the most desperate poverty often exists in the people with sufficient material wealth.

A person who does not know the Gospel is in greater poverty than someone who lives in a cardboard box by a freeway underpass.

Material wealth is fleeting, Spiritual wealth is eternal, this the lack of spiritual wealth is the greater loss.
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I understand what you’re saying, but first let’s see if we can help the person who is living in a cardboard box by a freeway underpass find some adequate shelter to cope with the elements and some nourishing food to eat to remain alive. Then we can preach the Gospel, the Torah, the Qur’an, to save the person’s soul.
 
I agree. Taken to an extreme it is the heresy of the Social Gospel, where man builds the Kingdom of God himself (often accompanied by postmillennialism and a belief in human perfectibility).

As John Paul II said in Redemptoris Mater (¶2) in the context of social work and the New Evangelization: “Missionary evangelization is the primary service that the Church can render to every individual and all humanity in the modern world.”

Social work that does not intend to the conversion of men and the saving of souls (such as those who provide x and y relief to the poor on a “mission”, without intending to share the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST our Lord) is a poor use of the Church’s time, and can degenerate in to heresy.
 
Khalid said:
I agree. Taken to an extreme it is the heresy of the Social Gospel, where man builds the Kingdom of God himself (often accompanied by postmillennialism and a belief in human perfectibility).

As John Paul II said in Redemptoris Mater (¶2) in the context of social work and the New Evangelization: “Missionary evangelization is the primary service that the Church can render to every individual and all humanity in the modern world.”

Social work that does not intend to the conversion of men and the saving of souls (such as those who provide x and y relief to the poor on a “mission”, without intending to share the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST our Lord) is a poor use of the Church’s time, and can degenerate in to heresy.
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I suppose therefore that Mother Teresa was wasting her and the Church’s time catering to the physical needs of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta without evangelizing to them? Or St. Maximilian Kolbe, who sacrificed his own life for that of a Jew in Auschwitz without evangelizing to him first, was also wasting his time?
 
meltzerboy said:
I suppose therefore that Mother Teresa was wasting her and the Church’s time catering to the physical needs of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta without evangelizing to them? Or St. Maximilian Kolbe, who sacrificed his own life for that of a Jew in Auschwitz without evangelizing to him first, was also wasting his time?
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I have heard this criticism of Blessed Mother Teresa by fundamentalist Christians.However,I agree with you,how better to show love of Christ than to minister to the needs of the poor in this way.To me this is a form of evangelization.I seriously doubt if one is starving,they are more interested in being prosthylized than receiving nourishment!
 
Augusta1990 said:
At the other end of the spectrum, though, are those who think they’re great Catholics simply because they have the right, orthodox answers to all these hot-button issues (which should just be a given), ignoring how adamant Jesus was about the corporal works of mercy. That’s also a tendency to be avoided.
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And if salvation is the foremost goal, it will be avoided.

Think about it and it will make sense to you.
 
Isn’t helping the poor a form of evangelization? I bet there are many who’ve recieved help from thr church who want to find out more and maybe even become catholic. That being said , I think a lot of these kinds of groups need to evangelize better and promote the fact they are catholic
 
In answer to the OP’s question

JMO:

I observe that far too many interpret the word “help” in a very limited way.

I observe also that the term “social justice” has become increasingly narrowly defined as cash disbursements by the government – toward some who unquestioningly need and deserve it, toward others who have enough resources to understand how to play the system without really needing the system. (IOW, not the desperately poor and helpless of whom Jesus spoke in the gospel of Matthew)

Too many people (including, unfortunately, many Catholics) are too lazy to investigate who truly needs charity (and do not qualify for gov’t aid, for various technical or bureaucratic reasons), and how to best (most directly) reach those people.

We are called to use our brains to discern the many causes which are included in the term social justice, and not pass those decisions off to gigantic “charity” funds or to gigantic bureuacracies. The Gospel of Matthew is not about a charity Superfund or an imperial bureaucracy. It’s about indivduals – not organizations – opening their eyes to other individuals more in need than themselves: seeking them out, and relieving their distress

It is also about the broad range of corporal works of mercy. (Thank you, the person who mentioned that.) Those corporal works of mercy have a tradition back into the OT, a tradition the early Christians continued.

It is also about the tradition of social justice which characterized the Jewish people before Jesus, which included charity toward widows, orphans, and the powerless, but by implication did not stop with cash assistance. To “help” the poor means also to be an advocate for the poor – to shield them from those who would take advantage of them; to defend them in civil matters; to be their voice.

Thus, legal help; thus, lay counsel (formal and informal); thus, community programs which provide assistance of labor & time (instead of cash). Thus, community or subsidized programs which provide tutoring to poor children.

Thus, the cause that I am a supporter of myself: restorative justice.

Many of these pertain to structures which did not exist in Jesus’ day. To confine His words to a particular way of giving or a particular set of static assumptions about the world is to read the Gospel not at all in the way God expects us to use our brains in the modern world.
 
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