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jwinch2
Guest
This is pretty much where we are at.
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jwinch2
Guest
A friend of mine posted this on his Facebook profile a little while ago and it reminded me of this thread.
https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/s480x480/282218_351023771634762_1550030775_n.jpg
I only agree with this to a point, I do believe that government as a role to play in providing a safety net for the poor, particularly the extreme poor. However, there is a good point to be taken from this. At some point we should be asking, and so should our Bishops, whether or not voting to spend someone else’s money is really the Christian thing to do? Is it really morality on our part to force people to give to others? Is it really morality on our part to have the government do these things, or are we just passing the buck? Don’t we all have a personal obligation to see Christ in the poor and to help Him?
Perhaps personal responsibility is where we, and our Bishops, ought to be spending more of our time.
Just a thought.
https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/s480x480/282218_351023771634762_1550030775_n.jpg
I only agree with this to a point, I do believe that government as a role to play in providing a safety net for the poor, particularly the extreme poor. However, there is a good point to be taken from this. At some point we should be asking, and so should our Bishops, whether or not voting to spend someone else’s money is really the Christian thing to do? Is it really morality on our part to force people to give to others? Is it really morality on our part to have the government do these things, or are we just passing the buck? Don’t we all have a personal obligation to see Christ in the poor and to help Him?
Perhaps personal responsibility is where we, and our Bishops, ought to be spending more of our time.
Just a thought.
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Michael_Mayo
Guest
At the personal level it can be overwhelming and confusing. Walk down the street of a big city and you will be asked for money. Should you give? How much? To everyone who asks? Will it really help them? I guess the thing to do is support and volunteer for local organizations that have some amount of organization and system of accountability, food pantries & soup kitchens. In my town it is the Salvation Army and Methodist Wesley House that have taken on the challenge and other churches support them. And then there are the telemarketers for charities. We used to get several calls every night. Again the need is overwhelming. They are mostly worthwhile charities with good causes…difficult to say no. That is why, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, I would hope that the government would better coordinate and manage programs. We get charity calls from a Disables Vets organizations and police officers organizations. Sounds to me like the governments they served ought to be taking care of them.
I don’t know. This “preferential option for the poor”, I am not sure I know what it means. What else is one to do but turn to the bishops for guidance? But I am truly interested in what others think about it. Not to argue my point, because I don’t have one anymore. But to reflect on the principle from other view points.
You are weldome to:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=687672
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I agree that there is no virtue in acting politically to give Peter’s money to Paul if one is not Peter. It is something that can quickly become corrupted and corrupting. A doctor once remarked to me that people don’t mind paying for medical services as long as it’s not their own money they’re spending. That’s certainly true, and Obamacare, as an example, is a convoluted game of muscial chairs in which those with no real stake in the outcome (congresspeople and the executive) are busily rearranging the chairs for political purposes while the public frets over whether they will get the “free stuff” or be the ones forced to pay for the “free stuff”. (none of which is free, anyway)
It is also in the nature of governments to buy political power with “charity”. Remember how the emperors of Rome provided “bread and circuses”? There was no charity in that. The purpose was to keep the public quiescent and preoccupied while the governing people pursued their own ends.
Possibly the most dramatic “modern” example of how far and how corrupt it can get is the Terror-Famine in the Soviet Union. Churches were absolutely forbidden from engaging in efforts to relieve the starving. Instead, their assets were seized by the party cadres who distributed some relief to party members but sold much of it abroad to prop up the soviet government.
Ours is a more gentle system wherein the government absorbs more and more of individuals’ income and wealth in order to redistribute politically, crowding out the ability of individuals to engage in charitable giving. Even within my own lifetime, Catholic hospitals really were “charitable”, as were a lot of Catholic educational institutions. That’s all gone now. Yes, some of it had to do with the priests and religious who donated their time and talents, but some had to do with the fact that people were taxed lightly and were able to contribute very significantly. Long ago, I worked in a Catholic orphanage that was then on the wane. I had to marvel over the facilities that were totally paid for by donations made long ago. If you look at the old churches in major cities, you see it there as well. Forgetting about architectural preferences, you can tell the financial support was greater than it is for the buildings being constructed now.
I don’t know what it would take to return income and wealth to individuals. But it is plain to me that turning to the government to solve all things does, of its very nature, drain the resources that could otherwise be used charitably. Perhaps worse, it persuades people, little by little, that ONLY government can help anyone. Undoubtedly at least some of the Bolshevik cadres really believed in what they were doing. And then the corruption sets in because everybody thinks it’s someone ELSE’s duty to do the paying, just as we have all come to tacitly accepted that it’s someone else’s duty to pay for my healthcare.
Of course “Someone else” doesn’t particularly want to do it, so he must be forced by the strong arm of the state if he cannot bribe his way out of it politically.
It’s corruption.
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jwinch2
Guest
Michael,
I agree it can be very difficult. My tendency is to tell people that I donate to the local food kitchen and that they can get a good meal there if they are hungry. I rarely carry cash on my anymore as I use my card for everything, so that helps as well as I can honestly reply that I do not carry any cash. I have to know that I cannot personally help everyone who needs it, but if we all do our part, people will be taken care of, certainly with the basic necessities at the very least. Having said all of that, there are a couple of times that I did have cash, so I took a guy into a restaurant with me and bought him a meal, but I very very rarely just hand cash to people.
As for the rest, the numbers I cited earlier in the thread about the amount of money spent per person below the poverty line, and the overwhelming need that you cited in your post above, tells me that something is amiss. With the government spending over $300,000 per person, no one should be hungry, homeless, lack health care, or be uneducated in America. I contend that the same money would be far better spent by giving to local charities or even larger charities with a good track record of getting the money to the people in need rather than funneling it through the government.
If the government was rated as a private charity by Charity Navigator or something similar, it would probably only get one star due to their massive bureaucracy and inefficiency and how little of the money spent actually goes to the people in need. Why anyone would want to fund such a charity when there are others doing a much better job, and in our case who are in line with our Christian beliefs, is entirely beyond me.
Then, we come back to our situation as a country. There is a limit to what we can do before we fall off a cliff from debt and deficits. We keep spending money that we do not have on the backs of taxpayers, to help people who do not themselves pay federal income taxes. The hubris of politicians who claim we cannot afford to pay for doctors, nurses, medication, etc. but that we can afford to pay for all of those things plus a giant federal bureaucracy to manage it, is incredible in its scope. The latest analysis that I have seen from a non-partisan source suggests that 40 cents of every 1 dollar that the federal government spends is borrowed money. This cannot last and it is not likely to end well. We either print money, which we are already doing, and devalue the dollar, or we default on our loans in which case we end up like Greece except by then, there will be no one left to bail us out.
msnbc.msn.com/id/48008837/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/#.T-28hRcS2Ag
Something to think about the next time we think we need to be more like Europe in our social programs and monetary policy.
Peace,
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ljpgoodwin
Guest
So what does the Ryan budget say about all of this?
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Michael_Mayo
Guest
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ljpgoodwin
Guest
This is only a summation of the Ryan plan. Seeing as there does not seem to be agreement among the bishops on the Ryan plan, what should we use as universal and authoritative teaching to help us understand how we are to proceed with the Ryan plan?
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KSU
Guest
Michael, the link is not about the Ryan budget proposal we are discussing in this thread.
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KSU
Guest
The budget for 2013; the one Bishop Blair called immoral, thereby receiving criticism the likes of which I never saw before.
By now it should be clear what to use as the universal and authoritative teaching on matters such as the one at issue here— The Compendium, Chapter Eight VI B:
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY
a. Autonomy and independence
- …The Second Vatican Council solemnly reaffirmed that, “in their proper spheres, the political community and the Church are mutually independent and self-governing”.[867] The Church is organized in ways that are suitable to meet the spiritual needs of the faithful, while the different political communities give rise to relationships and institutions that are at the service of everything that is part of the temporal common good. The autonomy and independence of these two realities is particularly evident with regards to their ends.
…For her part, the Church has no particular area of competence concerning the structures of the political community: “The Church respects the legitimate autonomy of the democratic order and is not entitled to express preferences for this or that institutional or constitutional solution”,[868] nor does it belong to her to enter into questions of the merit of political programmes, except as concerns their religious or moral implications.
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ljpgoodwin
Guest
Here is an example of the bishops voting.
catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=14639
It is also the story that started this thread. The results of the vote are in the first words of the article.
The USCCB is the authoritative voice of the American bishops.
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markomalley
Guest
And what did they vote on in your example?
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KSU
Guest
Folks, you don’t know what budget is under discussion here. Nevertheless, you actually believe that the bishops took a vote on its moral implications. Moreover, you refuse to acknowledge that Chapter Eight VI B of the Compendium controls the issue under debate here because it’s only a part of the Compendium.
There is, therefore, no point to further debate.
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