Does Catholic Church Help the people in distress?

[LittleSoldier]

I saw that debate. It was on “Intelligence Squared” and featured Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry against Archbishop Onaiyekan of Nigeria and Anne Widdecombe.

The debate really wasn’t fair: Hitchens and Fry are skilled speakers and entertainers who know how to “work a crowd”. The good Archbishop did not have full command of the English language and Ms. Widdecombe, while energetic, is a lay person and had an irritating manner of speech. Basically, it was a trap and the Archbishop and Widdecombe took the bait.

None of the proceedings should cause one to believe that The Catholic Church is NOT a force for good. Hitchens and Fry had their list of typical “church evils” (I’m not denying the evil or sins) from 2000 years of history and had fun entertaining the audience with that list. The Archbishop wasn’t skillful at speaking English and didn’t really debate as such and Ms. Widdecombe’s manner was so irritating that it just about made no difference what she said as far as the audience was concerned.

In the end, The Deceived audience was Deceived by Deceivers while the Truth was left behind mocked and laughed at. The BBC should be ashamed for making such a presentation. It was a tremendous disservice to the public and nothing intelligent was really discussed.

Perhaps the debate should have been: “Is secular society a force for Evil in the world?”. Hitchens and Fry might not be so adept at denying that.

 

[LittleSoldier]

If you want to know what your local churches are doing all you have to do is go to the diocesan website.

Here is the Catholic charities description in my diocese.

This is completely separate from the Cathedral Emergency Service, which runs a food pantry, gives furniture and clothing, serve coffee and donuts to the homeless every morning, and each Wednesday serve a nutritional breakfast to the homeless, plus run a health clinic for the poor.

I think the reason you are having trouble is because Catholic services are so decentralized. You have individual parishes, dioceses, Bishops conferences, the Vatican, and Catholic aid organizations (like Catholic Charities and Catholic relief services) giving help to those who need it. This doesn’t even include schools, hospitals and other Catholic institutions helping out those in need. Nor does this mention the money from donations that goes to established charities not run by Catholics.

You’re correct IMO. In my parish we have a barrel for Food Share. But every church in town and all three grocery stores and the dollar store and I don’t even know how many other stores, also have barrels.

One church provides free meals. It used to be one meal a week. Now it’s a meal every single day. I don’t know if my parish is involved with that.

Our parish is involved with a local pro-life agency which collects maternity clothes, baby clothes, and baby equipment.

It’s difficult to tease out what the Church does when she is involved with other organizations.

And actually it’s good that she is. Food Share in my town is an amazing success because everyone from the BSA to the USPS is involved. There’s no reason for people to go hungry where I live. But I can’t claim that the Church is responsible. We all are.

It makes it difficult. I guess one way would be to list organizations are directly overseen by the Church and separately list organizations that the Church is involved with directly but does not oversee.

 

[The_Old_Medic]

As a child (before I was baptized), my mother went to a Catholic Church for gas and food money (we were on the road, hundreds of miles from our “home”. She got $25.00 (which in 1956 was a fair amount of money).

Just recently, our Pastor paid rent for 6 months for a single mother with 3 kids. Our Knights of Columbus Council reimbursed the Church for that expense, plus we bought her a car (and paid 6 months insurance) to get back and forth to work with.

There is a LOT of this type of help being done in a LOT of parishes. Most people just don’t know about it, because it is not often mentioned.

 

[Newbie2]

Hello All,

I might sound like a sceptic if you look at the Title. But I AM NOT.

I am sure CC helps people who are in distress in many ways. I know for a fact that CC runs innumerable healthcare , educational vocational training institutions. Catholic religious spend their lives by helping people in different ways.

The reason why I am asking the question if CC helps people in distress is that there were a debate on BBC sometimes back on if CC is force for good or not! I am of course on CC’s side.

It got me thinking, I was trying to understand the humanitarian efforts that church undertakes. May be Church is not seeking any media attention nor any awards or praises from people who cries foul all the time.

But , forgive me if I am wrong on this, as a Catholic I want to know what are the Humanitarian efforts are done by the church at any given time? What did we do for Haiti ? What do we do for Africa ? What do we do in Middle east ? What do we do when huge natural calamities occur ?

Where I can get the info ? What do you know of Church’s efforts ?

Hope I will be enlightened here!

with prayers,
Joe

Bingo. That is the key. The Church works through her individual members, in small groups and in relatively large groups. You hardly ever hear about the guy down the street who mows his neighbor’s lawn while his neighbor is hospitalized for cancer treatments, the families who take meals to the family down another street who’s dad fell off a ladder at work and is unable to put food on his own table, the lady who goes and visits infirmed people at the local nursing home.

And, aside from trying to recruit others to help out as well, or raising money to help others, that’s the way it should be. Otherwise it’s a matter, methinks, of avoiding attention in some respect. Good works are done because it’s right to do them, not for any sort of attention, and that goes from the level of the individual right up to the diocese level and above.