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tbcrawford
Guest
I agree Glen and the last two paragraphs in particular.Well said. Well said !
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I agree Glen and the last two paragraphs in particular.Well said. Well said !
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TrueLight
Guest
I’m sorry, but that is not a good analogy. Would you put a bag of money next to a man who is half unconscious and needs medical attention? Of course not. He cared for the man in the most appropriate way possible.
The way I look at it is that $.25 is not going to make me go broke, nor is it taking food away from my children’s mouths.
Someone commented on how some people are happy living on the street. I remember I had a conversation with a person who had been homeless and he said when he was homeless, he was happy. He didn’t need to worry about the light bill or rent or a stressful job. He just had to get enough to eat every day.
Some people are not mentally able to deal with life’s stressors, or they feel no one cares about them or that they don’t matter.
Sometimes a kind word and a quarter goes a long way.
J
jmcrae
Guest
Isn’t that a good description of every legitimately homeless person out there? (Not including the scammers, who of course are in perfect health and capable of rational decision-making.)
We also need to do this. Support the homeless shelters, and push for medical care for those who can’t afford insurance.
J
Jayne_L
Guest
Someone may have given him a cigarette. I rarely carry cash, and don’t really go for the “lets go buy food” tact (social phobia doesn’t really let me talk to strangers). I’ve been known to give them a cigarette however, as I smoke myself and I know it can be a simple joy. Maybe I’m not helping, but I know the problem with addiction. No matter your state in life, giving up cigarettes is hard and unpleasant. I’ve been in a situation where I was too sick to work and I only got through on the charity of others - thank fully it wasn’t conditional on giving up cigarettes (although I did make sure I smoked rollies which are 1/4 of the price of tailors). They gave for their benefit and I was just lucky enough to also benefit.
These days if I have a small amount of change on me I do try and give that. Even if it’s only a dollar, I’m doing it for my benefit not for theirs. God calls on me to be generous. That’s what I’m going to be judged on, not whether I only gave to the worthy.
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MissRose73
Guest
I prefer to donate to charities of my choice either financially or with donations of food or clothing compared to giving to someone standing on a street corner. I have no idea if the story the person is telling me is true or not about their need when they are begging for money. I am a compassionate person but at the same time I must keep myself safe & not get harmed if I go into my wallet to pull out money to give at the same time. I can still fulfill the Corporal Works of Mercy but in my own way that makes me feel at ease.
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tbcrawford
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Newbie2
Guest
Could have been, I dunno.
My dilemma is when someone asks for help, but when you aren’t prepared (i.e. don’t have time)to buy them lunch somewhere, walk them to the bus station or don’t know where to refer them for other sorts of help.
I’m walking by someone and they ask for money? How to handle it, right then, right there?
I guess it’s wise to be better prepared when going to areas where one is likely to encounter the homeless; can’t think of any other way of going about it.
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Castello
Guest
That is when the little cards in the pocket help - they give the phone number of St V d P society.
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theswan
Guest
yeah pass the buck. Except when it is the govrment then you dont want your dollars going to help the poor.
Build more prisons have a strong military bail out the wealthy but help the poor why that’s socialism.
By the way, I aint got a thing against the idea of socialism heck it worked for the early Christians.
Brainwasked selfish people who go make it sound so reasonable with words whn it comes down to there abject fear of someone getting ober on them=How dare that bum take my buck under false pretense!
Christ said to give your cloak as well and to never deny when a person asks for money.
I give up!
Build more prisons have a strong military bail out the wealthy but help the poor why that’s socialism.
By the way, I aint got a thing against the idea of socialism heck it worked for the early Christians.
Brainwasked selfish people who go make it sound so reasonable with words whn it comes down to there abject fear of someone getting ober on them=How dare that bum take my buck under false pretense!
Christ said to give your cloak as well and to never deny when a person asks for money.
I give up!
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markomalley
Guest
Let me give you a quote from Dorothy Day (hardly a right wing knuckle dragger) written back in 1945:
**We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion. It is an acceptance of Cain’s statement, on the part of the employer. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” **Since the employer can never be trusted to give a family wage, nor take care of the worker as he takes care of his machine when it is idle, the state must enter in and compel help on his part. Of course, economists say that business cannot afford to act on Christian principles. It Is impractical, uneconomic. But it is generally coming to be accepted that such a degree of centralization as ours is impractical, and that there must be decentralization. In other words, business has made a mess of things, and the state has had to enter in to rescue the worker from starvation.
Of course, Pope Pius XI said that, when such a crisis came about, in unemployment, fire, flood, earthquake, etc., the state had to enter in and help.
But we in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam. “Uncle Sam will take care of it all. The race question, the labor question, the unemployment question.” We will all be registered and tabulated and employed or put on a dole, and shunted from clinic to birth control clinic. “What right have people who have no work to have a baby?” How many poor Catholic mothers heard that during those grim years before the war!
(snip)
The people are seduced, robbed, stupefied, drugged and demoralized daily. They are robbed just as surely as though those flat pocketbooks of those shabby mothers were pilfered of the pennies, dimes and nickels by sneak thieves.
The people say proudly, “We got It coming to us. We pay taxes, This ain’t charity. It’s justice.” And they hug their sweets, their liquor, their movies, their radio, their dissipations to them, in a vain endeavor to find forgetfulness of the cold and ugliness, the leaking plumbing, the cold water, the lack of coal, the ugly housing, the hideous job, or if they are housewives who stay at home, from the wet diapers, the smelly clothes and beds, the shoddy mattresses and blankets and furniture that the children break to pieces, the crowded quarters where the poor mothers’ heads reverberate with the din of the not too healthy children.
Yes, they pay taxes, and It Is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on. They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan. And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced. Their virtue is being drained from them. They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers. The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer-hideous word-in this war.
(snip)
THE poor mother of six cannot reject the one hundred and eighty dollars. She cannot say, “Keep your miserable, puny, insufficient $180 which you give men in exchange for my husband.” She has poverty, Involuntary poverty.
But we must reject it. We must keep on talking about voluntary poverty, and holy poverty, because it is only it we can consent to strip ourselves that we can put on Christ. It is only if we love poverty that we are going to have the means to help others. It we love poverty we will be free to give up a job, to speak when we feel it would be wrong to be silent. We can only talk about voluntary poverty because we believe Christians must be fools for Christ. We can only embrace voluntary poverty in the light of faith.
Dorothy Day recognized that the State exacted too high a price for their social “assistance.”
And if you know anything at all about the Catholic Worker movement she started, you would recognize that she was ANYTHING but a money-grubber.
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Monte_RCMS
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revert_jen
Guest
Is it possible you really don’t get it?
Handing someone a card for the local St. Vincent de Paul is not passing the buck if you are also donating money to St. Vincent de Paul.
If I donate $50 to SVdP, and then hand out 10 cards, it’s a lot like I’ve given each person $5, which is more than they get from most people. In addition, that $50 will provide more help for the needy than handing out $5s on a street corner, because they can buy in bulk, they (unlike, say, the local McDonalds) are staffed by volunteers, and they have experience knowing what people really need.
To avoid derailing the thread, I will not go into the question of government aid instead of charitable giving other than to say that if you can’t see the difference between a voluntary gift out of love, and having the money taken from you by the government, you need to think about it a little more. Not saying what is better or worse, but you have to see that it is different.
–Jen
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tbcrawford
Guest
Sorry don’t mean this in a rude way but is it possible you don’t get it?
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revert_jen
Guest
Yes, it’s possible.
If you mean that every single person has to personally hand money to every panhandler (or even many panhandlers), I certainly don’t get it. I have been seriously physically threatened by a panhandler (in the UK in fact) because I refused to hand over any money, when I really honestly didn’t have any. (I was not on vacation or anything; I was living there.) I am also naturally shy around strangers. I do not personally seem well suited to giving out money on the street, although if I see an elderly woman I often do.
Do I think it is meritorious for people to have personal contact with the needy? Of course.
Do I think it is a requirement that every person must have regular contact with the needy at every stage of his life? No.
Do I think that sending $100 to the local food shelter is an act of caring for the needy? Yes.
Do I think it is passing the buck? Not in the sense which the poster to whom I was responding seems to have meant the word, no. (I mean it is technically passing 100 bucks, but I’m pretty sure the poster was not engaging in a pun.)
I think that it is perfectly acceptable to give people cards that direct them to a place where they can get assistance, provided you help that place (or a similar one) with money as you can. I think calling it “passing the buck” implies that the only acceptable way of helping the needy is to hand out money on the street, and I disagree with that very strongly. It is, as other posters have pointed out, not always prudent. In fact, it is not always in the best interests of the people you are trying to help.
If people feel comfortable handing out money to strangers on the street, and assuming that the person is truly in need and will not spend the money becoming more involved in a dangerous addiction, that really is great. They are probably right much of the time, and anyway, the other times it will be “credited to them as righteousness.”
I just don’t feel we all have to help the needy in the same way.
–Jen
P.S. I do think it is amusing, though, that people seem to be more worried about them spending the money on cigarettes than on heroin.
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tbcrawford
Guest
Thankyou my friend for your response.I actually asked because you had asked another poster.
We all see things from a different perspective.I am sure we all, with great sincerity, mean to do the right thing as regards all our brothers and sisters who are in difficult times. Perhaps we all go about it differently and perhaps we all evaluate the situation in different ways.
I understand it must be frightening to be threatened by people who perhaps have mental health problems and are feeling desperate so behave in a threatening manner in desperation of their circumstances. Many of these people are feeling rejected and neglected by society.They are depserate and on the edge of life much of the time.Many are struggling to get through each day in any way they can.
It is a huge challenge for all of us to help those who we fear and in fact who hurt us but in my humble opinion that is in fact what we are called to do.
It is easy to love those who are good and kind to us, who treat us nicely.How very difficult it is for us to love those who wrong us or do distasteful things to us…yet we are called to love everyone.
Yes many people who have nowhere to live have many problems health problems emotional problems.Many have turned to drink or drugs to 'get through; their painful day. I for one would not liek to spend one day in their shoes. I cannot imagine (with all my lovely family around me) just how lonely and desperate some of our poor brothers and sisters are feeling…yes they are our brothers and sisters and we are called to love them.Are we really in a position to deem who is worthy of our love or help? When we do not help others as much as we could are we fulfilling what we are called to do. Are we ready to live in eternal life with all our brothers and sisters and share all we have with one another? It just seems to me that when we get to that place in our hearts, that we are truly able to love our neighbour (everyone) as our brother and sister then that may be when we ready/
Jesus insisted that we love one another as He loves each one of us. Jesus gave His life to love us and He tells us that we also have to give whatever it takes to do good to one another. And in the Gospel Jesus says very clearly: “Love as I have loved you.”
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta “We can keep the joy of loving Jesus in our hearts, and share that joy with all we come in contact with. Let us make that one point - that no child will be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, or killed and thrown away. And give until it hurts - with a smile.”
“I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people first. And find out about your next-door neighbors. Do you know who they are?”
“When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society - that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome”
On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand, “Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me.” Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, “Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me.” These will ask Him, “When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?” And Jesus will answer them, “Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!”
God bless
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revert_jen
Guest
If you must know, he came after me with a knife, and if he hadn’t tripped, I would probably be dead. It was between 8 and 9 in the morning and he was drunk, but not too drunk to make quite coherent sexually based threats to me. Perhaps it would have helped him in some way if I had helped him become a murderer, but I don’t feel the end justifies the means.
I can help people without handing out money on the street for which I am unsuited emotionally and with which I am in disagreement intellectually.
You define “help” your way, and I’ll define it mine.
And feel free not to continue implying that if I don’t hand out cash on the street I’m going to hell. It is very judgemental.
Thank you.
–Jen
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tbcrawford
Guest
Gosh I am really sorry you took my post as so offensive and judgemental.That was certainly not my intention at all.I am sorry for having cuased you offense.
In my post I tried my utmost to be humble and polite stating that we all see things from different points of view
I did in fact say QUOTE “We all see things from a different perspective.I am sure we all, with great sincerity, mean to do the right thing as regards all our brothers and sisters who are in difficult times. Perhaps we all go about it differently and perhaps we all evaluate the situation in different ways.”
I am truly sorry for your personal terrifying experience in no way do I belittle it or judge you and may God bless you.
My intention was the complete opposite of what I have managed to do.I have failed to get my humble message across.
I meant to ’ imply’ nothing other than Jesus message to us all. I judge no-one… that is the point.I am sorry that I have failed to show you love and for that I sincerely apologise.I hope you are able to see my post in the light it was meant to be.
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revert_jen
Guest
Well, when I read it again, I really can’t see any reason for you to quote those things to me except you thought I either didn’t know them, or that I wasn’t applying them in my life. Why else bring them up? And since one of them was the reading at Mass quite recently, I don’t see how I could be expected not to know them. If you weren’t trying to show me the error of my ways (which is inherently judgemental, implying that you know better than I do what God requires of me) then I’m not sure what the point was.
However, I can see that our minds work very differently, and that is a blessing. It is important that all sorts of people make up the Church, so that all different sorts of talents can do God’s work. I accept that you were not trying to judge me since you say it, in which case no apology is needed. But since you made one, I accept it anyway, and offer my return apology for writing more harshly than I should in response.
–Jen
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tbcrawford
Guest
When people post here Jen they give their opinions.We are all entitled to give opinions.I have made no offense to you I simply do not understand how or why you have taken offense.
My comments in general were directed to everyone not just to you. I shocked and saddened that you should have taken offense at my comments.
You have accused me of some quite awful things which I would never do or say to anybody.
However thankyou for accpeting my apology and I accept yours.
May God bless us all always.
My comments in general were directed to everyone not just to you. I shocked and saddened that you should have taken offense at my comments.
You have accused me of some quite awful things which I would never do or say to anybody.
However thankyou for accpeting my apology and I accept yours.
May God bless us all always.
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revert_jen
Guest
I’m sorry you are shocked and saddened. However, when you quote someone’s entire post before making a bunch of comments, it is generally assumed that those comments are related to the post you quoted. If you want to make general comments that are not directed at anyone in particular, it is better to just use the “Reply” button rather than the “Quote” button.
For example, if I quoted your entire post, and then commented “It is important to love your neighbor,” unless you had said something about loving your neighbor and I could be understood to be agreeing with you, it would be a reasonable assumption that I thought you were lacking in neighborly love. There is nothing wrong with the statement in itself, but in context, many people will take it to be directed a them.
I’m just trying to help you–if you didn’t know this, and it sounds like you didn’t, you will probably be understood better if you learn it now. If you aren’t directing your comments at someone in particular, you really need either not to quote a post, or be very clear in your comments that you aren’t directing them at the poster of the post which you are quoting.
God bless,
–Jen
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