No one here has “tarred” anyone because they receive welfare. What we have been saying is that the welfare system we have is seriously flawed since it has created generational poverty when it was intended to relieve it. The system needs revamping, but anytime conservatives say so they are “tarred” with being uncaring and greedy, which is simply not the case. So, we should be careful who we accuse of what when dealing with social issues.
Dear Della,
Cordial greetings and a very good day. Thankyou for your response.
Forgive me, dear friend, but I was not implying that any of contributors to the present thread were indiscriminately lumping all welfare recipients together. However, at least here in the UK, it is a fact that the public are becoming jolly unsympathetic towards benefit claimants of all sorts (even the chronically sick do not escape their disdain) and are wont to speak angrily of “benefit cheats” and those who they feel are disinclined to work. As I stated previously (#56), it would be sheer naivety to deny that there has been some abuse of the benefits system, and even the zealous champions of cliamants rights would, I think, freely acknowledge that. What would be hotly disputed is that this abuse is a widespread occurence on the scale suggested by some politicians and the extreme right wing tabloid press. The latter, for example the
Daily Mail, have a habit of finding unique and flagrant cases of benefit abuse (which no right thinking man would defend) and then holding them up as if they were common place and that just about every person who is receiving welfare payments is milking the system somehow. Now I am quite sure that both you and Sedoman would concur that this sort of disengenuous journalism, if you can honour it with that name, is downright scaremongering and smearing of a small, and often vulnerable, segment of society who already have a multitude of difficulties with which to contend, not least financial hardship. The last thing that these people need is to be on the receiving end of harsh and severely critical attitudes that only serve to add to their already heavy burden.
As professing Catholics, we surely ought to be the very people from whom the long-term unemployed and acutely sick receive a ready and sympathetic ear. Moreover, we should freely offer our love and friendship to these poor and vulnerable folk and welcome them in our homes and churches, especially if they are fellow-members of the household of faith. Is not that, my dear friend, the love of Christ in action as well as our duty? A few years ago I was chagrined to hear of a chap in a parish who, after being sadly unemployed for two years, stayed away from divine worship because he was so frightened of being asked what he was doing and why he was still jobless, notwithstanding that he had done his level best to secure gainful employement. It was a fear of harsh and censorious attitudes, and that from his brethren in Christ, to which I alluded at the end of the preceding paragraph, that kept him away. This is as tragic as it is inexcusable and surely within the community of the faithful, at least, no stigma should be attached to unemployment or long-term mental or physical sickness. St. Paul’s dictum ‘if a man will not work, he shall not eat’ (II Thess. 3: 10), be it remembered, was addressed to
voluntary unemployment, to the slothful not the redundant. Thus an obligation is laid upon us, dear friend, to warmly welcome and support the jobless and the sick (as Christ Himself would do) in our Catholic parishes, otherwise pious talk about ‘the body of Christ’ and ministy to the poor and marginalized becomes a sick joke.
Many people, not necessarily the posters on this thread, need to change their un-Christian attitudes towards the unemployed and sick and persuade the public to do the same. Unfortunately, this is an arduous task for those who have been tutored in the values of the so-called ‘work ethic’ as they tend to automatically despise those who are losers in the struggle to survive, as if it were all their own fault and if they got their finger out they could find work if they really wanted. Now please understand, dear friend, that I do, as stated before, accept that there are a few work-shy people who do not want to work and prefer to sponge on the community, but I contend that, contrary to the propaganda, they constitute a infintesimal minority. Most normall chaps, unless they are mentally handicaped, want nothing more than a steady job and to earn their own money so as to be independent. There is now, more than ever in these difficult times in which our lot is cast, the urgent need for Christlike sympathy and much more pastoral care than there has been hitherto.
My only plea is that men will repent for their hard speeches and for looking down on the unemployed and chronically sick in receipt of state benefits and imagining all sorts of negative and unkind things respecting them.
God bless.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
