Why do we get into social services?

[foolishmortal]

I can understand feeding the poor and what not but, if the sufferers and the sorrowful are blessed according to the beautitudes, than why don’t we just meet them where they’re at and help them offer it up and just provide other spiritual advice?
It seems, once an injustice is alleviated against a group, they don’t do as much virtuous stuff or idle thoughts and deeds set in. I’m all for the kingship of Christ but it seems that no sooner had we been accepted in Rome and become top dogs there, the Arians started up and then other heresies. When certain Catholic ethnic groups felt accepted here during the waves of Catholic immigration here, they were exclusive to other Catholic ethnic groups. When we felt accepted in the '60s with JFK, many joined the abortion bandwagon not many years afterwards. How many great black people have we had since civil rights? Adversity seems to build virtue, especially when persecuted by outside aggressors. When a group feels accepted, they have internal fighting. It seems we do oppressed people a favor by not changing their social state.

May God forgive me if I am being heretical here.

 

[puzzleannie]

foolishmortal:

I can understand feeding the poor and what not but, if the sufferers and the sorrowful are blessed according to the beautitudes, than why don’t we just meet them where they’re at and help them offer it up and just provide other spiritual advice?
.

I have no idea where you are going with the rest of your post, but the reason we provide material assistance to those in need is in obedience to Christ’s clear command in Matt 25:31-46 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked etc.

 

[kmmd]

When we provide for a person’s physical needs and pay no attention to their spiritual needs, it is like treating them like a dog. Who would let a dog go hungry? But human beings need much more than to have their tummy’s full. In the United States, poor people are fat. I know all about making poor choices but while our government agencies are all about helping them choose the right food, they are forbidden from even thinking about their souls. This, however, is the most important part of their being.

Is that the kind of thing that bothers you? It bothers me.

 

[foolishmortal]

2nd responder: Were you responding to me or the last replier?

Anyway, to the first replier, I was talking about trying to save all the world’s injustices problems instead of meeting them where they are so that we can assist them as an angel sent by the Father assisted Jesus at the garden without saving him from his fate. If we save people from these sufferings are we preventing them from gaining graces and virtue that suffering-accepted to honor God would have brought them? Gandhi got the British off the Indians’ soil but the people turned on each other just as we turn on each other during times of peace.

 Is it a sin to hope we would be conquered by an external enemy or virus so that we would stop being idle and over-consumptive sinners and have a healthy sense that we should live well because we know not the day nor the hour?  The only thing that keeps me from desiring that is that people in mortal sin would go to hell quicker as an external enemy or virus would kill them.  I think I would reform more of what needs reforming in my life if I deep-down (not in merely intellectualizing it) feared I may die the next day.  It may, as in a sentence of capital punishment, move those with a conscience to try to repent an amend their lives.
Sorry.

I didn’t want to get on the group again for a while because I can ramble and write idle things…some of which I know insufficiently about, but I couldn’t let people think I was for depriving people of acts of spiritual mercy like food, clothing or water. It just seems people turn on their own when relieved of suffering. People still may riot or what not when suffering, but that’s because our society and Nortwestern hemisphere is becoming spiritually deprived and that’s where Catholics would make a difference. Is righting social ills one of those or corporal works of mercy? Ashamed to say, I forgot those lists.

 

[goravens]

I think there is definitely some truth in what you’re saying. We are seeing an increase in vocations from third world countries. More and more priests from overseas are finding their way into my diocese to help with our lack of priests. And personally, I always feel closer to God when undergoing some kind of suffering whether it be physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, etc. But as far as letting people continue being hungry and poor so they won’t become like many fat, spoiled Americans? I’m uncomfortable with that. We have a responsibility to serve the least of these, and to love our brothers as ourselves. Maybe if we all truly did that, myself included most of all, we would each be closer to God and living in solidarity with one another. Less of the great divide between prosperity and poor.

 

[foolishmortal]

It’s probably just idle talk

Of course, I never said not to feed the poor. Dying never helped anyone who does not have a bad attitude. Basic sustenance for the body is important. You get the basics of what I was thinking though. What if bringing social justice to people makes them into monsters? Maybe that should be left in God’s hands though. There’s nothing bad about helping others who are suffering, but social justice seems to be happening at a better rate than spiritual justice in the developed world in recent decades, it seems. It’s as if charity, though being the highest of the theological virtues, according to Jesus, has become directionless as it replaced Faith and Chestertonian common sense. Nowadays, many Catholics think abortion and assisted suicide is compassionate. These things pass for common sense these days amongst the miseducated and those who are too proud and disobedient to look at the science the Church offers which rebukes the claims of the world.

 

[foolishmortal]

I guess one of the Beautitudes talk about those that hunger and thirst for justice. Maybe it’s not our place to prevent them from becoming complacent after becoming free from oppression. Maybe God needs to give certain peoples a break from oppression at times, I don’t know.

 

[puzzleannie]

foolishmortal:

. What if bringing social justice to people makes them into monsters? Maybe that should be left in God’s hands though. .

I confess I don’t know where you are going with your speculations. So what if obeying Christ’s clear command to respond to the physical and material needs of the poor causes one or more recipients of this charity to respond badly. That does not remove the obligation to obey his injunction in Matthew’s gospel to feed the hungry etc., because that is the basis for our final judgement.

 

[Anna_s_Mom]

I have recently been in need of assistance. I felt so ashamed at first. Now I just thank God everyday for the wic program. I don’t know what I would do for Anna’s formula without it. I did breastfeed the first month, but then I had to stop for medical reasons.

 

[Augustine]

foolishmortal:

Is righting social ills one of those or corporal works of mercy?

I think that you’re striking a chord here, for I asked a parallel question elsewhere.

What I think that happens is that people are content to just feed the hungry and clothe the naked, instead of encouraging them to get food and clothes for themselves. In other words, instead of just giving them the fish, why not teaching them to fish for themselves? In this sense, I see a lot of the moral hazard of such social services.

They’re not worried with the spiritual ailments that the needy may be going through, even if they are part of the Church. And oftentimes such ailments perpetuate the cycle of material poverty itself.

And, of course, they soon become institutions. And as any institution, though its growing bureaucracy, its survival becomes its primary goal. Then solving hunger and nakedness is contrary to its interests, but making sure that the hunger and the naked come back becomes a measure of its success.

 

[foolishmortal]

Well, that happens too.

I don’t know why PuzzleAnnie thinks I’m for not providing necessary material and physical things to the poor. I’m talking about social justice–getting oppressive governments off the peoples’ backs. They can get replaced by another regime even if the people aren’t spiritually mature. I was thinking that we spare them the false hopes of either a foreign government, national government, local government, dictatorship’s removal will do the people any good.
Mao, for example, may have meant well (he may not have been in on the communist political system’s dirty little secret about ridding world of religion–especially Christianity), I don’t know, but he then established a communist government and oppressed the people he said he was saving from tyranny. Liberals did that with blacks. Even the liberal Warren Beatty’s character admits it in “Bulworth”. There are probably plenty of conservatives not interested in the social reign of God who play social conservatives for fools. We Christians did beautiful things with the churches throughout the world before the 60s, but would we have had half the troubles if we had desired to remain powerless?
BTW…I’m not saying we should tear down the beautiful churches (we can use them to pay abuse settlements) or that we should never build others though because they were built out of love of God (and not mass-produced as they are in the burbs).
I was thinking though. Maybe it's not our right to decide what the oppressed will do with their new justice.

 

[asquared]

foolishmortal:

Well, that happens too.

I don’t know why PuzzleAnnie thinks I’m for not providing necessary material and physical things to the poor. I’m talking about social justice–getting oppressive governments off the peoples’ backs. .

perhaps your headline and your initial post confused her into thinking you were talking about social services, rather than liberation theology. Perhaps her definition of social justice is more in line with the classic Catholic encyclicals on that topic, and not about toppling governments.