'And which of these was neighbor to the man who fell in with the robbers?'
Understanding the Church's 'preferential option for the poor.'
In the last 30 years, many Catholics in the United States have come face to face with a theologically recent phrase, "the preferential option for the poor."
More than a few in fact found themselves a bit disconcerted by the expression, especially as it seemed to identify a new focus for Catholics, at a time when both Catholic education and parish life had left many unchallenged about social issues. Admittedly, Pope John Paul II himself eventually amended the term to "preferential, but not exclusive, option for the poor."
Nevertheless questions about the meaning and even theological legitimacy of the term still remain in the minds of many. What exactly does this phrase mean? Even more importantly, if it is truly a legitimate part of the Church's moral teaching, how does it affect our Catholic moral vision and the obligations of discipleship?
Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), a Brazilian bishop who began his priesthood ministering to the poor in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, is often credited with helping the Church adopt the "preferential option for the poor" as the cornerstone of Catholic social morality. He has been quoted as having remarked on more than one occasion, about his dedication to the poor, that "When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist."
Whether the quote is entirely historical or not is less important than that it captures the tension that he and many other Catholics often encountered between the moral obligations flowing from "charity" and those from "justice."
While collecting toys and food for the poor and needy at holiday time is generally accepted as a wonderful expression of Catholic charity, advocating for a living wage law, health and retirement benefits for service workers, protecting the God-given and inalienable human rights of everyone including undocumented immigrants, and fair trade and anti-sweat shop agreements that protect vulnerable agricultural and factory workers in developing countries is not always embraced so universally in our Catholic community.
Advocacy for social responses to systemic poverty has often been unpopular among many mainstream Catholics when solutions apparently collide with an individual's political ideology. In fact, the call to keep Church and state separate is often used by some in an attempt to keep other Church members from advocating for particular issues.
What does our tradition have to say about advocacy for justice?
St. Thomas Aquinas, along with a number of others, taught that the virtue of charity obligated the Christian to share with the poor only from one's "surplus" wealth and goods. This unfortunately led to centuries of casuistic discussions by the Church's moral theologians about what exactly "surplus" meant and often resulted in conclusions that for all practical purposes excluded the wealthy from any serious obligation to their neighbors in dire need.
Moral obligations flowing from justice, on the other hand, were understood as a moral duty to give others in need what is their "due," regardless of whether it comes from one's surplus or not. After centuries of debate and discussion, the Church of the 21st century seems to be challenging us to accept that these two virtues, if not essentially similar, are at least complementary.
The bishops of Latin America began to recover the essential connection between charity and justice in historic discussions at their conferences in Medellin, Colombia (1968), and Puebla, Mexico (1979). When faced with the almost insurmountable challenges of impoverishment throughout their regions, and the inability of "charitable" donations to seriously address the situation, they began recovering the early Church traditions surrounding the rights of the poor.
These discussions were complemented with contemporary biblical scholarship, and eventually an understanding that authentic Christian discipleship demanded a "preferential option for the poor" was born. In addressing the Latin American bishops at Puebla, Pope John Paul II affirmed that conclusion:
"The principle of the universal destination of goods requires that the poor, the marginalized, and in all cases those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern. To this end, the preferential option for the poor should be reaffirmed in all its force" (AAS 71, 1979).
The complementarity between authentic charity and true justice is articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice" (n. 2444).
What is important to note is that this is not a new teaching of the Church. The Catechism in fact is actually quoting St. Gregory the Great (540-604 A.D.). Even prior to St. Gregory, St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.) had articulated the same moral obligation of the faithful toward the poor: "…Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we posses are not ours, but theirs.'"
An authentic understanding of the call of every disciple to work for a just society is not a new teaching then. It predates the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas by almost a millennium. What becomes apparent is that although the Church does not begin to produce her exemplary body of social encyclicals until 1891 with Rerum Novarum, we need only remember that the greatest commandment, as found in our Bible, entails a love of God that is only authentic when it is expressed in making oneself a neighbor of everyone.
The fact that Jesus expresses his mission in Nazareth at the beginning of his public ministry with a quote from Isaiah cannot be dismissed as mere "idealism." Rather, the mission of Jesus is the mission of the Church: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor…" (Luke 4: 18).
In the fall of 2006 the World Institute for Development Economics Research, based in Helsinki, published a report with sobering statistics suggesting a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots of the world. The richest two percent of the world's people have more than half of the world's wealth, and in fact at the millennium in 2000, the richest 1 percent, most living in Europe and the United States, owned 40 percent of global assets. The bottom 50 percent owned only one percent of the world's wealth.
In the end, the Church teaches that it is not enough to give fish to the hungry if simultaneously we do not teach them to fish or, even worse, bar them from the fish pond. Meeting the immediate needs of the poor is indeed both a legitimate and laudable work of mercy that must always be a part of our Church's mission, but at the same time it must be accompanied by actions that address and attempt to ameliorate the conditions that continue to impoverish individuals and even countries.
This essential connection is emphasized in Apostolicam Actuositatem, Vatican II's Declaration on the Apostolate of the Laity, and quoted in the Catechism: "The demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity" (n. 2446).
The call to a preferential option for the poor is impossible without reaffirming the principle of solidarity. A "preferential option for the poor" cannot be understood as a cry to build a welfare state. A real option for the poor embodies both a love for the poor person and a desire to provide the means for them to become part of the global economy. It is not a cry for a handout but, on the contrary, for every Christian to provide a hand up to their neighbor. The Church's social teachings make it clear that we must promote the good of everyone of our sisters and brothers because we are all really responsible for all (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38).
Pope John Paul II challenged the church to remember that the poor should not be seen as a problem, but as people who can become the principal builders of a new and more human future for everyone. The preferential option for the poor is not an attempt to exclude anyone, let alone the rich, from the reign of God; rather it attempts to sharpen the focus of everyone in the Church on the need to let both charity and justice strengthen the foundation for all of our moral decisions with economic and political implications.
Let there be absolutely no doubt: Catholic teaching concludes that the "preferential option for the poor" is an essential aspect of our pro-life stance. We are not truly pro-life until we advocate for the protection of our sisters and brothers consistently throughout their lives, from the moment of their conception until the moment of their natural death. Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings. |