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Jayden Emberton-Gaines

Professor Gabrielli

Faith, Religion, & Society

Dec 5th, 2016

Help the Poor Climb Out of Poverty

Have you ever heard of the term CST? CST stands for Catholic Social Teaching, this is a

very important term that can help people all around the world make it a safer and overall better

place to live. CST has seven main principles which are all of equal significance, those principles

are, Dignity of the Human Person, call to Family, Community and Participation, Rights and

Responsibilities, Preferential option for and with People who are Poor, Dignity of Work and the

Rights of Workers, Solidarity, and finally Care for God’s Creation. It is preached throughout

CST that if one lives by these seven principles they will be helpful to their family/community,

and hopefully influence the others around them to treat each other and the world with the same

regard. A big problem I see all too often in the world is people living in poverty and being poor.

If humans are informed about how many people are actually suffering due to poverty, people

would actually begin to stand up and make a change. If we continue to sit back and do nothing

to help the poor and those living in poverty, we will all be affected in some way or another. We

need to remind society about the harmfulness of living in poverty and guide them in the right

direction to make a change.

This worldwide problem of helping the poor came up in two class reading we did about

Catholic Social Teaching. These two class readings are excerpts on Justice and Charity, what

their true meaning is and how they relate to each other. In the excerpt Caritas in Veritate, by

Pope Benedict XVI this is said about the differences between Charity and Justice, “First of all,
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justice. Ubi societas, ibi ius: every society draws up its own system of justice. Charity goes

beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks

justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his

being or his acting.” (Pope Benedict XVI,5). That goes to show exactly what it is that people are

doing to help the poor. However, it is said in the excerpt Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict

XVI that the poor do not need “charity” but rather “justice”. The works of charity- almsgiving-

are simply a way for the rich to avoid their obligation to work for justice and to sooth their

consciences while preserving their status and robbing the poor of their rights (Pope Benedict

XVI, 1). With the definitions of charity and justice followed by what we should be doing to help

the poor should raise a lot of questions, “Why wouldn’t charities be a better option?” “Isn’t it

better to give people something of mine to help them thru hard times?”. Many Americans

simply give money to charities to feel better about themselves, thinking they have cured half of

all poverty throughout the world. Pope Benedict claims that simply giving what is yours to the

poor is not what they need, rather they need guidance and need to be given what is theirs, rights.

Although the absence of help from society is hurting the poor, it definitely is not the only thing.

There are things in this world such as hunger and diseases that are hurting/killing those

that are less fortunate. Many preventable diseases around the world are hurting the poor, due to

the heart breaking fact that they simply do not have enough funds to protect themselves from

these diseases. According to the Catholic Social Teaching this is due to the lack of care that

society has for the poor. The lack of support we have for people to help them get back up on

their feet again and prosper. One thing we can do to help many of the poor keep from getting

life threatening diseases is make vaccines cheaper and provided to the general public. Education

for Justice also states that, “Pharmaceutical companies must do more for the common good,
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providing generic drugs and shortening patent periods that prevent generic drug companies from

reproducing medicines” (4). In The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day, a legendary catholic

social activist, Peter Maurin, Day’s husband said, “we are our brother’s keeper, and the unit of

society is the family; that we must have a sense of personal responsibility to take of our own, and

our neighbor, at a personal sacrifice” (Day, 179). Coming from the Catholic Social Teaching

this is the way that society needs to see things in order to assist in ending poverty and help the

poor. Getting communities as a whole to have this mindset can fix a lot of problems concerning

poverty. People would then look out for each other and serve justice to one another. Therefore,

giving the poor the rights they deserve and guiding them out of a life of poverty.

It is often that people think of poverty as just numbers, but it is way more than that.

People going through poverty are not simply stats, but rather our brothers and sisters, member of

our united human family. Those statistics however can imply the significance of the problem at

hand. In the article “A Place at The Table” written by the United States Conference of Catholic

Bishops (USCCB), their main goal is to get Catholics around the world to Recommit to

Overcome Poverty and to Respect the Dignity of All God’s Children. Within the article, the

USCCB has some heartbreaking statistics, “More than half of the world's population lives on less

than two dollars a day. More than 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day”, “Almost

800 million people across the globe, most of them children, live with hunger or malnutrition as a

regular fact of life. They live in desperate poverty, which means they die younger than they

should, struggle with hunger and disease, and live with little hope and less opportunity for a life

of dignity”, “In the United States, thirty-four million people live below the official poverty line

(i.e., $17,960 for a family of four). If all these people lived in one state, its population would be

larger than the combined current populations of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, New
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Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Iowa, and Arizona”, and

“The younger you are in our country, the more likely you are to be poor. More than 15 percent of

our preschoolers are growing up poor. Discrimination, lack of opportunity, and economic

injustice make poverty worse, especially for those in racial and ethnic communities and for

persons with disabilities” (USCCB, n.p.). As you see from these statistics poverty is a very

serious subject that harms many people in not only the United States, but around the world. One

service that helps try and put an end to poverty is the Catholic Relief Services (CRS). This

specific organization provides emergency response and recovery to those who suffered from a

natural disaster. This helps keep those who have survived the natural disaster out of poverty and

get them back on their feet. The Catholic Relief Services provide things such as, “Once we meet

immediate needs for food, water and shelter, we transition to rebuilding and reconstruction,

supporting the survivors of natural disasters and chronic emergencies in reclaiming their lives.

Our programs seek to prevent loss of life, minimize suffering, reduce property damage, speed

recovery, reduce vulnerability, and otherwise better cope with natural or man-made disasters,

while fostering a culture of peace, dignity and respect” (CRS, n.p.). This organization follows

many of the principles of CST, thus they are helping a wide variety of people all over the world.

All in all, if we can get more people to understand the meaning of the Catholic Social

Teaching and why it is so important to be a part of our daily lives we can build towards ending

poverty. Informing society about the damage poverty has on the brothers and sisters of the

worlds one big family, as well as what we can try and do to end poverty and help the poor back

on their feet is very important in executing our plan. Poverty will not end by itself, we have to

be persistent in our plan and bring others along with us, as long as we follow the guidelines of

the CST and are passionate about helping the poor, all should work out fine.
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Works Cited

"A Place at the Table." A Place at the Table. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 13 Nov.
2002. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

"Caritas in Veritate (June 29, 2009) | BENEDICT XVI." Caritas in Veritate (June 29, 2009) |
BENEDICT XVI. Pope Benedict XVI, 2009. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1981. Print.

"Deus Caritas Est (December 25, 2005) | BENEDICT XVI." Deus Caritas Est (December 25, 2005) |
BENEDICT XVI. Pope Benedict XVI, 2005. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

"Emergency Response and Recovery." CRS. Catholic Relief Services, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.

Rauh, Jill. "The Poor Are Still Dying from Preventable Diseases around the World." The Poor Are
Still Dying from Preventable Diseases around the World | Education for Justice | Catholic Social
Teaching. Education for Justice, Jan. 2006. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.