On Not Keeping The Poor Poor
No war has been lost so miserably than America’s War on Poverty. Launched 50 years ago by LBJ, a president not usually given to the swoons of political naiveté, was a head first slam into the brick wall of common sense. With Wilsonian contempt for the delicate rhythms of human liberty and the humble acknowledgement of human imperfectability, he initiated one of the most egregious redistribution programs in human history. What did it accomplish? A taxpayer bill of 13 trillion dollars, and, as of today, a decrease in American poverty from 15% in 1964, to 13% today. The perverse consequences of such an ivory academic tower blunder has been the creation of a permanent underclass of Americans who no longer believe in themselves, but only in government. The War on Poverty was really a War on Human Dignity because it neutered countless tens of millions of men and women.
This War rendered sterile the natural aspiration of every human person to be more. They truly became the wretched of the earth, or in Eliot’s evocative phrase, Hollow Men. Once grand American cities became wastelands of violence and ruin, monuments to the scourges of secular hubris. This War instilled in this underclass a breathtaking indifference to most crucial institutions upon which civility and happiness are built: religion, family, law and authority itself. Atom bombs falling on cities could not have accomplished such devastation. Concentration camps could never have so completely stripped man of his dignity. Torture chamber could not have executed such barbarity. So goes the cost of ignoring human nature, and nature’s God.
Even with a half century of such bruising human folly, that same folly still sits at our doorstep. Instead of the choruses of the War on Poverty, we have the atonal refrains of something called “Income Inequality”. Different names; same programs. Different century; same dangerous naiveté. What bewilders is not so much that these tropes of “Income Inequality” are being chanted in the power corridors of Washington, D.C., but that they have even reached the sacred precincts of the Vatican. Strange, given the fact that the vast riches of the Church’s teachings prevent man from such folly. The Church immunizes us from such retreats from reason, because she alone protects reason from its enemies. Reason stretches to its highest peaks under the protection of the Church’s Magisterium.
In the Church’s theological lexicon the poor is not a political or demographic category, but a theological one. Moreover, nary a whisper can be found in any of the Holy Gospels of a scolding of any class (except the Pharisees), certainly not the so-called “rich”. In fact, when Our Lord warns that “it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” (Mt 19:24), He is not condemning riches but attachment to riches. Many a rich man and centurion were friends of Our Savior (St. Matthew himself, a tax collector, was likely a rich man.) Confirming this point, Our Lord is well known as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Mt 11:19).
The Savior doesn't pity the poor, for he doesn't address categories. He speaks to persons. Amazed by the poor widow, Christ singles her out not because she is poor, but because, in spite of her poverty, she is generous, “And calling His disciples together, he saith to them: Amen I say to you, this poor widow hath cast in more than all they who have cast into the treasury. For they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want cast in all she had, even her whole living.” (Mk 12:43-44). Generosity creates happiness, and with happiness poverty is forgotten. Ronald Reagan once remarked that he grew up poor, but never knew it. Just as Aristotle teaches in the Ethics that where there is love, justice is not necessary, so it is with generosity: when present, misery becomes invisible.
St. Matthew’s widow is so praised not because she is poor, but because she is poor of heart, following Our Lord’s counsel, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt. 5:3). Throughout the entire Bible, the “poor” are the poor in spirit. What they are without is pride and vanity; empty of any desire that would not lead them to God. Thus the paradox: those truly poor are the truly rich. It is this mystery that Our Lady proclaims in her Magnificat, “He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he sent empty away.” (Lk 1:53). Here is the Mother of God’s aria to humility: The poor are those whose only deprivation is the self, and the rich, those who hearts are heavy with interest only in self. When we read in Revelation, “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” (Rev 3:20), Our Lord waits for the soul to become poor: to love Him more than all else.
Of course, when the soul becomes poor, it seeks what God seeks. Above all it seeks the good of all for whom Christ shed His Blood. As Our Lord pitied the suffering of the soul buried in his sins, with equal compassion he pitied their physical suffering. For both afflictions there is mercy, but the deeper and more divine compassion is for the burden of sin. Notice that Christ does not release the Good Thief from his agonies, but He accepts his contrition, and then welcomes him to Heaven. While He feeds the hungry and alleviates the lot of the poor, he never fills any man’s pockets with lucre. Undoubtedly there was income inequality in the Roman Empire, but not once did Our Lord mention it. Rather, he called men to the treasures laid up in heaven, and challenges them to tap the natural riches He has given man.
Wasn’t He teaching the human race about using their natural gifts in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes? Our Lord has compassion on the multitudes and remarks to the apostles that He will not send them away fainting from hunger. When the apostles complain that they do not have enough to feed so many, Our Lord replies, “How many loaves have you?” (Mt 15:34). A small detail with a profound divine lesson. Our Lord expects us to begin by finding in ourselves what is necessary to the task. After our best work has been done, He does the rest. Thus St. Augustine when he writes, “the God Who creates us without us, does not save us without us.”
Clarity shines here. Tis a thousand pities this divine design has been lost upon so many, even in the Church. An embarrassment seems to distract the conscience of many Catholics today. Unless they mimic the solutions of the political left, they fear they will be seen without the bona fides of a properly “enlightened” man. It is a well-known joke that the Episcopalian Church is the Republican Party at prayer. That could very well be rephrased to read that much of Catholic leadership these days is the political left at prayer.
For good Catholics the plight of the poor demands our compassionate concern, or else the dynamism of the Saints is inexplicable. But that concern must be imbued with Catholic nerve and bear the imprint of Christ. Our greatest charity is to guarantee that the poor will not stay poor. A poor man’s dignity is not honored by throwing him a dollar each day, but by helping him earn his own dollar each day. To suffer poverty is not a virtue – to be poor of heart is. Recent trends in some Catholic theological circles see poverty as a permanent mark of status. Perhaps this explains Samuel Huntington’s 2004 book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. The distinguished Harvard professor writes, “Hispanic traits…that hold Latino’s back: mistrust of people outside the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition; low priority for education and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven.” The last sentence is deeply disturbing. If it is true, it reveals a parlous misreading of Our Lord’s own teachings. Unfortunately, this is the prevailing attitude in the Church of the Southern Americas. Aside from a clear distortion of the Gospel, it leads to a slow strangulation of the human spirit made in the image and likeness of God. Beneath its deception, man is left a husk, drained of dignity and striving.
An allied corollary is the peculiar notion that men are poor because some men are rich. It is the old Marxist cliché of “haves and have-nots”: you “have” only because I “have not.” The real truth lies in the fact that men are different because they are free. So will their outcomes. Right reason has always seen the disparity as a tribute to human liberty; but now the Left view it as a treacherous breach of fairness. Only the imagination of great artists can express the absurdity of such blatant anomalies. George Orwell answered that call in Animal Farm.
A remedy to this inversion is the lives of the Saints, especially those renowned for their works of charity and holy poverty. St. Francis of Assisi, for instance. He wed Lady Poverty. While he remained faithful to her all his life, never once did he decry those who did not. His preaching was the authentic doctrine of Christ. All are to be poor in spirit – rich and poor alike. Men are called to be saints. Not all in the same way. Some will be saints through becoming poor; most will become saints by keeping their possessions, but being sure that they are never possessed by them. In the end, becoming a saint is all that matters.
Not a few clerics these days would be utterly bemused at St. Francis’s balance, of embracing poverty for himself, but not presuming it for others. But it was merely a reflection of the balanced teachings of the Church he loved. In St. Thomas’ Treatise on Law he articulates the raison d’etre of human and divine law. In this context he also supplies us with a masterful analysis of that admirable balance of Catholic teaching, which does not command the same things for everyone: “Wherefore it (law) does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous…Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into greater evils.” Those same clerics might be terribly embarrassed by St. Francis’s intransigent attitudes toward the Sacred Liturgy. He insisted that his friars find the most precious vestments, vessels and ornaments for the celebration of that Sacred Liturgy. St. Francis himself certainly did when he assisted at Mass as deacon. These same clerics would be met with even more confusion when they peruse some of Francis letters. Like a broken record, he enjoined his friars to be sure that Churches be appointed lavishly, especially all that touched upon the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Yes, this is Il Povarello who speaks.
Why should this confuse anyone? St. Francis imitated Christ down to the stigmata he bore upon his body. Balance is a divine thing because it proceeds from order: it means that even good things done to excess become bad things. Few saints embraced poverty more perfectly than St. Francis. Yet he would never dare think that the Churches that held the Divine Word Incarnate should look like the cell he prayed in. Chesterton makes the point forcefully:
Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson,
and there is much to be said for the combination; for
Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people
in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold.
Odd that some might want to sport the hair shirt outside, and spurn the crimson and gold. As far as balance is concerned, nothing comes close to one of Chesterton’s most memorable tour de forces in Orthodoxy:
This is the thrilling romance of orthodoxy. People
have fallen into the foolish habit of speaking of
orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum and safe.
There was never anything so perilous or so exciting as
orthodoxy…
The Church swerved to left and right, so as exactly to avoid
enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk
of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to
make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was
swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have
it too unworldly…Here it is enough to notice that if
one small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders
might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased
wrong about the nature of symbolism would have
broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions
might stop all the dances; might wither all the
Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines
had to be defined within strict limits, even that man
might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had
to be careful, if only that the world might be careless…
To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism
to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious
and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one
whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly
chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull
heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling
but erect.
Always in the Church’s quiver has been the most formidable weapon in the War on Poverty: the Catholic School. Behold its arsenal: systematic immersion in Catholic doctrine, its pervasive cultivation of Catholic piety, its inculcation of the human virtues of self-control, discipline, hard work, respect for others, fair play, rigor, civility, good manners, honesty and the constant training in the permanent truths through a classical education. Like a divine alchemy, self-absorbed boys and girls were transformed into generous men and women. Men and women prepared to make sacrifices necessary to pass that legacy to the next generation. Men and women who become their nation’s finest citizens.
Rich men are the ones with full souls. They are to be found in the barrios as well as on Rodeo Drive. Happiness is not a matter of erasing income inequality. It is a matter of souls becoming rich, with a spiritual wealth available to every man whether he lives in a Detroit ghetto or in a Beverly Hills chateau. But if we keep speaking of income inequality, everyone will certainly remain poor.
March 2014
