”Mary and the Poor” – Patrick T. McCormick

Mary And “The Poor”

Today we hear a great deal of conversation about “the poor”. The popular press writes about the plight of “the poor” while our pastors remind us of our obligations to care for “the poor” and the Church speaks about God’s special love of “the poor”. But in the midst of this conversation we need to stop and ask who are “the poor” about whom so much is being said. – Patrick T. McCormickOften enough we have a statistical grasp of “the poor”. Seventy percent of the “the poor” are women and children, forty percent of minorities are among “the poor,” one out of every five children are born into poverty. While statistics can help us to understand the severity of poverty in America and around the globe, these numbers often strip the human face off “the poor”. Instead of persons with stories and lives of their own, we come to see “the poor” as a number, a percentile, a problem which must be approached mathematically. Statistics transform “the poor” into a faceless mass, a growing cancer in our society.

Or perhaps “the poor” are made into victims, objects of our charity and care, the recipients of our pity. We raise monies for “the poor,” collect clothes or foodstuff for “the poor,” make an effort to remember “the poor” at Christmas. In this way “the poor” are merely the needy and passive recipients of our care; unfortunate and helpless creatures without faces, dignity or control of their lives. “The poor” need charity, our help, and thrive on our guilt.

In all of this we are tempted to shun “the poor” because they are such a painful reminder of our own frailty, of our own weakness. “The poor” represent for the wealthiest and most consumerist society in the world a kind of hell. “The poor” are our image of hell, just as winning the lottery is our image of heaven. We have come to believe that there is nothing worse than poverty and so we are driven to see “the poor” as the economic equivalent of “the poor”. They are a place where the God of America does not go.

For the full text visit
http://www.secretariadojmv.org/inter/ingles/formacion/mary_and_the_poor.htm