Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Attention To Social Injustice Growing, But Not As Fast As Social Injustice

Early today it was announced that the Vatican has “updated” aspects of sin with fresh attention placed on, among other things, a persistently broadening gap between the rich and the poor.
The Associated Press story from Vatican City was fraught with an undertow of an attempt a light humor, and not very graciously done. “The Church has announced a list of new sins,” nudge, nudge, har har.
Stupid journalists. I used to be one. I have repented.
The AP reported on Sunday’s edition of L’Osservatore Romano, which quotes Monsignor Giafranco Girotti on what amounts to fresh attention, or emphasis, on issues that are considered offensive to God (and therefore, sins):

VATICAN CITY (AP) - In olden days, the deadly sins included lust, gluttony and greed. Now, the Catholic Church says pollution, mind-damaging drugs and genetic experiments are on its updated thou-shalt-not list. Also receiving fresh attention by the Vatican was social injustice, along the lines of the age-old maxim: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer."
… "If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that's especially social, rather than individual," said Girotti, whose office deals with matters of conscience and grants absolution.
… "The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice," Girotti said in the interview published Sunday.

This last, about “unsustainable social injustice,” certainly applies to the homeless anywhere in the world. Their plight is not well-understood. Their existence is only absently noted by the passing world. Their innate dignity and worthiness as persons is somehow in a weird discount bin in our minds.
The homeless are spoken of as people who have other options, so they have an obvious need to get smarter, or get motivated, or just get on down the road and don’t embarrass this or that community with your want.
In fact, the vast majority of homeless people in America have played out all their options, and they need a hand, or an advocate.
In my town, all the social agencies are bumping into the emergence of a housing shortage caused by a certain amount of economic booming in the area. Although we are a small community (15,000) we have seen up-close and personal the effect of our own “unsustainable social injustice,” as some few get on the gravy train of progress, and many others are left at the station to decide where to sleep tonight. Many of our households have had long-term guests staying on couches, sparerooms, basements and vehicles of friends and relatives. I have a son-in-law-to-be living in my basement while he and my daughter search on for an apartment to live in after the wedding in May. Technically, I have a homeless young man living downstairs where we keep the cats’ food … and box.
We have come to depend on agencies and corporations and even churches to take care of our poorly-housed. The problem is pervasive enough that each of us is going to have to lend a hand.
This could mean a shift in attitude is the first order of business.
The question is not, “What is wrong with those people?”
Noted author (and Catholic convert) G.K. Chesterton was among several writers of his time who were asked to submit an essay on the subject, “What is wrong with the world.”
Chesterton’s response was succinct: “Dear Sir, I am.”

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