\tIt\u2019s no secret that to be a Christian is to have an obligation to care for the poor. This obligation comes directly from the teachings of Jesus, who said, \u201cwhatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.\u201d And so, throughout our history, the Church has cared for the poor, and exhorted her members to do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tBut the perennial question Christians must face is: what should we *do*? Is it enough to hand someone a dollar when they\u2019re begging in the street? Is it better to write a check to a homeless shelter? Should the care of the poor affect how we vote?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe social teaching of the church, with it\u2019s emphasis on the rights and dignity of all people, says that we have to do all these things. We can\u2019t ignore the poor in our cities and neighborhoods and should give from our resources to help them meet their basic needs. But we also need to address issues of justice, and look at the social structures that can be improved to lift people out of poverty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
20th century Catholic activist Dorothy Day once said, \u201cIf you feed the poor, you’re a saint….If you ask why they’re poor, you’re a Communist.” The Church has had plenty of critical things to say about communism, and about unbridled capitalism as well, but the totality of Catholic social teaching consistently calls us to work for the dignity and rights of all human beings. That means we must both make sure people\u2019s basic needs are met, but also work for justice for all people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To find out more about the church\u2019s teaching on social justice, you can go to the web site of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, at http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/sdwp\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Or you can look at the web site of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, at http:\/\/www.osjspm.org<\/a>\/.\u00a0 It\u2019s information that every Catholic should know, so that we\u2019re working both for charity, and for justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s no secret that to be a Christian is to have an obligation to care for the poor. This obligation comes directly from the teachings of Jesus, who said, \u201cwhatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.\u201d And so, throughout our history, the Church has cared for the poor, and exhorted her members to do the same. But the perennial question … Continue reading Charity and Justice<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts-of-faith","tag-facts-of-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-5z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}