Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)
POVERTY THAT DEHUMANIZES, POVERTY THAT SANCTIFIES
As we begin this Lenten Season in
the Year of the Laity, we invite you, our brothers and sisters, to reflect on
poverty, particularly the types that contradict God’s Kingdom as well as those
other types that promote and establish the Kingdom. We do this following the
lead of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, whose own Lenten Message takes its
inspiration from St. Paul writing about our Lord Jesus Christ: “He became poor,
so that by his poverty you might become rich” (cf. 2 Cor 8:9).
There are many forms of poverty.
Those that degrade and dehumanize, we are to reject and work against. Those
that paradoxically humanize and sanctify, we are to embrace and through them,
by God’s grace, be transformed. We encounter such opposing forms of poverty on
three dimensions of human existence: material, moral, and spiritual. Allow us
now to describe them in a framework that may help us all observe this season of
grace more generously and fruitfully.
Poverty that degrades
and dehumanizes
In his earthly life, Jesus was no
stranger to poverty. He knew well how people suffered from it and he tirelessly
went about lightening their burdens: “Then Jesus went
about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every
sickness" (Mt. 9:35).
He worked against this kind of
poverty because it degrades and dehumanizes humanity; deforming the very ones
created lovingly in God’s image and amounting to a grave insult hurled at God.
Such poverty continues to undermine and threaten our existence.
In his apostolic exhortation,
Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis declares
in no uncertain terms, “
No to an economy
of exclusion!” (
EG 53) This
exclusion is the defining characteristic of poverty in our country and in the
world today. As the Pope has stressed,
“Poverty
in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth, so
many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable that there are so many
hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many
poor persons. Poverty today is a cry.”[i]
Indeed, it is a great scandal
that takes us all to task.
[ii]
No to Material
Destitution
In the material dimension, poverty that degrades and dehumanizes
exists for individuals and families as destitution, which is an exclusion from the basic needs of life.
In the past few years the poverty rate
of the country has hovered at over 20% according to the National Statistics
Coordinating Board (NSCB). This means that one in every five Filipinos are in
households earning less than the level of income needed for a family to meet
its minimum food and non-food requirements. While the poverty rate has gone
down from its peak of 29.7% in the early 90s, to have such a huge segment of
our population living in such abject poverty is an unacceptable scandal. These
official figures are further enhanced by the real life perceptions of people.
In its survey on poverty for the last quarter of 2013, the Social Weather
Stations (SWS) reports that 55% of respondents actually consider themselves poor,
up from 50% the previous quarter. Clearly, many people see themselves as being
excluded from opportunities to live a decent life.
No to various faces of the Economy of
Exclusion
On the societal level, the scandal of material poverty can be seen in
various faces of the economy of exclusion.
Exclusion from gainful livelihood. The appalling poverty rate is aggravated by
the exclusion of many Filipinos from opportunities for economic advancement. The
latest Labor Force Survey pegs unemployment at 6.5% of the national workforce
and, more tellingly, underemployment at 17.9% (the latter being the percentage
of the workforce that is employed but looking for additional work).
Exclusion from sufficient
shelter. Shelter is another
basic right to which people are denied when poverty strikes. The Subdivision
and Housing Developers’ Association has estimated that the housing shortfall
between 2001 to 2011 has reached 3.93 million units. The estimates of informal
settlers alone run from anywhere between 1 to 3 million households, not
counting those rendered homeless by recent natural and man-made calamities.
Exclusion from rural
development. Centuries of
inequitable land ownership, peace issues, and lack of livelihood opportunities
have excluded poor rural folk from genuine progress, driving them into the
cities in search of a better life. Sadly, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension
with Reforms (CARPER) is set to expire this June 2014, with land acquisition
and distribution targets still unmet.
Exclusion from adequate health
care. The poor, who can
avail of health care at only public hospitals and local government health
centers, are at risk of being further excluded from access to basic health care
with the proposed privatization of leading public health institutions such as
the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital and the National Orthopedic
Hospital. Especially
vulnerable are children and the elderly, unless government continues to aspire
for the ideal of “universal health coverage.”
Exclusion from quality
education. While we have had
good progress in battling illiteracy, further improvements can be made. The
International Labor Organization reports that, in 2010 to 2012, out of every
ten grade 1 pupils six finish elementary school and only four are able to
finish high school. Overcrowding in schools, large classroom sizes, and double
to triple shifts are chronic problems in basic and secondary education. Quality
higher education, in particular, is an elusive dream for many. Our Catholic
schools in the rural areas continue to suffer from the departure of our well
trained teachers in the pursuit of higher monetary gain.
Other faces of poverty. The foregoing are some of the most familiar
faces of poverty, but other aspects of poverty also cause concern. In the
aftermath of typhoons, droughts, and earthquakes, it is poor Filipinos who are
most profoundly affected and further excluded from a decent life. Despite
recent progress in the peace accords between the MILF and the Philippine
Government, the ravages of war (as seen in the MNLF Zamboanga incursion and the
long standing NPA rebellion) continue to affect the poorest who are often
caught in the crossfire. The destruction of the environment due to illegal
logging and both large and small scale mining disadvantage the poor, especially
our indigenous communities, who are often excluded from the benefits of such
economic activities. We suffer from ecological poverty due to our neglect of
the gifts of creation entrusted to us by God.
No to Consumerism
On the level of a global ethos, the scandal of material poverty shows
itself in the ever-growing influence of consumerism. Pope Francis laments that
“The great danger in today’s world,
pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a
complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and
a blunted conscience” (EG 2). In
the end, such poverty leads to a self-inflicted emptiness.
No to Moral Destitution
In the moral
dimension, poverty can be debilitating on the same three levels.
Individually, one can experience dehumanizing poverty as a
slavery to vice or sin. “How much pain
is caused in families because one of their members—often a young person—is in
thrall to alcohol, drugs, gambling or pornography! How many people no longer
see meaning in life or prospects for the future, how many have lost hope! And
how many are plunged into this destitution by unjust social conditions, by
unemployment, which takes away their dignity as breadwinners, and by lack of
equal access to education and health care. In such cases, moral destitution can
be considered impending suicide.”
[iii]
On the societal level, moral poverty confronts us everywhere as the
malady of
corruption. As we have
written repeatedly, “
We face today a
crisis of truth and the pervading cancer of corruption. We must seek the truth
and we must restore integrity.”[iv]
More recently, on the pork barrel issue, we renewed the call for vigilance and
self-critique, “
Our protests should not
just emanate from the bad feeling that we have been personally or communally
transgressed, violated or duped. It should come rather from the realization
that God has been offended and we have become less holy as a people because of
this.… We are not just victims of a corrupt system. We have all, in one way or
another, contributed to this worsening social cancer—through our indifferent
silence or through our cooperation when we were benefiting from the sweet cake
of graft and corruption.”[v]
Most widely, as a global ethos, we experience moral destitution as inequality. We see this in the critique
of capitalism that Pope Francis makes: “In
this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume
that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in
bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion,
which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust
in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings
of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting” (EG, 54).
No to Spiritual Destitution
Material destitution constitutes a scandal. Moral destitution
frustrates our striving to respond to God’s call of love. But spiritual
destitution is the form of poverty that threatens the core of our relationship
with God. Individually, we experience it as
loneliness and hopelessness. Mother Teresa declares from her vast
experience of being among the poorest of the poor that “
the most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being
unloved.” Moreover, she is convinced: “We can cure physical diseases with
medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love….
The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty
of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is
a hunger for God.”
[vi]
Then, as a society, we see this poverty in
religious intolerance. The Pope has spoken out adamantly against
it, which exists even within the Church: “
The
Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord,
and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do
not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this [person] is not Catholic! He cannot
do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment
within him.… [T]his ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside…cannot do
good is a wall that leads to war and…killing in the name of God… [which] is
blasphemy.”[vii]
Globally, spiritual destitution appears as
relativism and the loss of a sense of transcendence. According to
Pope Francis, “
It is the spiritual
poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly
seriously. It…makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of
peoples.… There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if
everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time
caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that
unites every human being on this earth.”
[viii]
Poverty that Humanizes and Sanctifies
Poverty that degrades and dehumanizes is all around us. One can be
disheartened by all this especially in the midst of struggling against.
However, the Christian believes that “the Gospel is the real antidote to
spiritual destitution.” Pope Francis precisely encourages the faithful to
affirm
“that God is greater than our
sinfulness, that he freely loves us at all times and that we were made for
communion and eternal life.”
[ix] In the
great wisdom that only God possesses, the Gospel proclaims that Jesus
resoundingly defeats this poverty by practicing another kind of poverty,
namely, the poverty that humanizes or makes one fully human, the poverty that
sanctifies or conforms one to his own likeness. This life-giving poverty also
has material, moral, and spiritual forms.
Yes to Simplicity, Commitment,
and Surrender to God
Material poverty that humanizes
and sanctifies is experienced in simplicity
of life. Not all are called to choose a life of actual poverty. Many among
the laity, the clergy, and the religious do so admirably, whether as
individuals or in community, and as a result give a powerful witness to the
Gospel. However, all are called to live lives that are marked by a consistent
and liberating detachment from such worldly goods as material possessions,
resources, power, and social status—a detachment that allows us to be sensitive
and to respond to those with less possessions, less resources, less power,
lower status.
Such a readiness and ability to
respond to those in need finds a stable expression in the moral poverty of a commitment to the Good, the Just, and the
True. It is a sustained yearning to participate in the establishment of the
Kingdom manifested in concrete decisions and patterns of behavior that always
look beyond the private realm of self and family toward the public world of
neighbor and society. It is the natural consequence of professing a faith in a
God who identifies with the little ones. After all, “how does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s
goods, and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 Jn 3:17).
Finally, humanizing and sanctifying poverty endures in its spiritual
form as
surrender to God (Ps 9:10,
Prov. 3:5-6). According to PCP II, to be a Church of the Poor means “a Church
that embraces and practices the evangelical spirit of poverty, which combines
detachment from possessions with a profound trust in the Lord as the sole
source of salvation. While the Lord does not want anyone to be materially poor,
he wants all his followers to be ‘poor in Spirit’.”
[x]
Christ’s Invitation, especially to the Laity
This Lenten season, Christ
invites all, but especially the laity, to oppose degrading and dehumanizing
poverty and to embrace humanizing and sanctifying poverty. In other words, he
invites us to imitate his example. We fight poverty with poverty only because
Christ has shown us the way. “Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was
always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the
integral development of society’s most neglected members” (EG,
186). Much more needs to be done in translating this faith into effective
action, in achieving “a greater
penetration of Christian values in the social, political and economic sectors,”
which
in the mind of Pope Francis is where the Church relies on the laity (EG 102).
Particularly, we are invited to
practice material poverty by taking up a simple lifestyle and works of mercy
and justice that attend to the poor and aim for an economy of inclusion, for
what the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen calls “total human development.” We are to
exercise moral poverty by strengthening our resolve to practice solidarity with
the neglected and to denounce injustice and all forms of radical inequality. We
are to embrace spiritual poverty by deepening our rootedness in Christ, whose
poverty alone enriches us. “Let us not
forget,” Pope Francis insists,
“that real
poverty hurts… I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.”[xi]
At the same time,
“We may be sure that none of our acts of love
will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others. No single act
of love for God will be lost, no generous effort is meaningless, no painful
endurance is wasted” (
EG 279).
May the Lord bless your Lenten
observance and send you forth with love and joy.
May Mary, Mother of the Poor show
you the way to the heart of Jesus, our pearl of great price!
For the Catholic Bishops’
Conference of the Philippines, March 5, 2014 Ash Wednesday, the beginning of
Lent
(SGD)+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS
Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan
President, Catholic Bishops’
Conference of the Philippines
[i]
Francis, Meeting with Students of
Jesuit
Schools, Q & A, June 7,
2013.
[ii]
Cf. CBCP, Pastoral Exhortation,
“To Bring
Glad Tidings to the Poor” (Luke 4:18), January 27, 2014.
[iii]
Francis, Lenten Message, 2014.
[iv]
CBCP, Pastoral Statement,
Seeking the
Truth, Restoring Integrity, February 26, 2008.
[v]
CBCP, Pastoral Statement on the Pork Barrel,
“Hate evil and love good and let justice prevail…” (Amos 5,15),
September 5, 2013.
[vi]
Mother Teresa,
A Simple Path: Mother Teresa, 1995.
[vii]
Francis, Homily at Mass in Domus Santae
Martae on the feast of Santa Rita, quoted by
Vatican
Radio, May 22, 2013.
[viii]
Francis, Audience with the Diplomatic
Corps, March 22, 2013.
[ix]
Francis, Lenten Message, 2014.
[xi]
Francis, Lenten Message, 2014.
