In February 1977, another conservative priest was named archbishop
in a small Latin American country. A modest and good
man, he was mostly inclined toward books and theological
study. Little of significance was expected of him.
Within a
few months, his responsibility for a war-torn country
full of poor Catholics changed him. In his conversion,
Archbishop Oscar Romero recognized the
tragedy and devastation of the poverty of his native El
Salvador. He saw with new eyes children dying of chronic
diarrhea and villages devastated by malnutrition,
joblessness, and hopelessness.
And his skilled mind enabled him to quickly identify
the true causes the political and economic causes that
were the ruin of many of his fellow Salvadorans. He
would spend his remaining three years in the service of
the poor. In some ways, it is just another story about a
saint.
In another way, something dramatic and divine
occurred here that reveals what it means to be Catholic,
what it means to be neighbor, and what it means to be
human. We can be tugged by the despair and desperation
of others away from our books and comfort to places and
positions unfamiliar and difficult. We might even
literally spend our lives in the service of that
tug.
Last March, parts of the state of Kentucky where I
live received the heaviest rainfall ever recorded for
that area in a 24-hour period. Creeks and rivers
swelled, flooding and destroying many towns and cities.
Many people were killed.
But as staggering as the devastation and loss were,
as remarkable were the stories of self-sacrifice and
courage of neighbors who saved one another from harm's
way. Particularly poignant were the stories of those who
actually lost their lives as they tried to save others
swept away by the rushing water.
Three elderly women tell the story of their rescue by
a high-school boy who swam back and forth to their
flooded apartment and carried each of them to safety on
his back, and then left them in search of others. A week
later, his body was discovered downstream.
Like the story of Romero's life, there is something
extraordinary and even holy about this story. We have an
inner prod that draws us to the care of others in peril;
so strong is that prod that we may even risk much to
obey its meaning.
We are, we believe, made in the image of God. But
what does that mean? I think it means that we are made
in the image of a God whose call to Moses was motivated
by the suffering and despair of a group of slaves.
We are made in the image of a God who, in the person
of Jesus, noticed and responded to the desperation of
the sick, the poor, the stranger, the broken. In other
words, we are made with a predisposition to care about
one another's lives. And that predisposition intensifies
around suffering.
The power of a
phrase
In 1979, the Latin American bishops met in Puebla,
Mexico to address the affairs and direction of the
Catholic Church in Latin America and issued a statement
that included the following: "From the heart of Latin
America, a cry rises to the heavens ever louder and more
imperative. It is the cry of a people who suffer."
The most popular and powerful effect of the document
issued from that meeting has been the impact of a
simple, five-word phrase. The bishops titled one of the
key sections of their document "The Preferential Option
for the Poor," and it is that single phrase that has so
provoked the larger church's social imagination.
Indeed, when the U.S. Catholic bishops issued their
pastoral on the economy only seven years later in 1986,
they referred to the preferential option for the poor as
a touchstone for their writing, applying it to the
situation in the U.S.
More recently, in their 1994 document on the social
mission of the parish, titled "Communities of Salt and
Light," the U.S. bishops again refer to the phrase. They
state boldly and unambiguously: "Our parish communities
are measured by how they serve 'the least of these' in
our parish and beyond its boundariesthe hungry, the
homeless, the sick, those in prison, the stranger."
It is difficult to find a book written in the last 15
years addressing the topic of Catholic (or Christian)
response to poverty that does not mention or elaborate
on the phrase. Even Pope John Paul II has adopted his
own version of the phrase when he talks about a
"preferential love of the poor."
Why such immediate and widespread attention to this
relatively recent and simple phrase? There are three
reasons.
First, when the Latin American bishops met in Puebla
for their General Conference in 1979 and, before that,
in Medellín, Colombia in 1968, the predominant
experience of the church there was poverty. As the
bishops wrote in the earlier document from Medellín,
"[We] cannot remain indifferent in the face of the
tremendous social injustice existent in Latin America,
which keeps the majority of our people in dismal
poverty, which in many cases becomes inhuman
wretchedness."
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"Dismal poverty" and "inhuman wretchedness"
were filling the pews. Either the church would
have to address these realities or cease to be
credible. The preferential option for the poor
portrays a serious, open-eyed, determined
posture toward the problem of poverty.
Second, the bishops at Puebla and Medellín
were having to negotiate not only the fact of
widespread deprivation and desperation but a
local church history of disinterest and even
disdain for the poor. In her momentous book
Cry of the People (Viking Penguin, 1991),
Penny Lernoux chronicles the legacy of the
Catholic Church in Latin America.
The church, Lernoux wrote, "encouraged a deep
strain of cynicism among the upper classes, who
learned that they might do anything, including
slaughter innocent peasants, as long as they
went to Mass, contributed land and money to the
church's aggrandizement, and baptized their
children. These were the 'good Christians'
honored by the Latin American Bishops."
In this context the bishops were put in the
unenviable position of having to assume the role
of prophet. They needed to speak a word that not
only expressed a commitment by church leadership
to the poor but also opened the eyes of those
blind to their suffering and encouraged broader
commitment to the poor among church membership.
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The bishops did their job well. The transformation of
the Latin American church in the last 25 years borders
on the miraculous. And the adaptation of the
preferential option for the poor by other conferences of
bishops, the pope, theologians, and other Christian and
non-Christian traditions is testimony to the provocative
power of the phrase.
The third reason the phrase has received such
attention is its theological and biblical soundness. As
Latin Americans and their pastors looked to the Bible
for answers to landlessness and oppression, the Exodus
story came alive with its account of a people being
liberated from slavery and brought to a land they could
call their own, to a place where justice could reign. As
peasants encountered the words of the prophets, they
heard of a God whose care seemed particularly committed
to those in anguish. In other words, God cared about
them and cared about a solution to their problems.
As campesina widows, whose husbands had been
tortured and killed by government forces, gathered to
study Jesus' words about the reign of God, Jesus' own
actions, and even his cause of death, they encountered a
man poor like themselves, a man who yearned for
reconciliation between privilege and poverty, a man
whose commitment to the dignity of all and the
liberation of the poor was of such passion and
importance that he was willing to die for those
convictions.
The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann has observed,
"Reading the Bible with the eyes of the poor is a
different thing from reading it with a full belly. If it
is read in the light of the experience and hopes of the
oppressed, the Bible's revolutionary themes promise,
exodus, resurrection and spirit come alive."
Six things you can
do
But, you may wonder, what might a preferential option
for the poor mean in our own lives? I assume most
readers are of relative privilege. Father Jon Sobrino
writes that there are two classes of people in the
world: rich and poor. The rich do not worry about
whether they will eat tomorrow. The poor do. So we must
accept that most of us are rich. Given our privileged
status, how do we make a preferential option for the
poor? Here I will try to be as practical as possible.
If you grew up like me, it's likely that you really
just don't care much about poverty. Or, at least, you
don't care enough to do much more than wish it didn't
exist.
So here's my confession: I am the son of a rich
couple. My youth was spent in contemplation of tennis
and water skiing. I spent $700 my first semester in
college just on dates. I once had 30 pairs of shoes. I
am, at times, utterly disinterested in matters even
remotely connected with the poor. So, if you are half
the scoundrel I am, consider these possibilities drawn
straight from my own tarnished past.
1. It is
important to be directly connected to the poor. I didn't care a thing about the world's poor
until I cared about one poor person. And I only came
to care about one poor person because I put myself
in a place where that could happen. In my case, it
happened at a day shelter for the homeless. Tom and
I played cards, drank coffee (I hate coffee), and
just talked (I love to talk).
After a month or so, I stopped being scared of
Tom and started to like him. And, despite my 30
pairs of shoes, Tom seemed to like me. I actually
gave himhesitantly, I admitsome of my shoes. I swear
that's true. And, more important, I heard Tom's
story. I heard the story of his cruel, broken life,
and it changed me some.
I have had other such encounters since then, with
the poor of Central America and with the rural poor
in this country. All these experiences changed me as
well. But the point is that we need at least to give
ourselves an opportunity to care about somebody
who's poor, somebody we probably wouldn't spend time
with in the normal course of our day.
So, spend some time with an abandoned old person
at a nursing home or serve and eat lunch with the
guest of a soup kitchen. Become a big brother or big
sister to a child growing up in inner-city poverty
or in a rural shack with only one parent. That's
step one.
2. Ask questions
and search for answers.
After the first
step, our face-to-face contact may stimulate an
appetite for some kind of information or education.
As I continued to visit the soup kitchen, I started
to ask myself, "Why are half the men here Vietnam
vets?" (I still don't know the full answer to that.)
I wanted to know why a great many of the visitors to
the soup kitchen were mentally ill, and I wanted to
know what opportunities were available to them.
These are simply the questions that come to us
when we care about somebody else. And perhaps they
stimulate associated questions about poverty: Why
are some people unable to escape the projects? Why
are the people of El Salvador unable to feed
themselves? Why do Third World countries export food
when their own people are dying of hunger?
Sometimes I just read Sports Illustrated,
but now I also read Sojourners and the
National Catholic Reporter and Bread for the
World newsletters. I occasionally get depressed
reading this stuff. But I can't stop reading them.
It would be like abandoning my heart at this point.
For some good ideas about things you can read,
connect with your diocesan parish social ministry
office for materials. Or just talk to the people who
are already veterans of this stuff. They'll be your
biggest help.
Also, keep an eye open for lectures or workshops
offered in your diocese that pertain to matters of
human suffering. I know it doesn't sound like a fun
use of a free evening, but God is full of surprises.
3. Start to
advocate.
It is
very important that we become advocates for the
healing of the political and economic relationships
and policies that are broken. We can spend all the
time we want at soup kitchens, but unless something
changes, the one thing that we will probably notice
is that there are more and more people showing up
every day.
We need to ask ourselves, "So what's going on
that makes the soup kitchen such a popular place
these days? How are we going to fix it? How can I
help? And how can nonprofit groups, businesses, the
church, and the government help?"
It is possible that our faith and our love will
move us into political participation and political
responsibility. Might not religious education and
Confirmation classes and the RCIA want to prepare
blossoming Catholics for such a task? And for us old
Catholics who have not been trained for such, we
might simply have to breathe deep and just do it.
Then you could volunteer to be on the board of a
nonprofit organization or to work with your diocesan
Catholic Charities or Campaign for Human
Development. I wish I had some flashier, more
enticing advice. But let me offer this story.
Bread for the World, a great Christian
organization that lobbies in Washington on hunger
and poverty issues (and which you can join),
estimates that for every letter written on behalf of
anti-hunger legislation, a life is saved! One letter
written; one life saved. Have I something better to
do? Even my most dearly held lethargy and apathy
have limits.
4.
Work with the poor as they help themselves.
This is whatwe might call solidarity work. It's a mixture of the
first three, and it involves working side by side
with the poor as they negotiate the solutions to
their own poverty.
I have been involved for years with soup-kitchen
work and giving talks and writing letters; it's only
recently that I've become acquainted with this work.
It is exciting and downright inspiring to work with
the poor as they consider and strategize and
organize for their recovery from neglect and
voicelessness. I have been connected with both an
urban and a rural version of this work. For a lead,
you might call your local diocesan Campaign for
Human Development office. But do steps one, two, or
three before tackling this.
5.
Watch your money. I suppose you might be
familiar with the story of Harry Wu, the Chinese
Catholic who returned to his native country under
the threat of death to document the forced
child-labor camps producing, of all things, stuffed
toys. Well, besides reading up on labor-rights
abuses, trying to educate congregations, and
possibly writing letters to the Chinese government,
it strikes me that we're not going to want to buy
products made by young slaves. Even if they're
cheaper.
Do I think not buying a teddy bear made in China
will change the world? Yes. I do not want to be part
of a market demand that reduces children to such a
state. I can support companies that care for their
employees and can petition my government to pressure
the Chinese government into a more responsible
posture toward such abuse. In the meantime, my
children watch and learn something valuable. Yes, it
does change the world.
A mature, well-considered dedication to the poor
also will probably result in a simpler life, with
less things and less preoccupation with money and
possessions. It's tougher to care too much about
another pair of shoes when you've met people who
have none. And there is something freeing about
having less stuff. Saint Francis called the simple
life "a lady," which I guess meant he liked it.
6. Give money.
Remember to give a good bit of your money
away. The early Christian definition of so-called
disposable income is that it is the rightful
possession of the poor. Like all things, the key is
just to get started. Decide that you are going to
give away 5 percent of your income, or 1 percent, or
.001 percent. Then do it, and periodically and
prayerfully consider if this is still suitable or
needs to be adjusted.
Let me suggest that you earmark some money for
local causes, some for international causes, and
some for person-to-person support. Some may question
this last suggestion, but I think it's important to
know people well enough to trust them with regular
assistanceand well enough for them to trust you. In
the words of Saint Vincent de Paul, "The poor will
forgive your gifts of food only by feeling your
love."
If possible, do all these things with a friend or
with family. It is great to have someone else who is
having the same experience to talk with. My most
stubbornly held dream is that one day entire parishes
will evolve to the point where every member will be
formed and encouraged in the tradition of a preferential
love for the poor. I'd like to be at their liturgies.
Remember that at the heart of the preferential option
for the poor is a faith that love, generosity,
compassion, and justice are the values dearest to God's
heart and our own hearts. Remember, too, that our faith
tradition tells us that we discover our lives only as we
give them away.
A preferential option for the poor simply reminds us
who we are: a people who, when we are honest and awake,
would do anything to end one another's suffering.—End
While theologians may differ on some aspects of the
meaning of the phrase, it is safe to highlight a few
critical characteristics of the preferential option for
the poor.
1. It is
scriptural.
The option
for the poor is reflected inyou could even say advocated
byGod in scripture. While that may startle us at first,
the preferential option for the poor is, in fact, a
responsible, reasonable way to describe Yahweh's
activity in the Bible.
It is a valid description of the call of Moses and
the liberation of the Hebrew people from Egypt in the
book of Exodus, and of the Old Testament prophets and
their particular concern for the care of widows,
orphans, and foreigners. Most important, it is a
description of the ministry of Jesus, whose care and
teaching demonstrated a dedication to the weak and
neglected.
One caution: God does not love poor people more than
rich people. But the love of God gets focused in a
particular way on those who suffer. This is not
unfamiliar to us; imagine the love of parents when one
of their children is seriously sick. They dedicate
themselves to the recovery of the sick child with
special care, all the while not loving any less their
healthy children.
So it is with God. God's preferential love for the
poor is motivated by their pain and God's intention that
all live lives of dignity and abundance.
2. It has a goal. A preferential option for the poor does not
assent to the position that poverty is inevitable or
acceptable. The meaningfulness of love is that it makes
a difference. Love that pours itself out for the poor
ultimately desires the end of the suffering as well as
an end to the cause of the suffering.
Consequently, God's arena of care and healing
includes not only family, neighborhood, prayer, and
sacrament, but politics and economics.
Indeed, both Moses' covenant and Jesus's notion of
the Reign of God address realities that merge the ideas
of faith and politics. The ministry of Moses, motivated
by God's love for the Hebrew slaves but obstructed by
the designs of the pharaoh, was necessarily political
and revolutionary. For much of the poor, "a land of milk
and honey" can only be understood in the light of faith
and of politics.
Certainly, some forms of human brokenness and
suffering are not matters of politics: for example, the
suffering caused by tornadoes or old age. Butand this is
criticalpoverty almost always is. The majority of the
poor are poor because of political and economic forces
out of their control.
3. It is
multifaceted. This doesn't mean that a
preferential option for the poor can be expressed only
in political and economic activism. I think a healthy,
integrated care for the poor expresses itself in myriad
ways, including many familiar though precious
expressions of charity: donations, soup kitchens,
homeless shelters, and so on. However, a holy
determination to ease or eliminate poverty will
ultimately evolve into the recognition of and engagement
with the political and economic forces at play.
4. It is a
response to sin. Donal Dorr's book, Option
for the Poor (Orbis, 1992), written only four years
after the 1979 Puebla General Conference, analyzes the
history of Catholic social teaching as it concerns
itself specifically with the idea of a preferential
option for the poor. Historically, he observes, the
church has been deliberate and persistent in its
statement of care for the poor and its call of
conversion and responsibility to the rich. However, the
church has not been nearly as helpful in counseling the
poor when faced with an unrepentant oppressor, a
pharaoh.
Political and economic decisionsas Moses, the
prophets, and Jesus recognizedoften pay homage to the
preference of self-interest of the powerful at the
expense of the well-being of others. Pork-barrel
politics is a familiar example.
A preferential option for the poor calls us to stand
on the side of those whose lives have been diminished by
neglect or scarcity. This means we stand, not as enemies
of anyone, but as allies of the poor and as adversaries
of the decisions and realities that rob them of life.
5. It is based on
faith. While a preferential option for the
poor may express itself in political and economic as
well as civic and charitable ways, it is ultimately a
matter of faith. "Preferential option for the poor"
names the size of our heart and the energy of our care.
It names our willingness to suffer and sacrifice and
endure hardship on behalf of our sisters and brothers.
What can holiness mean in our faith tradition except
that we become people whose love grows and grows to
include the care of all? And what would our love mean if
it did not seek out and care for the most wounded among
us?
—JJ
