(10-30-2018 01:56 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(10-26-2018 08:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-25-2018 10:43 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  The Catholic Church says that the point of charity is to connect with the poor. The poor are helped infinitely more by knowing people care for them than they are from receiving more material goods.

This type of charity also helps the giver just as much as the receiver. In secular terminology, by getting to know someone in need of charity, we grow as a person and learn more about what we truly need to be happy.

So yes, the Church would say that going and visiting a poor family in a 3rd world country and helping them build a house would probably benefit the poor people more than donating the cost of the trip.

A few years ago I heard a homily from a priest who turned charity it on its head: he said that we should always accept charity when it is offered. (Note: charity is an action of altruistic love to someone in need of it, and it's a completely independent concept from a donation or almsgiving. Much of the charity we do actually does not involve a donation). By accepting charity, we allow others to give charity. Because charity is just as beneficial for the giver as it is to the receiver, it is actually an act of charity to accept charity even when we do not want it.

Now, what would that do for our nation if we didn't have to go overseas to practice it?

Really my only problem with overseas missions is that we don't equally seek to do home missions. And I'm not talking about building houses and churches, or even doing medical work. We truly do have hungry people here, but more than even those we have lonely elderly shut ins that just need lights changed, eyes on electrical wires, or just a humanizing visit.

In organizing this I found that a woman and a child could provide a great social time while the husband took care of the home's needs. If the projects were too severe we would acquire the names of children who almost always lived a goodly distance away and give them a call. In most cases they were grateful for the eyes on the situation and responded positively with the needed repairs.

There is much to do here as well.

In Ohio and Indiana it is very common for Catholic groups to do missions to Appalachia.

But I question the depth of the material poverty in this country. When my wife and her sister went on Appalachian trips, they were shocked that many of these people who were hand-picked as being "in need" of donations had more material goods than my wife's family had.

It's hard to buy the line that people deserve your sympathy when they are buying things that you can't afford.

Are poor Americans uneducated? Yes. Do they have less stable jobs and worse working conditions? Absolutely. Do they have less material goods than richer people? In general, yes. But do they suffer from a lack of material goods? No. Absolutely not.

Involuntary starvation does not exist as a social problem in this country. The only places where you see starvation is due to mental illness or a power trip, not a lack of money. We're the only society in history where the poor consume more food than the rich.

There was a National Geographic article on hunger in America. It focused a lot on bad choices. The kid is hungry so you go to KFC or Church's or Popeyes when you could buy 5 times the chicken at a grocery store. Then at the end of the week, the person is out of money. (this was before the NG's current PC editor. Such an article would never fly today).