Correspondence
Correspondence In desperate need To the Editors: Help! St. Benedict, St. Francis, and Mary Harris houses of hospitality in Washington, D.C. are in dire need. We know it's the nature of the,...
...Just published reports of the 1980 Census show that, but for an increase in single-headed households, the income of black families relative to whites' would have risen over the last decade...
...Help us to be "about" this work again as soon as possible...
...At this writing there are only four volunteers among the three houses, mounting expenses, and considerable debt...
...Too often, their emotional and physical scars are permanent...
...KEN HUGHES Coordinator, Interreligious Campaign for Economic Justice Government & poverty Stanford, Calif...
...The archbishop's call for a special responsibility toward the poor by religious groups is clearly one which combines charity and justice...
...BENEDICT'S HOUSE P.O...
...There is nothing sacred about food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing, cash assistance, or job training...
...Even today, most of those on welfare or the unemployment rolls remain for relatively brief periods...
...Furthermore, underdeveloped countries whose governments have imposed extensive economic controls, such as Tanzania, have experienced declines in real wealth and productivity...
...The Archbishop failed to mention this trend...
...The best way to deter Soviet leaders from launching a nuclear attack against us is to convince them that they themselves will be the target of the retaliation...
...The median income of single mothers was much lower than that of two-parent families...
...They should, but probably will not, study the development economist Peter Bauer...
...The situation is too dependent upon the contingencies of technology and political strategy...
...I would suggest that the nuclear weapons dilemma, like those in medical ethics and genetic engineering, has been posed by advances in technology...
...To the Editors: Archbishop Bernardin's article [Sept...
...The aim of the Emergency Campaign is not to legislate morality, but to restrain immorality...
...Further, Bernardin challenges the church to "undertake a fresh appraisal of poverty: its causes, its effects, and its solutions...
...But these programs are aimed at helping many of the 32 million impoverished Americans, whose dignity as human beings cannot be denied, despite the ravages of our economic system...
...To the Editors: Father Sebastian Moore is to be congratulated for his insightful article "Bishops' Dilemma", [Sept...
...Technology marches on...
...The same thing can be said about negotiated reductions of armaments...
...Given that less than one-tenth, by one estimate, of the cuts can be met through private giving, it is clear that reliance on sporadic giving is not enough, that an ongoing governmental role is needed...
...What appears to be happening, however, is that growing numbers are born, live, and die dependent on public funds, with their own human potential and that of their children irrevocably stunted...
...We are also in desperate need of funds, material, and labor...
...It is to be hoped that being a "church of the poor" will not be equated with support of the welfare state and/or socialism...
...Jews, for example...
...BRINK...
...Nevertheless, he appears not to recognize how much the "principles" of Catholic social teaching he cites with approval embody political and economic judgments...
...To the Editors: Archbishop Bernardin's article on poverty [Sept...
...From dispelling myths about the poor, to laying out principles guiding social analysis and policy, the piece should be required reading for anyone who asks of the religious community's role in economic affairs...
...THE EDITORS Techno-theology Belmont, Calif...
...Other factors aside, one would expect that ethnic groups whose members' average age is younger would have lower per capita incomes than those groups which are older: Hispanics vs...
...You give people a place to stay and something to eat," she said, "That's what it's all about...
...Some breakthroughs may be decidedly destabilizing, while others may tend to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war...
...The real evil of programs such as AFDC is that they spawn generations of families with no productive skills, the so-called "underclass...
...The fact that this pattern has appeared in such disparate countries as Britain, Sweden, and now, apparently, West Germany, suggests a causal relationship...
...Benedict's encourages us to "consider the lilies" and trust God that it can be done...
...sive capability against a nuclear attack...
...Doing economic justice means crying out on behalf of the poor...
...Families with female heads have a poverty rate six times that of male-headed families (31.4 percent vs...
...However, there is evidence that, instead, they have helped foster a poverty "class...
...Today more than half of the total number of poor families are maintained by women...
...government transfer programs, including but not limited to those for the poor, expanded in recent decades, inflation rose and productivity declined...
...A system of high energy beam weapons mounted on satellites could, theoretically, de-activate enemy missiles and bombers...
...In fact, just about anything you could send us, we probably need...
...not to make bad people good, but to make vulnerable people safe...
...MARY ASH For more on this, see page 612...
...The call to serve the poor, then, requires that we serve these desperately poor families...
...SCOTT C. DUFFY ST...
...The more limited funds in the private sector make it less able to generate the social service bureaucracies which, because they are maintained by the programs they administer, have a stake in their continuance...
...Today, the unemployment rate for minority youth hovers at the 40-50 percent level in some areas, although in earlier decades (when discrimination was more prevalent) it was at times less than for white youths...
...We hope your readers will help...
...In quoting statistics about the poverty picture from the National Advisory Commission on Economic Opportunity Final Report (NACEO, 1981), Bernardin made one oversight, however, which concerns me deeply...
...The obvious implication is that reductions in the social programs of the sixties and seventies pose serious moral questions...
...20001 Women & children last Loveland, Ohio To the Editors: In Archbishop Bernar-din's article on "Poverty: America's Social Sin" [Sept...
...Last week one of our neighbors spoke with me in hopes for a speedy reopening of Mary Harris house...
...When we are challenged as a church to make a "preferential option for the poor," we are, in fact, challenged to advocate justice for poverty-stricken mothers and their children, for destitute elderly women...
...More than half of the families with female heads live in poverty, and 40 percent of all black children are poor...
...The Interreligious Emergency Campaign for Economic Justice was formed this year by Washington religious office (Continued on page 637) Correspondence (Continued from page 610) heads to fight the huge budget cuts in federal programs for the poor...
...Obviously, the expansion in AFDC and its decreasing stigma is not solely responsible, but during the Depression when welfare was both less available and less acceptable, the birth rate among the unwed of all races and classes was but a fraction of what it is today...
...When we find such a disproportionate number of women among the poor, we must suspect institutional sexism as one of the root causes of their poverty...
...24], I found a much needed call for the American church to commit itself to the struggle for economic justice as well as to charity for the poor...
...The archbishop's points demonstrate the kind of clear thinking and principled stance I most hope for from church leaders...
...One way to carry out this role is through a nationally organized effort...
...Only through prayer have we lasted as long as we already have...
...In a related area, liberals have long asserted that minimum wage legislation is needed to assure a "just wage...
...24...
...Children of such families form a large share of the caseloads of social service agencies dealing with neglected and abused children...
...Moreover, families headed by women are experiencing a steady decline in their economic status...
...That same force may resolve those dilemmas (or at least transcend them by redefining moral issues, or posing new dilemmas...
...including yourselves (volunteer opportunities abound down here...
...Benedict's is operating in the very deep red...
...Research and development could make this a reality...
...For such programs to be morally requisite, it must first appear that they are likely to achieve their intended objectives of helping the poor...
...When productivity declines, so do opportunities for useful employment, as exemplified most recently by layoffs in the automobile industry...
...In a similar posture are the Latin American bishops whose concern for the poor is commendable, but whose ignorance of both democracy and economics leads them to espouse the socialism which has crippled too many economies...
...5.3 percent...
...Although the official teaching of the church may deplore divorce and sanction certain norms of family life, families headed by women- divorced, separated, widowed, deserted, and single women-constitute the fastest growing portion of the poverty population...
...Isn't it...
...Perhaps it is not possible for moral theologians to come out with a single pro- or con- position on deterrence or the freeze...
...they are promulgating an immoral sham upon the poor...
...We need your prayers most of all...
...MARIAN APRIL McCONEGHEY Grailville For economic justice Washington, D.C...
...BOX 26209 WASHINGTON, DC...
...Studies by economist Walter Williams and others show that each substantial increase in the level and coverage of the minimum wage has been associated with a rise in unemployment among those at the bottom of the economic ladder...
...Archbishop Bernardin is correct in calling upon the churches to get involved in putting action behind words...
...Some of this is a result of a sharp rise in the divorce rate, but a substantial part reflects the explosion of pregnancies among unwed teenagers of all races...
...24] is one of the finest calls to action written on the need to advocate for the poor...
...Second, consider the increased defenCommonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...We know it's the nature of the, Catholic Worker to be in chronic need, but we've exceeded even our normal quota of precariousness...
...Evidence that government intervention may exacerbate poverty is usually ignored by liberals, including Catholics...
...Statistics further indicate that much poverty, irrespective of race, is attributable to this increase, mainly in female-headed households...
...Thus, clerics, who clearly lack any knowledge of economics, are quick to condemn cutbacks in welfare programs and to blame greed and selfishness for unemployment and poverty...
...and the income of black mothers was 40 percent of black family income...
...Thus, our challenge requires that we analyze, confront, and elminiate that sexism wherever we encounter it...
...The report includes an entire chapter documenting the "feminization of poverty," a current phrase naming the trend that families headed by women and poor older women form a large and rapidly increasing proportion of the poverty population...
...White mothers had a median income that was only 38 percent of the median income of two-parent white families...
...Elected officials who continue to exhort churches to take up the slack, and feel that the poor are better off with a supply-side policy in full force are more than naive...
...Although it's tempting for us to take in our nets and call it a day, Michael Kirwan, Claire Schaeffer, Susan Burke, and I all agree that the needs of the poor are too great to abandon ship...
...There is a salient distinction between public and private welfare programs: the latter are less likely to create and maintain dependency...
...T.L...
...The thousands of homeless daily compete for our forty beds, seventy-five meals, and clothing, but our situation is so difficult that both Mary Harris and St...
...First, consider the increased accuracy of nuclear and other forms of weaponry...
...As U.S...
...The four years that Michael spent by himself running Mary Harris and St...
...Unfortunately, in order to kill them, at present we would have to kill several million innocent Soviet citizens...
...Unfortunately, this interpretation seems all too prevalent...
...If government is held to have a duty to "promote the production of a sufficient supply of material goods" and to safeguard "rights" which include "useful employment" and a "sufficient share of earthly goods," it must be assumed that it is considered both moral and necessary for governments to play an active role in the production and distribution of goods and services...
...Historically, in America, most families have not remained permanently poor...
...Lip service to the needy is not enough...
...24] is refreshing in its acknowledgment that the church has no special political, economic, or social expertise, and in its insistence on the importance of a search for truth in public policy...
...Francis houses are closed at this time and St...
...These appalling data demonstrate clearly that when we are talking about the poor in America in 1982, we are talking, in large measure, about women and children...
...similarly, the income of Hispanic mothers was 38 percent of the average Hispanic family income...
...One reason is simply that income tends to rise with age and experience...
...Members of the Congress have been lobbied by the Campaign to preserve the integrity of these basic benefit programs as a means of restoring the societal responsibility toward the poor...
...From the NACEO report:"Two out of three poor adults are women...
...When race is taken into account, the poverty rate also increases so that minority families supported by women have even higher rates...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published...
Vol. 109 • November 1982 • No. 20
