Rev. John Michael Hanvey is a Franciscan working for THOMAS
To be able to state (Roman Catholic Bishop’s Autumn Conference) that there is so much poverty in our country and so much hardship that many families are on the verge of destitution, is one of the scandals of a widening economic inequality.
The poor are becoming poorer, and desperately so. The struggle on a daily basis just to make ends meet even for those in jobs, is an outrage, and the wider poverty of those unable to find work, or those who just cannot work is frightening. It’s frightening because it’s this type of frustrated and angry poverty leads to what I call the ‘illness of meaning’ which becomes a breeding ground for crime, violence, emotional stress, addiction and self-loathing in general.
The Dominican theologian Fr. Timothy Radcliffe said recently in his Romero Lecture ‘A Disturbing Truth: the Church, the Poor and Oscar Romero’, if we do not open our eyes to it and respond, then it will surely erupt and destroy our society before long. We must take stands in favour of a taxation system that favours the common good; we must oppose the growing inequality that is tearing apart our country’.
There can be no looking at serving the poor either, through rose-tinted spectacles. There is nothing romantic, nor is there a ‘feel good factor’ about working with the poor or those on the edge in Great Britain. The poor of our country are different I believe from say, the poor of the Phillipines trying to rebuild their lives after the recent typhoon, or the poor of South America, for whom the saintly Archbishop Romero was a champion. Our poor in Great Britain for the most part are the poor of a secularised society and do not have the richness of a faith or spirituality to help them and encourage them to stand up for justice and / or community of faith in the sense that the Scriptures speak of these things, in both the Old and the New Testaments.
Archbishop Vincent Nicholls of Westminster said recently ‘We see not only material poverty that affects people today’ and then he goes on to speak from a position of faith in relation to the poor, a language sadly not understood by so many who struggle on the edge. He says ‘ We see every human through the eyes of faith, each person endowed with God-given dignity, born and flourishing in relationship to others and to God.
This is the challenge of the Church in this country, to tackle the double poverty of body and soul. Whilst so many are experiencing a deeper and scandalous material poverty which can be alleviated, the soul of this country is dying alongside it and not recognised as such, and this is our responsibility of reaching this spiritual wasteland and building communities of faith that are non-judgemental, accepting and accessible in the often desperate estates where so many who struggle live and where the faith buildings are either locked or boarded up whilst we get on living our middle-class Catholicism at a safe distance.
Being poor is a full time job, with little time for spirituality as one is passed from pillar to post and often kept waiting, because the poor are considered to be of no importance. The Archbishop of Westminster quite rightly points out some of the other poverties, the relational poverty which robs people of the external truths and values about what it means to be fully human; the relational poverty experienced by so many elderly people today, the poverty of parenting which undermines family life and children’s welfare and education. But until we begin to address the root causes of these ‘poverties’ the situations will only get worse and our efforts will produce little that endures.
I believe that religious leaders of all faiths, might usefully follow the very high profile example of Pope Francis, must speak to government both national and local, as well as to their own Churches, if they are bishops, in strong and unequivocal language about the basic material and spiritual needs of people who are often invisible and without a voice. Hopefully they can do this from the simplicity and accessibility of their own lives. The poor of El Salvador knew where to find Archbishop Romero, so must the poor know where to find the Church now.
Most of the poor when the Church does attempt to reach out to them see it as just another charity like the food banks etc. just another social agency. This I feel is a pity, whilst feeding the hungry and clothing the naked have a value in themselves and need no theological justification, they are just good and noble humane things to do, we need to be offering the possibility of something more.
Vibrant Eucharistic communities of prayer and service, actually living with those on the edge, seems to me to be a way forward. We need as Church to go both to the wastelands and the neglected estates of our country.