Living Justice: Pathways from Poverty and
Commitment to the Common Good

Commentary on Poverty Conference

The second biennial poverty conference of the Institute for Poverty Studies, on October 20, 2001, structured conversations among academics, community service providers, and religious and community leaders on concrete policies, programs, and practices for the poor. The goal for these dialogues is to enable the community to shape and inform academic research and make research findings, applications, and experience available to the community. The Vincentian Institute of Poverty Studies seeks to uncover solutions to poverty, eliminate barriers to services, encourage social and economic development, and promote a vision of the common good.

Father Thomas Massaro began the dialogue with a hope that the U.S. response to terrorism will provoke a renewed commitment to combat poverty in our nation. He traces the historical and cyclical patterns of our national policies and programs that focus on the poor. He suggests that the Catholic perspective on "community" and "the common good" could make a distinctive contribution to developing a national policy to alleviate poverty. He suggests three components of that policy. First, we must encourage orderly economic growth and full employment. Secondly, we need to adjust some of our universal measures and eligibility guidelines as well as design policy and programs for specific populations around their needs. Finally, Father Massaro suggests that finding pathways from poverty will require collaboration and cooperation between public and private organizations and resources. His reflections stimulated dialogue on various topics throughout the day such as Charitable Choice--its promise and its peril, the implications of the new Federalism, health care needs in poor communities and income sufficiency.

In the final paper in this section, many of those conversations were summarized by Peggy Steinfels, the well known editor of Commonweal, invited to the conference to observe and challenge us for the future as well as to offer a reflection on "When we were Poor..." She asks us to "reweave a sense of solidarity"--a union of interests, purposes, sympathies and responsibility-- with those who are poor, unemployed, as well as the new immigrants, in our efforts to face the challenges of alleviating poverty. We have also included a very brief summation of Msgr. William Linder's talk about New Community Corporation. New Community is the story of a people determined to claim their rightful dignity and destiny. Refusing to succumb to poverty and despair, New Community rose from the rubble of the civil rights riots in Newark, New Jersey in the late 1960s and grew to become the largest Community Development Corporation in the United States. This story is a story of practical solutions, dreams dreamt and realized, and a hopeful future.

As we enter the 21^st century, the United States of America holds 29 percent of the world's income, one third of the world's wealth and about 4 percent of the world's people. In this wealthy nation, more than 31 million Americans are living in a state of poverty according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, March 2001. These numbers include one out of every six children in America. The United States has the second highest child poverty rate of industrialized countries. In 2001, the official poverty threshold, as defined by the federal government for a family of four was $17,650. Many experts and the panelists at the conference advocate for more accurate and flexible poverty measures. These acute inequities and the conditions of poverty that exist in this country and the world, require action for social justice. In light of the complexity of seeking solutions to poverty through welfare reform, education reform, health care reform and housing initiatives, we will continue our efforts to address various issues of poverty from a Catholic social justice perspective, seeking solution-oriented approaches for the problems of poverty, and encouraging systemic thinking about solutions and commonality of interests.

It is desirable that economic development of the commonwealths proceed in orderly fashion, meanwhile preserving appropriate balance between the various sectors of the economy.
-Mater et Magistra, 128

 

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