Posted on 06/03/2012 6:01:24 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Families from rich countries could sponsor families from poor ones, Pope Benedict XVI suggested Saturday at a gathering of around 350,000 people at a park just north of Milan.
The pope was speaking at the latest event in a three-day visit to Milan, part of the Church-sponsored World Meeting of Families, a relaxed and festive setting that has been a welcome distraction from recent crises at the Vatican. Speaking without notes before an enthusiastic crowd at the Bresso park, the pope proposed a new twist to the system under which cities in different countries "twin" with each other.
His suggestion that families from rich countries could act as sponsors for families from poorer ones drew enthusiastic applause from his audience. One could have "a family in France, in Germany in Italy, talking responibility for helping" another family in need, said the pope.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
They could call it “Foreign Aid”.
I believe rich families already sponsor many poor families, they call that jobs, taxes and charitable contributions.
This seems like the Pope is suggesting yet again that private charity is better than government redistribution. I believe that he and JPII have each made more than 10 statements related to this over the decades.
I believe that government redistribution is the path to a godless society.
Several Catholic organizations have been doing this for years. In concept, a good, Christian thing to do. However, it needs to be done in a frame work that allows for those recipients to pursue self-support and self-worth as the eventual goal. Charity is one thing, welfare, another. Part of the problem is that depending in what country the “poor” live, what is causing them poverty? Is it government economic policy, etc. The world will always have it’s poor (Christ said so, although he may have spoken in both economic but I think primarily in a spiritual sense). As for the “rich” parts of the world supporting the “poor” parts, the rich are tottering on economic implosion due to massive indebtedness and corruption, we may all be in the same soup before long.
I would hazard to guess that the Roman Catholic church, besides the antiquity value of its priceless relics, has assets that are far more liquid which would dwarf several countries. One wonders why the Pope calls on other less-fortunate rich people to do what it, with its value, can do on a wide scale.....
There’s a lot to be said for personal charity as opposed to government handouts or international programs. The Christian “foster child” programs where you decide to pay a certain amount per month for a particular child’s schooling, etc. are good examples of this and actually yield results. The Archdiocese of New York started a program where they paired wealthy suburban parishes with poor inner-city parishes, and also encouraged New Yorkers to sponsor individual poor kids at Catholic schools.
There are times - a natural disaster or war or something that destroys a society on a large scale - where help does have to come from a government or large institutions, but even then, much of the work is done by individuals who feel a call to help those in need (for example, people who go to rebuild houses after a hurricane).
It could be a system like sponsoring a poor child now through Christian aid, but a whole family. I’d only go along if there was thorough vetting - no addicts, no abusive individuals or criminals. And if entirely voluntary, not mandated by the state like EITC today.
Charitable giving is always good as long as government is kept out of it.
Third world families beget more families than European families. If your family sponsors third world family, then in one generation, your children’s families will have to sponsor more than one third world family in order to keep up. Third world families beget their next generation in a shorter period than western families. If your family sponsors a third world family, your children will have to start sponsoring third world families (plural, each) before they themselves have started families, if you and they are to keep up.
I just don’t understand why people suggest solutions that simply cannot work. They want your money. They want your freedom. But I don’t know why.
I would agree. I was referring to what our government already spends as a nation abroad each year. Making a funny, as it were.
The organization “Food for the Poor” focus its charitable work on collecting donations for low-cost food and basic housing in places like Haiti, but also solicits donations for things like sewing machines and farm animals so that its aid recipients can begin to develop some self-reliance.
It strikes me as a good model, and one that could be expanded. And it embodies a fundamental aspect of Christian charity - that it be individual and voluntary. One place where the Catholic hierarchy went very wrong in America was buying into and supporting the liberal idea of charity - that it be collective and coercive. That’s never worked in any society (see, for example, communism) and it sure ain’t working here.
By far the very best, most important thing that can be done to help the poor needs the cooperation of both those of means and the church. It is blindingly obvious but goes dramatically against the prevalent culture.
It is to, by any means, change the culture so that sex outside of marriage is universally condemned. This is because not only does marriage have a vital *biological*, but it is essential to prosperity and success. And this can be backed up with statistics.
1) People have an age window for reproduction, from about age 15 to age 35. *Anything* that inhibits reproduction during those years will demographically harm a society.
2) However, children raised by single parents are 60% more likely to become criminals. This is because such children are raised in a “survival” mode instead of a “success” mode.
3) There are people who medically can have children, but there are also people who should not. Those who should not still crave sex, but they cannot be allowed to interfere with those who should reproduce. Thus society needs to protect breeding couples from them.
4) Even since before the start of the 20th Century, there has been a very strong cultural push to destroy marriage as an enforced social institution, to promote “free love”, abundant contraception to support this, as well as abortion. The across the board destruction resulting from this philosophy has been devastating, responsible for more catastrophe than can be totaled. And it continues today, unabated, a continual stream of propaganda directed at the young and impressionable.
So how can the wealthy and the church put the brakes on this disaster?
To start with, stop funding and supporting the philosophy of “free love”. Stop encouraging sex outside of marriage, along with the restoration of ideas like “adultery”, with profound social sanctions, which are often far more effective than legal or criminal ones.
This also means condemning those who advocate such things by recognizing who they are and what they are doing.
With the restoration of the family, and just basic fairness, prosperity returns, cruelty and murder abate, and society and the world improve markedly.
The largest private charity in the world, in terms of money and services given to the poor, pro bono, is the Catholic Church.
I would love it to have fewer government run social services and more voluntary social services like we used to have before FDR. Without the government safety net communities found ways to take care of their needy and they would today.
“I would hazard to guess that the Roman Catholic church, besides the antiquity value of its priceless relics, has assets that are far more liquid which would dwarf several countries. One wonders why the Pope calls on other less-fortunate rich people to do what it, with its value, can do on a wide scale..”
Judas said something similar once, but then Jesus told him that the woman anointing him was a better use for the expensive oil than selling it and giving the money to the poor. I think the finest should go to God and His Church. Don’t you?
I bet it could be done for only 60 cents a day !
lol
welcome to 1980 Mr. Pope.
I really don’t have any animosity towards the Catholic Church. I just thought the Pope’s plea amidst the spendor of the Vatican City seemed a bit “off” to me.
I think the idea of setting up a program to do this is important, because if individuals do it, there is too much room for abuse (i.e., grifters deciding that they’ll get a free ride). The existing programs that do this work very well, and while you know about the family or the child you are helping, and can have contact with them, it all goes through a third-party system that watches for fraud or abuse.
The Church’s assets are hardly “liquid.” The great majority of Church property consists, literally, of property: that is, land and buildings, often of little value and certainly almost all difficult to sell or make liquid. In fact, maintaining these properties for use for church services, charitable work, etc. represents a huge outflow of money and that money actually is already going to the poor and the non-poor who receive these services.
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