WCR Letters to the Editor

The refusal to fight poverty

Even to question whether there is severe poverty in Canada is to lose one's humanity. That substantial inequality, which defines poverty, exists despite the country's astounding wealth and high and rising incomes for elites is not in doubt. According to the UN, Canada is in 16th place among developed countries in the percentage of the population that lives in poverty.

The conventional view is that there always has been and always will be poverty. But, don't you think that governments, supposedly charged with the public good, could solve it if they really wanted to?

In our adversarial system, meaning "savage capitalism," there are more than a million people unemployed, some two million poor and three million on welfare (nationally). Nearly one in five citizens is needy. There is no prejudice shown to corporations kept dependent on the public dole.

Governments have assigned the job of dealing with poverty to social agencies. This approach fails because the remedy is part of the disease. Since it is primarily an economic condition, such charities only maintain and prolong the malaise.

Social workers don't redistribute wealth. They really are wolves in sheep's clothing because they place band-aids on the mess made by the owner-operators of the country.

Why should the needy be grateful for the crumbs (EI, SFI) left over from the politico-corporate table? Human dignity demands relative security and freedom from fear, not living like misfed animals. Advising thrift to the poor is akin to telling a starving person to eat less.

Big business won't solve the inequality it has created. Corporations are undemocratic, publicly unaccountable and interested primarily in shareholders' profits.

The materially comfortable and politically inactive middle class must also share heavy blame for maintaining the status quo. They are potentially all-powerful because they have the most votes, but don't vote to attack the root cause (unshared wealth) of poverty. However, they know that it is wrong to steal from their neighbour.

What they haven't figured out yet is that once you get beyond this one-to-one level and pit the individual against transnational conglomerates, government bureaucracies, agribusiness and the banking and gas monopolies, it becomes a value judgment to decide who is stealing from whom.

Capitalism is licence to steal; the government regulates who does the stealing and how much.

The gullible middle class has internalized the values of the rich and powerful - dog-eat-dog competition and hypocritical charity - and actually espouses them more fiercely than do the rich. Charity assuages the guilt.

Can the social cancer that is poverty ever be cured? It was unknown in distant cultures until they became "developed." There probably wasn't any among North American First Nations peoples before most of them (estimates range up to 10 million) were exterminated.

Today in some industrial nations - Sweden, Norway, Japan - poverty is minimal. Here, in the late 1940s and early 1950s unemployment seldom rose above three per cent.

Poverty should shame us all, but especially our elected employees who have the power to abolish it.

Fred Douglas
Edmonton

Christ's humble coming in our midst

The Eucharist is Emmanuel, God with us. There is nothing in existence which physically binds heaven and earth other than Jesus' substantial presence in the consecrated bread and wine.

It is the living glorified body of Jesus himself with us according to his word; it is his promise to be with us always, even to the end of the world. Yes, God is everywhere. But he physically makes his dwelling with us in the holy Eucharist. Because God has said it, it is the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

In fulfillment of the Scripture, he said "It is consummated." He completed the new Passover, the new covenant in his blood. God's great and perfect plan, to be one with us was perfected.

In this greatest miracle, which may seem to some to be almost insignificant, our Lord comes physically into our midst. The moment of consecration is more intimate than the sudden appearance of Jesus above the altar could possibly be.

He invites us to join with him in the sacrifice of Calvary, to offer ourselves with him to the Father without reservation, and to become one with him through the Eucharist.

We are free to use our will, to choose to believe or not believe. Jesus asked his Apostles if they would go away also when he revealed this truth. They believed because he said it. We do well to follow their example.

In a humble stable in Bethlehem our God, our king, our Lord, our all, was born and laid in a manger. Only those appointed by the Father were aware of the greatness present amongst them.

It seems right to me that Christ's presence in the Eucharist is like his coming as the child of Mary, simple and humble, the hidden manna, Emmanuel.

Bill Lavelle
Ardrossan

The danger of relativism

Relativism is a dangerous belief which puts truth at the service of one's personal feelings. It purports to create a more holistic view of reality when it in fact distorts it through duplicity. It preaches the "wide road" and then turns around and calls it compassion.

Indeed, what a dangerous kind of compassion it is! Such an outlook turns sin into a kind of "slippery fish," a reality we really can't get our hands on. And underneath its veil of pretended complexity we find sloth and cowardice.

Such persons like the moral law "just a bit on the fuzzy side" - a tad out of focus. And why not? Surely it is more consoling for a guilty conscience not to see the ugliness of sin so clearly, just as it is less threatening to watch a blurry brownish figure approach, rather than a 400-pound lion.

If moral relativists could convict themselves of sin as well as they rationalize it away, they would become great saints.

And people wonder why fundamentalism is the fastest growing religious concept in the world today. In an age of immortality and genetic experimentation people want to be told what is right and what is wrong. They don't want rhetoric.

And if the Catholic Church can't give it to them, then they will look for someone who will.

Lonny D'Agostini
Edmonton

One way to feed the poor

A clever idea! If you go to the Hunger Site at the UN - http://www.thehungersite.com - and click a button, somewhere in the world some hungry person gets a meal to eat, at no cost to you. The food is paid for by corporate sponsors (who gain advertising in the process because you see their logo).

All you do is go to the site and click. But you're allowed only one click per day. So spread the word to others.

Cam McDonald
Edmonton

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