By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Pope Benedict XVI’s World Day of Peace message for Jan. 1, 2009, entitled “Fighting Poverty to Build Peace” highlights much more than just the material poverty experienced in the world today. He calls attention to “tragic situations of poverty” such as the spiritual and moral malaise in the West, the lack of proper healthcare in developing nations, greed-driven financial systems and the threat globalization poses to the poor.
“Poverty is often a contributory factor or a compounding element in conflicts, including armed ones. In turn, these conflicts fuel further tragic situations of poverty,” the Pope said in his statement.
“Fighting poverty requires attentive consideration of the complex phenomenon of globalization,” he said, which “needs to be managed with great prudence.”
He quotes John Paul II’s encyclical letter “Centesimus Annus,” in which he warned of the need to ‘abandon a mentality in which the poor – as individuals and as peoples – are considered a burden, as irksome intruders trying to consume what others have produced’. . . . (I)n today’s globalized world, it is increasingly evident that peace can be built only if everyone is assured the possibility of reasonable growth: sooner or later, the distortions produced by unjust systems have to be paid for by everyone.”
The Pope called for a “common code of ethics” rooted in the natural law inscribed by the Creator on the conscience of every human being.
“Effective means to redress the marginalization of the world’s poor through globalization will only be found if people everywhere feel personally outraged by the injustices in the world and by the concomitant violations of human rights.”
He went on to describe other non-material forms of poverty that are plaguing the world today.
“For example, in advanced wealthy societies, there is evidence of marginalization, as well as affective, moral and spiritual poverty, seen in people whose interior lives are disoriented and who experience various forms of malaise despite their economic prosperity.”
He cites abortion as another form of poverty.
“Poverty is often considered a consequence of demographic change. … The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty, actually constitutes the destruction of the poorest of all human beings.”
The problem of pandemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS is also addressed.
“Insofar as they affect the wealth-producing sectors of the population, they are a significant factor in the overall deterioration of conditions in the country concerned. . . .”
He references the poverty-producing programs being forced upon some of these nations that invest billions in condoms and “risk reduction” plans rather than addressing the underlying behavioural causes for the pandemics:
“It also happens that countries afflicted by some of these pandemics find themselves held hostage, when they try to address them, by those who make economic aid conditional upon the implementation of anti-life policies.
“It is especially hard to combat AIDS, a major cause of poverty, unless the moral issues connected with the spread of the virus are also addressed. First and foremost, educational campaigns are needed, aimed especially at the young, to promote a sexual ethic that fully corresponds to the dignity of the person; initiatives of this kind have already borne important fruits, causing a reduction in the spread of AIDS. Then, too, the necessary medicines and treatment must be made available to poorer peoples as well.”
He also reminds the world that almost half of the people living in poverty today are children, mostly because of policies that weaken the family and fail to protect women and mothers.
“When the family is weakened, it is inevitably children who suffer. If the dignity of women and mothers is not protected, it is the children who are affected most.”
He also called for a more ethical approach to economics in combating world poverty and referred to the current financial crisis when he said:
“The recent crisis demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good. . . . Finance limited in this way to the short and very short term becomes dangerous for everyone, even for those who benefit when the markets perform well.”
The Pope’s message also cites excessive military expenditures, lack of access to the food supply, and unfair trade policies as other reasons why so many people are left wanting in our world today.
He concludes by reassuring the world of the Church’s commitment to the poor.
“The Christian community will never fail, then, to assure the entire human family of her support through gestures of creative solidarity, not only by ‘giving from one’s surplus’, but above all by ‘a change of life-styles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies’.”
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