Pope Francis vs. the NY Times

PhilanthropyDaily.com ^ | May 12, 2015 | Scott Walter

[Edmunds mom]

Do individual human beings matter? They do to Pope Francis, who recently had 150 of Rome’s homeless persons receive a tour of the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel.

Particular men and women, so some folks tell us, aren’t that important, because if you really want to “change the world” and help people, you must turn your gaze from the people you see in front of you and contemplate instead social structures/societal forces/the root causes of poverty.

This kind of thinking is common in places like the New York Times editorial pages, which seem to think Pope Francis shares their philosophy. But I’d say the pope’s treatment of those homeless persons shows that his approach to changing the world and helping others is entirely different.

...the Times and others who deal in disembodied social forces usually condescend to those they would help by treating the poor as powerless victims of social inequities -- as persons who have nothing and can do nothing for themselves or for anyone else. Yet the Pope said the opposite. He did not speak abstractly about the poor; he spoke to every single one of these struggling persons. And he didn’t say, “I denounce the sinful structures of our globalized economic system that victimize the class to which you belong and deprive your class of material riches.” No, Pope Francis said that he, a world leader who lives amid palaces, lacks something that only they, in their dignity, could provide him: “I’m in need of prayers by people like you,” he explained.

[Edmunds mom]

An argument that Pope Francis does not sing off the same hymn book as the NY Times.

[CharlesOConnell]

A poor, negligible Muslim woman who was kidnapped by Boko Haram, survived the rescue which killed a number of the other women, showed in a modern context what Jesus pointed out with the Widow who gave the Temple treasury 2 mite-coins.

Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates may get all the press about "Philanthropy", but this poor Muslim woman outdid all their billion$.

She came back to her home village which was wiped out, she only had survived because she was kidnapped to be a sex-slave, with 3 Christian orphans in tow. She proclaimed that she would give her life for them.

The greatest philanthropists in history haven't been Morgans, Roth Schilds, de Medicis, King Croesus or King Midas, they are like the Hindu woman with the starving family whom Mother Theresa brought a sack full of rice, she couldn't stay at the moment to properly thank Mother, she divided the sack in 2 to take half to her poor Muslim neighbor whose family was even more starving.

That's philanthropy.