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Ignoring the Poor Is a Damnable Sin—A Homily for the 26th Sunday of the Year
Archdiocese of Washington ^ | 09-28-19 | Msgr. Charles Pope

Posted on 09/29/2019 7:48:47 AM PDT by Salvation

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1 posted on 09/29/2019 7:48:47 AM PDT by Salvation
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To: nickcarraway; NYer; ELS; Pyro7480; livius; ArrogantBustard; Catholicguy; RobbyS; marshmallow; ...

Monsignor Pope Ping!


2 posted on 09/29/2019 7:49:52 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation

Faith without works is dead. I will show you my faith by my works; feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless.


3 posted on 09/29/2019 7:52:15 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: Salvation

The problem is that satan imitates the Light to fool us. Just as a narcissist views the empathy and caring of their victims as a weakness, available to lead them astray.

There are several good books on this topic, one being Toxic Charity which reveals the benefit of teaching people to fish rather than enabling the people to be perpetual victims constantly begging for you to give them a fish.

God allows suffering for us to experience discomfort when we grow off the path that leads us toward Him.


4 posted on 09/29/2019 7:58:12 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: SkyDancer

And the poor were fed through gleaning the fields.

Give the poor work.
Who will not work, let him not eat.

Two principles which are not in conflict but rather harmony which tell us not only what God wants us to do but how he wants it done.


5 posted on 09/29/2019 7:58:22 AM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptors)
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To: SkyDancer

You heard the one about teaching a guy to fish, The corollary is those that won’t fish can cut bait or starve.


6 posted on 09/29/2019 7:58:25 AM PDT by robowombat (Orthodox)
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To: tired&retired

Help people to grow. Don’t enable them to be perpetual victims.

Jesus did this when He told the rich man to go and sell all his belongings and give the proceeds to the poor before following Him.


7 posted on 09/29/2019 8:01:26 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: Salvation

When people beg from me and ask for me to enable their victimhood I find that I often disappoint them. When people turn to God in prayer, I find myself helping them and replying, “All gratitude goes to God, not me.”

A life if gratitude toward God is a happier lufe.


8 posted on 09/29/2019 8:06:00 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: MrEdd
Give the poor work. Who will not work, let him not eat.

Refusing to help those who are poor, due to adverse circumstances, is a sin.

Becoming poor, due to laziness and a bad attitude, and then demanding that others feed you while you decline to lift a finger for yourself, is a far greater sin.

9 posted on 09/29/2019 8:07:07 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: Salvation; All
Monsignor Smug continues a long tradition of clerical shame peddlers of all Christian denominations who put on the spiel about the ‘poor’ as though we are living in the 10th century (OK I know the muzzards are, but that is another matter.) with lepers and beggars expiring on the streets. The entire routine is to try and shame the man in the street by either outright lies or dissimulation. The holy man can sit back and feel very sanctified as he has another sherry before a a Fillet Mignon and baked potato with butter and sour cream., he can also hope the schlemiels he has just shamed and threatened with hell fire will cough up some more shekels that usual to his holy cause.
10 posted on 09/29/2019 8:12:19 AM PDT by robowombat (Orthodox)
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To: MrEdd
Just going what the Apostle James wrote: James 2:18

What are the works he's speaking about? And it has nothing to do with salvation.

11 posted on 09/29/2019 8:19:27 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: Salvation

There’s is a story briefly related by Josephus concerning the behavior of some Priests (though Josephus blames their servants to avoid blaming them) who took the food meant to support their relatives for themselves and the result was that some of those other elderly priests starved.

Which would have been an infamous event in Israel.

Now, the “rich man” may not have been any specific persons BUT Lazaraus who was named certainly might have been.

Interesting to me is the detail of the number of brothers that the rich man had, for if we look at Josephus we also find that the sons of Ananias (who himself Josephus described as “a great hoarder up of money”) we have the same number being High Priest after their father, and a sixth if we include the son-in-law Caiaphas.

That isn’t to say that there’d been one of these boys who had died young, before Christ told the story (if He was referencing this specific family in the story), but a name of one who’d starved (and he was at the doorstep like someone who maybe should have expected to receive something) would have been enough to clue everyone in about who was the villain, who was the victim and if so the story is easily seen as very, very politically subversive by those playing politics with the priesthood (as Ananias did).

Which is to say the story may have been about something more than just neglecting the poor but about injustices inflicted on the poor.


12 posted on 09/29/2019 8:19:52 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: robowombat

Well when you’re cold and shivering in the middle of Kansas and no lakes around and .....


13 posted on 09/29/2019 8:20:14 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: MrEdd
"Give the poor work. Who will not work, let him not eat."

Almost sounds like communism/socialism.

What if they were unable? What if no jobs available?

14 posted on 09/29/2019 8:21:48 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: MrEdd

I’m often critical of progressives in that they want to do good by proxy, through the government, rather than see that the command is to themselves and not how they vote.

Moreover, I point out that even if the welfare that they support is of a kinder and more agreeable form than that of the poor houses that Scrooge mentions, they too still evidence the belief that the care for the poor is the job of professionals being paid to do so rather than their own business (and like Scrooge feels he’s been demanded to do they make everyone give at the office for their professionally administered programs).

Finally, encouraging people to look to government from which their help (welfare check) comes is having them look the wrong way. That neglects the likely temptation to think you’re being held out on (ingratitude) if what you get is somehow your due, your entitlement, just for being here.

In a way this last dovetails with what I’d earlier suggested as a possibility about who Lazarus might have been (a Priest that starved, as per a story related by Josephus). For those elderly Priests certainly did have a right to expect that support, and so Lazarus might have gone to the guy stealing his food just expecting his right. You don’t have to be grateful for what you’ve a right to the way you should be for gifts. But what amounts to a provision for retirement (Priests had a retirement age, uniquely so in all Israel) is different from modern Welfare. Thus Lazarus might compare better to the pensioners in Hoovervilles than to those getting welfare today.


15 posted on 09/29/2019 8:36:57 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: MrEdd

Thank you - the article needed your perspective lest we be told that supporting idlers who are poor by choice is incumbent upon us.


16 posted on 09/29/2019 8:42:03 AM PDT by trebb (Don't howl about illegal leeches, or Trump in general, while not donating to FR - it's hypocritical.)
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To: SkyDancer

Even for those who can work there’s always a short term in which work is not yet to be had, in which you’ve stood around in the square and no one has hired you to work in their fields to borrow from another parable.

There is a difference between can’t right now and will not.

But what you bring up, things like invalids or “cannots”, are hard cases and you should not base general principals on hard cases.


17 posted on 09/29/2019 8:47:59 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Rurudyne

Was just saying. People say “get a job” well okay but what if you can’t? There are some people who just can’t pass an interview for whatever reason. True, there are people who scam the system, but ....


18 posted on 09/29/2019 9:00:30 AM PDT by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: tired&retired

Please cite passage about satan being light to fool us. Thank-you.


19 posted on 09/29/2019 9:13:26 AM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: robowombat
You're arguing with Jesus here, not with Msgr. Pope.

Read that parable again, with an acute and glistening eye.

20 posted on 09/29/2019 9:14:56 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("God bless the child who's got his own." - Billie Holliday)
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