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Sign & sacrament

29 Dec 2013 - Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Cycle A

On the walls of the North American headquarters of the Divine Word Missionaries there is a painting from China that depicts the Holy Family living as Chinese peasants. What’s especially interesting is that the painting shows them to be poor. In their small hut some paint is peeling from the walls, clothes are patched here and there, the table has seen better days. While Saint Joseph was probably not desperately poor, he and his family belonged to the vast majority of people who were outside the small elite who controlled most of the wealth and pulled the strings in ancient Palestine. So when Jesus talked about bringing good news to the poor, he was talking about a whole lot of people, including his own family. In imitation of Christ, what can you do to uplift the poor in your own family and beyond?

Poor poverty

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The inner word

30 Jan 2011 - Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Today's readings show the special place the poor and the just have in God's heart. Consider the following questions as you ready yourself to preach on this week's readings, which include the Beatitudes, one of the great passages from all of religious literature: How can you lead the members of your parish to be even better ministers to the hungry, the poor, the abandoned, the disabled? In what ways have the times you felt weak actually made you stronger? "The Lord protects strangers," says today's psalm. Are there strangers in your community who need your and your community's protection? Are there others, like Catholics who have left the church, whom you could welcome and thus make them "strangers" no more?

Poor poverty beatitudes stranger
Stamp out hunger?

10 Jan 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"Like a shepherd" God "feeds his flock," the first reading option from Isaiah 40 says. For a growing number of people in the United States, food stamps and little else serve a similar purpose. According to an analysis done by the New York Times, about 6 million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income. The number of people who describe themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash assistance—no welfare, unemployment insurance, pensions, child support, or disability pay—was rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but it has soared over 50 percent the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card. "The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. "People need income support." Even with food stamps, 14.6 percent of American households—49 million people—reported feeling "food insecure" at some point during 2008, according to a recent USDA study. "49 percent of all U.S. children will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood," said Mark R. Rank, poverty expert at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. "Food stamp use is a clear sign of poverty and food insecurity, two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child's health." Source: Articles by Jason Deparle and Robert M. Begeloff for the New York Times, Sandy Stonesifer for Slate.com, Jessica Martin for the Washington University in St. Louis News & Information Service, Judy Keen for USA TODAY, and Karen E. Cunnyngham, Laura Caster, and Allen L. Schirm for Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Children poverty food insecurity food stamps james weill food research and action center mark r rank

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World’s poor going hungry due to surging food prices

13 Jun 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

A Pharisee invites Jesus to dine with him in this Sunday’s gospel, but Jesus says he has been more attentively served by Mary of Magdala, who along with Joanna, Susanna, and other women provided for the disciples “out of their resources.” Resource-poor families around the world, however, are struggling to provide food for their tables. Surging food prices are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions, and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit, and even tomatoes, according to United Nations data. Scraping to afford the next meal is a grim daily reality in the developing world. With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorest countries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen malnutrition. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index--which includes grains, meat, dairy, and other items in 90 countries--was up 22 percent in March from a year earlier. Poorer economies are vulnerable to an array of problems that can push up prices. Farmers with less land and irrigation are hit harder by drought and floods. Civil war and other conflicts disrupt supplies. Prices in import-dependent economies spike when the local currency weakens. The global financial crisis hurt food production in some countries by making it harder for farmers to get credit for seed and supplies. People interviewed in a number of countries said they are coping not only by cutting out expensive items but by eating less--a trend that has stirred concern about malnutrition. Source: An article by Joe McDonald for the Associated Press

Poor poverty un food and agriculture organization food prices

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Doing well by doing good

10 Oct 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

When Naaman is healed of leprosy in this Sunday’s first reading, he offers Elisha a gift in return, which Elisha refuses. Government and charitable handouts to the poor have come into increasing disfavor among a group of development specialists and wealthy philanthropists who prefer using good old-fashioned capitalism to address poverty. Vinod Khosla, a billionaire venture capitalist and cofounder of Sun Microsystems, is a leading proponent of a movement to replace charitable handouts with microloans and venture capital investments. By backing businesses that provide education loans or distribute solar panels in villages, he says, he wants to show that commercial entities can better help people in poverty than most nonprofit charitable organizations. “There needs to be more experiments in building sustainable businesses going after the market for the poor,” says Khosla. “It has to be done in a sustainable way. There is not enough money to be given away in the world to make the poor well off.” Advocates of microlending find support for the idea from the work of business management professors like the late C. K. Prahalad, who have argued that large corporations can do well and do good by aiming at people at the so-called bottom of the pyramid. Besides Khosla, entrepreneurs like Pierre Omidyar, a cofounder of eBay, and Stephen M. Case, a cofounder of America Online, have started funds with similar aims. But Khosla, 55, who moved to the United States from India as a graduate student in 1976, has another motive. He wants to goad other rich Indians into giving away more of their wealth. A recent study estimated that Indians give much less as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product than Americans. Rich Indians “are more into temple building and things like that,” said Samit Ghosh, the chief executive of Ujjivan Financial, a microlender based in Bangalore, “rather than putting their money into real programs, which will have real impact on poverty alleviation.” Khosla said his experience with microfinance had helped shape his views on the best way to tackle poverty. He has invested in commercial microfinance lenders and has donated to nonprofit ones, and he said that moneymaking versions had grown much faster and reached many more needy borrowers. Source: An article by Vikas Bajaj for the New York Times

poverty philanthropy charitable giving mirolending indians microfinancing vinod khosla

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Poverty rate may be only economic indicator on the rise

24 Oct 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“The Lord hears the cry of the poor,” we affirm in the psalm response this Sunday. Unfortunately, the Lord is hearing from a lot more people these days. Thanks to the recession, 2009 was one of the worst years for poverty in America in more than half a century, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The total number of Americans living in poverty hit 43.6 million, and the national poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent. Many expect it to reach 15 percent this year. All told, a startling one in seven Americans are living in poverty. To make matters worse, state governments, facing a combined estimated budget shortfall of $380 billion for 2011, have begun cutting crucial services and laying off thousands of employees. Last year’s steep rate of job losses also caused millions of Americans to lose employee-provided health insurance. Nearly 17 percent of the population, more than 50 million people, has no health insurance, the highest level since the Census started collecting such data in 1987. The Lord rescues the poor from their distress, the psalmist says. Many charitable organizations serve a similar purpose. But more bad news: At a time when increasing numbers of people need some help, charitable giving has decreased sharply. Contributions to the nation’s 400 largest donor-funded nonprofits fell 11 percent in 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week. The drop was by far the steepest since the Chronicle began tracking those numbers 20 years ago, nearly four times as great as the next biggest annual decrease: 2.8 percent in 2001, when charities also struggled to raise money from recession-battered donors. Catholic Charities USA was one of only a few of the top 10 charities to report increased contributions last year, with a healthy 5.2 percent jump. But overall observers don’t expect charities to do much better in 2010; most fundraising directors say they’re expecting growth of only 1.4 percent this year. Source: Articles by Arthur Delaney for HuffingtonPost.com and by Noelle Barton and Holly Hall for The Chronicle of Philanthropy

poverty recession health insurance united states americans census bureau charitable giving catholic charities usa

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Help children learn by the book

22 May 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Christ is the cornerstone of Christian faith, as the Sunday reading from 1 Peter tells us. And early access to children’s books is foundational to a good education, researchers say. But many poor children grow up without books because their families can’t afford to buy them. A nonprofit organization is trying to change that. First Book is spearheading an effort to deliver millions of new, high-quality books to low-income children through thousands of nonprofit bodies. The organization’s goal is to democratize book access, but along the way it may end up reinvigorating the book business. Some 42 percent of American children--more than 31 million--grow up in families that lack the income to cover basic needs like rent, child care, food, and transportation. “These are families that are not buying books at retail,” said Kyle Zimmer, cofounder of First Book. “Not only are we losing 42 percent of kids whose families can’t afford books, the publishing industry isn’t reaching 42 percent of its potential market. The system isn’t serving them.” Zimmer got an intimate view of poverty while working as a volunteer tutor for poor children in Washington, D.C. She saw that children’s eyes lit up when they were given a book of their own, particularly a new book with an attractive cover. Kids would say, “Can I really take this home?” Some would add: “This is my first book.” They would go home and do their best to read it--and then they would come back and ask for another one. First Book makes books available at deeply reduced prices--typically 50 to 90 percent off--to any organization that is certified tax-exempt and serving children in need. Though the profit margins are much smaller than normal for publishers, they get the benefit of selling in bulk with no returns to a market they would otherwise never reach, so it is a win-win situation for all involved, Zimmer said. Source: A blog post by David Bornstein for the New York Times

Children poverty books kyle zimmer first book

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Rising number of poor and uninsured signals “lost decade”

18 Sep 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The gospel parable this Sunday features idle laborers who wait all day in the marketplace for someone to hire them. Persistently high unemployment in the U.S. caused the poverty rate to jump from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent last year, a 27-year high. About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, live in poverty. At the same time, the number of people lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high. Decreases in coverage were due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy. The percentage of workers covered by employer-based insurance has steadily declined in the past decade, from 65 percent in 2000 to about 55 percent in 2010, a U.S. Census report said. Main provisions of the health overhaul law mandating wider coverage do not take effect until 2014. In new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996. It is the first time since the Great Depression that median household income adjusted for inflation has not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University. “This is truly a lost decade,” Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.” This year is not likely to be any better, economists said. Stimulus money has largely been used and state and local governments have made deep cuts to staff and to budgets for social programs, both likely to move economically fragile families closer to poverty. Sources: Articles by Annalyn Censky for CNN Money, Sabrina Tavernise for the New York Times,Daniel Gross for Yahoo! Finance, and Hope Yen for the Associated Press

poverty unemployment health insurance census lawrence katz

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