Honduras and the early Church Fathers

This past week has not been all that busy since the Christmas vacations are just ending, the Catholic University doesn’t begin classes until January 21, and I am preparing for a visit back to Ames. But I did have an opportunity to have an extended talk with the director of the Catholic University about campus ministry on Tuesday and spent Saturday in Dulce Nombre as twenty folks came together to plan activities for the parish.

But my contact with the poor this week has again touched me.

Monday, after helping with the literacy program at the jail, I went with Sor Inez, a Spanish Franciscan sister, to visit a house in Colonia Divina Providencia, a poor neighborhood here in Santa Rosa. Sor Inez had told me of the family. The mother works from about 7 am to 7 pm for a family in town, which leaves her little time for her own family. So she has to leaves her baby in the care of her two older girls. The shack they live in is two rooms, a small room with two “beds,” and a kitchen and eating area – both with dirt floors. The mother borrowed money from her boss to pay for the land her shack sits on and cannot leave the job until she pays back the $150 she owes. This sounds to me like something out of the past – a type of indentured servitude. When she pays off the loan she can seek another job that would have fewer hours and leave evenings, Sundays, and many Saturdays free to care for her family. Sor Inez is working with her on this. Here is a woman who is a hard worker but has become trapped in poverty.

This past week I also spent one morning and one afternoon in Hogar San José, a home for malnourished kids under five, run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. The kids crave affection and now that they know me are less boisterous when I am around. Some of the infants are really tiny, showing the lack of food, but a good number of the others seem to be doing fairly well.

Seeing one little girl with an enlarged head I recalled the number of people I’ve seen here with serious physical disabilities, especially weak twisted legs which makes walking very difficult. Many are probably birth defects. I don’t know the statistics, but this is more than I recall seeing in the States. Or maybe they are just hidden there.

It's interesting how what I am reading sometimes fits in with my life here.

A few days ago I began reading Daniel G. Groody’s Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice (Orbis Books, 2007), which I am finding very good.

But what most surprised me – and delighted me – in the book is his chapter on “Justice in the Early Church.” He has mined some very pointed quotes from the early church fathers which are very critical of the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the poor. When I hear people criticizing the church for speaking out against injustice, I will turn back to the this chapter since the Fathers of the Church are quite harsh and their words speak forcefully to our world today.

St. Gregory of Nyssa said, contrasting the behavior of the greedy with that of wolves and dogs, “ …the insatiably greedy never allow any other human being to share in their wealth. Let a moderate table be enough for you. Do not throw yourself into the sea of unbridled consumption.”

In contrast to the modern claim to absolute right to private property, the fathers of the church – as well as recent popes – see wealth and property as God’s gifts that we are called to care for as good stewards. As St. John Chrysostom preached, “Wealth is not a possession, it is not property; it is a loan for use. For when you do, willingly or unwillingly, all that you have goes to others, and they again give it up to others , and they again to others. For we are all sojourners…”

And so, what is important in the eyes of God is not what we accumulate but what we give away. As St. John Chrysostom said, “…let us not make this the object of our concern, to seek in every way possible to acquire more possession, but consider how to dispose of them properly by alleviating the need of those found wanting, lest we lose those goods that last forever…”

Peter Maurin, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, put it nicely:
“What we do for our brother
for Christ’s sake
is what we carry with us
when we die.”

The fathers also spoke against the exploitation of the poor by the rich, in words that some might now regard as harsh or claim is fomenting class warfare. St. Ambrose, castigating the rich, wrote, "Such is your humanity that you plunder even as you pretend to give aid! Even a poor person is for you a fruitful means of acquiring profit. In their need, you subject the poor to high interest loans, compelling them to pay what they do not have." When I read this I could not help thinking of the poor woman in Colonia Divina Providencia

And, in light of the struggle here in Honduras over gold mining, these words of Ambrose are to the point: “By the needy gold is acquired yet it is denied to the needy. The needy toil and labor to seek out and find what they will never be permitted to possess.” The gold mining companies pollute the water, destroy forests, and yet only pay 1% in taxes.

Since I might be teaching a course on Catholic Social Teaching in mid-2008 at the Catholic University, I may have to find ways to incorporate some of their insights into the course. It is truly amazing how rich the Catholic tradition is and how it so often speaks to what is happening in our world today.