I've been thinking about the Catholic Church and its moral obligation to live in the spirit of god; and our obligation as Christians to do service for the poor. Our greatest calling as moral beings, is to eradicate poverty; if you define yourself as a Christian, and note that I am not speaking about denomination, but strictly as a Christian our one job is to make sure that we humbly serve the less fortunate. Serving the less fortunate means, real service, not glib half efforts like donating money to a soup kitchen but something substantive like eradicating poverty. There are people who complain about that the homeless problem can be solved if "these people" just pulled themselves up by their bootstrap and found a job. The substantive reasons why homelessness exists and ways to end it, are to numerous to list here, but I will say that no one wants to be homeless. People fall off the grid when they feel no sense of hope; we live in an immoral world that places profit above the value of human lives. The system is fundamentally broken because we have people who are unwilling to see that amassing money is not a virtue. We, as ethical beings need to reevaluate our obligations to such a system and say that we can do better. We need to put more money towards social programs, towards education and rehabilitation; we need to say that the rich have no moral imperative to make more money, which is not a "right" especially when weighed against human suffering.
I wonder if the Catholic Church, and all these schismists, in their effort to end abortion have lost their moral imperative. They have backed politicians who have the same temperament on the abortion subject as they do, but whose draconian policies have only succeeded in further eroding the middle class and heaped more people down the dark chasm of poverty. In our pursuits for baubles, we have forgotten our obligation to each other; and the church in its pursuits to end abortion has forgotten its duty. The nuance and philosophical arguments of that issue are too heavy to be listed here; but, are we to believe that the issue of a woman's right to choose is more important than our shared obligations. Is the sin of poverty, the sin of human suffering, the sin of bondage, and the sin of apathy are the weight of those things less then abortion.
I do believe that the church, regardless of denomination has lost its moral compass. When you have pastors who preach that they can have an abundance of wealth if they pray to god for such things, then we as spiritual beings must realize that something is wrong. We have pastors, who have done nothing to shake their parishioners free from the chains of apathy, who have failed to challenge the view that war is an immoral practice, and have failed to advocate for those most at risk. A person has a right to make a living, but not at the expensive of our right to live free from oppression. Poverty is a type of oppression, the worst kind when you think about it. It’s a type of oppression that sucks hope from those living under; it noticeably affects the quality of life and creates a vicious seemingly inescapable cycle. The right to live free from oppression is an inalienable right; the “right” to make money doesn’t supersede the other. I don’t think the Catholic Church has any moral authority for a multitude of reasons and I also don’t think these schismist religions have any either. They chase sea gulls and really fail to preach the unattractive truth about religion, that genuine service to each other is our only calling. It’s unattractive because it asks for sacrifice, and asks us for a minute to not vainly peruse treasure but end something we inflict upon each other.
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