Showing posts with label Pope Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope Quotes. Show all posts

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Pope Quotes 3-1-12

I have been as busy as ever, so I apologize for little posting lately. I also feel I have tended to emphasize economics more than Catholic Social Teaching lately, so strapped for time and desiring to spread the Church's teaching on economics and other social issues I decided to start a new series called "Pope Quotes". I hope you find the series informative and helpful!

On food shortages or famine, as has been occurring in East Africa and happens elsewhere around the world even outside of weather/climate-induced famines:
"Life in many poor countries is still extremely insecure as a consequence of food shortages, and the situation could become worse: hunger still reaps enormous numbers of victims among those who, like Lazarus, are not permitted to take their place at the rich man's table, contrary to the hopes expressed by Paul VI. Feed the hungry (cf. Mt 25: 35, 37, 42) is an ethical imperative for the universal Church, as she responds to the teachings of her Founder, the Lord Jesus, concerning solidarity and the sharing of goods. Moreover, the elimination of world hunger has also, in the global era, become a requirement for safeguarding the peace and stability of the planet.

Hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional needs, and also capable of addressing the primary needs and necessities ensuing from genuine food crises, whether due to natural causes or political irresponsibility, nationally and internationally." -- Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, pp. 27 (emphasis added)

On inequality and protection of the working class for the good of society:
"But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them... We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well-constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps 'the use of which is necessary to virtuous action.'"