I commented yesterday that our youngest daughter was married this past Saturday at a Greek Orthodox parish. That Sunday I concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with the parish priest. He and I are friends and have spent many hours around an altar. As a cradle Orthodox he was able to not only teach me much about both how to celebrate the Divine Liturgy and about the life of a priest, but also showed me something about the ethos of Orthodoxy.
He also happens to be politically conservative and does not believe that the government ought to be involved in as much as they are involved, particularly at the Federal level. Nevertheless, he does not preach his views from the pulpit. However, this Sunday he was forced to address the issue of current politics because of some of the political arguments between members of his congregation due to the nearness of a government default on debt. In Florida, every congregation has a large number of retirees from various parts of the country, from very conservative states to very liberal states. This presents a challenge to every parish priest in that state every political season or time of turmoil.
So, the priest decided to use an example from the poor. As he pointed out to, Our Lord himself said that the poor would always be with us. But then the priest also pointed out that from the Old Testament through the New Testament through the Church Fathers, it is clear that God’s intention is that we care for the widow, the orphan, and the poor. The argument, he said, is over how to accomplish that. Some believe that it is best done through government. Some believe that it is best done through the private sector. That is a discussion that needs to be had in this country and needs to be carried to its conclusion. But the discussion should not assume that the person who holds the other position is either evil or non-Christian. That is inappropriate for a Christian to believe about a fellow Christian.
Nevertheless he asked that none of us miss that the Orthodox position is that we need to indeed take care of the widow, the orphan, and the poor. And, he said, that means that we all agree that we need to give some of our money away for that to be accomplished. Neither the private enterprise position nor the government involvement position ought to be used as an excuse to keep your money without sharing. Whether personal and private or public and programmed, all of us ought to be willing to give away some of our money. We can always argue about the appropriate ways to give it away. We can argue about who ought to be the recipients of the funds. We can argue about how to help the most people to climb out of poverty. But, we should certainly never argue about our calling to put our hands in our pockets to tithe and to give offerings, some to the Lord, but some to those whom the Lord himself has said ought to be helped.
So, perhaps we can find a basis for an admittedly very broad agreement in what he said. We can agree that we have a calling to give of our tithes and offerings both to the Lord and to those whom the Lord himself has said ought to be helped. And then we can call each other to follow through and to fulfill that calling. Some will wish to do it by one method, some by another. But, the bottom line is to actually follow through and tithe to the Church and give additionally to the poor. For those who believe it ought to be done by government, give privately until you can convince people to pass the laws you believe are necessary. If you believe it ought to be done by private enterprise, then follow through, find one or more charities, and then make sure to give your tithe to the Church and your offerings to those charities. Otherwise, we are simply a bunch of clanging cymbals making empty arguments.
Amen
Thank you, Fr. Ernesto, for your wisdom today. I struggle with this very issue because I see the plight of those less fortunate and so often I become enraged by the seeming callousness of those with whom I disagree. Your words are timely and well-received by this struggling Christian.
I might add that as a person who is attempting to be faithful steward, I give my offerings to those I feel I can trust to use it wisely.
Amen! Father is of course to be commended for preaching this sermon. In response, several things come to mind:
a) that one can charitably donate, and therefore deduct from taxation, a substantial portion of one’s income; I believe it is up to one-half.
b)This properly Christian response is not only undertaken in order to “help the poor”. It is a spiritual discipline – almsgiving- and is done, along with prayer and fasting, so as to advance the sanctification and salvation of those who engage in it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ assumes that his followers will practice these disciplines and gives guidelines for how they are to be done in a spiritually profitable manner. This is in direct contradiction to the Randian approach to life which has no place for such a discipline and would see it as harmful to all concerned.
c)A big part of the problem is structural, meaning that our economic arrangements are inherently disempowering and poverty-producing. These structures need to be changed, along the lines of those found, for example, in Germany. This would eliminate a great deal of the problem in terms of “welfare” by creating a far greater level of sustainable and self-sustaining economic equality but would still leave plenty of room for private charity. In regard to this, if we are, say, the ninetieth percentile or below in terms of income, we are victimized by this in that we are not getting the kind of bang for our buck that we could if we allowed our government to get the kinds prices of it should be getting from buying in bulk. A great example is the fact that, in passing the Medicare medication benefit, it explicitly prohibits the government from negotiating lower prices with Big Pharma as virtually every other industrialized, Western nation does. For more on this, please see the following review I wrote of a book called “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?”, found at the link below:
http://vagantepriest.blogspot.com/2010/09/labor-day-2010-op-ed-piece-and-book.html
IOW, a big part of this problem has to do with confusing issues of “justice” with those of “charity”. The former, the creation and maintenance of “the common good” is clearly within the purview of the state, at least with regard to mandating the basic structure and the rules of the game while the latter is perhaps indeed best handled by private entities, including the Church and its members. Further, exactly how to achieve this type of justice is up for debate as well even if it is stipulated that public/governmental ownership of a large portion of economic enterprises is not very workable. One point to, on the one side, a Distributivist emphasis on empowered cooperative ownership, as in the Spanish Mondragon Corporation, vs. the German model. The latter empowers rank-and-file employees of major enterprises precisely as employees, without regard to whether or not they share in the ownership of the entity at which they work.