General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do you know why Catholics put money in the collection plate at Sunday mass? [View all]Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)...to reduce poverty is to make sure girls get sex education, young women and young men get birth control/condoms, and young couples get family planning. All of which gives young people a chance to continue their education or get jobs instead of taking care of lots of unplanned children. It gives them a chance, as well, to have only as many children as they can handle and provide for, and keeps a lot of unplanned children out of poverty as well.
Giving out food, clothes, etc. are certainly important as well. But I have a hard time reconciling the church's worry over poverty when, let's face it, in many countries--where it is the dominant theology, influencing the government--it actively contributes to keeping people impoverish by not providing young women with ways to avoid having not just children at a young age, but lots of children--and, likewise, the church doesn't give young men in many of these places a way to avoid having large families they must provide for.
Now none of that may apply to parish churches here in the U.S. BUT let us not forget that the bishops in the U.S. raised a huge stink about having their workers health insurance provide birth control to their workers. It is very difficult to respect the Catholic Church for caring about poverty when it interferes with secular laws that are working to help men and women avoid poverty like health care laws that try to provide birth control, like family planning, like sex education.
And just because people on this site are questioning Catholicism doesn't mean they don't care about poverty. Or are you presuming that those who care about poverty would never criticize Catholics because all Catholics care about the poor? Paul Ryan never seemed to.