The second paragraph of Blaise’s essay provoked my ire to a sufficient degree that I have decided to fire a shot across the bow. That being said, however, the rest of the article sufficiently mollified me so that I now offer more of a continuation – rather than a rebuttal – of his line of thought.

Those on welfare do not live like kings. Sure, there’s indoor plumbing and mega-sized TV’s. But the reality is darker. They live in cockroach-infested, trash-lined, ammonia-pungent, dungy quarters in which porn scrolls like a screen saver on the big TV’s and the folks in the apartment next door evidently don’t use the indoor plumbing as they should. When you walk in, the stench is the first thing that strikes you and the flies and bugs are the first creatures that welcome you. Sometimes there are dead bodies in the bed because the relatives don’t check in on their elders often enough. Often there are professional lights and cameras set up in the largest room (thanks to Amazon these are very readily available at low cost) so a woman can make enough money to feed her kids and her drug habit by dancing and stripping as googling viewers electronically pay her for each article of clothing she removes and each movement she performs. Kings have dignity; these poor people have none.

When you knock loudly enough on a door, you’ll see a pair of addiction-glazed eyes peeping out through a crack. As you try to make yourself understood, you have to keep moving your feet so the cockroaches don’t crawl up your leg.

That’s the reality of the poor in America today, at least in the West Side of Cincinnati. Sure, they have indoor plumbing and big-screen TV’s, but what good is that? They don’t live like kings.

On the other hand, the poor in Africa (at least in Zimbabwe), who don’t have either plumbing or television, are much happier. I think in large part it’s because they have some dignity and some faith. They live under a totalitarian regime but the corruption thankfully hamstrings the whole operation with inefficiency and so the lack of indoor plumbing is the worst daily effect of the tyranny that the villagers experience out in the bush.

It turns out that Pope Leo XIII was right when (paraphrasing here) he said the most important thing is Christian morality. Christianity is life. More accurately, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Faith is the Living Life. If we have Him, regardless of economic status, we have peace and joy and dignity. Without Him, the squalor may be internal or external, but either way, existence is corrupted and those without Him live in death. Those on welfare here could live lives of peace and joy in the knowledge that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. But I don’t think they’ve heard and they definitely haven’t seen.

As a final thought- I would encourage all those who read and write about Rerum Novarum to sometimes go to places where the cockroaches crawl up your leg.

– Fr. Henry

Read Blaise Ghering’s original post here.