‘But just as it’s no good
to be poor it is also no good to be rich if you get rich the way some politicians and their bagmen do in the Philippines today. By stealing from
everyone, especially the poor.’
I AM not a good Catholic. I rarely attend mass, I have read more pages of the Quran than of the Catholic Bible, and I can tell you for example that in the former the character we know as St. Joseph doesn’t appear in the Jesus birth story at all.
But I was baptized a Catholic because my mother was a good one and my father was a new convert (he had to shift from being Aglipayan so he could marry his college sweetheart, who became my mother). And I think the only time I attended mass for more than three days straight was when I stayed at a Jesuit residence in Boston in the 1990s or early 2000s when my younger brother was staying there and the Jesuits had regular service which I, as a guest in their house, dutifully attended.
There are a number of things in the teaching of the Roman Church that I am uncomfortable with, and some I find amusing. The many gaps in the Bible (like missing years and disappearing persons) also make me smile, given that the Romans and before them the Egyptians were excellent record keepers. But one of the favorite themes I find most amusing I heard the other morning during dawn mass, aka Simbang Gabi, and it was all about how the poor are happier than the rich and all that, something the Protestants never preach.
Now, is that why Catholic nations are said to be generally poorer than Protestant ones?
Then again maybe it’s the Church’s way of convincing us to forget all about materialism and give everything up to God (meaning them). Donate your property when you die. Give more than loose change at service. Help the parish priest do his thing by furnishing him a car he can use. Or a number of other things I can mention that would have gotten me burned at the stake decades ago.
Poor people aren’t happier than rich people. Rich people just have other, maybe more, reasons to be unhappy. But let’s cut the crap that to be poor is saintly, although Deng Xiaoping’s “to get rich is glorious” is also taking the other end to the extreme.
It’s no good to be poor. And the ideal way to get out of poverty is to work hard for it.
Again, in an ideal world the rich should know that making sure hard workers are rewarded with success in life can only be good for everyone, including the rich themselves, because when hard work doesn’t result in commensurate advancement a sense of injustice builds and that can engulf everything and everyone.
But just as it’s no good to be poor it is also no good to be rich if you get rich the way some politicians and their bagmen do in the Philippines today. By stealing from everyone, especially the poor. Thankfully, there are other decent ways to get ahead in life because success, in the Philippines at least, is 70% perspiration, 30% inspiration and another 50% connection.
Rather than glorifying poverty and hardship and equating that with Christ’s suffering on the cross — which, by the way, He couldn’t have suffered for us because at the time he was crucified there were no us, no Catholics yet, not even Him as he was a Jew! — maybe it would be better for the Roman church to start focusing on hard work and diligence and encouraging the flock to strive to be the best in one’s craft and calling?
That would be a far better message, yes?
