St Francis and Dorothy Day knew what we still lack
Freeing ourselves from the problem of riches
This week’s Passio is written by priest, campaigner and activist Fr Martin Newell CP
"When man dies, he carries, in his clutched hands, only that which he has given away." —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We have two new priests at our local parish of St John Vianney. Fr Jerome Oduntan and Fr Vincent are members of the Spiritan Religious Order. They are also from Nigeria. Like most Catholic parishes in London, many in the congregation are also from one African country or another.
Africa is the part of the world where the Catholic Church is growing fastest. In terms of explicitly Catholic and Christian faith, Europe is very much in decline. The Catholic Church in England is once more an immigrant church, as it had been since the days of the Irish potato famine.
Looking at the relative life and dynamism of the Church in the Global North vs. the Global South, I’d suggest we can discern the perspective from which God sees the world. It seems God is choosing Africans, and the poor.
This should not be surprising; we can discern the same thing in the words of Pope Francis. Coming from Argentina, he is also bringing us a view of the world from the Global South, and from the poor. This is why he keeps reminding us that migrants, seeking access to the riches of the world (that have been plundered from the south to the north), must be welcomed as Christ. He has called repeatedly for the rich to stop destroying the life of God’s Earth, which the poor most immediately rely on; and for the powerful to stop building and using their armies, or building their wealth on the blood-soaked arms trade.
From the perspective of the poor in the Global South, this is not controversial. At this time in history, when riches are at least as great a problem as poverty, I’m reminded of the Psalmists’ refrain:
“In his riches man lacks wisdom; he is like the beasts that are destroyed.”
Psalm 48
So what do we do? In the Catholic Worker movement, we seek to share life with, for and among the poor. We choose to live in (at least relative) poverty. For God is there.
As the estate agent said, there are three things that matter: location, location and location. We locate ourselves among the poor and marginalised, which is all the better to read the Scriptures and hear the voice of the Spirit. The Scriptures were, after all, overwhelmingly written from the margins, from places occupied and oppressed. So such a place—living and working among refugees and migrants—should be a good place to read them, and understand what God is saying to the Churches.
This is the voluntary poverty that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin described. St Francis used to refer to ‘Lady Poverty’ in the same way. They did not mean destitution. It is a call to conversion, away from the comforts and material addictions of our culture.
Voluntary poverty, real simplicity, is blasphemy to a culture of greed. If we take less, there is more for others who need it. If we can cultivate the virtue of needing less, we are free to do what is needed; and anything is possible, if we put our minds and hearts and backs into it.
This isn’t easy to hear. It seems obvious that the rich will find it hard to connect with a God who blesses the poor, calls for justice, and critiques riches. A God who calls for simplicity of life to make space for true spiritual experience. It seems obvious that in order for the rich to hang on to Christian faith identity, they – we – might have to distort the Gospel of Jesus. We might distort it to say that riches and poverty are of no concern. Or, it could be to say that God blesses riches and curses the poor – that is to say, their poverty is their own fault. This is a form of blasphemy, of ‘using God’s name falsely’.
All this has life-denying, self-harming effects on our spiritual selves, let alone the planet and on others.
This is partly because we live in a culture of addiction, promoted all the time by saturation-advertising in the name of profit. It is a culture that believes it has grown out of a need for God, but cannot fill the spiritual void with material prosperity and possessions. So addiction follows; more things, more experiences, more comfort, more luxury, more profit, more of everything except those that really matter.
Meanwhile, the corporations continually tear down their towers in central London just to build bigger ones: not unlike the rich man in Luke 12:16-21, who tears down his barns to build bigger ones for his hoarded wealth, while the poor starve. And plenty more of us ‘need’ our bigger houses because we ‘need’ the space to keep all our stuff.
It is so normalised that only the most extreme addictions stand out. In a culture of addiction to hedonism—where all this is lauded and celebrated—even the poor become hedonists. All this is promoted by capitalism with its addiction to profit and ‘growth’. And all this has life-denying, self-harming effects on our spiritual selves, let alone the planet and on others. No wonder God is choosing the poorest, even if sometimes I admit I find it difficult to understand.
I pray that the climate and environmental emergency will be a reality check that will bring us back to our senses—as it has already started to do, for many. Please God, we will hear this call to conversion. Please God, we will hear the cry of the poor, the planet, and of peace, and begin to realise what it means to live simply and embrace Lady Poverty, so that all people and all creation may live life to the full.
This article is adapted from the London Catholic Worker newsletter. An alternative version also appears in Passio Magazine Issue 13 — pick up a copy here.
Fr Martin Newell is a Passionist Priest, one of the founders of London Catholic Worker. Martin also writes at Passionate Faith.
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