Archbishop: The Poor Must Be Treated with Dignity, Have a Special Place In the Lord’s Heart


I have mixed feelings about Attorney General Douglas Moylan’s campaign against panhandling. On the one hand, I agree with his concern for the safety of both the pedestrians and drivers. On the other, he is taking the public discourse on poverty and mental health epidemic in the opposite direction of justice, not to mention the hypocrisy of chasing away the poor while the politicians get away with their own version of illegal panhandling.

This conflict of conscience led me to ask the leader of Guam’s overwhelmingly dominant religious denomination for his thoughts for me to share with our readers and viewers.

Here is what Archbishop Ryan Jimenez wrote to me in response to my request for his comment on the matter:

“I do not want to be seen as taking sides in often contentious disagreements between elected officials in our island. As the person entrusted to lead our Catholic Church on Guam, I simply encourage everyone to treat all of our homeless and impoverished brothers and sisters with the same deep love and compassion that our Creator has for them. In fact, because they suffer more than most and are among the most needy among us, they have a special place in the heart of our Lord.

“Remember too, as we treat — or mistreat the poor — so we do to our Lord. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Indeed, surviving day-to-day on Guam, has been an increasingly agonizing challenge for many people, not just the homeless. The difficulties often spiral into cases of depression, suicide, drug use, violence, the breakdown of marriages and family or crime. The wounds of the few become the wounds of all of us. All deserve our boundless love.

“So the government, churches, private sectors and all partners in our community need to devote more resources to help those in need. However, we must always do so with the utmost respect for the dignity of the persons who have fallen and are suffering, for theirs is the face of God.”

 

The archbishop’s call for social justice rooted in compassion for the poor should be the predicate of policy and enforcement in our government. It is mind boggling that this even has to be said. There was a time in Guam, when families opened their homes and enjoined society in a culture of reciprocity that needed no nudge from public policy and political governance. Granted, that was when poverty was not so much of an issue as it is today. It also was in a time when the meth epidemic did not exist, and mental health was misunderstood and its disorders swept under the rug.

 

Now these issues compound on us, with those living under the poverty line treated and looked upon as akin to the excrement of society. But it is societal and political waste borne from decades of ignorance about mental health, no strategic investment in public education, cronyism, corruption, regressive tax policy, pitiful minimum wage, anti-union statutes, increased disease, absence of health coverage for thousands, and the perverse incentives of the welfare system that have systematically plunged tens of thousands into poverty and created an entitlement culture. The attorney general is not wrong about the impact of entitlements on poverty. But he is missing all the other causes – the big picture – or otherwise assigning that big picture and blame for missing it to the governor alone.

 

We – the people and the government we elect and empower – are responsible for these same impoverished conditions that the government through the attorney general now wields its power to beat down further. Sure, everyone including those living under the poverty line can make better decisions. Perhaps many dependent on entitlements can work harder. But even if every able bodied, able minded resident living under the poverty line pulled themselves up by their bootstraps as the saying goes, there simply is not enough opportunity (as they say) to go around.

 

We are talking about decades of failure to educate generations of Guamanians and immigrants from public school classrooms into careers and vocations that would grow the economy. Decades of tax policy that has rewarded the rich while balancing that effect on the annual budget on the backs of the poor with regressive taxes like the business privilege tax. Decades of increasing health problems gapped by an increasing number of people without adequate health insurance coverage. Centuries of misunderstanding of mental health disease, and decades of treating the meth epidemic as a criminal problem rather than a mental health issue. Decades of an attitude of acceptance of corruption and cronyism.

Our government is quick to banish the unsightly poor from asking the driving public for their charity, but drags its feet at the insistence and threats of the oligarchy when it comes to the minimum wage.

 

Workers stand no chance against a system that privileges the connected and the sociopaths, while boxing out ethical people who will lose their jobs and their livelihood for being sick too often, needing to take time off to give birth and spend time with a newborn, or are taxed to the bone by the burdens of this not-so-friendly economy.

How many of your children will have a fighting chance at owning a home, much less affording current market rates for rent? Will your children and grandchildren fall victim to a government that punishes them for the conditions this same government created and failed to reverse? Will they find themselves homeless, battling mental health disease without therapy, fighting to survive medical conditions for which they cannot afford prescription drugs, or trading in their integrity and their souls so that they can survive on the better end of our endemic system of cronyism?

Will your children be the ragged-looking street beggars this government you elected whisks away by the heavy hand of the so-called justice system?

Archbishop Jimenez’s message speaks to a great need for charity, not just from the haves to the have nots, but in our hearts and by our actions, both as individuals and as members of the body politic.

The attorney general’s panhandling campaign must be limited to a law enforcement effort to have the panhandlers comply with the law and ask for money according to the safety standards the legislature has stipulated. But more – much much more – must be done by both society and the government we elect to lift people out of poverty. The solutions are comprehensive, but our reward for instituting them and working toward this goal is – and there’s no other way of putting this – eternal.


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