| The Face of Poverty Today: A Challenge for the
Church
The Catholic University of America
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
January 17, 1985
Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to Father Byron, President of Catholic University, for the invitation to deliver this address on the fact of poverty and the challenge it poses for the Church. Both the topic and the place of the lecture have special relevance.
The bishops of the United States are engaged in a major effort to help the Church in the U.S. in its analysis and response to the fact of poverty. The first draft of the pastoral letter, "Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy" is merely an initial step in an extended process. Its goal is to engage every level of the Church in study, discussion and decisions about how the Church can and must respond to the cry of the poor.
The opportunity for me to address an audience at Catholic University as part of this process has both symbolic and substantive significance. The Church always acts with a sense of its history and its tradition. The tradition of the U.S. Church's social teaching on poverty has been profoundly influenced by this University. To come to the intellectual home of Msgr. John A. Ryan and Bishop Francis Haas, of Father Paul Hanley Furfey and Msgr. George Higgins is to acknowledge the U.S. Church's debt to this University. It also recognizes that the social tradition continues here, symbolized by Fr. Byron's own ministry and by the work of so many of your faculty.
My purpose this evening is to analyze the relationship of the Church to the fact of poverty in our time. I will examine where we stand as a Church, what we can bring to the struggle against poverty, and how we should proceed in this struggle precisely as the Church.
More specifically, I will address three questions: the nature of the problem we face, the role of the Church, and one aspect of the policy debate on poverty.
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