The new year is a time of great hope and fresh beginnings. To be sure, the problems of the past year don’t get swept away. But we see things in a new light in these beautiful days after Christmas — when once more we have renewed our faith in the God who became one of us, who shared in all the joys, worries, and anguish of our humanity. We can approach our problems with the hope that comes from knowing that God in his tender mercy is always with us.
We enter the new year facing many challenges. There is an urgent need to reform our immigration laws to provide justice to millions now living in fear and without rights or dignity. I’m thinking, too, of the life issues — the radical Freedom of Choice Act in Congress, and the fact that there are now two states in the U.S., Oregon and Washington, where doctors are required to help patients who want to kill themselves.
But another problem in particular has troubled me for many years now. How is it that chronic poverty persists in our land of plenty? This issue has been lost a little in all the concern for the financial crisis and the instability in the global economy. Ironically, one effect of the current crisis has been to cause the upper and middle-classes to feel the same want, fear, and despair that the poor feel all the time — in good economic times or bad.
None of this is good. But my point is that even when we “fix” what the experts say is broken in our economy and get people back to work, we still have to face the fact that far too many Americans are living as part of what seems to be a permanent underclass. They are trapped in dead-end, low-wage jobs, living in neighborhoods with high crime rates, inadequate schools, and limited social and cultural opportunities.
Pope Benedict XVI makes a good point in his message for this year’s World Day of Peace celebration. He says that too often we focus on the “technical” issues of poverty — setting up regulatory structures and channels of the distribution of aid.
We can forget that poverty is always local and poverty is always personal. It is not only about programs, “levels of assistance,” or statistical measures. Poverty always has a face. It is the face of your friends and mine, of our family members and neighbors.
And if poverty is always personal, our means of addressing the problem as Christians, must be personal, too.
Recently I met with local leaders to discuss the situation here in San Antonio. It is true that our region has been spared the worst of the current distress — at least so far.
But we still face troubling realities. It seems that our city and region are increasingly divided along the lines of wealth, and the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” its becoming wider too.
I am worried, too, about a sense of resignation that I see among our poor brethren. I see signs that some of our brothers and sisters feel that things have been bad for so long, there is no way they can ever be different.
I see this in the area of education. Drop-out rates remain alarmingly high and, in general, there seems to be little appreciation of the value of education beyond the high school level. This is a tragic mistake and a snare.
Experts have long told us that education is one of the few proven engines of economic opportunity and mobility. This is even more true in the global economy. To limit yourself to a high-school degree, or worse, to drop-out before getting a degree, is to resign yourself to low-wage work with little possibility for advancement.
In the coming year, I am resolved to working with other local leaders to raise awareness of this critical issue and to take practical steps to address it. There is so much that we can do as a Catholic community with our strong network of schools, universities, our parishes, and social outreach programs.
I will be writing and talking to you a lot more about this in the year to come. But as we begin the new year, I invite you to pray with me for a greater spirit of solidarity, a greater opening of our hearts to the needs of the poor, who are always with us, and always seeking our friendship and love.