Pope Francis and the Poverty-Ridden Catholics
Politics / Religion Feb 05, 2017 - 03:10 PM GMTBy: Dr_R_M_Mathew
- A New Development Strategy for the Catholic Church
In spite of the increasing charity and missionary works in terms of billions all over the Christian world, especially of the Catholic Church for the last 2000 years, poverty and backwardness in the Christian World have been growing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that while over 38% of the world Christians lives in ignorance, poverty and backwardness, the share of the Catholics comes around 30%. However, more than 60% of the world Muslims belongs to this category despite the importance given to zakat by Islam.
Poverty, Ignorance and Backwardness
It is high time for the Christian world, especially Pope Francis, to re-examine the basic issues of poverty, ignorance and backwardness at least among the Catholics over and above the frameworks of charity, missionary works and preaching on ‘Sins’ , ‘Prayers’ and the‘Life after Death in the Hell or Heaven/Paradise’ citing both the Old and New Testaments. It is both a sin and shame on the part of the Catholic Church to keep such a large number of Catholics under rising poverty, ignorance and backwardness while it lavishly spends trillions for constructing modern gigantic churches and cathedrals, organizing pilgrimages and feasts and celebrations competitively and generating envy for many.
Not Mere Mercy & Charity
Poverty, ignorance and backwardness cannot be addressed with mere charity and missionary works in terms of billions that are purely voluntary, highly scattered, unsystematic, short term and discontinuous without proper long term strategy, feedbacks, evaluations, revisions and implementations. They can be dealt only with mass empowerment, employment and income generating projects planned and executed with high level professional expertise, dedication and commitment on long term basis with well-formulated policies and strategies globally.
Life Before and After Death
During the Middle Ages, denouncing the worldly or material life and seeking the life after death were the hallmark of Christianity. But in the twenty first century, Christianity as a whole, especially the Catholic Church, accepts ‘life’ before and after death is equally important or having co-equal status, that is without denouncing the life before death, one can seek and attain Heaven or Paradise after death. Worldly life is not only for committing sins and repenting for them but also for empowering the poor and weak and ensuring a better life for the unfortunate poverty-ridden millions all over the world, over and above charity or mercy or compassion.
Empowerment of the Masses
Though the Catholic Church has the world’s best organizational structure, expertise and resources to take up massive projects far better than most of the governments, political parties or even multinational corporations, it lacks well formulated global strategies, long term plan and dedicated organizational structureto address the poverty, ignorance and backwardness at least among the Catholics and empower it’s unfortunate poverty-ridden members.
Jesus empowered the weak and down-trodden with Food, Dignity and Knowledge. It has widely been recognized that they are powerful enough to empower the masses and make them innovative and enterprising besides acquiring the required skills in the modern age. Mathew’s Theories of Knowledge Consumption-Production Growth and Dynamic Knowledge Bank can effectively be employed in enriching and empowering the masses with knowledge globally.
Income and Employment
Mass poverty and backwardness are widely prevailed in the vast rural areas and in almost all city and suburban slums. Massive urbanization, consumerism, corporatism and undue importance given to the service sector at the cost of agriculture and industrial sectors are the basic reason for creating such a large number of poverty-ridden people all over the world, especially among the Christians. Future development alleviating the mass poverty can be made possible only by attaining Inter-Sector and Inter-RegionBalances, as the present development strategies are biased favoring the cities and service sector and totally ignoring villages or rural areas and farming sector. Even Information Technology and Global Economic Crisis unfavorably affected millions pushing them towards backwardness and helping a small minority getting very rich within a short span of time.
New Role of the Church under Pope Francis
Massive Development Projects, benefitting millions of poverty-ridden Catholics all over the world, with sound strategies, organizational machinery and expertise besides mobilizing the required resources must be incorporated as the integral part of the mission of the Catholic Church under the direct involvement of Pope Francis. The best brains and talents can be attracted and mobilized globally for this purpose. Besides the Global Development Initiative of the Pope, there must be Regional Development Initiative under each Cardinal that can be extended to every Parish at grass-root level. Development must be redefined as Mass Empowerment, Employment and Sustainable Income Generation for millions.
All the existing resources set apart for Charity and Missionary works must be reallocated for Development, including mass empowerment, besides mobilizing a sizable amount by cutting 30 -40 per cent of the expenses of church and cathedral constructions, feasts & celebrations besides pilgrimage. If the Catholic Church determines, within five to ten years, poverty and backwardness among entire Catholics can be eliminated globally.
Mass & Global Impacts
Once such a global developmental initiative is implemented effectively, more people will be attracted towards the Catholic Church than its hitherto charity and missionary activities. Further, it will provoke all other Christian sects or groups to undertake similar development initiatives besides the other religions, as a situation will emerge in which no religion can exist without improving the living conditions of their own people. In the days come, with mere prayers and preaching or sermons and offering heaven or paradise after death no religion can attract and retain people under its fold without making development a reality.
About the Author: Prof.(Dr.) Raju M. Mathew is an economist with strong backgrounds in Education, Political Science, Information Technology and Comparative Religions. He has supervised doctoral works based on the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and Upanishads. Besides formulating two theories of knowledge consumption-production, he propounded Knowmatics, Cybernetics of Knowledge. He widely writes on the Global Economic Crisis, Islamic Terrorism and International Politics.
My recent writings on these topics appeared in the Market Oracle (UK) can be found with the help of the following link: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/UserInfo-Dr_R_M_Mathew.html
Prof. (Dr.) Raju M. Mathew
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