Please do yourself a favor and read Fr. Ray Blake’s piece on the poor. Click here. And read the whole thing.
You read it? Good.
Now go read how a UK journalist twisted it into something ugly. Click here to read it.
Did you read it? Are you horrified? Yeah, me too. This piece of journalistic malpractice is going everywhere over in the UK. It’s become a huge deal. So if you have a moment go to Fr. Ray’s blog and let him know you support him.
Update: Hermeneutic of Continuity has a good piece on this disgusting bit of journalism.
September 7, 2013 at 4:49 am
I'm really confused by this. I genuinely felt the same way as the journalist initially upon reading Fr. Ray's post.
After four (!) readings, I'm starting to get an inkling of what Fr. Ray is getting at, but I'm sympathetic to the (I'm assuming) non-Catholic journalist's interpretation. The language he (Fr. Ray) uses is harsh, and without preface. It's easy to misinterpret it, and honestly it took me reading the post at HofC to get a fuller scope of what's going on.
Now, you say this is part of a larger problem in the UK, and you may very well be right. But in this instance, especially since the journalist is quoting things supposedly Fr. Ray said that's NOT in his post… well, I suspect there's more to it than what meets the eye.
September 7, 2013 at 4:51 am
He wasn't the only "journalist" to misrepresent what Fr. Ray said. http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/bill-gardner-unscrupulous-journalist.html
September 7, 2013 at 3:59 pm
This is a sad commentary on the state of education today, that so many can read Fr. Blake's article, and completely misunderstand the points he is making.
September 7, 2013 at 5:02 pm
I agree with Bill Meyer. I read Fr. Blake's article when he first posted it and I can't understand how it could be misunderstood by anyone with any intelligence.
September 7, 2013 at 5:02 pm
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September 7, 2013 at 5:47 pm
He should take it as a badge of honor. The world is supposed to hate you as a Catholic priest, just as it hated Christ. If it does not, you are doing something wrong.
September 8, 2013 at 12:12 am
When I read this at HOfC I was struck because of the honesty. Poverty is so often sentimentalized and everybody is supposed to practice the virtue of "Niceness" before all. Honesty about the conditions of the poor is necessary before we can actually help the poor. Thanks for the link.
September 8, 2013 at 4:00 am
WOW! It's like reading about two different priests giving two different opinions.
September 9, 2013 at 9:43 pm
My wife has run a homeless program in Southern Florida for over a decade and I worked with the homeless in two different states and what Fr Blake is doing is not helpful to anyone – least of all the homeless beggars.
For starters, why are there no guards stationed at the door to stop that clown from interrupting Holy Mass?
Are there no workers in Perfidious Albion who can make a professional assessment of the homeless loitering in the alleys there?
If they can't stop drinking and drugging find treatment programs for them and tell them if they do not willingly enter those TX programs they will be chased off Church Property the next day.
Assisting the homeless to continue drinking and drugging does not aid them on the road to Salvation but, rather, may well speed them on the way to Perdition.
There is way too much sentimentality about this subject and way too little christian or social expertise.
Giving them handouts may make one feel good but a little hard-headed realism can do wonders and after you have forced the hands of the homeless (many of them have families they are neglecting because Father gives them monies to get drunk) you will likely, years later, hear endless "thank-yous" for giving them a hand up out of the ditch.
2 Thess 3:10 is helpful in this regard
September 9, 2013 at 10:20 pm
I attend a downtown parish with a ministry to the homeless. My reaction to what Fr. Ray Blake does is to say if he has prayed and discerned what God would have him do for those who knock at his door and if that is what he is doing, well who am I to judge? After all, discerning the will of the Father and doing it is the essence of the command Jesus repeats 3 times in His "farewell address" to His disciples in John's Gospel when He says "to love one another as I have loved you" – because everything He did was an act of Love and at the same time the perfect will of His Father.
However, as I have prayed and discerned how to best love those homeless (as in what would God the Father tell me to do), I tend to go more the way of "I am not Spartacus", who puts it well. If I am going to love/help someone, I want to go more distance than handing them a few bucks, I want to truly "love/help" them and be sure I am not being lazy or sloppy about what "helpful love" means for their particular case at that particular time given my other responsibilities.
September 9, 2013 at 10:49 pm
The simplicity with which the journalist clearly decides to interpret a portion of the comments and deliberately miss the meaning is disgraceful to anyone with intelligence. It's a clear misrepresentation.
My observations…called life…indicate that poverty is an ugly, messy and difficult thing. You want to help but you have to get in there, get messy…literally and figuratively, and discern how to help. This deters people. In my travels I see the incredible disregard for the beggars on the street. If you ever need to go on the lam…just be a beggar downtown. No one will see you. Still we must help how we can and the romanticized ideals of the left, of the libs of the democratic elitists fighting for equality is that…ewwww, they're yucky, but government programs take care of them. Don't call them homeless call them shelterly challenged. Don't romanticize just how terrible poverty is.
September 9, 2013 at 11:20 pm
Dear Art. Thank you. The goal ought be to reunite a sober Farther with his family and that used to be the general premise of christian charity in America until the professionals got aholt of it and all of that sad process is pretty well described in "The Tragedy of American Compassion."
BTW, if I am passing through a town and I am accosted by a panhandler, I give him money but I always tell the man my name and I ask him to pray for me as prayer is a work and there is dignity in all work.
AmBishops ought be teaching Catholics Catholic Social Teaching and especially Catholic Social Teaching re the Economy which has always condemned Usury (ALL loans that require more money to be paid back than was loaned is Usury. Period; See Vix Pervenit ) and the Manchester Liberal Economic System (Calvinism in America) is mortal sin in action.
Instead of working on behalf of the putative right to Religious Liberty ( a Protestant Principle) they'd be better serving the Body of Christ by teaching Catholic Social Doctrine and working to turn America into a Catholic Confessional State that recognises the Kingship of Christ and Legislates accordingly
September 10, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Wow. People have really poor reading comprehension.
Father is thinking about not posting anymore, which is sad. Part of the problem is that it seems arrogant to just tell people they appear to be incapable of understanding something. I've been reading his blog for years. I didn't even realize he was getting flak for that particular post. He should be able to push up the chain of command- someone at the dailymail ought to be able to read.
September 10, 2013 at 11:26 pm
Which is more frightening–that it's willful misrepresentation, or that the journalist is actually that stupid?