Concrete Acts of Kindness for the Poor
Antonella Cappuccio, Fr. Michael J. McGivney (detail) CC
I am so pleased to have this opportunity to highlight the wonderful work of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization that focuses on charity and helping men and their families to grow in faith and service to the Church. The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) has been blessed to partner with the Knights of Columbus on many initiatives over the years. It is wonderful to put our faith in action.
As a proud Knight of Columbus, I and several of our NCBC staff belong to council 17262 in Narberth, PA. We are actively supporting the annual Coats for Kids community program. Because of its standing as one of the preeminent Catholic social organizations, the Knights of Columbus can purchase designer-quality outerwear at huge discounts and distribute them through local charities in cities across the United States. This important initiative provides warm coats for underprivileged children in the Philadelphia region. We invite you, as friends of the NCBC, to join us in supporting this endeavor.
Although this is not clinical bioethics, it is an important means of witnessing to the core principles of the Catholic medico-moral tradition. In particular, it shows the solidarity of the entire Catholic health care community with highly vulnerable persons in the poorest large city in the United States. As Pope St. John Paul II observed in Sollictudo rei socialis, solidarity—or “love and service of neighbor, especially of the poorest”—is a profound expression of charity, “the distinguishing mark of Christ’s disciples.”
As the pope reminded us in Centesimus annus, The universal destination of goods—whether in the form of medical treatment or goods, like coats, that address the social determinates of health—has been recognized as an imperative of Catholic life through the centuries. Local partnerships like this one demonstrate, in a small way, that we can fulfill this responsibility at the local level through subsidiarity, without reliance on governmental mandates or coercion to provide for the needs of others.
Please join the NCBC in supporting this and other works of charity.
Our world needs more knights devoted to serving and protecting the poor and vulnerable. Catholic culture is unique in proposing this ideal that invokes thought-provoking paradoxes. When Christ said, “Blessed are the poor,” he was turning the world’s wisdom on its head. Jesus was especially addressing the rich, I think, and challenging them to reflect on what is the true source of joy and blessings. It is not wealth but rather the love of God and virtue. Wealth is, more often than not, a stumbling block for faith and can foster the illusion that we are not completely dependent on God’s gifts to us, starting with our lives and continued existence. The poor also represent a blessing because their distress offers all of us an opportunity to become the hands and feet of our Savior in bringing help and loving care to those with greater physical needs than ourselves.
