“Charity”: Donation or giving back what is rightfully theirs?
By | Oct 16, 2008
I was emailed a pretty challenging quote today :
“When we give to the poor we are not being generous; we are merely returning to them that which we have withheld from them.” (Source unknown)
I have to admit, I feel pretty chuffed with myself when I ‘give to the poor’ in whatever form. But this quote makes a valid and uncomfortably challenging point, especially given the increasingly skewed structure of the world’s wealth distribution, shown in the graphs below.
Maybe the quote should even be a bit stronger: “We are merely returning to them that which we have stolen from them”, or at least “We are merely returning to them the wealth we have inherited from those that stole from them” (even though the lack of conciseness in that one does not make for a good quote)
Source: ‘The Community Solution’, Powerpoint Presentation “Energy and Inequity”, available from http://www.communitysolution.org/problem.html
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Anne
October 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Someone just emailed me saying that the quote above is St Ambrose – Pope Paul VI quotes from him in the encyclical Populorum Progressio as saying:
“You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only to the rich”.