[US] New 'culture of poverty' sweeping U.S. speaker tells Catholic Charities

from Catholic Online

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (CNS) – A new "culture of poverty" is sweeping the United States at a "phenomenal and frightening" rate, a speaker told Catholic Charities workers at the Catholic Charities USA annual gathering, held in Minneapolis Sept. 14-17.

Generational poverty, in which two or more generations of a family have lived in poverty, is becoming an epidemic in this country, said Allison Boisvert, justice and charity minister at Pax Christi Parish in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Social workers need to understand this new culture of poverty if they are to be effective advocates for those they serve, declared Boisvert, who herself emerged from generational poverty and worked for Catholic Charities for 22 years.

"There is a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor," Boisvert said. "Everything about them, from the condition of their teeth to the way in which they love, is suffused and permeated by the fact of their poverty."

Boisvert said at a young age she became acquainted with social service agencies as a consumer.

"I began to use all of the social and psychiatric, health care and juvenile justice systems," she said. "I moved through the process as if it were some kind of warped matriculation."

When welfare officials learned about Boisvert's heroin addiction, they gave her two options: clean up her life or risk losing her children. Boisvert chose to clean up her life.

"Like so many recovering types, I went into the business that cured me and I worked with the generationally impoverished in many forms," Boisvert said. "But I've also watched the development and the final institutionalization of a permanent underclass in the richest country in the world.

"To be impoverished in the richest country in the world is to be an internal alien, another culture that is radically different from the one that dominates society," Boisvert continued. "The generationally poor are usually as confined by their poverty as if they lived in a maximum security prison."

Poverty topped the agenda at this year's Catholic Charities USA conference and was the theme of a new policy paper detailing the agency's plans to address what is a growing problem in the U.S.

After several years of decline, recent indicators have shown an increase in the number of people living in poverty in the United States, said Father Larry Snyder, Catholic Charities USA president.

Catholic Charities statistics reveal some disturbing trends, Father Snyder said. "For the first time since we have gathered data, over 50 percent of people that we serve now live below the level of poverty in this country," he said.

A family of four earning less than $20,000 per year in 2006 is classified as poor, according to U.S. government measurements.

Catholic Charities agencies across the nation are feeling the strain, Father Snyder added.

Since 2003, he said, the number of people for whom Catholic Charities has provided emergency services -- such as food, clothing, temporary shelter, and assistance paying utility bills and prescription medication costs -- has increased by about 30 percent.

"Our work is not done," Father Snyder told conference attendees.

In her keynote address, Cokie Roberts, senior news analyst for National Public Radio, spoke about the Catholic Church's political influence at the national level.

Roberts, a Catholic, praised the church's efforts to help the poor.

"It seems to me that your issues are actually the ones that Jesus talked about," Roberts told conference participants. She challenged Catholic Charities to educate parishioners about the "option for the poor," a Catholic social teaching that puts the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.

"The parishes do wonderful work in terms of actually helping the poor with soup kitchens and with collections and with people volunteering, and it's always just wonderfully heartwarming to see the children bringing up their toys to give to poor children," Roberts said. "But how about teaching it? How about having all of those people who are in those parishes every Sunday hearing about the preferential option for the poor?"

Catholics need to be educated about Catholic social teaching so they can influence public policy through their voting, Roberts said.

"I say get this poverty report into the parishes," she said. "Organize those armies of compassion, because that's where they are."

Also during the conference, Catholic Charities USA presented its 2006 Vision Award to John Carr, secretary of the Department of Social Development and World Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The annual Vision Award recognizes an individual whose life and work personifies Catholic Charities USA's vision for the new millennium. Carr, a former legislative coordinator for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, was recognized for helping to apply Catholic social teaching to issues related to poverty, racism, welfare reform and other social issues on the personal and public policy levels.