A Quote by Ignatius of Loyola
If our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, the hungry, we are guilty of heresy.
Related Quotes
To be active in a church social life or church activities or even a church mission to help the hungry or reach the poor, but really our dedication has to be born out of an infatuation with Jesus.
Caring for the poor is one natural overflow and a necessary evidence of the presence of Christ in our hearts. If there is no sign of caring for the poor in our lives, then there is reason to at least question whether Christ is in our hearts.
Do we know our poor people? Do we know the poor in our house, in our family? Perhaps they are not hungry for a piece of bread. Perhaps our children, husband, wife, are not hungry, or naked, or dispossessed, but are you sure there is no one there who feels unwanted, deprived of affection?
Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.
In every age the church is threatened by heresy, and heresy is bound up in false doctrine. It is the desire of all heretics to minimize the importance of doctrine. When doctrine is minimized, heresy can exercise itself without restraint.
In Community of Caring, we believe the quality of caring we give to our parents, to our brothers and sisters, to our families, to our friends and neighbors, and to the poor and the powerless endows a life, a community with respect, hope and happiness.
But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church? ... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. ... The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour.
Modern minds no longer object to the Church because of the way they think, but because of the way they live. They no longer have difficulties with the Creed, but with her Commandments. The heresy of our day is not the heresy of thought, but of action.
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
Many of the liberal people tend to say, "Well, the solution is government." I couldn't disagree more. The government cannot solve the problem and never will. I believe the solution to these problems is the church and that the church should be responsible for caring for the sick, and assisting the poor, and educating.
Jesus tells us what the 'protocol' is, on which we will be judged. It is the one we read in chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, I was naked and you helped me, clothed me, visited me, took care of me. Whenever we do this to one of our brothers, we do this to Jesus. Caring for our neighbor; for those who are poor, who suffer in body and in soul, for those who are in need. This is the touchstone.
A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
Since the Church is to be servant to the poor, it is our fault if that wealth is not channeled to help the poor in our world.
It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy.
The church has no authority to preach of inclusivity if we fear altering the look of our church by bringing in the poor.
If we all gave all our goods to the poor, the church would fall apart. If we all hated our father and mother, as Jesus told us to, there'd be an end of the church's emphasis on the family as being the one important thing holding the whole society together. There are all sorts of ways in which the church's teachings contradict directly what Jesus says in the Gospel.
