Saturday 14 October 2006

Giving what is theirs

“Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life” (Chrysostom).

“When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours” (Gregory the Great).

—Cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 647-48.

3 Comments:

Rory Shiner said...

Thanks Ben. I am preaching on 1 Timothy 6 tonight, and these quotes are worthy inspiration for that task.

Anonymous said...

Yes, thanks, Ben. Too late, alas, for this morning's sermon on the Rich Young Man: "Money Is Murder" (a shortened form of a Hauerwas quote I came across I-can't-remember-where).

Here are five other quotable quotes on the theme of money - all wry.

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." - Dorothy Parker

"Banking is the second oldest profession, but more profitable than the oldest profession." - Flann O'Brien

"Fame is failure disguised as money." - Brendan Behan

"Avoid like the plague a clergyman who is also a businessman." - St. Jerome

"Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production." - Herbert Marcuse

Michael Westmoreland-White, Ph.D. said...

The best seconary study of the early church's attitude toward money and poverty (so different from the affluent modern/postmodern church) is Justo Gonzalez, Faith and Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use of Money (Harper & Row, 1990).

The kind of quotes you cite could be multiplied a thousandfold.

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