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Just because I was born in America, does that mean I'm more privileged than everybody else in the world?
Is it wrong to be rich and have nice things?
Just because someone's poor doesn't mean I have to be.
I was blessed to do four years of mission work in the Dominican Republic;
working with people that materially were very poor, but spiritually very rich.
One family stands forever in my mind and heart.
They were poorer than even the rest of the people that I knew.
They lived up in the hills in a one-room house.
They had one daughter, one pot, one table, one bed, one chicken.
One day the father asked me a compelling question.
He said, "God must love Americans more than He loves us, doesn't He?"
Then, I said, "Why?"
He said, "Because you're rich and we're poor, so God has blessed you."
"God loves you more than He loves us."
I explained, as best I could, that God loves all of us equally,
and the inequalities, the injustices in the world are not God's will,
but rather the effect of sin and selfishness and individual decisions and societal structures
that keep people from living a life of dignity and of justice.
All of that really speaks to the seventh and tenth commandments:
Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's goods.
The Church has always upheld our right to personal property,
but the saints remind us that there's a social mortgage on our property;
that we can't simply do with our money and our possessions as we wish...
just carving out this little place of pleasure and comfort for ourselves...
but that God has given the world's goods to us to be distributed and enjoyed by all.
So, there's something profoundly unjust that a tiny segment of the world's population has more than they need,
and a large segment of the world's population wonder where their next meal is coming from.
There's people dying of malnutrition, there's people that don't have jobs,
do not have homes, do not have adequate medical care.
For that reason, the Church upholds the common good as one of the goals for us to embrace.
And so, as followers of Jesus, we are called to live out the political implications of the Gospel,
that the Church has principled positions on things like immigration, minimum wage, right to life, prison reform.
And, we advocate for actions both on a governmental and private level
that help us to seek that greater common good;
to seek that equality and justice and flourishing of human rights that people around the globe aspire to.
The Church can lead the way because of the power, truth, and beauty of her social teaching.
All of that comes from our conviction that,
in Jesus Christ, God has revealed to us, his love for us and our dignity within him.
It's the Year of Faith and we're connecting Christ and the Catechism of the Catholic Church!
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