Is U.S. poverty really a thing?
Jesus said, “For you have the poor with you always” (Matthew 26:11). But is He correct?
The U.S. official poverty rate was 11.6% in 2021, but that number doesn’t count more than $2 trillion in welfare payments to lower-income households. When these payments are factored in, the poverty rate dipped to a negligible .08%.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former Senator Phil Gramm and former Assistant Commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John Early, demonstrate that when these transfer payments are considered, incomes of the bottom quintile of income recipients grows from $17,650 to $65,000. (Global poverty has been in sharp decline, too, falling from 80% in 1800 to 10% in 2015 according to the U.N.)
Material poverty isn’t America’s most pressing social issue. Moral poverty is, according to the late Pope Francis. He characterized moral relativism as “the spiritual poverty of our age.”
Francis built on the theme of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who expressed similar views, that moral relativism is “the greatest problem of our time.”
Catholic speaker and author, Chris Stefanick, explained:
“Relativism is the idea that there is no universal, absolute truth, but that truth differs from person to person and culture to culture. In other words, truth is relative to what each person or culture thinks.”
We see the poisonous fruit of this thinking in the abortion debate. Moral relativists refuse to consider the truth of the reality that the unborn have a human nature and intrinsic dignity.
They reduce the humanity of our unborn brothers and sisters to a clump of cells with the moral equivalence of a gall bladder gone bad.
Abortion is a black and white issue
But the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that abortion is a black and white issue:
2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.
From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.71
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.72 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.73
Protestant and Catholic church attendance has been in steady decline since the 1973 Roe v Wade decision ushered in unfettered abortion. Then, 73% of Americans claimed church membership compared to 45% today. Weekly church attendance dropped to 29% by 2019.
As people decoupled their lives from God, the spiritual poverty rate soared, as did moral confusion and mental health issues.
When we rely on ourselves rather than God, how can life be anything but a disappointment? We’re only human.
Without God, life loses meaning, which is reflected in shocking suicide rates, especially among younger Americans. We live in the richest nation in the history of the world, and yet misery abounds.
The answer clearly isn’t another government program. The answer is God. His riches await to lift us out of the spiritual ennui that defines the age.
There’s good news slowly unfolding. The New York Post reported on a surge of converts in U.S. Catholic churches. They cite data published in The National Catholic Register that shows 30% to 70% growth in select dioceses across the country. The bulk of these converts are in their 20s or early 30s, according to the piece. And it seemed to kick in after the pandemic.
They quote a 30 year software developer for his reasons for joining the Church:
“I was wrestling with mental illness and the meaning of life, and those are questions that I could not answer without religion. My mental health improved very quickly, and church showed me a different way of looking at life. I just became less self-centered, and that made me a lot happier.”
Many of the young people interviewed by the Post said they had a distaste for the “lax” brand of Christianity presented by some Protestant alternatives.
Pulse is quick to acknowledge the uncompromising commitment to scripture by many of our Protestant allies in the pro-life movement.
In this era of intense spiritual poverty, it makes sense that young people are looking for an authentic spirituality, one that that is counter-cultural, not lax and compromising to the culture.
The Post quotes another young Catholic convert who said,
“I had anxiety, depression, and panic attacks, but since I’ve started praying the rosary regularly, I haven’t had any of those issues.”
The U.S. has made tremendous strides in reducing the material poverty rate. Now is the time to focus on a much larger issue: spiritual poverty. By all indications, the time is now.
