Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Let the Church Say 'Amen'

It’s getting harder to write that check to put in the weekly church envelope, but it’s important. If it’s getting hard for me, it must be impossible for the folks who are losing their jobs. The numbers of laid off workers are climbing into the stratosphere, and there’s no end in sight.

What made my blood boil was a report on a news program with a man complaining about the $500,000 salary cap for CEOs. These folks have evidently become accustomed to a particular lifestyle. My advice: Get over it; change your lifestyle. Why should they have to make changes when they have “a certain skill set” the expert wondered. Some of those oh-so-skilled, highly paid executives can take some of the responsibility for the economic mess we’re in, that’s why.

And while many of us have been making changes along with our sinking retirement funds and our shrinking pay checks, some of these people have continued to breathe their rarefied air, paying each other their exorbitant bonuses and riding around on their corporate jets. Where, and more importantly when, will it stop? No one seems to have an answer to that question.

While the “haves” continue to lament their new and confounding situations, the rest of us keep trying to lower our thermostats, cut our expenses and hold on to whatever it is we still have. Still, the poor are with us, and their numbers continue to grow. At this point, some of the poor are our neighbors, our friends and our children who may be ready to move back home because they, too, have lost their jobs and benefits.

What to do? Make room for them, make sure we treat them with dignity as we always have, and continue to find creative ways to help them. As Catholics, it’s what we do best — help those in need. We hold the fund raisers; we bake the cookies and cakes; we cull the clothes from the closet that we can’t wear or feel we can live without. We keep on doing what we have been taught to do.

We may not be able to stop greedy executives from continuing to live in their grandiose lifestyles, but we can help one person at a time even if we don’t know their names. We have been reminded since we were small of the poor and hungry around the world. Those folks are still there, but their ranks have been expanded to include the poor and the hungry closer to home. We have to check our cynicism and our frustration “at the door” and keep reaching out.

I spoke to a woman I know at an event recently. She has seen a lot of life, and not all of it has been uplifting and optimistic, but her hope remains strong. She reminded me of something: “No matter how bad things get or how disillusioned we become, we are still the church,” she said. Let the church say “Amen!”