Option for the Poor and Vulnerable

A  basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society  marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the  story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46)  and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first. 

Scripture

• Exodus 22:20-26
        You shall not oppress the poor or vulnerable.  God will hear their cry.

• Leviticus 19:9-10
          A portion of the harvest is set aside for the poor and the  stranger.

• Job 34:20-28 
          The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

• Proverbs 31:8-9  
          Speak out in defense of the poor.

• Sirach 4:1-10  
        Don’t delay giving to those in need.

• Isaiah 25:4-5  
          God is a refuge for the poor.

• Isaiah 58:5-7
          True worship is to work for justice and care for the poor and oppressed.

• Matthew 25:34-40  
          What you do for the least among you, you do  for Jesus.

• Luke 4:16-21  
          Jesus proclaims his mission: to bring good  news to the poor and oppressed.

• Luke 6:20-23
          Blessed are the poor, theirs is the kingdom of  God.

• 1 John 3:17-18
          How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s good and sees one in need  and refuses to help?

Tradition 

Still, when there is  question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a  claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding  themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of  the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly   depend upon the assistance of the State. On  the Condition of Labor (Rerum Novarum), #37
   
The  obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single most  urgent economic claim on the conscience of the nation. Economic Justice for All, #86
   
In teaching us charity, the Gospel  instructs us in the preferential respect due to the poor and the special  situation they have in society: the more fortunate should renounce some of  their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of  others. A Call to Action (Octogesima Adveniens), #23
   
"He who has the goods of this world  and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of  God abide in him?”  Everyone  knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the  poor in no uncertain terms. As St. Ambrose put it: “You are not making a gift  of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You  have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of  everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.” On the Development of  Peoples (Populorum Progressio), #23
   
Therefore everyone has the  right to possess a sufficient amount of the earth's goods for themselves and  their family. This has been the opinion of the Fathers and Doctors of the  church, who taught that people are bound to come to the aid of the poor and to  do so not merely out of their superfluous goods. Persons in extreme necessity  are entitled to take what they need from the riches of others.
 
Faced with a world today where so many people are suffering from want, the  council asks individuals and governments to remember the saying of the Fathers:  "Feed the people dying of hunger, because if you do not feed them you are  killing them," and it urges them according to their ability to share and  dispose of their goods to help others, above all by giving them aid which will  enable them to help and develop themselves. The Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), #69
   
Love for others, and in the first place  love for the poor, in whom the Church sees Christ himself, is made concrete in  the promotion of justice. On the Hundredth Year (Centesimus Annus), #58
   
The needs of the poor take  priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the  maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled  industrial expansion; the production to meet social needs over production for  military purposes. Economic Justice for All, #94
   
The obligation to provide justice for all means that the poor have the single most urgent economic claim on the conscience of the nation. Economic Justice for All, #86
   
The primer purpose of this special commitment to the poor is to  enable them to become active participants in the life of society. It is to  enable all persons to share in and contribute to the common good. The  "option for the poor," therefore, is not an adversarial slogan that   pits one group or class against another. Rather it states that the deprivation  and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community. The extent of their  suffering is a measure of how far we are from being a true community of  persons. These wounds will be healed only by greater solidarity with the poor  and among the poor themselves. Economic Justice for All, #88