December 16, 2011
Bishop Thompson addresses groups working to end homelessness
Bishop Charles C. Thompson poses with Evansville Mayor Jon-athan Weinzapfel at the Destination: Home celebration. (Message photo by Paul R. Leingang) Click for a larger version.
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
“From the Catholic perspective, a “preferential option for the poor” necessarily demands that we keep before us the needs of the homeless, the vulnerable, the sick, the elderly and all those so easily forgotten or overlooked by society,” said Bishop Charles C. Thompson, at the seventh annual celebration of “Destination: Home.”
Bishop Thompson, introduced by Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel, was the keynote speaker at the luncheon celebration, hosted by the City-county Commission on Homelessness and held in the Woodward Center at St. Benedict Cathedral, Dec. 8.
Weinzapfel has been an active member of the City-County commission for the past seven years.
Luzada Hayes, executive director of Aurora and resource coordinator for Destination: Home, reported to the group on the progress made since 2004, when Destination: Home was launched.
“We exist to bring an end to homelessness in our community,” states the website of Aurora, established in 1988. Destination: Home was established in collaboration with governmental agencies and private organizations on “a Ten-Year Journey to End Homelessness.”
The collaborative efforts in-clude collecting data on the homeless population, working to prevent homelessness, establishing housing for homeless veterans and others, moving low-income renters into home ownership through Habitat for Humanity of Evansville, training and employment options, helping people establish bank accounts, and working to in-crease public awareness of the needs and what can be done.
In his keynote address, Bishop Thompson quoted from the New Testament, papal teachings and documents of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — while asserting that “other faith traditions — such as Judaism, Islam and other Christ-ians —[have a] similar concern for justice and charity.”
Bishop Thompson pointed to national realities of “numerous individuals in crisis, struggling families and hurting communities.” He noted that the signs of this “broken economy” carry both an economic and ethical impact.” He quoted from the 2011 Labor Day Statement from the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development: “We believe a moral measure of any budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated.”
He concluded his presentation with “some basic principles — eight beatitudes — for persons of any faith or no faith to keep in mind.”
His list included the principle that “we are bound to each other . . . by the common bond of humanity”; that “no one chooses homelessness for its own purpose . . . “; and that we may be associating with homeless persons without being aware of their situation.
Bishop Thompson said we should examine our own attitude toward the homeless: Is it “compassion or condemnation.”
He said we need to respect the fact that no one is bound to accept our acts of charity. He said that even if someone responds to our charity with anger or insult, “we must not forfeit our own personal dignity and obligation to bring that goodness to others.”
“Each homeless person has a name,” he said. Each person “has a soul” so the spiritual aspects must be kept in mind along with the physical.
His eighth principle was that “But for the grace of God, there may be you or me.”