POVERTY
A CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING PERSPECTIVE
Keywords:
Catholic Church, Catholic Social Teaching, Community, Human Person, Image of God, PovertyAbstract
Poverty is a major threat to human life because it dishonours the human person who is the image of God. It affects the community from a domestic setting thus, depriving individuals of the very basic needs they require for a decent living. This deprivation of essential requirements for life is dehumanizing. Poverty is therefore, a serious challenge to the people. This article interprets poverty within the Catholic Church perspective to see how it has affected people. It further provides a critical judging of poverty in the light of theological arguments by focusing on the dialogue between various moral theological perspectives on the human person as a morally autonomous individual whose dignity is being threatened by the social evil of poverty. The article evaluates poverty from the Biblical foundation. It examines the Old Testament’s and New Testament’s concept of poverty. It also offers the basis of the dignity of the poor within the Roman Catholic social teaching from the early church to middle ages.
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