New Testament on Welfare & Poverty New Testament

Thessalonians: Anyone not willing to work, let him not eat

"2 Thessalonians 3:10 English Standard Version (ESV) 10 For even when we were with

Any budget should help "the least of these"

A week after Ryan's boast, the bishops sent letters to Congress saying that the Ryan budget, passed by the House, "fails to meet" the moral criteria of the Church, namely its view that any budget should help "the least of these" as the Christian Bible requires: the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless. "A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons," the bishops wrote. In fact, Ryan would cut spending on the least of these by about $5 trillion over 10 years--from Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and the like.

Ryan didn't turn the other cheek, saying, "The work I do as a Catholic holding office conforms to the social doctrine as best I can make of it.

Responsibility to be kind to the poor among us

If we really want to eradicate poverty, we should allocate significant resources and personnel toward providing education and opportunity for the poor. And if we are to provide assistance to our able-bodied citizens, it should be attached to a requirement for work or acquisition of education and/or skills.

If they have to work anyway, many people will put real effort into finding the kind of job they want as opposed to collecting unemployment benefits and being assigned to work they consider undesirable. Some conservatives would say that we should leave such people on their own to sink or swim because we cannot afford to keep supporting them, while some liberals would say that these people already have enough problems and that it would be unfair to require anything of them. I reject both