"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that Jesus commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition, and then admit that we just don't want to do it." -Stephen Colbert

Wow. Thanks to my friend D for posting this quote today. It is the challenge. The Catholic Church teaches a "preferential option for the poor," but the practicing what we preach? In our every day lives? In the Church's every day teaching?

It's that fallacy of the American Dream, as I tell my students. We want to believe that if we just work hard enough, we can have "it all." It makes us feel proud when we do get "it all"--job, housing, spouse, kids, etc. But it also lets us look at the poor and say, "Clearly, they're just not working hard enough." "I worked HARD for what I have...they should too." It negates privilege. It lets us point finger instead of accepting that we have a responsibility to the other.

It's hard to admit that the world is unfair...to accept that the system is flawed. But it is. And so we need to try to do what's right...to be better...to recognize the divine in the other, the struggle in the other, the good and the deserving in the other.