Solution to poverty is poverty

I have yet to study Pope Benedict XVI's Message for the World Day of Peace, 1st January 2009. It's theme is "Fighting Poverty to build Peace", and the same theme was the subject of the Pope's homily at Mass in St Peter's Basilica yesterday.

In his homily, Pope Benedict compared the chosen poverty of Christ as he become man to the un-chosen poverty that is sinful. According to ZENIT's report:

Nevertheless, he continued, there is "a poverty, an indigence, that God does not want and that must be fought." This, the Bishop of Rome said, is "a poverty that impedes people and families from living according to their dignity, a poverty that offends justice and equality, and as such, threatens peaceful coexistence."

He affirmed that such poverty is not just material, but also includes the forms of poverty found in rich and developed nations: phenomena such as marginalization and relational, moral and spiritual misery....

He thus made a call for a "virtuous circle" between the poverty "to be chosen" and the poverty "to be fought," such that "to combat iniquitous poverty, which oppresses so many man and women and threatens everyone's peace, it is necessary to rediscover sobriety and solidarity, as evangelical values that are at the same time universal."

The Pope's homily is interesting in a number of ways. The first is the way in which it carefully describes the difference between chosen and un-chosen poverty, and then relates them to each other - chosen poverty (on the part of those who are rich) as an act of solidarity with those who are poor without choice. A second way is its inclusion of forms of poverty other than material poverty, thereby asking that the spiritual poverty of materially well developed societies be included in the consideration of poverty by the Church. These two are not un-related to each other, a recovery from the spiritual poverty of developed nations being a condition for the recovery from material poverty of under-developed nations.

Thirdly - and I think the Pope's words can be rightly seen in this way - we can read the Pope's words as a kind of manifesto for the livesimply project. The Pope has provided an explicitly Christological orientation that can be taken up by livesimply and would enrich its campaign of solidarity for the poor. I have posted previously on the possibility for livesimply to become the modern branding of the evangelical counsel of poverty.

There is another potentially interesting possibility in Pope Benedict's words. In the life of the Church there are such people as consecrated virgins, single lay people who have formally vowed themselves to virginity but are not members of a religious institute. Canons 1191-1198 of the Code of Canon Law cover the question of vows in this sort of situation, without limiting in any way the vows that can be made, whether privately or publicly. Perhaps thought could be given to encouraging the vow of poverty being made in this way.