Bishop Says Poverty Is Top Issue

Poverty, not welfare, is the nation’s central domestic problem, according to a top Roman Catholic Church official.

“Our economy is not producing the jobs and opportunities we need to the use the talents and energies of all people,” Auxiliary Bishop John Ricard of Baltimore told President Clinton’s working group studying ways of once again reforming the nation’s welfare system.

Ricard, chairman of the Domestic Policy Committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference, made his comments in testimony Aug. 20 to the Working Group on Welfare Reform, Family Support and Independence.

The bishop told the working group that seeking to find ways to end poverty “is a moral imperative of the highest priority” rather than “a luxury to which our nation can attend when it finds the time and resources.” He gave qualified support to the currently popular notion of requiring work and training opportunities for welfare recipients and setting time limits on support. But he told the working group, “Caring for one’s own children is work that is just as important and valuable to society as paid employment.

“While the trend is clearly toward mothers of young children working at least part time, we question whether the government should degrade the moral value of maternal care by a policy that requires mothers of young children to take jobs outside the home,” he said.

Government should not treat the family as an economic unit or set policy that suggests “parents’ primary responsibility is to provide for material needs rather than emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs,” he said.

At the same time, Ricard criticized using “problems of poor families for political purposes,” and, in a shot aimed at conservatives who criticize the welfare system and say they espouse “family values,” added that “in some places concerns about values and behavior are being used simply to justify cuts in essential assistance to poor children.”