The Other Christmas Lesson for a Heartless Meritocracy : Skid Row: Death takes no holiday among the people who count least--except to God.

The pungent odor of feces wafts its way to the third floor as a reminder that Sarah is slowly dying down below, and I desperately hope that someone other than myself will take notice and change her diaper.

Sarah will die any day now. Ravaged by stomach cancer that went undiagnosed for years as she self-medicated with street doses of heroin, Sarah lived on the sidewalk in a “cardboard condo” not far from our soup kitchen where she took her meals, her welfare check going to pay for her “medicine.” Even on her deathbed, she is hounded by the loan shark to whom she owes more than she will ever be able to pay.

This old Victorian house in Boyle Heights, home to the Catholic Worker community for many years, has become a hospice. At first, it was our response to the growing number of AIDS victims on the streets of Skid Row. Our care has since expanded to include any homeless victim of a terminal illness.

I have come to see our ministry to dying indigents as the single appropriate response to the current plight of the poor in our society. I also recognize that this work is out of sorts with the American character. We like to think of ourselves as a people of hope. We have hope in the future, hope in ever-changing technologies that will improve the lot of the marginalized as all boats rise on the tides of progress. The thought that something like Mother Teresa’s work with the dying street people of Calcutta might apply to our own American experience is repugnant to the vestigial liberal sensibilities among us.

The classic liberal notion of an economic pie sufficient to be spread among all in need has died a painful death. And the current conservative resurgence bears little resemblance to any authentic conservatism, which was based on the preservation of traditional values grounded in a common commitment and a reciprocal relationship of mutual responsibility. Instead, we live in a meritocracy, according to Christopher Lasch, writing in Harper’s magazine. A meritocracy is a society in which the wealthy and powerful feel they have earned their privileges and recognize no sense of obligation to the less advantaged. “But meritocracy,” says Lasch, “turns out to be a contradiction in terms: The talented retain many of the vices of aristocracy without its virtues. Their snobbery lacks any acknowledgment of reciprocal obligation between the favored few and the multitude.” Furthermore, meritocracy simply drains off the best brains of the lower classes while depriving the majority of the poor of any reasonable excuse for their own poverty: They just didn’t try hard enough.

Our current social policies reject the possibility of reforming criminals or mainstreaming the poor. Rather, we prefer to segregate them into prisons, orphanages, Skid Row. A local disc jockey even goes so far as to voice an apparently general but unspoken attitude: “Do them a favor and put them to sleep.”

We are surrounded by death at our house, but there is a refreshing honesty about facing death directly. We particularly appreciate the attitude of the medical professionals who care for AIDS patients. In the face of this plague, they lack the hubris endemic to their peers. Because there is no cure, all the physician can offer her patients is compassion and anesthetics. She cannot cure, but she can heal.

In his ministry, Jesus healed a great number of sick people. But these miraculous healings were not cures in the medical sense of the word so much as they were healings of a breach in the social environment. A disabled person who lives in a loving, supportive environment does not necessarily need to experience actual physical regeneration in order to feel a sense of wholeness. Jesus’ healings were a sign of reconciliation and acceptance of those who had been shunned by the dominant culture. It was the moral righteousness of the religious and political elites that resulted in sickness and death for the rejected--the bleeding woman, the lepers, the crippled poor.

As I write, I notice that someone has, thank God, changed Sarah’s diaper. I guess all of us have a desire to avoid the messier problems of our social environment. Why waste time with dying drug addicts or homeless AIDS victims? Why waste time with the poor at all?

Perhaps it is because, despite the saccharin Christmas images of angels and shepherds, the real message of the Incarnation, according to Luke, lies in its prophetic warning to all of us elites, meritocratic or otherwise: “For God has deposed the mighty from their thrones, but lifted up the lowly.”

So we wait and stand watch with Sarah and Bill and Lenny and Lora and. . . .