Changing our World: Catholic Social Teaching and GAMC

by Bernie Evans, who serves on JRLC's Executive Board and is a member of the faculty at Saint John’s University. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Churches? Government? Charitable organizations? Individuals? Whose job is it to help people in poverty? The Catholic Campaign for Human Development has designated January as “Poverty in America Awareness Month” and its website is loaded with information on poverty in our nation (www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa). This is a good time to ask not only how widespread is poverty in this country, but how should we who are not poor respond to the needs of persons who are. Whose responsibility is it to address the needs of the poor?

Some people answer that Churches, charitable organizations and individuals – not government -- are responsible for the poor. This may be the thinking behind the decision by Governor Pawlenty and other legislators to end General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) as of March 1. GAMC is Minnesota’s public health insurance program for the poorest citizens in this State. This $396 million program serves more than 35,000 Minnesotans with annual incomes below $8,000. Many of them struggle with mental illness, chemical dependency, chronic physical disability, or homelessness.

At hearings around the State county officials, religious leaders, hospital administrators and GAMC recipients have asked legislative representatives not to end this program. Speakers argue that if reform of GAMC is needed, we should make those reforms but not throw out the whole program and thereby guarantee that the poorest of our neighbors will not have basic medical care. Others argue that ending GAMC is not the right way to balance the State budget, and that raising needed taxes should be part of our conversation.

Catholic social teaching tells us that all of us – individuals, charitable organizations, churches and government – are responsible for meeting the needs of the poor, including their medical requirements. As Pope Paul VI wrote in his 1967 encyclical, On the Development of Peoples, all of us must struggle to build a world in which every person can live a dignified life, a world “where the poor man Lazarus can sit down at the same table with the rich man” (47).

We do this by contributing to churches and organizations which strive to help the needy. We do this also by paying the necessary taxes to allow the government to ensure that these needs are met when our charity falls short. Critical to this point is the recognition that the satisfaction of a person’s basic rights and human needs must not be dependent upon the uncertainties of other peoples’ charity.

In speaking about the responsibility of the State, Catholic social teaching repeatedly points out that government must not show favoritism among various groups -- with one exception. The State must “promote in the highest degree the interests of the poor” (On the Condition of Labor, 26).

Our Church’s social teachings leave no doubt that we have an obligation to assist those in need – through charitable works and through acts of justice. One act of social justice would be to lead our government to provide needed medical services to the poorest citizens of Minnesota, something that we as individuals or churches or charitable organizations do not have the means to accomplish.

We can engage in this act of social justice by urging our legislators to keep GAMC alive or to create some mechanism that provides the equivalent needed services. The Minnesota Legislature and Governor will have the short month of February to fix this problem. It is their responsibility as much as it is ours to encourage and support them in that effort.

Whatever we decide to do, we might consider and extend to medical services a saying from the early Christian writers: Feed the man dying of hunger, because if you have not fed him you have killed him. This saying would not be so troublesome if it didn’t follow by a few centuries another saying from Matthew’s Gospel: As long as you did it for one of these the least of my sisters and brothers, you did it for me.

This post was originally written for and published by The Visitor.