"The gospel accounts of Jesus portray him as giving more emphasis to helping the poor than to any other ethical concern, so this should be a top priority for all Christians."
"In addition, for Catholics especially, the church has taught, at least as far back as Ambrose, and continuing through Thomas Aquinas to several recent papal pronouncements, that what the rich have in “superabundance” is owed, by natural right, to the poor for their subsistence. That is very similar in its implications to the position that I hold."
Interestingly, these are the words of a committed atheist, Peter Singer, in an interview with Charles C. Camosy, Associate Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at the Jesuits' Fordham University. The interview is published under the title, "Peter Singer on why we don't help the global poor and why we should."
It is an easy 3 or 4 minute read and I highly recommend it to your spiritual reading pleasure. It includes a link to download a free copy of the highly recommended e-book, “The Life You Can Save”.
Find the interview by Charles C. Camosy here.
If you have already decided that you are not going to go to the link then, please, at least read this from the interview...
Camosy: Folks should read the book to get the full version in the argument, but for those unfamiliar with your work, what's the takeaway? What do those of us who have more than we need owe the poor?
Singer: I would say we owe them equal consideration. That is, we should not think that the death of a child in Mali is less important than the death of a child in the United States or whatever other affluent country we may live in. We should not think that losing one’s sight matters less when it happens to someone in Eritrea than when it happens to our neighbor. And so on for all the many other preventable harms that happen to people.
Yet every time we spend money on luxuries that we do not need, when we could have donated that money to an effective nonprofit organization preventing the deaths of children by providing bed nets against malaria, or restoring sight by removing cataracts, we are failing to give equal consideration to people in low-income countries.
Admittedly, this is a very demanding standard — some will say too demanding. As an alternative, I could suggest the “rule of easy rescue,” which I often illustrate with the story of the drowning child in the shallow pond. If you can rescue the child, at no risk to yourself, you ought to do so. You ought to do it even if there is some cost to yourself — for example, you will have to replace your expensive shoes, which you are wearing and which you will ruin when you jump into the pond.
Most people agree with this judgment — it would be wrong to let the child drown because you don’t want to ruin your shoes. That judgment reflects our acceptance of the rule that if we can easily prevent something very bad happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we should do so. That rule is much more lenient than the principle of equal consideration of interests, but most people in affluent countries are falling far short even of that standard.
Find the interview by Charles C. Camosy here.