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RE poverty

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AO1: What do Catholics teach about causes of hunger and disease? Catholics teach that there are five basic needs for all people, across the world. These are health, education, food, water and work. Without water and food, the body will die. Without a balanced diet and a clean supply of water, the body will suffer from malnutrition or diseases such as cholera. And without health, food or water, they become ill, children cannot get an education, and adults cannot go to work, and without these they cannot earn a living to pay for those things that keep them alive. This is called the poverty cycle, and is one of the main problems throughout the developing world that must be tackled. There are many causes of hunger and disease, and some of these are related to either a process in the poverty cycle or something that starts the cycle. The main causes include population, natural disasters, war, ignorance, debt and unjust trading. As many families in the developing world grow crops to earn money and feed themselves, they rely on the land and labour. ...read more.


AO2: Using CAFOD, explain how Catholics may respond to world hunger and disease. CAFOD stands for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development. Its aim is to "promote human development and social justice witness to the Christian faith and the gospel's values. Funds raised will: empower people to bring about change; raise public awareness about poverty and injustice; act for the poor and challenge governments, and international bodies to adopt policies with social justice". This basically means they educate British Catholics of the need for aid, raise funds, and distribute them to the poorest parts of the world. The 4 main things CAFOD does to achieve this are short and long-term aid, fundraising and education, all of which Catholics can respond and help them with. Short-term or emergency aid is for quick response to natural disasters, providing food, water, shelter and medical supplies to victims. These are the charitable works identified in the Bible, as the duties of all Christians. Countries send support such as sniffer dogs and modern devices to help find survivors lost in wreckage. The UK sends the RAF to drop aid and save stranded people in floods. ...read more.


Many people also take a much more selfish view. They believe they should help their 'closer neighbours' first, such as in the UK sorting out the NHS. The main flaw I see in this view is that no country will ever be perfect; someone will let the country down somewhere. This is why communism, although supposedly a perfect idea, can never work. And if a country is never perfect, there will never be time to help those in more need, further away. Personally I believe that Christians should take it a step further than "each other", as this is what they believe in. They should be helping all those in need, like the Samaritan did, and not leave the 'aliens' to help themselves. To remove the hunger and disease in the world, everyone should be doing their part, and Christians should be setting an example in the meantime. The parables are also not just for Christians, they hold important moral values that bring out the best of people across the world. We should not do this through fear and religious leaders should never use fear as a weapon to force their followers to be this way. Christ taught that we should act through love not fear. ...read more.

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