Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last Tuesday the worst recession since the 1930s is probably over, although he cautioned that pain — especially for the nearly 15 million unemployed Americans — will persist.
Bernanke said the economy likely is growing now, but he warned that such growth won't be sufficient to prevent the national unemployment rate, now at a 26-year high of 9.7 percent, from rising. Bernanke’s hopeful comments come on the heels of a report issued by Catholic Charities USA that suggests their client rolls have increased by 10 percent.
Father Larry Snyder, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, suggested that demands for housing and social services continue to climb while many local Catholic Charity agencies struggle to meet the needs of the impoverished. “More people are turning to us in our local agencies and operations than ever before and while our resources are strained beyond compare, we nevertheless are there for them,” suggested Father Snyder. A decrease in government funding combined with a steep decline in charitable donations has forced some Catholic Charities agencies to scale back services and make drastic cuts in personnel costs.
Mr. Bernanke’s optimism about the economy may be cause for hope but in the meantime most Americans are not enjoying any reprieve from the recession. Rather more realistic than Mr. Bernanke’s observations are those of Father Synder of Catholic Charities USA who suggests, “Our agencies are being confronted head on by more need and less resources — an unacceptable scenario. And we know the 2009 numbers will only grow because we are already seeing that every day.” The pain may not be present to some in Wall Street banks but it still exists for the millions of unemployed, homeless and hungry who struggle each day to obtain life’s most basic essentials.
Mr. Bernanke’s optimism may generate hope for Wall Street investors but it does little to bring the much needed hope to the millions who make up the poverty rolls in our nation. Empty words and false hopes do little to serve the common good of our nation in a time of economic decline. As Mr. Bernanke’s comments suggest, too often in our public discourse anger trumps wisdom, myth outweighs fact, and slogans replace solutions.
Our moral tradition commits the church to protecting human life and dignity, especially of the poorest, most vulnerable members of the human family. In the faces of poor persons the Catholic Church sees the face of Christ whom we serve across the nation. Ironically poor people have contributed the least to the economic crisis facing our nation, but their lives and livelihoods are likely to suffer the greatest devastation because they struggle at the margins in crushing poverty. Catholic Charities USA has shown us that the reality is that for millions of Americans living in poverty, the recession has only begun and that apparently is a fact that Mr. Bernanke seems sadly to have forgotten.
