Numbers on the increasing disparity between rich and poor in this country are overwhelming. However, even more astonishing is the apathy to this disturbing fact. Day after day studies and essays come out saying on a very small group of people is gaining more and more wealth and power in this county and world. Yet since the “Occupy Movement” there has been not much stir about it. A January 2015 Fortune magazine article talked about how The 1% will own more than the 99% by 2016. Now 2016 is upon us. The same report from January, 2015 tells how four-fifths of the 7 billion people on the planet share 5.5% of global wealth. Day after day we hear these reports how wealth and power is more and more in the hands of the few but feel hopeless about doing something about it.

A Catholic Church official of the Archdiocese wrote a friend today about how concern about spending four million dollars of money “belonging to the poor” on a suburban store for the well-off was just a disagreement among followers of Jesus in the Church. Since when do moral issues like this one just become dissent, “my opinion vs. your opinion?” When Jesus said the “The Truth will set your Free” he did not mean “half-truths or misrepresentation of the facts. Gandhi called his autobiography “experiments with truth.” Yes, in our struggle for ‘truth’ we can just state our ‘opinion of truth’ but we struggle for the truth and seek it with creative dialog. Everything is not ‘relative’ especially in area of morals and values.

Perhaps it is this disregard for seeking the ‘truth’ is why we are so apathetic when we hear reports of how, literally, the small percentage of rich are getting richer and the rest of people are getting poorer. “Equality’ and basic human ‘rights’ become empty words when our values and “opinions of truth” are relative.

Christians all know what Jesus said and preached about nations caring for the least of persons,(Matthew 25)and about how to love everyone as self, even our enemies (Matthew 5). If all is relative and all is just “your opinion and my opinion” why even be a Christian. The truth can only set us free if we believe there is truth.

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