Mother Teresa feeding the hungry

Today I spent a lot of time comparing St.Vincent De Paul home visit areas on the north side where there are home visits with the percentage of households under the poverty line in each census tract. I had all the information but ran into technical difficulties with my scanner and computer that made a small project a major and difficult one. But I got some information together and went to the meeting to find out it was not on the agenda, even though the pastor of the Church had asked me to draw maps with the information. I got some of the information in anyway but basically felt disappointed that with all the talk about serving the poorest of the poor there was not much interest in looking at the information.

It turns out that areas of north side that are not covered by a St. Vincent De Paul conference are some of the poorest on the North Side. It was ironic that the same pastor that asked me to draw the maps led the opening reflection with a prayer based on the Gospel of Matthew 25. Jesus tells a parable about the end of the world and the “judgment of nations.” The nations welcomed into the Kingdom of God are those who fed the hungry, visited those in prison, and gave drink to those who are thirsty, basically the King at the Judgment of nations says: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The pastor who led the prayer, like many, expressed this was a parable about individual action not that of ‘nations’ and groups as it was told in the Gospel. Serving the poorest of the poor is the work of all of us, nations, State and local governments and SVDP conferences.

If my research is used or not to serve those in need on the north side is out of my control. However, it does fit into a bigger project I am working on: The History of the Catholic Church on the North Side of Milwaukee since 1958. The more I look into this history the more I find that as African Americans and the poor moved into the north-side whites and the Catholic Church moved out. The work of the Church should be the work of serving the poorest of the poor, not moving away from them.

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