My good sir, it is not my intention to accuse anyone of anything. Alas, the limits of communicating via ASCII alone! My personality is direct, challenging, questioning. Can’t help it, and don’t mean anything by it. I am eager to learn and to take example, and the way I do that is by challenging and questioning.

I can’t accuse anyone of anything for I am a useless servant. I worked as a volunteer for Mitch Snyder in DC back in the 80s, and have handed out lots of cash to a lot of guys over the years. Still and all, I’ve done not enough, not enough.

I have a homeless brother (I mean, a biological son of my two parents, because all the homeless are our brothers and sisters) who is in a church-sponsored rehab / work program. It’s free. The family is so happy. We would have paid for him to go into rehab, but he had to want it for himself. Finally, he did want it when he hit bottom, and when he did, this was how he wanted to do it. Praise be to the Lord.

(I don’t mean anything by telling you this; I’m just telling you.)

Dr. Eric also wrote, “I am well acquainted with the virtue of prudence.” Excellent! I wasn’t sure the extent to which the exercise of this virtue was a priority; now I have a clearer picture. Thank you!

“The couple should live like brother and sister as the Fathers have written when couples have more children than they can take care of.

“The person should move out of the city and to a nice rural area. There are plenty of jobs, lower cost of living, and cheaper housing.”

I like those answers, and agree with them. Prudence, indeed. As Charlotte Bronte wrote, “I mentally shake hands with you for your answer.”

Thank you. I know I sound like a pain in the derriere, but I will learn a lot, and will do a great deal more, I hope, for our folks on the street.

The couple should live like brother and sister as the Fathers have written when couples have more children than they can take care of.

The person should move out of the city and to a nice rural area. There are plenty of jobs, lower cost of living, and cheaper housing.

I recounted the two situations, hoping to explore the thought processes of other Christians on these matters, and to have my own explored in turn.

I believe “private judgement” is a God-given gift that I am to exercise on behalf of my own spiritual and material welfare, as well as on behalf of my neighbor whose ability to exercise sound judgement on their own behalf may be impaired by illness or addiction.

That his ability to exercise sound judgement on his behalf may be impaired doesn’t mean that my neighbor is not still a child of God, or worthy of my love, compassion, and concern. He is worthy of all those things. It’s just that he may not be worthy of being the one to “call the shots” in the way that a person with all their faculties is.

If I don’t allow the impaired one to “call the shots”, and simply walk away, I don’t believe am not off the hook. I believe I must at least offer assistance in some other way, either to him directly or to a program set up to assist people like him.

Sign me,

Once took a gun away from my drunk-off-his-a$$ alcoholic even though he really, really wanted to keep it.

And hopelessly in love with my recovering alcoholic husband until the day I die, and thanks be to God for AA and Al-Anon.

This is problematic for the simple reason that there is an assumption made. First, the assumption that giving money blindly to the destitute is equivalent or at least similar to unlocking one’s back door, in other words, should we give $5 to the man laying by the steps of the subway, the probability is he will misuse the money we provide him and thus our action is imprudent. But what is truly imprudent is – without evidence – assume he will misuse the money given to him.

Regarding NFP, I suppose there is a point there but I fail to see it. Would you say that the material is subordinate to the immaterial or vice versa?

Your last example falls flat. Do you have statistics about how many beggars use the money given to them by pedestrians on drugs, alcohol, or mischief or are you using private judgment? I don’t know of any time in human history when the destitute haven’t been accused of misusing alms, yet Christ doesn’t seem to make the distinction you are making.

I would be curious to know whether Dr. Eric would agree with the following two remarks made my more than one Christian of my acquaintance:

“We pay no attention to any notion of refraining from intimacy so as to space or delay pregnancy; we are intimate whenever we please, and take whatever God sends. We have six children with a seventh on the way. We don’t have enough money to pay rent and utilites and for food, so we live in my in-law’s basement. Still bill collectors hammer us day and night.”

and

“I live in a tough neighborhood, but I believe God will provide. I don’t have a lock on my front or back door, nor on my window, nor do I have any anti-theft devices on my car. I have had sixteen break-ins, have had eight TVs stolen, 4 CD players, and have had my car stolen four times. The insurance pays for everything, though.”

“You are not your alcoholic’s Higher Power. Their Higher Power is their Higher Power.” (From the program literature)

Alcoholism is a predictable and progressive disease, and like any progressive disease it has stages. Only physicians and other medical professionals can diagnose these stages within any given patient, but laypeople initmately familiar with the disease can make a reasonably fair assessment on the ground, too. It’s possible for a layman with intimate experience of the disease to spot someone in the throes of alcoholism or drug addiction.

Alcoholism and drug addiction are unlike other diseases such as cancer or Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis. There can come a moment for alcoholics and drug addicts in which they might say, “Enough! I need to get my life back on track. I need to get help!” and, once they do so, help will be available by God’s providence through the human agency of programs for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, and they can be cured. But for many forms of cancer, Parkinsons, or M.S., however much help the sufferer may seek, whatever regimen they may follow, their condition will never improve and they will succumb. But the alcoholic who has not yet reached the end stages of the disease can still turn his life around, if he has the moment. If too many people are taking pity on him by handing him cash, this moment may never arrive for the alcoholic living on the street.

But then again, we don’t want the alcoholic living on the street to suffer an alcoholic-withdrawal seizure that leaves him (even more) permanently impaired or dead.

For their homelessness and their sickness, the alcoholic living on the street truly needs our assistance. For their addiction, the alcoholic or drug addict needs to make changes – changes only the addict can make – with God’s help, of course, and with ours. But only he or she can make them. There are certain things we might do or say, thinking to be helpful, that only delay the arrival of that moment, that epiphany in the life of the addict.