have to look at facts that are, like the sun, too painful for our direct gaze. Instinctively we look

"The poverty of the poor is their ruin," says the Book of Proverbs. And the ruin is not just

material. Poverty rapes and kills the spirit of the poor. We underestimate its complexity and

cruelty. There are four dimensions of poverty:

(1) Material limit. Poverty does mean a lack of material necessities. For the one billion people in

"absolute poverty," the most basic essentials are critically lacking and death is fastening its grip on

them. Note, too, that fewer than 3 billion people could eat as we eat, i.e. on a North American

diet. We are almost 3 billion beyond that now. Limits have already been passed.

(2) Poverty strips the human spirit of its two indispensable prerequisites, the two things we cannot

do without. They are, I submit, respect and hope. The opposite of respect is insult and, as

Aristotle said, insult is the root of all rebellion. Respect is the recognition that our humanity is

valued at its worth, that others recognize that humanity is a shared glory and our possession of it

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