Justice vs. Charity

From a review of a book on Christianity, capitalism and globalization comes the interesting medieval notion that caring for the poor is an act of justice and not charity. Of course, in our day and age looking after the poor is looked at rather grudginly as "charity," often with a sense of pity.

In the mouthes of more conservative minds charity becomes a reproach about the indigent's laziness and lack of desire to work. This latter attitude is belied by the fact that most of the poor work or are elderly (having spent their lives working and being repaid with an old age relegated to eating cat food).

According to the review of THE NEW GLOBALIZATION: RECLAIMING THE LOST GROUND OF OUR CHRISTIAN TRADITION, by Richard W. Gillett :

The engagement of the church in issues of work and poverty is traced from the early church, through the medieval period and then the Reformation, up to our current crisis of global capitalism. Special emphasis is placed on the medieval insistence that providing material relief to the poor is an act of justice rather than of charity. This came from the widely accepted medieval understanding of property, in which canonists and theologians spoke of a “community of property.”

This concept, with roots in natural law, prevents private property from having absolute rights, and it supported the medieval church when it claimed that the care and protection of the poor in society were within the purview of ecclesiastical authority, and thus regulated by ecclesiastical law. In fact, church historians in recent decades have found that Gratian’s Code of Canon Law in 1140, as it pertains to decrees on poverty, contains an enormous collection of what today would be called case study law on property and the rights of the poor. [my emphasis]