Poverty saves because it teaches people to solve problems. But there is poverty, and then there is poverty. Socially, in the modern world, poverty is all about oppression, bigotry, domination and degradation. There is nothing constructive about such perversions. Poverty must be humane to teach what sin is.

Power is not sin, it just leads to sin. How fast it gets there depends upon the purpose. If the purpose is to be a winner in satan's world, it gets there awful fast. If the purpose is to create justice in opposition to satan's influences, it corrupts more slowly, and it may be a noble and necessary thing to do. Presumably, God uses power to end sin without being corrupted by it.

The word poverty does not have the same meaning that it had two thousand years ago. A bishop is supposedly in poverty, because the church owns his limousines and mansion, even though he owns everything in the diocese, and the faithful can't touch them if they want to.

Using general terminology, power corrupts and poverty saves. The essential ingredient of poverty is powerlessness or vulnerability.

People are greatly influenced by their environments. Environments create strong forces which are directed by surrounding realities.

The position of power, status, wealth or well-being makes problems invisible. Powerlessness or vulnerability makes problems relevant.

Morality is largely the manner in which a person relates to problems. Relating to persons may seem less materialistic than relating to problems; but life is defined by objective realities, which may or may not be material; and morality is that which sustains life.

With "poverty," the concerns of the persons are their problems, so solving problems is the same thing as relating properly to the persons. Poverty creates a problem solving orientation, which is the essence of morality.

Solving problems creates and defines morality, because all elements of constructivity are taxed by the process. It requires knowledge, reason, consideration, respect, responsibility and whatever else one can list for virtues.

The need to solve problems also opposes sin, because creating problems is the essence of sin. So persons in poverty learn instinctively what sin is. The situation is similar to the rabbit learning the characteristics of the hawk.

Persons who are well off lose sight of what sin is, because they do not see problems or concern themselves with them. Without a sense of sin, they tend to assume that morality is arbitrary rather than objective. They then rationalize the arbitraries, until there is nothing left of the subject.

The significance of this perspective was demonstrated by a statement which two bishops made. One was Oscar Romero, who was martyred in El Salvador, and the other was Dom Helder Camara, who frequently escaped a similar end in Brazil.

They both said that when they were newly ordained priests, they were assigned impoverished parishes, and it transformed them. They were surrounded by impoverished persons, talked to them, studied them, and knew them. But they did not understand the forces until they felt them themselves.

What one finds at the bottom of society is a hail storm of sin. An infinite number of forces rain down on vulnerable persons. The forces, however, are not visible when looking down; they are only visible when looking up. The reason is because forces cannot be seen by looking at them; they have to be felt to be seen.

There are two general consequences. One is a development of character by vulnerable persons, and the other is a source of truth from the bottom of society.

When television cameras go into the third world, where the people live a somewhat normal existence, which is getting rare, the character of the persons is striking. The first effects one notices are their sincerity and consideration. Their ability to survive attests to their level of responsibility and discipline.

Truth can only come from the bottom of society, because that is where the contact with reality is at. Certainly, some truth can exist at the top, but it doesn't originate there.

This effect is very noticeable when trying to convince persons who have status of some point. Their only concern is "who says so?" To me, it is irrelevant who says so, because all truth originates with objective reality. At the top of society, that fact is not comprehended.

Try to trace down the sources for reality by authorities. Certainly authorities contrive, but they always attribute the source to some other authority, never to the logic of objective reality. Infact, they assume and imply that it is invalid to use logic and objective reality as a source of reality.

A consequence which is very visible is a lack of mental discipline which is found in the well-off world. One of the most common examples is not bothering to find out the simplest facts before drawing conclusions. Another example is accepting contradictions, as if they didn't matter. Similar to it is defying established facts and choosing corrupted substitutes.

Constructivity requires relating to other persons through objective reality, because objective reality creates a medium which defines and sustains life. Corruption destroys the ability to relate to objective reality.

Vulnerable persons learn to relate to objective reality in their attempts to solve their problems. Affluence promotes a separation from objective reality for the reasons given above.

These statements can be tautological, because they are extensions of basic truisms concerning power and poverty. To test them, how much objective reality is there in Natural Law or atonement? The purposes of those contrivances is to shift morality in Catholicism and Protestantism into a mystery realm which cannot be questioned by human rationality.