Most of the people in the world would like to move to another country. They will take huge risks to get to places where they find opportunities for freedom and gain. Some who already live in richer, more prosperous countries and places will often travel to poorer countries and neighborhoods, where some self-satisfaction is taken in others’ poverty. “I’m sure glad I don’t live here.”, we tend to think when among the impoverished. Behind that thought underlies the notion that “We’re (I’m) better than they are.”
Those who live in the richest countries spend little time thinking about the possibility of going to a place of even greater prosperity. “I have everything I need, right here.”, they generally say, with a self-righteous pomposity that blinds them to the sight of better places beyond.
If we only travel locally, we may drive through a poor neighborhood and be relieved to be out of it. We generally blame the poor and afflicted for being poor and afflicted, not understanding that poverty and affliction are often visited upon them by the despicable beings who enrich themselves by taxing and regulating their neighbors into poverty.
Catholic Fundamentalism holds that just as there are richer and poorer neighborhoods, countries, and continents, the poorest people are those who do not love God and their neighbors. Those of us who endeavor to do so actually live in another country, despite our status of poverty or wealth. In that country, to which Augustine referred as “The City of God”, people are like, to use a crude comparison, super-nudists, baring not their bodies but their souls. Daily, even hourly, they offer their souls up to He Who programmed them, begging Him to let them be worthy of obtaining a passport to live in His country. Forever.
