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To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

by Theresa Fritz Camoriano

I used to attend a Catholic church, in which we were urged to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable".  While I could understand the merits of comforting or helping people who had problems or were "afflicted", I never could understand the desire to harm or afflict people who were comfortable.  How could anyone think it was virtuous to harm or afflict anyone else?  It seemed to me that this church was promoting a hatred of successful people (the "comfortable"), which was morally wrong and very destructive.  Eventually, I left that church, writing them a letter explaining that I could not, in good conscience, support an organization that promoted such a harmful and destructive idea.

Unfortunately, the idea that it is morally justified to "afflict" or harm the "comfortable" is not limited to that one church.  I have recently seen two more instances of that kind of "religious" thought.

First was the dancing in the streets in many Moslem countries upon hearing the news that thousands of people had been killed in the World Trade Center.  The suicide hijackers had indeed "afflicted the comfortable", destroying many lives and much property.  Hearing of their celebrations made me question again how anyone could feel happy or virtuous about harming or afflicting people whose "sin" was that they were "comfortable".  What kind of religion could promote such a destructive world view?

Again, just this past week, I saw another promotion of the view that it is virtuous to "afflict the comfortable".  This time, a writer on the editorial board of our local newspaper, named Betty Winston Baye, had written an article about her visit to Cuba.  She is thrilled to be there and sings the praises of Castro's revolution, which, she says, has been good for black Cubans.  She says she understands "why so many older, wealthy white Cubans in Miami despise Fidel Castro.  He stole their paradise on earth.  He came down out of the mountains with his revolutionary army in 1959, ending abruptly those Cubans' lives of leisure, in which their every whim was catered to."  The venom and hatred for "comfortable", white Cubans fairly drips from her pen.  She goes on to praise the fact that Castro stole people's "grand villas" and "palatial estates", dividing them up "into apartments for multiple families" or using them for "government offices or ... schools".  Obviously, Betty shares the view that it is virtuous to "afflict the comfortable".    

She finds it "heartbreaking" to see the "once-grand villas and apartment buildings" in "such terrible disrepair" and to see "blocks of rotting blocks that one assumes are unoccupied until noticing laundry hanging on porches".  Apparently, she still does not understand that this poverty and misery are the result of the immorality of "afflicting the comfortable".  Of course, the Bible and the Koran do not teach that it is virtuous to afflict or harm innocent people.  Quite the contrary.  But these "afflict the comfortable" types have twisted their religions so that, instead of being life-affirming, they promote hatred, death, and destruction.

If only Betty would remain in Castro's paradise, where she could experience the results of her world view along with the Cubans -- but no, like all parasites, she will return to feed on those she despises, taking advantage of all they produce, even as she promotes the virtue of "afflicting" them, just as the suicide hijackers took advantage of our jets to murder thousands of the "comfortable" in the World Trade Center.

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