Pope Leo XIV’s premier apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te, on the poor, is due for release Thursday, though it was signed October 4. I have no insight into what it may contain and look forward to reading the Pope’s document. I do not prejudge what it might say. That said, I think there is some value in a comment Eric Sammons made recently: “Catholics are absolutely, positively required to help the poor. We’re literally damned if we don’t. Catholic are free to disagree with exactly how to best help the poor, as that is a prudential judgement.”

Let me say this is not a subterfuge, some “escape clause” to avoid what the Pope may say. As a Catholic theologian, I would insist on the basic premise that your faith shapes your politics, not vice versa. Those of us who have criticized “pro-choice” politicians (and the bishops who support them), for example, did so precisely out of that principle.

Poverty is not (or at least should not be) a partisan issue. Poverty is a major modern social problem. It links up with others, e.g., joblessness (especially of youth), healthcare, and confidence about the future. Many of the people who voted for Donald Trump did so precisely because they were feeling the bite of poverty. One may disagree about their choice, but the underlying phenomenon is clear: poverty is an issue with broad public impact, even in America.

So, that the Pope is addressing poverty is a welcome thing. How to address poverty, however, is another question. The Church’s social doctrine provides Catholics with overarching principles, e.g., we should address poverty. It does not offer concrete political solutions how to do that. This distinction is vital because it keeps the Church from being too closely identified with a particular political platform, which is not her role. It also requires us to debate — perhaps vigorously — the means we propose to address poverty.

My practical observation is that, in practice, that vital distinction between addressing poverty and how to do it is often lost. Slapping an “anti-poverty” label on something does not make it automatically something Catholics have to or even should endorse. The feasibility — immediate and long-term — of any concrete policy rightly should be examined. But, as I have said, in practice that distinction is often elided. If something’s called “aid to the poor,” then some assume that “Christians” ought to get on board — and if they don’t, it means their politics are getting in the way of their faith.

Just as Christ warns that “not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 7:21), so not everything that is called “anti-poverty” truly will help the poor. Labelling something “anti-poverty” does not make it so. That claim needs to be proven. Demanding such proof is not callous “rationalizing” away concern for the poor; if our faith tells us to help the poor, our reason requires us to explore whether a given policy really does what it is claimed to do. Catholicism, after all, deems faith and reason compatible.

There are, unfortunately, those who resort to sloganeering to avoid that hard work of rationally proving the merits of a given program and its effectiveness. One example of such sloganeering: an X commenter that quotes Dorothy Day:  “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” If by that one means that one’s approach to poverty must always be the band-aid for the latest wound, then no. There are times the root causes have to be fixed and, if someone doesn’t want to fix them, does morality require us endlessly to save a man from himself, especially when our intervention reassures him he can indulge his dysfunctional behavior?

Poverty in society is wrong in part because it offends the common good, the good of all not just in the moment but planned for the future. A particular policy cannot simply be endorsed because it might now help some people who claim to be or even are poor. How to promote the common good — which is the vocation of lay persons in politics, not clerics in the Church — involves assessing a particular program against other, equally legitimate and compelling aspects of the “common good.” That is the due diligence towards the “common good” demanded of public officials. How does this policy affect the “common good?” Yes, it may alleviate this current instance of “poverty,” but what is its impact on the overall financial health of the community? A policy that helps Y but leaves the larger society poorer in long-term debt — and America’s debt now totals over $37 trillion — is not necessarily an “anti-poverty” solution. Nor is a policy that alleviates immediate effects of someone’s situation while leaving long-term problems unresolved. This may simply create an ongoing condition of dependence. And we all know that the attractiveness of social welfare programs often makes them politically immune from the hard “common good” decisions that have to be made when entitlement spending increasingly cripples the financial common good.

I make these two observations because, frequently, “helping the poor” glides over questions of responsibility towards the larger common good and endorses short-term fixes over long-term consequences, especially when the failure to uproot negative factors ensconces a cycle of long-term poverty temporarily “fixed” by band-aid approaches. Catholic social thought does not require endorsing such approaches, even if in practice Catholic spokesmen have aligned themselves with them.

Pope Francis was right in reminding us we live in a “throwaway culture’ which includes discarding people. We cannot let the “long-term” leave those in the present in misery. But “misery” and “poor” are not coextensive; “the poor you will have with you always” (Mt 26:11) because no amount of money will take away every human need. The responsible Catholic public figure needs to differentiate what misery needs to be fixed now from what poverty needs to be addressed long-term — and perhaps, sometimes, by “tough love.” A man may need a bed tonight, but there comes a point where he may have to decide between a bed and his drinking/drug habit, to decide to get sober and resume a normal, self-productive life. There’s no denying there will be huge obstacles on that path, but obstacles do not justify throwing up one’s hands and creating a permanently dependent class.

Catholics need to be in the forefront of addressing poverty because poverty is a social ill of our time. But we need to be there armed with other relevant principles as well: the common good (including society’s); long-term personal responsibility; and the subordination of clerical instruction to responsible lay moral leadership. Only when we get these things right inside our Church can we be the leaven in a polarized public square that needs to see these issues not through the prism of politics or momentary partisan advantage but — through the rational debate and practical compromises we must first learn to do among ourselves — as issues involving all of us in our common fate as Americans building up a nation “with liberty and justice for all.”