Once many people thought it was impossible to abolish slavery, since societies had always had slaves, and maintaining living standards required slaves.

Today we think such views not just ignorant, but too accommodating to a great moral evil. Attitudes to slavery changed because of the campaign by religious and humanitarian abolitionists that the issue was fundamentally a moral one. There was no economic inevitability about slavery.

Today the greatest moral issue of our time, in the view of Pope John Paul II among many others, is the persistence of mass hunger and the most severe poverty for one-fifth of the human race. Yet leading economists assure us that hunger persists not for economic reasons, but because of other political and social factors.

Click HERE to read the full article from OnlineCatholics, Issue 57, 22 June 2005.

Photo: onlinecatholics.acu.edu.au

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