James Whitford, 48, founder and director of the Watered Gardens Gospel Rescue Mission in Joplin, tells stories of rescues from poverty. He tells of Jon, once a homeless addict, who via the help of a mentor gained and keeps a full-time job. Whitford and his volunteers help each lodger at the mission set goals: “He has to be working toward those goals. The end goal is to eliminate homelessness in that individual’s life.”

Kevin Crowley, 83, founder and director of the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin, does not tell stories, unless pushed. Crowley, a monk within the worldwide, 10,000-member Capuchin Order of Friars, believes it’s wrong to “pry into the personal lives” of the hundreds of poor people who come to his center each day for breakfast, lunch, baby food and diapers, food parcels, and medical/dental help. He sees some of the same people coming year after year and says, “It’s not nice to be putting all sorts of questions to them. They like to be anonymous.”

For more about Whitford’s mission, please see our Q&A in this issue—but the different approaches of these two men with hearts for the poor are more than personal views: They reflect, five centuries after the Protestant Reformation, historically dueling evangelical and Catholic attitudes toward poverty.

Civil rights activists in the 1960s asked each other, “Martin or Malcolm?” The nonviolence of Martin Luther King Jr., or the militance of Malcolm X? During the two decades after Martin Luther in 1517 protested Roman Catholic abuses, Christians concerned about poverty also had a choice: Martin Luther, who left Catholicism, or Matteo da Bascio, who stayed within it and created the Capuchin order of friars, named after the hoods (cappuccio) on the brown robes they wear.

Martin and Matteo had different attitudes toward poverty. Begging was common at that time: The poor gained a few coins, and donors believed they gained merit in God’s eyes. Luther, though, believed the just shall live by faith, and all should live by work: He called for “the abolition of all begging throughout Christendom.”

Soon in Luther’s Wittenberg, families and friends cared for the poor, with the church as backup. Deacons met weekly to discuss how to place the able-bodied in jobs and help those unable to work. Luther saw no merit in poverty: People of means were to help people in mean circumstances change their lives, work hard, and become well-off themselves. Da Bascio’s Capuchins had a different approach: Their goal was to become poor themselves, and live alongside others who remained poor.

The Capuchins were radical within that resolution. They vowed to own nothing, to wear only robes “made of poor quality cloth,” to “never sleep on a featherbed or on mattresses or between sheets or have a feather pillow under their head,” unless they were very sick. A 1536 discourse on the vows of poverty that Capuchins took stated, “Those who observe them are in good circumstances and continuous merit and thus when they die are certain of salvation. Those who do not observe them are in bad circumstances and continuous disadvantage and are damned when they die.”

Most Catholic monks did not follow the Capuchin way, but the idea that the poor by being poor were closer to God had deep roots within Roman Catholicism. So did the idea that the rich by giving to the poor won favor with God. I’ve now visited Protestant anti-poverty organizations in more than 100 U.S. cities and seen how most aspire to help their clients move out of poverty, so I asked Friar Crowley how he follows what has happened to regulars at the center he started almost 50 years ago, in 1969.

Answer: He doesn’t. Many alcoholics and addicts eat at the center, ironically located across the street from the Irish-whiskey-glorifying Jameson Distillery, but Crowley said, “We treat everybody the same whether they haven’t got a problem or have a problem. … We give help to those in need without asking any questions.” I asked, “Do you pray with the people who come here?” He responded, “We don’t shove prayer down their throats.” Crowley did say that the center has worship services: “Twice a year.”

Crowley became a priest in 1958, at age 23, after reading and hearing about Francis of Assisi: “I loved him for his humility, his love of nature, and his love of the poor. … He gave me the courage to do exactly, no, to make an effort to do what he did.” When Crowley came to Dublin in the 1960s and saw people begging on the street, “My concern was to make sure no one dies of hunger. This is what I was called to. This is what I wanted to do.

The Day Centre at first occupied two rooms at the back of the Capuchin Friary, where Dublin’s Capuchins live. Crowley fed soup and bread to 50 men, many of them alcoholics. Crowley moved the operation to a separate small building in 1976 and then to a larger building in 1997. He now heads a $5 million operation that offered 398,000 “units of service” in 2016, including breakfast for 250-300 and lunch for 500-600.

In the United States many of the poorest are alcoholics, addicts, or mentally ill, so how prevalent are those ailments among Crowley’s clients? His response: “I don’t know. I don’t go into the details of how many people have mental problems or drinking problems or drug problems. … Our main concern is the dignity of each person. We don’t ask them questions.” The center’s feeding room features faded white walls, a scarred tile floor, and 20 rectangular tables, each of which seats six. Off to one side sits a “family area” for women and children with two security guards standing by.

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