In a state-of-the-state-for-nonprofits presentation done by Massachusetts’ Associated Grant Makers on the same day as the NECN show, we learned that growing deficits, combined with a jobless recovery and increasing health care costs could lead to up to 70 years of continued income disparity nationally. Right at the new year, we also received confirmation that Massachusetts will have to cut another roughly $3 billion from its budget for Fiscal 2011.

Why do I paint such a bleak picture? Because the dominant victims in this economic turmoil will most certainly be the poor, the marginalized, the minorities and the immigrants. We cannot afford to pursue public policies, and private spending and giving priorities as individual citizens that fail to recognize our common bond in pursuit of prosperity and expression of our human dignity. If we do, we not only will fail the test of how a prosperous society treats its poor, we also will fail the test of whether we can create a vibrant workforce that will carry the Commonwealth’s economy well into this new century. And we will have failed to meet Catholicism’s call to live out our solidarity with one another.

At the end of its recent “Bending the Curve” report, The Boston Foundation quoted John Winthrop as he was helping to found Massachusetts: “We must be knit together in this work... [and] be willing to abridge ourselves of superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must ... make others’ condition our own...as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of spirit in the bond of peace.”

John Winthrop may not have been Catholic, but I believe his message was.

Tiziana C. Dearing is president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston.