Catholic Culture: Is the Default Position Shifting to Subsidiarity?
Not so long ago, most ecclesiastical officials and Catholic academicians emphasized solidarity as a political
ideal. Owing to a common misunderstanding of both government and
solidarity, that emphasis was almost always at the expense of
subsidiarity. In recent years, however, the tide in favor of
subsidiarity has begun to turn.
It remains true that concern for the poor and marginalized must be a
significant political priority, reflected in how we conceive and use
government. But what too many Catholics missed for much of the twentieth
century was that solidarity is not really a political virtue
at all, whereas subsidiarity is. Solidarity is the concern of all for
all. It is the sense of responsibility we are all supposed to have for
each other. It leads to that true care and reciprocity which are the
marks of a healthy society, and it is prior to politics and government.
But insofar as solidarity has been incorrectly viewed as a political
virtue, too many Catholics have insisted on the need to mimic solidarity
by using government to enforce what they think the results of
solidarity should look like. …
… In contrast, the principle of subsidiarity is distinctively a political
virtue, though not exclusively so. Based on the truth that human dignity
includes the right and the duty of persons to freely participate in the
solutions to their own problems, the principle of subsidiarity states
that everything should be done at the lowest possible level of
organization, and that whenever something more is needed, higher levels
of organization are obliged to assist lower levels rather than to
supplant them. This means that in the political order the virtue of
subsidiarity actually preserves and fosters the conditions within which
solidarity can flourish, even if solidarity does not necessarily
flourish as a direct result. …
Leave a Reply