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Subsidiarity |
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One of the most significant concepts in twentieth-century Catholic social teaching, subsidiarity shows the importance of keeping persons and institutions from being swallowed up by the state. Subsidiarity was first formulated in Pius XI’s 1931 encyclical On the Fortieth Year, Quadragesimo Anno, and was a response to both Fascist and communist collectivism, which were on the rise in the 1930s. But subsidiarity reflects Catholic notions about distribution of social power going back to medieval feudalism and the ancient world, and has important applications in modern democracies as well. In Pius XI and subsequent papal thinking, subsidiarity (subsidium: Latin for “support”) requires the state to foster personal freedom and institutions for the sake of the common good. Contrary to the organic and totalitarian theories of society, however, this does not mean that all other institutions are subject to the state. Rather, individuals and intermediate institutions should have the freedom to exercise their proper responsibilities: “Just as it is wrong to take away from individuals what they can accomplish by their own ability and effort and entrust it to a community, so it is an injury and at the same time both a serious evil and a disturbance of right order to assign to a larger and higher society what can be performed successfully by smaller and lower communities” (Quadragesimo Anno, 79). In this vision, society has multiple layers of authority, and the national state exists to promote the common good through national coordination and, when no other social institution can perform a necessary social function, as the agent of last resort. In recent years, totalitarianism and authoritarianism have receded. Subsidiarity has been invoked, particularly in John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical The Hundredth Year, Centesimus Annus, to caution modern democracies about the dangers to family stability and individual initiative in the excesses of the welfare state. John Paul also pointed to the need for the state to foster economic enterprise instead of merely becoming a universal employer (Centesimus Annus, 48). The crisis of welfare systems and social programs in all the developed nations at the end of the twentieth century seems to have given the idea of subsidiarity renewed relevance.
See: Property; Social Doctrine; Socialization. |
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