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{"id":18357,"date":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=117"},"modified":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","slug":"the-limits-of-subsidiarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/09\/the-limits-of-subsidiarity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of Subsidiarity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

D.C. Schindler (Communio<\/a>, 2013, 600-1) argues that the Catholic appeal to subsidiarity isn\u2019t adequate on its own to meet the challenge of totalitarian liberalism. Subsidiarity assumes \u201ca strong conception of what are referred to as \u2018intermediate communities,\u2019 such as the family.\u201d The problem that Schindler discerns is that we have to answer the question, \u201cWhat communities do we designate as intermediate\u201d and \u201cWhat do we identify as the poles between which they stand?\u201d<\/p>\n

The typical answer is that \u201cone describes intermediate communities as those that lie between the individual and the state, and one includes the Church as one of those communities.\u201d But this leaves the state as \u201cthe most comprehensive community, which means that the particular good that defines the state provides the context, and therefore in a fundamental way the terms, for all other communities that com within it. To emphasize subsidiarity, in this respect, means to appeal to the state to allow appropriate space for the Church, for the family, and so forth.\u201d But this confuses parts and whole, and \u201creinforces the absoluteness of the state in spite of all its intentions otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subsidiarity would work better if we turned the framework upside down. Schindler\u2019s proposal \u201csimple takes liberalism and its minimalist notion of the limited political common good at its word,\u201d that is, that we accept liberalism\u2019s claim to regulate only a part<\/em> and not the whole. Once we accept these terms we may \u201ctake the political community ordered by the state to be an intermediate community, and recognize as most comprehensive the community ordered to the highest, most integral good, namely, the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

To accept that, of course, liberal order would have to cease being liberal order and acknowledge \u201cthe authority of the body responsible for the integral good as such.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"