A Faithful Progressive Catholic…

(yes, they do exist) writes about subsidiarity (the basic Catholic teaching that the person closest to the problem should deal with the problem). He writes from the perspective of a Catholic physician:

I confess, the discussion of subsidiarity as a “who doesn’t do something” is never enlightening. In conservative circles, no matter what, the veto is that the federal government never will do anything. Yadayadayada. I can write that argument faithfully for any style of conservative. (Unanswered is how the disgrace that is the South will ever have infrastructure that approaches a Western nation.)

Never mind that, the dynamic of action is never really understood on this issue. “I” have to answer to the principle of subsidiarity. The question is “what do I do when faced by the poor in my life?” Giving to a low-overhead charity was at one time considered a thoughtful answer. Really, its not an answer to subisidiarity.

A big international/national charity is not subsidiarity. It is not intrinsically more or less efficient than a government intervention. Sometimes a government intervention is better, sometimes an international charity is better. Understand that the dynamic of either is one of “big.” (The National Guard, the American Red Cross, Caritas, and the US Army relief operations all work with different tasks but all are “big” and each effective in its own way for its given task.)

What do I do is the faithful question posed by the Gospels? Do I live a life comfortably ensconced in the economic apartheid that is American society? Is my life circumscribed by the boundaries of my tasks such that I will never encounter the poor on even a monthly basis?

Daniel Harrington (once a Catholic Worker, then an atheistic leftist) did describe the technique in which the poor are hidden from our lives, such that the interstates bypass their neighborhoods now and we will never be stopped in our travels at intersections in which we would at least view the poor. The end of public and mass transportation as a means of moving middle class people also has resulted in the isolation of ourselves from the poor, and the poor from us. Churches and religion now constitute the new prime examples of that economic separation of our lives. (In that year of study of the apostle Paul, no one made note that when Paul founded his churches, he made sure the rich ended up smack-dab sitting next to the poor, with all the discomfort such a relationship involves. His insight into the functions of community were impressive.)

Subisidiarity requires a dynamic in which I must first encounter Christ in the poor, then decide on that relationship.

Just some thoughts.

I find these thoughts discomforting because I’d just as soon write a check and retire to my suburban hobbit hole, but I think he’s right. Now I have to figure out what to do about it. Damn.

By the way, the other pillar of Catholic social teaching is solidarity (something we hear much less about in our libertarian culture). It’s the basic teaching that we are all in this together, that no man is an island, and that we can’t say to the weak, “Your end of the Titanic is sinking.” Indeed, the radical solidarity of the human race is pounded home again and again in Scripture in ways foreign to individualistic moderns. Whole nations are called by the name of their patriarch and Jesus takes the title “Son of Man” to emphasize his complete identification with the human race.