The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human. (par 28)
This address my comment in response to the post about Godless countries - It's not as much whether God exists, but whether God is relevant. Who needs God when government can provide? My rhetorical answer, of course, is everyone.
Back to subsidiarity, The Inside Scoop provides the following excerpts from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church that explains the moral framework:
The necessity of defending and promoting the original expressions of social life is emphasized by the Church in the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, in which the principle of subsidiarity is indicated as a most important principle of “social philosophy”. “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them”.
On the basis of this principle, all societies of a superior order must adopt attitudes of help (“subsidium”) — therefore of support, promotion, development — with respect to lower-order societies. In this way, intermediate social entities can properly perform the functions that fall to them without being required to hand them over unjustly to other social entities of a higher level, by which they would end up being absorbed and substituted, in the end seeing themselves denied their dignity and essential place.
Subsidiarity, understood in the positive sense as economic, institutional or juridical assistance offered to lesser social entities, entails a corresponding series of negative implications that require the State to refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the existential space of the smaller essential cells of society. Their initiative, freedom and responsibility must not be supplanted. (par 186)
And:
The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms. “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending”. An absent or insufficient recognition of private initiative — in economic matters also — and the failure to recognize its public function, contribute to the undermining of the principle of subsidiarity, as monopolies do as well. (par 187)
This resonates deeply with me, especially during these times. Wilhelm Röpke, another Protestant, incorporated much Catholic thought into his writings, and subsidiarity is one of the principles he so loved about Switzerland's history and encouraged the world to adopt post-WWII.
Another article linked in The Inside Scoop is "More Government, Less God: What the Obama Revolution Means for Religion in America," written by W. Bradford Wilcox for the Public Discourse site. It not only discusses the possible implications of a hard left social agenda, it does so in the context of the same countries, Sweden and Denmark, covered in the "Godlessness is Great" article. A very interesting read.
5 comments:
So could you say that in light of these comments, the current proposition to remove tax shelters for charitable giving is a good thing because it removes the government's involvement in the church's responsibility?
Yes. Exactly.
Quoting from my post below, I am not a fan of tax incentives. If I were President, I may be tempted to get rid of both the charity and mortgage interest deductions... what worries me is removing tax incentives while simultaneously raising taxes, in a down economy.
I believe that, long term, government incentives turn into government loopholes, or they cause bigger problems than they create. Plus, as you pointed out, there is the religious aspect.
Government is a tool of coercion, not compassion. A good tool, but limited. It is like the old saying, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Government is a hammer, and society is trying to convince itself that every problem is a nail.
Justus, your point is well taken about the relationship between government and God. But I'd say there is only correlation and not causation. We shouldn't forget that the Church has suffered many self-inflicted wounds. Confession: I'm just as skeptical of the catholic and Catholic Church as you are of expansive government. After all, the Church has its own history of tyranny and a reign of terror.
As for Wilcox's argument, its my opinion that the implications of the hard left social agenda are no more or less dangerous than the implications of the hard right. If the followers of Christ are as willing to cede their ministry to the Government as Wilcox suggests in his piece, or as hungry to establish a theocracy as many on the far right suggest, then we, as a people are in real trouble.
Dr. RR, I shared your skepticism on the historical church, but must say it has been much reduced in recent years. For one, I separated the sinful actions of a small percentage of men from the church as body of Christ. Second, I have read a good bit on those supposed terrors, and my perspective has changed considerably.
"It is testimony to the strange vagaries of history that it should be the Spanish Inquisition that remains notorious today, even though the 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy murdered in the Spanish Republican Red Terror of 1936 is more than twice the number of the victims of 345 years of inquisition." and "It is one of the great ironies of history that three times more people died in the forgotten event that almost surely inspired the Spanish Inquisition than died in the famous flames of the inquisition itself."
Vox Day in "The Irrational Atheist"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gldlyTjXk9A
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
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