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SUBSIDIARITY 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. Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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