Subsidiarity (Catholicism)

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius and has its origins in Catholic social teaching.

The origins of subsidiarity as a concept of Catholic social thought lie with Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, who served as Bishop of Mainz in the mid- to late 19th Century. It is most well-known, however, from its subsequent incorporation into Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo anno. This encyclical’s formulation of subsidiarity is the touchstone from which further interpretations tend to depart: "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." As with many social encyclicals in the modern period, this one occurs in the historical context of the intensifying struggle between communist and capitalist ideologies, exactly forty years – hence the title – after the Vatican’s first public stance on the issue in Rerum novarum. Promulgated in 1931, Quadragesimo anno is a response to German National Socialism and Soviet communism, on the one hand, and to Western European and American capitalist individualism on the other. It broke the surface of Catholic social teaching in this context, and it is helpful to keep this in mind.

Gregory Beabout suggests that subsidiarity draws upon a far older concept as well: the Roman military term subsidium. He writes that “the role of the ‘subsidium’ (literally, to sit behind) is to lend help and support in case of need.” Employing Beabout’s etymology, subsidiarity indicates that the higher social unit ought to “sit behind” the lower ones to lend help and support in case of need. Another etymological interpretation states that subsidiarity literally means “to ‘seat’ (‘sid’) a service down (‘sub’) as close to the need for that service as is feasible.” Either interpretation indicates a hermeneutic of subsidiarity in which the higher social body’s rights and responsibilities for action are predicated upon their assistance to and empowerment of the lower.

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