In praise of the walls that we need

“We are builders of bridges, not of walls,” said Bishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, a senior member of the Roman Curia, in January 2017. His words were a reaction to President Trump’s ordering restrictions on immigration during the present incumbent’s first term of office.

The best way to respond to Bishop Becciu’s words would be to remind him of the social teaching of the Catholic Church and especially the teaching of subsidiarity. The Church’s teaching on subsidiarity, as iterated and reiterated in papal encyclicals by Leo XIII, Pius XI and John Paul II, is that matters ought to be handled at multiple appropriate levels of organization and should not be devolved to large central governments. The Church teaches that 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.

Having reminded Bishop Becciu of one of the core teachings of the Catholic Church on political organization, let’s now offer him a basic course on Catholic political philosophy to explain the relative importance of both walls and bridges.

The Church teaches that the fundamental and sacrosanct primal unit of political society is the Family. Families need a home. A home needs walls. It needs walls to protect the family from the heat and the cold, but also to keep burglars and other unwelcome visitors out. Indeed, walls might not be enough. Putting locks on the doors might also be prudent.

Families also need bridges so that the family members can commune with other families. Doors are bridges enabling the family to visit neighbours and for neighbours to visit them. But the door is a wall as well as a bridge and it is the family’s right to restrict the number of neighbours it allows to pass through its doors.

The principle of subsidiarity also teaches that the family needs to be empowered politically and economically.

This means that political government and economic activity should be as close to the home as possible. Instead of government becoming incessantly bigger and ultimately global, moving further and further away from the families and people it is meant to serve, we need the reinvigoration of small and local government and the devolving of power away from central government, thereby bringing government closer to the people. This is showing proper respect for the dignity of the human person and the political freedom that this dignity demands.

Instead of economic structures becoming bigger and ultimately global, with globalized corporate management moving further and further away from individual employees, we need the revitalization of small businesses. This is showing proper respect for the dignity of the human person and the economic freedom that this dignity demands. This can only be achieved if local government and local economies are strengthened. They need to be protected from the encroachments of political and economic gigantism and centralism. They need to be powerful enough to protect themselves from the giants who want to devour them. They need economic and political “walls” in the form of laws that favour strong local government and strong local economies.

And what is true of families and local governments, in the face of overreaching central government, is true of those same central governments in the face of overreaching corporate and political globalism.

Sovereigntism, the belief that the preservation of the national sovereignty of individual nations protects the world from the tyranny of globalism, is itself an expression of subsidiarity. As the principle of subsidiarity states, political power ought to be handled at multiple appropriate levels of organization and should not be devolved to large central governments. It follows, therefore, that national governments are more local than global political entities. Such global entities, if they need to exist at all, should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a national level.

Few people have expressed the importance of the existence of nations better than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “It has lately been fashionable to speak of the leveling of nations,” Solzhenitsyn wrote, “of the disappearance of individual peoples in the melting pot of modern civilization. I disagree…. [T]he disappearance of nations would impoverish us not less than if all men should become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities; the least among them bears it own unique coloration and harbors within itself a unique facet of God’s design.”

Solzhenitsyn’s wisdom reminds us that the multifarious nations of the world are unique and beautiful flowers which are threatened with destruction by the efforts of globalists to uproot the flowers that they might be replaced with a monstrous monotonous monoculture.

If the nightmare scenario of one-size-fits-all globalism is to be avoided, nations must be preserved and protected. And this means that they have to be able to preserve and protect their physical and economic borders. They have to be able to decide on the number of migrants who can enter the country and be able to protect the borders so that people cannot enter the country illegally. They also need to be able to decide on the types and levels of trade with other countries, protecting the national economy by promoting trade which strengthens it and doesn’t weaken it. Such protection does indeed constitute a wall, but it is a wall that serves the same purpose as the wall that protects the family home.

Let’s conclude where we began by returning to Bishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu and reminding him that, as a member of the Roman Curia, based in the Vatican, he was speaking from a sovereign nation protected by walls on all sides, except for St. Peter’s Square, which is protected by very vigorous border controls. The Vatican builds walls to protect itself from those which seek to harm the Church. It employs guards to secure its borders. Nobody speaks of building bridges over the walls of the Vatican so that terrorists can gain easy access.

The year after Bishop Becciu made his banal comments about “bridges, not walls”, he was made a cardinal by the pope. Three years later, in July 2021, he was charged with embezzlement, abuse of office and subornation. In layman’s language, he had used his position in the Church to steal, lie and cheat and had conspired with others to do so. Becciu stood trial in a Vatican court and was convicted and sentenced to 5½ years in prison. He had been protected by walls of silence, layers of bureaucracy, and other obstacles to justice. These are the walls that we don’t need.

We don’t need the bureaucratic walls that enable corruption to thrive. We need bridges of transparency.

As for those enemies within the walls, the traitors, the disciples of Judas, we need the walls of prisons to protect the rest of us from their malevolent presence.