“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.
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Good article. Rather than allowing immigrants to pour into the U.S. to escape from terrorism, crime, corruption, etc. in their country, wouldn’t it make more sense for the U.S.A to hold other nations accountable for fixing the terrorism, crime, corruption, etc. in their own country rather? The U.S.A. has been generous about sending financial, medical, and even military aid to nations and I’m sure that we would be happy to help these nations improve their lot rather than just welcoming all their people into our country and giving them welfare and expecting them to learn our language and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
In a perfect world we would refrain from cooperating in human smuggling & drug trafficking but we’ve become huge consumers of that. We buy the drugs & use the cheap exploitable labor. As long as we continue to demand the contraband, the cartels people are fleeing from will increase, grow stronger & create more extortion & violence on both side of the border. They’re present now in all US states.
Immigrants are a valuable asset & one that’s going to be in shorter supply as global birth rates fall. I want a safe, secure border but I believe that some people who came here years ago & have been working honestly & contributing to their communities should be considered for exemptions. Especially those brought here as young children at no fault of their own. At the very least those who volunteer to serve in our military should be offered citizenship.
Control of the border means the ability to track those who do come across, which makes it much easier to arrest the Americans who are involved in drugs or using the cheap exploitable labor. Law enforcement can’t move fast enough to track down millions of these operations, but they probably can manage tens of thousands pretty well. Increasing the risk of prison for lawbreakers tends to reduce the number of lawbreakers.
Those who serve in the military do have a path to citizenship – basically have a decent record for at least a year and do the paperwork. You do have to be a legal resident to join the military. For the obvious reason, that having unvetted illegal immigrants joining the military is probably a bad idea if you don’t want to make it a magnet for everyone who hates the US. Keeping the cartels out of the military is a big enough challenge as it is. Presumably we don’t want to give them military training.
I wasn’t aware that people who skip in line should be given the right to remain in their stolen place. Where’s the justice for all the legal immigrants who will be bumped by allocating personnel and other resources to the illegal immigrants? The ones whose wait time is already close to a decade? Children who’ve lived here most of their life are one thing. Everyone else should self-deport and come in the right way. And we should have immigration policies that allow for that to happen in a reasonable amount of time.
Even in an imperfect world, it would be nice to have a pope who would speak out against transgressions of personal morality instead of one who has downplayed, even ridiculed such things as personal virtues like chastity, failing to even recognize the connection between the sex revolution and the abortion holocaust, which for reasons of church politics, he claims to oppose.
The Pharisaic quality of what so many Church dignitaries, beginning with the current Pope, say about illegal immigration is revealed by what the Vatican actually does:
Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border/
It is not only a matter of our physical and economic borders. It is also a matter of protecting the cultural patrimony of a locale or a political entity. If we care nothing about our Christian cultural history over 2,000 years, then let’s begin the process of tearing down churches, cathedrals, and monastic sites. Let’s toss all the sculptures, frescoes paintings and other artistic expressions into the dumpster. Let’s empty our libraries and databases of literature of all kinds and heap them into one huge bonfire. Let’s close down every college and university the world over. Why? Because all of these are expressions of our Christian culture. And, here, I’m not talking about freedom of religion alone but of the cultural dimension to 2,000 years of belief.
Paris was once my favorite city of all time. Not because the population there were devout followers of the Christian faith but because the legacy of the past was still very much in evidence. Without, however, a genuine value placed on that Christian faith in the practical lives of the people, the faith and its cultural expressions are weakened and become easy prey for those motivated to destroy it. The last time I was in Paris, foreigners who do not share the Christian faith clearly dominated as they did in other cities and towns across France. The place was no longer the same. I left disheartened. I fear all of Europe cares little about its cultural life because they have dissociated themselves from its roots. I fear the same for the USA if people continue on the path they’ve been on for quite some time.
Similar experience last time I was in Paris. Ad yet, there are signs that Catholics are waking up in France and Spain, perhaps elsewhere. Pray for Catholic Europe.
Prelates who make vacantly idealistic pronouncements on politics are perhaps forgetting an important doctrine, a doctrine without which the whole rest of the faith is not worth a hill of beans: the doctrine of original sin.
Those who govern the world are charged with the government of sinners. Any premier who attempts to govern by idealistic principles will swiftly find themselves booted out of office, either by their people or by their rivals. A failure of government is an invitation to chaos. And since it is manifest that order is preferable to chaos — for the poor and the weak in particular, it is vain to urge on any government a policy, no matter how noble it sounds, that is incompatible with the maintenance of order.
A nation of more generous souls might be persuaded to tolerate a more generous government policy. It might even call for it. Perhaps rather than lecturing kings and princes, the Church should start there.
To change laws, you must first change votes. To change votes, you must first change minds. To change minds, you must first change hearts. To change hearts, you must first open eyes. Start there. It makes no sense to urge the branch to be fruitful when the root is dead.
Excellent comment. This is precisely why it is the lay obligation to govern society and the clerical vocation to teach and guide the faithful. American Founders sought an “ordered liberty” and in the end, order is charitable.
We about the primacy of the family, and that: “…Catholic political philosophy [explains] the relative importance of both walls and bridges.”
Three Points and a Question or two:
FIRST, St. John Paul II was also clear that subsidiarity and solidarity must never be separated, and then wrote of a “non-exclusive solidarity” (“Memory and Identity,” 2005). Later in “Caritas in Veritate” (2009), Emeritus Pope Benedict appealed to some kind of a world political authority”—or maybe an institutional architecture of “governance”—that would need “to observe consistently [both] the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity . . .“ (n. 67).
SECOND, does Pearce speak interchangeably of “nations” and of presumed nation-states? A political sociology based on the anomalous experience in the West? Here’s the rub….What about multi-national states where communal groups (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious) and even tribalism trump the arbitrary post-colonial state boundaries? And, what too about the family of Islam, the ummah, which spans the superimposed state boundaries stretching from Morrocco to Indonesia and the southern Philippines?
THIRD, so, what now about eastern Ukraine with its ethnic Ukrainians who happen to speak Russian?
As the world abruptly lurches back into a “sphere of influence” idiom (Russian, Chinese, American, European), we might be reminded of an instructive case-history during the Versailles peace negotiations. Secretary of State Robert Lansing (“The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative,” 1921) writes that a flashpoint why the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations (in addition to excluding the Senate from the secret negotiations) was President Wilson’s duplicity regarding his own principle of national “self-determination,” by awarding the Chinese Shantung peninsula (previously ceded to German control, 1898), to Japan!
Even the geographic birthplace of Confucius—reduced to an extraneous and expendable bargaining chip in a therefore failed attempt to secure Senate support for the much broader world-order League of Nations.
QUESTIONS: Today, on another global gameboard, and in a parallel case of expediency (!), what does our Catholic Secretary of State really have to say to the liberal Wilson’s distant successor, ironically a conservative clone in the White House?
And, especially, what does the universal Church, or the next conclave, have to say about globalized poker? Does the post-synodal but still credibly worldwide Church, and now worldwide spread of cardinals’ hats, give some astute hope for both walls and bridges? Remembering that Dei Verbum and Veritatis Splendor and moral absolutes, invite us beyond any more preliminary “pluralism of religions”?
Mr. Pearce gets at the heart of the matter when he observes that we cannot have a functioning home without walls of one sort or another.
If anything, walls come before bridges.
Well done, Mr. Pearce. Thank you.
“We’re going to build a big, beautiful wall. It will be so beautiful”.
-45th and 47th President of the United States, Mr Donald J. Trump.
Thank you enthusiastically for this solid presentation of Catholic/papal teachings related to the principle of subsidiarity, author Mr Pearce. Concise and clear with apt comparisons. And not a poor redress to the hypocrisy of former Bishop (eventually Cardinal) Becciu.
Compelling responses, stream commentators.
Be assured of my Rosary 🙏for our Church, the Body of Christ
“The greatest poetry has always depicted the world as a little citadel of nobility threatened by an immense barbarism, a flickering candle surrounded by infinite night.”
That is a quote from the great literary scholar Dr. Harold C. Goddard (d. 1950), as found in his book “The Meaning of Shakespeare.”
P.S. I have always like Joseph Pearce and have read and valued all of his books. I don’t think he has ever read Dr. Harold C. Goddard. I think he would find a true friend and kin in Dr. Goddard.
I thought some might find this conversation to be enriched by some relevant quotes from the “magna carta” of Catholic Social Doctrine, Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” (1891) (as quoted from the Vatican website):
1. “Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers, or is threatened with harm, which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in to deal with it.” (Rerum Novarum, § 36)
2. “The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers.” (Rerum Novarum, §32)
3. “Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference – since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them. ” (Rerum Novarum, §32)
4. ” We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government’s whole reason of existence; and the members, because both philosophy and the Gospel concur in laying down that the object of the government of the State should be, not the advantage of the ruler, but the benefit of those over whom he is placed. As the power to rule comes from God, and is, as it were, a participation in His, the highest of all sovereignties, it should be exercised as the power of God is exercised – with a fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches also individuals. ” (Rerum Novarum, §35)
If you invite a stranger into your home, he will stir up trouble for you and will estrange you from your own family.
— Sirach 11:34
Does Bergoglio’s New Catholique Church still even do the Bible?
We hear about the primacy of the family, yes, and that: “…Catholic political philosophy [explains] the relative importance of both walls and bridges.”
Three Points and three Questions:
FIRST, St. John Paul II was also clear that subsidiarity and solidarity must never be separated, and then wrote of a “non-exclusive solidarity” (“Memory and Identity,” 2005). Later in “Caritas in Veritate” (2009), Emeritus Pope Benedict appealed to some kind of a world political authority”—or maybe a less pointed institutional architecture of “governance”—that would need “to observe consistently [both] the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity . . .“ (n. 67).
SECOND, does Pearce speak interchangeably of “nations” and of presumed political idiom of nation-states? A political sociology based on the anomalous experience in the West?
Here’s the rub….What about “multi-national” states (the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) where communal groups (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious) and even tribalism now test the post-colonial and superimposed state boundaries? And, what too about the fluid family of Islam, the ummah, which spans state boundaries stretching from Morrocco to Indonesia and the southern Philippines?
THIRD, so, what now about eastern Ukraine with its ethnic Ukrainians who happen to speak Russian? As the world abruptly lurches back into a “sphere of influence” idiom (Russian, Chinese, American, European), we might be reminded of an instructive case-history during the Versailles peace negotiations. Secretary of State Robert Lansing (“The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative,” 1921) writes that a flashpoint why the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations (in addition to exclusion of the Senate from the secret negotiations) was President Wilson’s duplicity regarding his own principle of national “self-determination.” This by awarding the Chinese Shantung peninsula (previously ceded to German control, 1898), to imperial Japan!
Even the geographic birthplace of Confucius—reduced to an extraneous and expendable bargaining chip in a failed attempt to secure Senate support for the much broader world-order League of Nations. A Munich Moment, destined to be repeated again in 1938, and again?
QUESTIONS: Today, in a parallel case of expediency (!), what might a Catholic Secretary of State have to say to the liberal Wilson’s distant successor, ironically a conservative in the White House?
And, what might the universal Church, or the next conclave, have to say about the déjà vu global poker table? Does the worldwide spread of bishops and now cardinals’ hats give some hope for an astute institutional architecture of both walls and bridges?
Remembering, too, that Dei Verbum and Veritatis Splendor and moral absolutes, invite us beyond any more preliminary “pluralism of religions”?
Pope John Paul II on SOLIDARITY:
(I think the Pope John Paul II quotes below counter the notion that whole teaching of Catholic Social Teaching consists of nothing more than an admonition for the exercise of highly localized “family values,” as promoted by the Conservative movement in the USA, and that going beyond said “family values” constitutes a violation of the doctrine of subsidiarity and constitutes socialism as well.)
1. “Pope Paul’s Encyclical translates more succinctly the moral obligation as the “duty of SOLIDARITY”; and this affirmation, even though many situations have changed in the world, has the same force and validity today as when it was written.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 8)
2. “At the same time, in a world divided and beset by every type of conflict, the conviction is growing of a radical interdependence and consequently of the need for a SOLIDARITY which will take up interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane. (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 26)
3. “When interdependence becomes recognized in this way, the correlative response as a moral and social attitude, as a “virtue,” is SOLIDARITY. This then is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 26)
4. “The exercise of SOLIDARITY within each society is valid when its members recognize one another as persons. Those who are more influential, because they have a greater share of goods and common services, should feel responsible for the weaker and be ready to share with them all they possess.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 39)
5. “Interdependence must be transformed into SOLIDARITY, based upon the principle that the goods of creation are meant for all.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 39)
6. “The motto of the pontificate of my esteemed predecessor Pius XII was Opus iustitiae pax, peace as the fruit of justice. Today one could say, with the same exactness and the same power of biblical inspiration (cf. Is 32:17; Jas 3:18): Opus solidaritatis pax, peace as the fruit of SOLIDARITY.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 39)
7. “SOLIDARITY is undoubtedly a Christian virtue. In what has been said so far it has been possible to identify many points of contact between SOLIDARITY and charity, which is the distinguishing mark of Christ’s disciples (cf. Jn 13:35). In the light of faith, SOLIDARITY seeks to go beyond itself, to take on the specifically Christian dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and reconciliation. One’s neighbor is then not only a human being with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with everyone else, but becomes the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit. One’s neighbor must therefore be loved, even if an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her; and for that person’s sake one must be ready for sacrifice, even the ultimate one: to lay down one’s life for the brethren (cf. 1 Jn 3:16).” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 40)
8. “The “evil mechanisms” and “structures of sin” of which we have spoken can be overcome only through the exercise of the human and Christian SOLIDARITY.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, para 40)
NECESSARY WALLS & BRIDGES
BRIDGE: The one “bridge” that souls on earth absolutely need is the bridge that Christ makes available. Christ’s bridge enables Man to travel to God. Christ IS the bridge.
BRIDGE: Another necessary “bridge” is the connection that Christ makes possible between souls on earth that are in a State of Grace within the Body of Christ.
WALLS: The main “walls” that are needed are those established by the Holy Church around the Body of Christ, that alerts and warns the Body of Christ to stay away from heresy, doctrinal error, sinners (except as absolutely necessary), sinful activities (Protestant worship services; Pagan and New Age worship services; Communist Party front groups; socialist meetings; Pro-Abortion and pro-LGBTQ political parties; strip clubs; parties involving drugs and premarital sex; Masonic meetings; pornographic websites; etc.) and also what pre-Vatican II Catholics called “near occasions of sin.”
In the secular, political realm, there are also necessary/useful bridges and walls:
-WALL: A strong national military.
-BRIDGE: Alliances with other trustworthy nations with strong national militaries.
-WALL: Strong, severe enforcement of laws against Americans hiring illegal immigrants. (If these laws were enforced, 99% of all illegal immigrants would immediately self-deport, at their own expense, and no new illegals would arrive at all.)
-BRIDGE: Mutually fair and beneficial trading partnerships with other nations.
But our souls are not saved by the walls and bridges of the secular state.
For those with an eternal perspective, the priority must be on the walls and bridges of Christ and His Church.
Because of the current crisis in the Church, the walls and bridges of Christ and His Church are not functioning as they generally have, and so many Catholics are in distress.
I think this distress leads some Catholics to look to secular politics to make up the difference.
Do you see that, too?