Vice President JD Vance’s recent comment that we should love and assist those close to us before those who are more distant provoked an outburst of argument that eventually involved even the Pope.
The comment raised important issues, not only about immigration but also foreign aid and “America First” as a general approach to dealing with the rest of the world.
The partisan nature of these issues, together with incomprehension of opposing views, often injured the quality of argumentation. But intelligent discussion would be useful: the issues are as partisan as they are because they reflect a basic difference that lies behind much of the great division in politics today.
That issue is whether social order starts primarily with what is most concrete—individuals, families, local communities, and how they achieve their good—or what is most general—humanity and universal justice.
Catholicism has generally insisted on both the particular and the universal: the particularity of the Incarnation along with the universality of God; the particularity of the individual believer and diocese along with the universality of the Church; the particularity of family ties, along with the universality of love for others. Our social teaching has also involved both concern with the particular in the form of subsidiarity and with the universal in the form of solidarity.
Today’s public thought, in contrast, is rather one-sided, with universality exercising a far stronger pull on educated people, at least in their stated morality. We live in a liberal society that emphasizes universal principles. It wants to solve people’s problems systematically, and dislikes results that vary locally because they seem discriminatory and thus unjust. Solidarity focuses on the universality of human needs, and the consequent obligation to support all people everywhere who find themselves in difficult and perhaps desperate situations. It thus fits current ways of thinking.
Also, science and technology are universal, and they are considered uniquely rational models for problem-solving. So why not deal with political and social issues in a similar spirit? Technocratic understandings that favor uniform systemic solutions thus dominate public thought, so much so that even many Catholics find subsidiarity incomprehensible, and can only attribute support to a cold or bigoted lack of concern for others.
Ever since Leo XIII, the Church has therefore thought it useful to emphasize subsidiarity in its teaching. And it is something the Church is able to add to political discussion, so Catholics should be clear about the reasons for it.
We are all enmeshed in networks of relationships that are basic to how we live. These start very locally indeed, with family relationships; we bond with our mothers even in utero. It is in these settings that we learn love, mutual aid, and everyday duties. Our relationships do not stop there, of course, but soon extend to ever more extensive systems of cooperation and loyalty: more distant relatives, networks of friends, those who belong to the same locality, region, and nation.
There are also, of course, yet larger communities: Europe, East Asia, Latin America, the Arab world. And communities of other kinds: Christendom, the Muslim world; classmates, work colleagues, practitioners of the same profession. One could go on.
All these bring with them mutual obligations that vary by the nature of the relationship and its importance in our lives. As Thomas Aquinas puts it, “In matters pertaining to nature, we should love our relatives more; in matters pertaining to civil society, we should love our fellow citizens more; and in military affairs, we should love our fellow soldiers more.”
Concern with such relationships is central to Catholic social and moral thought. The Church generally recommends a natural law approach that tells us that the normal functioning of human beings and their societies is good and should be fostered, even though it sometimes goes wrong and needs to be corrected.
In particular, we rely by a sort of natural necessity on particular and mostly local connections and communities for effective participation in the world around us. They provide the setting in which we carry on life, know what is going on, and are able to act in intelligent, effective, and morally informed ways. It is difficult to do the same in larger settings. How many of us can judge or act intelligently in global politics, or indeed do more than try to second-guess what we are told?
The local and particular are therefore necessary if we are to be social human beings, and cultivating them is a social duty. That is why the Church supports subsidiarity, and it is why Dante put those who betray particular relationships at the center of Hell.
But common humanity is also a relationship that brings obligations with it. The parable of the Good Samaritan draws attention to that. As often, Jesus is leading us beyond everyday duties and pointing toward the infinite.
For that very reason, however, the parable defies institutionalization. How, for example, do you apply it in a world with cheap jet travel and the Internet? It was by chance that the Good Samaritan ran into the Jewish man lying beaten and robbed on the road. He rose to the occasion and helped him generously—unlike the priest and Levite, who had closer ties and so a greater obligation. And for that, he should be honored.
But suppose there had been helicopters at the time offering cheap rides on credit, and robbery victims all over Judea started having themselves medevacked to the Good Samaritan’s home. Should he have felt equally called to help them all? Would the fact they were right there on the street in front of his house make them his neighbors and obligate him (if he were a Christian) to the same standard of responsibility and care he showed on the Jericho road?
Life must go on, and since we are social beings, it should go on in a social order that makes sense and works reasonably well. These are no longer chance personal encounters that call the Good Samaritan to go beyond his ordinary everyday duties. They have become a system, and need to be considered as such in connection with other systems of obligation he is part of, including general systems of social obligation in the world at large.
Why is medevacking trauma victims to him in Samaria a system he is conscience-bound to support? Should he deprive his family, relatives, and local community of the attention and care that are due them? Wouldn’t that facilitate bad conduct by priests and Levites in Judea, who can now export their local problems to him rather than doing something themselves?
It could be that our Good Samaritan is a man of heroic charity who feels called to respond immediately to the needs of others without concern for cost or circumstances. The world needs such people. But should he be made the town mayor? Saint Francis was also a heroic figure, but nobody wanted to make him pope. And his father had some complaints—apparently justified—about his dealings with the family finances.
As the Apostle Paul noted, we have different gifts that bear fruit in very different settings. Political organization is necessary, and it has its own demands. In that setting, the demand for strict universality is ideological rather than moral. Taken literally, it deprives particular connections of practical importance and so makes us useless to each other. The political form that corresponds to it is a universal bureaucratic order that determines all social life.
That sounds more like the Antichrist than the coming of the Kingdom.
The Vice President is a politician, and as such, prudence should be his prime virtue. In his position, the Golden Rule seems mostly to require working toward a political order that in practice people generally have good reason to approve. And that is the setting—with all the messy practical considerations relevant to it—in which we should discuss his conduct in office.
There is a lot to discuss on that issue. Would, for example, a global regime of effectively open borders mean a better world? To me, it appears it would mean mutual distrust, cultural chaos, and rule by oligarchs, demagogues, and tyrants. Others disagree vehemently.
But that is politics: each should present his view, and let us all try to be fair-minded and public-spirited—which, after all, means concerned with the overall situation, including its difficult aspects and further ramifications.
• Related at CWR: Vice President Vance, the Good Samaritan, and the “order of love” (Feb 10, 2025) by Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P.
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It is impossible to act lovingly toward those who live 5,000 miles away if I am not loving the person who lives in my home or just next door. Impossible to do and a lie if someone says otherwise.
So first let me ask those who live with you, if they experience your love in demonstrable ways and, then, let me go and ask your neighbor the same question.
I try to get at and understand the source of the violently opposing opinions expressed today in our nation, and within our own families. I think Mr. Kalb’s analysis of the particular v. the universal identifies a root point of divergence. A perfect example, is a person accountable for their own bad behavior or is society at fault? Obviously a number of factors play into what motivates a person to act in a certain way. But the disagreements begin when two persons place blame in opposite corners. The problem arises when people want to believe it has to be either one or the other. I’m a particularist who believes we’re ultimately accountable for our own choices, but I’m not blind to the influences of societal circumstances. Thank you Mr. Kalb.
A government’s first responsibility is to its law abiding,tax paying citizens, period. It’s not rocket science.
We read: “Today’s public thought, in contrast, is rather one-sided, with universality exercising a far stronger pull on educated people, at least in their stated morality.”
But, also: “There are also, of course, yet larger communities…” As in the first unifying view of planet earth as seen from Apollo 8–“earthrise” over the lunar surface. About the new dilemma of the “globe” and about what’s “local,” ecologists landed on the possibly balanced slogan: “think globally, but act locally…” Like the Good Samaritan?
With this dual perspective in mind and in some limited way, how might “spaceship earth” be likened to the unsinkable Titanic?
Of the survivors from “first class” there were 198 men and women (60%), compared to 131 lost. In “second class” 93 men and women (35%) were saved and 169 were lost. Of “third class” 151 (24%) survived but fully 490 were lost. (Of children, 56 were saved and 55 lost; and, of the crew, 207 were saved and 684 were lost.)
Appreciating and in full agreement regarding Subsidiarity as Kalb presents it here, and about “act[ing] locally”, does today’s lifeboat on the hypothetical titanic-earth include the recently humiliated Ukraine, or not? Re-balancing the weight in the lifeboat (Europe and the United States) is one thing, but paddling away with empty seats would be another.
Or, is the fate of Ukraine actually the global iceberg threatening the local free world?
This is an interesting comment. I like the analogy of the Titanic disaster, including the details on mortality by the classes of the passengers.
I interpret this as indicating that the profound, unprecedented advances in modern technology have inescapably changed the meaning of what is “local.”
Once our two big oceans made the continental USA invulnerable to any significant attack by foreign powers.
Now supersonic ICBMs mean that the USA is totally defenseless against the irrational or suicidal leader of any big nuclear weapon-armed nation that is willing to completely destroy the USA at the expense of their own nation also being completely destroyed.
Disease plagues once were always merely regional.
But now with constant, large-scale international travel by air, every plague (whether natural or manmade) will be a global plague in an instant. There’s no practical defense against this.
The longstanding, year-round deep ice at the north and south poles is now melting at very fast rate. There will be no escaping whatever changes this may cause in the ability to grow food in places where food has been grown for the past several thousand years.
It’s as if the many local chessboards of the past have now been reduced to a single global chessboard.
Or it’s as if the many local poker games of the past have now been concentrated into a single global table and a single poker game (which no player can leave).
There are scientists and mathematicians who have developed “game theory.”
It seems that now, due to modern technology, there is inescapably just one really important game, and it is a global game.
While political sloganeering can change public opinion, it seems that it cannot change this reality.
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main…
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne, 1624)
We elect our President, VP, and other politicians to govern/take care of OUR country, the U.S.A., NOT the whole world.
If our elected officials make wise decisions that take good care of OUR country and its citizens (including its old, sick, and marginalized citizens), we who live in the U.S. will thrive and have extra money, time, and talent to give to other countries (privately and through taxes) that aren’t being taken care of in a good way by their government, and we will live out our last days peacefully and safely.
But if due to an incompetent government/elected officials, we are struggling to earn a decent living, failing to graduate from high school (or even middle school) with an adequate education and go on to a trade school, college, on-the-job training/certification, and/or marriage/family, or living in constant fear of being murdered in our neighborhoods, and…we’re calling evil “good”–we need government to help get us all back on the right track.
And exactly what IS our “government” in the U.S.A.?
A government “of, by and for the people” means that we, the people, must step up and work WITH (and occasionally work AGAINST) our elected officials so that good decisions will be made to help Americans live good (not necessarily wealthy) lives and have the opportunity to improve their lot in life.
But it’s a lot easier to sit back, watch TV, and pontificate online than actually step up and be lights in a dark world! Binge-ing on HGTV all day today (I’m sick with a bad cold)!
Or–we can be “a little light”, as the children’s song says. A lot of “little lights” can light up a whole room.
Agreed, Mrs. Whitlock. Much wisdom here.
Would the fact they were right there on the street in front of his house make them his neighbors and obligate him? Kalb responds what if? Were this just rationale to medivac the stricken to his doorstep? The existential injustice, permitting caravans of migrants to arrive at our doorsteps. Do we apply instead the family rule and exclude care? Would the provision of care fall under the penalty of aiding and abetting criminal behavior of illegal trespassers [as I was convicted here by an all American internet court justice].
“But that is politics: each should present his view, and let us all try to be fair-minded”. Kalb is addressing a complex issue through the lenses of politician Vance. He responds with a brilliant analogy. Saint Francis would likely have taken the heroic position of aiding the destitute. But St Francis wasn’t selected to become pope. As for the flummoxed Christian he need not be flummoxed. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked laying at our doorstep. With that vote against open borders.
Yes, St. Francis was neither Pope, nor head of state. But then, too, there’s the riddle buried inside the parable, with possibly some meaning for our internet/jet travel age…What was the Good Samaritan doing outside of Samaria, and did he also merit a room in the inn? Yes to secure borders, but also we still have the “complexities” noted by Kalb and falling on the shoulders of those like Vance who are responsible for the “common good.”
I guess as Virgil says Amoris omnia vincit. After the woman at the well told what occurred Samaritan villagers streamed out to meet Christ, insisted he and the Apostles stay.
And you identify the common good as a moral consideration in context of a nation’s right to secure borders. Although, do we have a common, Christian responsibility for the good of at least some who illegally crossed the border?
I will venture to suggest that many Catholics in my octogenarian age group have heard one particular modernist sermon that touches upon the issue under discussion here.. It was a popular sermon, especially in the credulous era of the 70s and 80s when modernist enthusiasms over the “spirit of Vatican II” held sway. The text for the sermon was usually Matthew 22:36-39, although it also appears in Mark 12:28-31. A doctor of the law asks Jesus:
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” [Douay-Rheims]
Beautiful words. The essence of what it is to be a true Christian. But the fashionably modernist sermon usually went on, something like this:
‘Yes, we should love the Lord our God. But the Lord our God is a Spirit. How do we go about loving an invisible Spirit? We can’t, at least not easily. What we can do, however—and on a daily basis—is to love our neighbor. That’s in fact exactly how we love God—by loving our neighbor.’
At best, the sermon puts the two commandments on a par, whereas Jesus actually said that love of God is the greatest commandment—the greatest and the first. Also, in the minds of most hearers, the sermon subtly reverses the order of the two commandments—love your neighbor and thereby love God—whereas Jesus actually said that love of God is the first—the greatest and the first—commandment. And by the time the sermon is over, one is usually left with the mind-set in which efforts at seeking a loving union with God are really out of the picture entirely, and the Catholic Faith is reduced to a vague form of secular humanism. And the Catholic Faith as a vague form of secular humanism is the exact aim of the Modernist Heresy.
What’s the true, orthodox understanding of the passage? I take the true, orthodox understanding from the writings of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, the great Eighteenth-Century moral theologian who was named a Doctor of the Church in 1871, and who is the patron saint of moral theologians. The truth is that our “neighbor” includes our enemy, as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount tells us. Most of the time it’s hard enough to love our friends and neighbors. How can one truly love one’s enemies in the first instance? The answer is in the very words Jesus used. One loves one’s neighbor and one’s enemy with the love of God. That’s what Jesus’ words actually say. We first love God with our whole heart—all of it—and with our whole soul—all of it— and with our whole mind—all of it—then, and only then, are we able to practice the second commandment, loving our neighbor and our enemy truly as our self. It’s the love of God that’s the enabling love—not the other way around.
Some thoughts. First one point that these types of article miss is that the USA wealth is the capitalist system we live under. It provides the freedom, property rights etc. that produces wealth. Also we have a Constitution that so far has protected the working of our Capitalist system. Most other countries don’t have this and even though rich with resources are dirt poor. Around the world you can see that where rights are continuously taken away by government through regulation, theft and imprisonment, economic growth subsides.
Second, money given our country to another country goes through a bureaucracy that has its own values. So just saying we need to support poor countries doesn’t mean the money will be well spent. This is supported by the DODGE finding that have uncovered very questionable use of USA money. Beyond this some economist have written well researched article/books on the subject that show how USA foreign aid spending has done more harm than good.
Third if someone wants to support a poor country or residents, check out how some but not all Catholic organization use funds in a good way. I think Franciscan Missions is one to consider.
Grand Rapids Mike: you’re making good points. I’d add this: if our tax dollars are being used by various US Federal agencies to assist poor people in other countries to obtain contraceptives or procure abortions or to foster war in those places, then our foreign aid is being used for evil purposes. Let’s remember that Federal bureaucracies do NOT have moral consciences; only individuals have moral consciences. One of the benefits of the subsidiarity principle is that it’s more likely that decisions made will reflect moral choices that can more readily be examined.
“Do not EVEN THE PAGANS behave this way?”
Jesus: “For if you LOVE THOSE WHO LOVE YOU, what reward will you have? Do not even tax collectors behave this way? And if you greet only your brothers, what more have you done? Do not EVEN THE PAGANS behave this way? Therefore, BE PERFECT, even AS YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER IS perfect.” (Matthew 5: 46-48)
For any Catholic speaking in good faith on this “ordo amori” issue, I believe that it is practically undeniable that some attention must be paid to the life and teachings of JESUS CHRIST, particularly when He proclaims teachings such that quoted above.
There are so many proclamations from JESUS along these lines, but I will quote just 2 more:
“To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, LET ME FIRST GO AND BURY MY FATHER.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell TO THOSE AT MY HOME.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62)
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ FOR THE PAGANS run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But SEEK FIRST His kingdom.” (Matthew 6:31-33)
PLEA FOR A MEDIATOR
I see two groups of Catholics.
CATHOLIC GROUP #1: One group of Catholics carries a flag with “SOLIDARITY” written on it. They wave that flag whenever any social, economic, or political issue arises, and they act as if that single word answers everything from the moral perspective of Catholic Social Teachings.
CATHOLIC GROUP #2: A second group of Catholics carries a flag with “SUBSIDIARITY” written on it. They wave that flag whenever any social, economic, or political issue arises, and they act as if that single word answers everything from the moral perspective of Catholic Social Teachings.
REQUEST: Could Catholic World Report find some wise, honest, well-informed, non-partisan, calm, peace-filled, holy, charitable soul to function somewhat as a mediator between these two groups, and to carry out that mediation by communicating to us on this website how solidarity and subsidiarity are really meant to work vitally and strongly together within the context of Catholic Social Teaching and within the context of the earthly life of Catholics seeking to stay and grow in the State of Grace?
Surely Pope Leo XIII and Pope John Paul II did not envision one or the other of these two virtues (solidarity and subsidiarity) to, in effect, CANCEL OUT the other one, right? That would be absurd, would it not?
And yet, practically speaking, that is what I see both of the aforementioned Catholic groups doing.
Don’t you agree?
A COMPARISON: Christ is both God and Man. It has always been an arch heresy for people to so emphasize the Godliness of Christ that the Humanity of Christ is, effect, cancelled out, or, to so emphasize the Humanity of Christ that the Godliness of Christ is, effect, cancelled out. My amateur theological mind thinks of these as possible manifestations of either of those: Arianism, Jansenism, Gnosticism, Docetism, Modernism, Nouvelle Théologie.
Just as Christ is both fully God and fully Man, should not Catholic Social Teaching be both fully pro-Solidarity and fully pro-Subsidiarity?
But how?
I’ve never even seen any attempt to explain how (and I HAVE searched!).
All I ever see is what appear to me to be partisan polemics in favor of one unbalanced extreme or the other?
(I have tried reading the papal encyclicals on this issue, but I have found them difficult to digest within the time that I have for such study.)
Could we please get a mediator in this controversy of Solidarity “versus” Subsidiarity?
Does anyone else see the need for this?
“… carry out that mediation by communicating to us on this website how solidarity and subsidiarity are really meant to work vitally and strongly together within the context of Catholic Social Teaching and within the context of the earthly life of Catholics seeking to stay and grow in the State of Grace?”
I addressed some of this over a dozen years ago here at CWR in a piece titled “Solidarity, subsidiarity, and principled sanity”. Perhaps of interest.
Thank you very much.
I read the older article that was referenced. Of particular interest to me were the following segments (capitalization added by me):
-“SOLIDARITY without SUBSIDIARITY can easily devolve into a kind of totalitarianism whereby “justice” is achieved either through outright manipulation and intimidation or through more subtle forms of social engineering.”
-“But SUBSIDIARITY without SOLIDARITY can result in a society marked by rampant individualism, a Gordon Gekko “greed is good” mentality, and an Ayn Rand/Nietzschean “objectivism” that positively celebrates the powerful person’s dominance of the weak.”
-“Catholic social theory involves the subtle balancing of these two great principles so as to avoid these two characteristic pitfalls. It does, for example, consistently advocate the free market, entrepreneurial enterprise, profit-making; and it holds out against all forms of Marxism and extreme socialism.”
-“But it also insists that the market be circumscribed by clear moral imperatives and that the wealthy realize their sacred obligation to aid the less advantaged. THIS LAST POINT IS WORTH DEVELOPING.”
Natural Law Man,
Catholic Social Teaching is the exercise of the moral virtues, especially “prudential judgment.” And this judgment is challenged by the kinds of inseparable binaries you propose…
Solidarity/Subsidiarity
Dignity of Person/Family
Rights/Responsibilities
Conscience/Citizenship
Option for the Poor/dignity of Work
Personal Property/care for God’s Creation
Biblically, we likewise are admonished to be both “innocent as doves and wise as serpents”—“the serpent’s cunning complements the dove’s simplicity, and the dove’s simplicity moderates the serpent’s cunning” (Gregory the Great, Liturgy of the Hours, Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time…today!).
It’s almost as if the binary complementarity of man and woman in marriage actually means and embodies something.
“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.” (Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, § 36)