Last month, I suggested that subsidiarity comes from the idea that social order begins with the family, and proceeds from there to ever broader communities and ultimately to the whole world.
This view makes the family the fundamental social institution. That means it isn’t just a private contract or a matter of legal or social prescription. It’s something more deeply rooted in human nature: a durable union of man and woman that is complementary and oriented toward bringing new life into the world.
The family is a natural and necessary institution. That is because men and women are attracted to each other, and their union makes babies. Parents and offspring feel connected, and children require many years to grow up. There needs to be some way of looking after them cooperatively, and the family consisting of mother, father, and their children provides that in a way that pretty much grows up of itself.
It is particularly suitable for the purpose because man is both individual and social. A child needs close personal connections to others who provide love and security. He also needs a setting he knows among people he has an effect on and who want to be able to rely on him. That is how he learns to act socially and effectively. The family gives him all that and thus educates him in humanity.
Traditional family life is therefore the normal setting for parents and children. There are, of course, exceptional cases. The tie between parents and children is sometimes broken, and the children generally grow up somehow, but they risk psychological and social damage. That situation is not normally good for the parents either. So, exceptional situations—whatever devoted efforts some people make to soften their effects—do not change the rule.
This view of the family and society seems commonsensical, and it is historically dominant, but most people today don’t believe it. At least not explicitly. Educated and successful people are especially likely to reject it in theory. Even so, they usually live by it in practice: they don’t become successful by being stupid in their own affairs.
Instead, the tendency among such people is to view the state as the fundamental social institution. Here I am using “the state” in an extended sense to refer to the overall formal organization of society, as supervised by public authority to promote goals like safety, equity, and so on. So it would include private businesses and nonprofits to the extent they are integrated into the regulatory web and so become state agencies.
It is considered rational to rely on that structure, because it is thought to be supervised, guided, and to a large extent prescribed by public authority in accordance with the public interest and the best expertise. Arrangements like the family, along with local, cultural, and religious communities, are not regulated or supervised, and so are viewed as private pursuits in which people do whatever they want.
Most people are attached to the latter arrangements, so they are accepted to an extent. But the official tendency is to sideline them as much as possible. After all, to the extent they affect anything, unsupervised and likely injurious and discriminatory tendencies are likely to creep in.
The authorities thus try to deconstruct them. They are tolerated, as long as they are not well defined—as long as they do not “set up barriers”—but they aren’t trusted. With the family, for example, we see this in a thousand ways. We hear, for example, that “we have come to recognize that there are many different family forms”—in other words, that the family should be understood as nothing very definite.
But if it is nothing definite, why would anyone rely on it, or consider it an important part of the social order?
That is why, for example, a stay-at-home mom is not considered someone responsible for basic aspects of a fundamental social institution, who, as such, receives authority within the institution, support, and respect everywhere. Instead, she is seen as a social dropout, a loss to the productive economy, and someone who provides unpaid personal, housekeeping, and child care services, most likely out of slavishness.
Examples could be multiplied, in education, journalism, culture, religion, welfare policy, antidiscrimination law, and all aspects of public life. Whatever the lip service, authoritative voices reject a serious social role for anything but what I have called the state.
Many Catholics follow along: “social justice” Catholicism is Catholicism that accepts the state as the fundamental social institution and adjusts Catholic moral principles accordingly. So “pelvic issues” become private matters of no social concern, and Musk and Trump will go to hell for defunding the corporal works of mercy, which are now seen as basically a state function.
This new view, despite its acceptance in public discussion and policy, has strikingly bad consequences.
It weakens and discredits family ties and other informal traditional connections, so that all aspects of people’s lives depend on the chances of the market, along with faceless bureaucrats and an incomprehensible complex of often intrusive rules.
As a result, they feel insecure, isolated, powerless, and resentful, prone in private life to various addictions, and in public life to mistrust, irrational hatreds, and conspiratorial thinking. They become susceptible to manipulation and are ready prey for demagogues and tyrants.
We see these things around us, and the ideal of the administered society contributes to them.
But if “social justice” means that, how is it social justice? And why expect administered social relations to work better than administered economic life?
Public thought and everyday social life have apparently taken a wrong turn. For the sake of the common good, we should do what we can to find a better direction.
But what?
Liberalism, progressivism, and libertarianism are played out. Whatever problems they were originally intended to fix, they have become the problem, because they refuse on principle to recognize traditional, natural, and informal institutions like family, religion, and cultural community as real institutions with their own status and authority.
So, what to do?
Conservatives say, “Let’s stabilize what we have.” Stability is good, and such efforts are worthwhile. But what we have is thoroughly radicalized, so it’s a losing struggle.
Others, who might be called reconstructionists, want to build an order that embodies past goods, but without particular attention to how it was done then.
However, is that possible? Experience doesn’t suggest so: a social order cannot be constructed.
That is why many younger conservatives are saying, “Let’s insist on what we had.” That’s a good battle cry. But what we need—recognition of the transcendent, and acceptance of the pervasive effects of nature and history—cannot be forced.
A better future cannot be planned or imposed. Joseph de Maistre, although often considered a violent reactionary, summed up the issue: “what is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.” And Christ put it at the deepest possible level: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.”
What is needed is a fundamental reorientation: a world more pervaded by humility and love of what is highest. There is no specific recipe for getting there, but it seems that love of tradition will have to play a role. It helps people retrieve lost goods through the redirection of attention and the revival of older ways that others have found practically and symbolically sustaining.
And it embodies a recognition that religion is at the heart of our social and political problems.
That approach won’t change the world tomorrow. The older ways declined not only because of bad thinking but also because of changes in practical life, primarily industrialization and increasing reliance on technology. These things are not likely to go away.
Even so, a turn toward tradition can provide a concrete point of focus for attempts to turn from current orthodoxies to something better. And it can help build and furnish a lifeboat for many people. To the extent secular life keeps declining, that lifeboat will look better and better, and start to influence life elsewhere.
Isn’t that, after all, how the Barque of Peter originally grew?
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Social justice is a most unique and effective way to destroy individualism, personal responsibility, free enterprise, personal initiative.
It is simultaneously an effective way to impose statist rule, totalitarianism, atheism, and collectivism.
It requires that people be passive, unarmed, molded in their thinking and to surrender their autonomy to the State.
Sounds like the Progressive Leftist game plan to me. Social justice crazies happily intend to destroy the family.
Yes, the “family” is about love of historical tradition, but even more about the ever-new tradition of love in the future. And, therefore as Kalb implies, it’s not about setting the clock back but about setting in right.
But, here, about “subsidiarity” and history, in a decades-long correspondence beginning in the first years after the Council, a Jesuit Catholic once wrote to me this: “Let me suggest something less conservative than [localism/subsidiarity]. The utterly crucial fact for Medieval Man was revelation. God the Father said through his Son that all men must live in the God-Man Jesus Christ in order to be alive and so return to the Father whence they issued.”
Is this radical fact, again, the “state” of modern things? About politics as downstream of culture, it’s almost as if (!) the family is prior to the political state—both chronologically and in the order of reality—and that all the modern state can do is recognize—not construct and confer—real human rights, and either respect or displace the family.
God desires that all men come unto Him thus my most sincere desire is also that all men come unto Him in accordance with the Order of Love thus I pray and act responsibly, authoritatively and charitably, my love in action beginning with my family. My personal desire is to be chivalrous, that IMHO is the pinnacle of virtues that the Holy Spirit contends is the good life in gratitude to God.
As was asked in the village of Anatevka, ” And where does tradition come from?” Unfortunately, their answer is inadequate for a time when EVERYTHING is being shaken. We have something to offer only by returning to something and Someone unshakeable. ANYTHING less is inadequate for this time.
You are correct in recognizing the practical, if not conscious, dispute about where things begin: family or state. And it is precisely these fundamental sorts of errors at the level of theological anthropology that makes me so suspect of the synodality project: while the average Catholic is functionally illiterate about what his faith teaches and its implications for life (incl. the social order), we are wasting time “dialoguing” ad nauseam about how to accommodate the Zeitgeist with a splash of holy water and a pinch of incense.
John, eloquently stated.
Yes, but yours truly proposes that the issue in not “dialogue,” but monologue…
A monologue of clericalist theologians who for decades have wanted to replace Vatican II and the Magisterium with themselves, and using the ‘functionally illiterate” laity as body shields. Hence, the Germaniac deconstruction of the Successors of the Apostles, as such, even in the “synods” in Rome, and lubricated by creation (creation!) a moral carve-out (not discerning cases of individual culpability, but an objective category!) for the LGBTQ clan positioned as part of the broader tribe of irregular “couples.”
As for the future, and handled less ineptly (or worse), the 2008 “Ecclesial Assembly” could possibly be a re-tracking to establish the kind of ecclesial unity that Benedict had in mind when he used the same term decades ago…
About the “Ecclesial Assembly” of 2028 (no longer a so-called synod?)—decades ago, Benedict XVI used this term when he reflected on the loss of the “ecclesial assembly”—or communio— during the Middle Ages. The restoration of the sacramentally ordained priest as more than a seeming “cult-minister” (his words), but as a bearer of sacramentality through Holy Orders, also led to an unfortunate separation of the laity from the clergy—the loss of communio—”the problem of the laity, which arose at this time and still haunts us today” (“Successio Apostolica,” as Chapter 2 in Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius, 1982/Ignatius 1987).T he “original meaning of the word ‘ecclesia’—that is, not selectively heard (herded?) and walking together, but sacramentally and communally really ‘coming together’ within a Church that is institutional and charismatic, both (the four constitutions of Vatican II).
QUESTION: About real communio…is the 2028 event more likely the final straw in replacing a coherent commuio—not only the Apostolic Succession but also any future ecumenical councils of bishops, as such? Perhaps Cardinal Grech can clarify about “stretching the grey area”….OR, instead, the next conclave?
Recommended reading – ‘Letter to the Future’ by Michael O’Brien
A tad scary, but well worth it. 400 pages long I read it in 2 days, worth more than one read.
Q: Is the family still fundamental?
A: Yes
“But if it is nothing definite, why would anyone rely on it, or consider it an important part of the social order?”. Kalb asks the question that answers itself. Our nature tells us. Our widely considered father of the science, the sociologist Emile Durkheim, posited the family as the axial social institution among institutions that knit social structure.
It all centers on recognition of the good of nurture, of care and awareness of the meaning of the responsible good. We owe parents their due. The premier apprehension that shapes lives and the formation of a just society.
We no longer live within a fundamentally just society as long as there are elements that insist on deforming the family structure. Evidenced in the proclivity toward violent response and protest. The heavily oppressive cancel culture that knows no compromise. Some say we’re possibly on the road to civil unrest becoming civil war the latter mused publicly by prophet Alec Baldwin. If there is civil war, it’ll be largely due to the disintegration of family structure.
PIUS XI, JOHN PAUL II, & BENECTICT XVI WERE SOCIAL JUSTICE CATHOLICS
All of those popes used the term “Social Justice” repeatedly. They referred to Social Justice as a Catholic doctrine, a “good,” and a moral necessity.
The term “Social Justice” was first coined and used by a Jesuit priest.
John Paul II: “In order to achieve SOCIAL JUSTICE in the various parts of the world, in the various countries, and in the relationships between them, there is a need for ever new movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers.” (LABOREM EXERCENS, 1981)
John Paul II: “However, this struggle [of labor unions] should be seen as a normal endeavour ‘for’ the just good: in the present case, for the good which corresponds to the needs and merits of working people associated by profession; but it is not a struggle ‘against’ others. Even if in controversial questions the struggle takes on a character of opposition towards others, this is because it aims at the good of SOCIAL JUSTICE….” (LABOREM EXERCENS, 1981)
Hundreds of other such pro-Social Justice quotes from popes could be given.
So, I am confused.
This article seems to scorn and denounce Social Justice, as seen in this quote:
“Whatever the lip service, authoritative voices reject a serious social role for anything but what I have called the state. Many Catholics follow along: “SOCIAL JUSTICE” Catholicism is Catholicism that accepts the state as the fundamental social institution and adjusts Catholic moral principles accordingly. So “pelvic issues” become private matters of no social concern…”
If the author of this article thinks that some people are misusing the Catholic term “Social Justice,” why not just say that, and explain that?
And why not also inform his readers about what the true meaning of Social Justice is?
And why not substantiate claims about Catholic Social Doctrine and Social Justice with quotes from the huge body of papal writings on Catholic Social Doctrine, going back all the way to Leo XIII in 1891?
Who even reads “Rerum Novarum” anymore? Apparently, no one!
Yet subsequent popes have referred to it as the “Magna Carta of Catholic Social teaching.”
This article doesn’t give even one quote from any papal source.
If a lawyer’s petition doesn’t cite cases, treatises, or other legal authority, what value is it?
This article does mention some of the ideas of Joseph de Maistre. He was a French writer of philosophical texts, and he was a Catholic, but I’m not aware of him having any influence on the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.
I agree with this author that the culture, customs, and mores of the USA are massively messed up.
But I think the solution lies in authentic Catholic Social Doctrine being known, respected, revered, and practiced, first of all by Catholics.
And this will require that the bishops put a stop to all the Catholics who are disseminating various renegade interpretations (whether from the right or the left or wherever) of Catholic Social Teaching. In this Vatican II-inspired era of mostly “anything goes” and “not either/or but both/and,” that will require a true miracle in order to happen!
“If the author of this article thinks that some people are misusing the Catholic term “Social Justice,” why not just say that, and explain that?”
You will notice I put the term “social justice” in quotations. That is because I think the way it is mostly used today is basically at odds with the views of the popes you mention.
But the column was intended as a comment on a particular fundamental misconception. As such it couldn’t possibly include a full account of everything it referred to.