A Massive Betrayal - Brian Holdsworth - Church Teaching on Social Justice / Solidarity and Subsidiarity

Here is a transcript of the partial podcast by Brian Holdsworth

"If you ever spend any time trying to learn about Catholic social teaching, you will inevitably collide with two concepts, solidarity and subsidiarity, and many respectable commentators and instructors on the subject will point out that if you ever want to evaluate and compare some system or fabric of society for its compatibility with Catholic social teaching you should look to see if they get these two things right and I'm not going to go into a lot of detail with those concepts mean, although I am going to explain them a little bit for you here, but I would encourage you, if you are unfamiliar with them, to spend time learning about them, especially if Social Justice is something that's important to you and a great place to start is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church starting with Paragraph 1878 going all the way to 1917

So again, for the sake of this video, I will summarize them as concisely as I can, starting with solidarity.

So solidarity means treating your fellow man or humans, your fellow humans, if you prefer the gender-neutral language as neighbors rather than rivals. It means loving your neighbor as yourself and being invested in their interests as well as your own

On the political stage, this means the preferred policy is to produce a common good rather than only one for individual in concern for the poor? It's one thing to claim that, it's another thing to actually support policies that produce those effects. I think you'll see what I mean by the end of this video.

And on that note, the last thing I'll say about solidarity is that our interest for our neighbor needs to account most significantly for the most vulnerable. What you call this: a preferential option for the poor, and it is summarized in Christ's teaching when he says that what you do for the least you do for me and I think it's fair to say that most Christians have some appreciation for this concept, whether they get the nuances of it or how necessarily it's applied or not,

But subsidiarity Centisimus Annus, which is so named Centisimus means centenary because it was published on the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo, the 13th, legendary Social Encyclical Rerum Novarum thus placing John Paul, the second's thought within the stream of the thought of Leos.

And here's what John Paul this second had to say, summarizing and defining subsidiarity, he said

• A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions.

What this means is that the Governance of a community should take place at the most intimate and local level possible and that larger, more remote, and more powerful structures should restrain themselves from interfering with those smaller community structures.

So, for example, the most intimate level of the community would be the family, and it should govern itself as independently as possible from larger or higher community structures. The family shouldn't define its domestic life or base its relationships based on mandates from higher authorities like the city or the state. Likewise, the city should not be interfered with by the state, the province, or the nation, or these, again, these higher forms as much as possible.

• And it continues to scale up accordingly. Another way of saying this is that large and powerful political structures should be restrained from telling intimate and local structures how to live and function as a community.
• And the Catechism goes further. It goes on to say that the principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of Collectivism and sets limits on state intervention. In other words, collectivist socialism that is not compatible with Catholic social teaching or the principles of solidarity or subsidiarity. 

Now it's important to remember that solidarity and subsidiarity aren't exclusive to each other. One of the things that often happens when political principles get applied in the real world is that they end up falling prey to these false dichotomies that exist everywhere within the political spectrum. So, if you're someone who gravitates to one end of the political spectrum, you might be someone who says, oh, I love subsidiarity, and you talk about it all the time, and then you neglect solidarity as if that doesn't apply. 

And then the truth is, the same is true for the opposite end of the spectrum. And that's because people are getting the sense of a false dichotomy that exists between them. The truth of Catholic social teaching is that these two things are meant to work together in harmony to produce a common good. 

So, for example, subsidiarity doesn't mean that we're supposed to be living in some sort of extreme individualism. Solidarity reminds us that we are accountable to our neighbors and to each other, and we need to help each other. But this help doesn't come primarily from large government structures. It occurs through intimate and local relationships first and foremost. 

• So again, why am I talking about these concepts in the context of this video? Well, I would say, God willing, we are emerging from a global crisis in which two key strategies became dominant and widespread, and which I would argue clearly breach the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and we as a church seemed far too enthusiastic to endorse these policies in spite of our own teaching."

Brian Holdsworth