Patrick McKinley Brennan

Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine

This chapter is an invited contribution to the first English-language comparative study of subsidiarity, M. Evans and A. Zimmerman (eds.), Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming Springer, 2013). The concept of subsidiarity does work in many and varied legal contexts today, but the concept originated in Catholic social doctrine. The Catholic understanding of subsidiarity (or subsidiary function) is the subject of this chapter. Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle according to which the common good is to be achieved through a plurality of social forms. Subsidiarity is derivative of social justice, a recognition that societies other than the state constitute unities of order, possessing genuine authority, which which are to be respected and, when necessary, aided. Subsidiarity is not a policy preference for checking power with power. This chapter traces the emergence of the principle of subsidiarity to the neo-Scholastic revival that contributed to the Churchs defense against the French Revolutions onslaught aimed at eliminating societies other than the state. The concept of subsidiarity has implications for the present, changing socio-political landscape in the United States as the Church faces a state that is poised to compel the Church to violate the moral law.

By Nature Equal: The Anatomy of a Western Insight

Acknowledgment and ApologyForewordIntroduction: In Search of a Descriptive Human Equality3Pt. IHuman Equality: What does it Mean?171What Has Been Said?222The Host Property393Making the Host Property Uniform66Pt. IICould the Philosophers Believe in Human Equality?914Could the Enlightenment Believe? Individualism, Kant, and Equality1015Nature, Natural Law, and Equality123Pt. IIICould the Christians Believe in Human Equality?1456The Framework for a Christian Obtensionalism1487Repaving the Road to Hell: The Pelagian Issues1648The Repaving Project, Part II: An Equal-Opportunity Creator191Pt. IVGood Persons and the Common Good2159Harmonies of the Moral Spheres21810Harvests of Equality232Notes261Index349

Arguing for Human Equality

There is nothing that I would hold to more dearly in our past than the language of the Declaration of Independence, ‘all men are created equal.’ As Abraham Lincoln argued, this is in an important sense the foundation of our Constitution. The circumstance that the social facts of our world, then and now, are hideously inconsistent with this promise or ideal simply makes it all the more important. Yet upon what does this value of equality rest? Is it self-evident? Certainly not, and one may find oneself in deep trouble trying to rest it upon independent philosophical foundations. As a factual statement, it is obviously not true and cannot be true; as a matter of value no one thinks that we ought to equalize every aspect of life. So what can it mean? —James Boyd White, From Expectation to Experience