Michael Severance: ‘Rethinking Subsidiarity: Multidisciplinary Reflections on the Catholic Social Tradition’ edited by Martin Schlag and Boglárka Koller

Rethinking Subsidiarity: Multidisciplinary Reflections on the Catholic Social Tradition is a magnum opus of contemporary Catholic social thought. The book’s elite lineup of international scholars is distinctly aware of a troubling sign of ours times. Whenever a fundamental tenet of Catholic social thought, like subsidiarity, is the subject of a thorough reexamination something is askance in the basic Judeo-Christian civil order.

In the very least, the authors urge their readers to embark on greater, interdisciplinary study of subsidiarity and open their minds to examine various sectors of society in order to reconstruct its cultural depth and breadth. The collection of unique essays on subsidiarity engage with applied questions of ontology, moral anthropology, state versus market polarities, populist politics, European law and the Christian democratic tradition, as well as complex healthcare policy and capital asset management.

As the book makes patently clear, subsidiarity is certainly nothing novel, having been generally introduced by Pope Leo XIII in his anti-socialist and pro-private property encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and, later, more formally by Pius XI in his 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, right when Marxist, Fascist and National Socialist regimes were gaining central and eastern European political-economic power and fomenting a Second World War. Pius penned the iconic formula: ‘Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.’ (QA, n. 79)

Amid a post bellum period in which free societies eschewed reincarnations of 1930s totalitarianism and while allowing for the culture of local governance and de-centralized problem solving to be sewn deeply into the core of Western-style free societies, the principle of subsidiarity was indeed in full bloom. That is, until very recently.

The Covid pandemic changed that flourishing subsidiarity mind-set. It largely de-anchored the Church’s barque and her influence over a subsidiarity-based civil order. The Catholic social magisterium’s charism for personal responsibility was completely abandoned in favor of a very heavy-handed state hierarchy. No longer was there a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction in free societies for instinctively applying strong local management to local problems. Both ecclesial and lay civil institutions stood ‘weak-kneed’ before dictatorial governmental regimes exerting total control over the fundamental order of entire populations who depended on their promises for emergency social welfare between 2020 and 2022.

No doubt, subsidiarity is and has been under siege in recent years. It was not just a tactical strike during the pandemic by ideological state central planners. Still today, to the East, we see the Chinese Communist Party’s iron grip over what appear to be independent yet nevertheless puppet provinces; we also see Beijing’s Belt and Road initiatives overtake ever more foreign infrastructure. An insatiable Russian imperial appetite or Soviet nostalgia – take your pick – is behind Vladimir Putin’s war mongering in Ukraine and potentially beyond into NATO territory. While Great Britain escaped the yoke of Brussels‘ continental controls, Eurocrats are hungry for a more united foreign and public policy and the blurring of national and local sovereignty in terms of political-economic public policy. Across the Atlantic we witness arcane Canadian market monopolies and Venezuela wading ever deeper into tyrannical quicksand while inspiring other neo-Marxist regimes to rise up and shackle outspoken local opponents. 

Hence, as Lord Acton admonished that liberty is the high-hanging and most delicate fruit of a mature civilization, so too does subsidiarity hang in the balance when we easily cede our individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Subsidiarity, indeed, must be constantly reexamined during every generational push and pull toward bigger and smaller forms of management, while societies seesaw between more and less individual protagonism, between more and less dependency on nanny states and on elite central planners. That is exactly what the editors Martin Schlag and Boglárka Koller and their team of international contributors have brought to our urgent attention in Rethinking Subsidiarity.

The 225-page book is ‘multidisciplinary,’ as its subtitle states, allowing for readers to focus on diverse areas of subsidiarity’s practical application in the sectors of business, health, education, financial management, and political economy, and from various deeply set roots: theological, philosophical, historical, political and economical. Among the broad panorama of social questions we find: ‘Does subsidiarity offer a middle ground between utilitarianism and libertarianism? How does subsidiarity play into the creation of an organizational culture that fosters humanistic management? Is subsidiarity a personal virtue? How is employee participation specifically organized to allow the development of everybody’s gifts?’ (page 1)

In the limited space left for the review of a book that is largely conceptual and normative, and straddles the line between progressive and conservative social outlooks, it is best to focus on the most empirical of its contributions. This is the chapter by Christian Mendoza, The Principle of Subsidiarity: Overcoming Market and State Polarities.

In his practical analysis, Mendoza draws inspiration from natural law theorists such as the Oxford don John Finnis, Aquinas scholar Mary Hirschfeld and even libertarians such as Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. As he argues, markets, even the freest of economies and their billions of every-day transactions for local problem solving, can be an easy target for Big State controls and regulations when and if a major crisis occurs. A subsidiarity-based economy might soon lose its autonomy after a massive corruption scandal bankrupts several corporations in the same sector; or when a tech or real estate bubble bursts, displacing millions of employees and homeowners; or in the event of a an eco-Armageddon, as with the infernal wildfires in Los Angeles in January of 2025 that levelled large swaths of the metropolis.

In the most entrepreneurial economies, individual protagonists thrive precisely because they can plan and maneuver locally with as little bureaucracy as possible. Even so, as Mendoza writes, there are two market-mindsets. There are political-economic thinkers who, especially in times of crisis, ‘question whether it would be better to have an economy more regulated by the State apparatus.’ Yet, ‘on the contrary,’ he writes there are those who advocate, even amid chaos, ‘an economy entrusted to market agents’ and who ingeniously try ‘to define what would be the best social system in view of the common good’ (page 54).

The book, in large part, addresses this potential ‘dichotomy.’ Subsidiarity is not a black or white issue. It requires constant prudence, following the Church’s age-old social moniker to see, act and judge continuously. Subsidiarity cannot go to the extremes of economists, like Milton Friedman, who battle relentlessly for the maximization of local empowerment of business (‘the human being is considered a rational agent whose aim is to maximize his self-interest or utility function’ [page 55]). Most certainly, subsidiarity will not allow for centralized extremes, as we see among Latin American dictators who sweep any local power under the rug after executing so-called emergency national powers.    

The editors of Rethinking Subsidiarity believe that contemporary political, economic and legal structures have been polarized to the extremes: on the one side we have top-down socialized societies and, on the other, libertarian-leaning quasi anarchists that loathe Big Government. Schlag and Koeller believe we are reached a sort of impasse, or ‘stalemate’ in the tug of war between local/individual responsibility and national power grabs.

Herein lies the rethinking of subsidiarity, as if it were a reexamination of the social conscience. The editors believe that there is a middle ground, and it is none other than a principle which merely tends toward the local solutions to local problems, without being absolute. Subsidiarity is a modus operandi that allows for a both/and response in the polarized debate, since if and when the local solutions fail, there is plenty of room for more removed and distant agents of power to step in an attempt to resolve the issue at stake. A subsidiarity-based approach, thus, is about the right-rule. It is a virtuous mean between extremes, an “organizational principle that opens spaces of freedom in collective units.” (page 2).

To conclude, I highly recommend Rethinking Subsidiarity, particularly as a text for intensive studies on Catholic social thought. Readers of this unique publication will be challenged in their own thinking, to be sure. Furthermore, they will find a text that offers a balanced, honest approach without converting this classical principle of free society into an ideological panacea. Subsidiarity is one of many other social principles that make civil societies more just, more free and far more functional, providing indeed a valid ‘remedy against social and political unrest’ (page 62).

  

Rethinking Subsidiarity: Multidisciplinary Reflections on the Catholic Social Tradition, edited by Martin Schlag and Boglárka Koller was published in 2024 by Springer (ISBN 978-3-031-50142-5). 225pp.


Michael Severance is Director the Acton Institute’s Rome office. While advocating for free virtuous, and flourishing civil society based on personal responsibility, natural rights and entrepreneurship, Michael represents the Institute principally in Europe and the Eternal City via public speaking, contributing to international media, and the organisation of academic conferences. He also publishes scholarly works in several foreign languages and teaches philosophy of art and beauty for the Catholic University of America’s Rome Centre.