Many years back, my father took us along to Florida on a work trip. With seven kids in the back of a gray Chevy Suburban, he pulled off the main drag to show us a “neighborhood.” Or rather, he pulled into a series of empty blocks and streets to show us that there was no neighborhood. No houses, no cars besides our own, no dogs, no kids, no backyards. The streets were there, but no life.
What we were seeing was a development that had been stymied by the 2007-2008 real estate crash that kicked off the Great Recession. Some investors had bet big, and in that case, they lost big in laying the groundwork for a neighborhood that never was anything more than empty streets.
Highways, avenues, and boulevards don’t exist for their own sake. Life would be miserable without them, but their existence is bound up with connecting people and places. They are just a part of, and not even the most important part of, a neighborhood.
Catholics have a similar view of the State’s relation to the rest of society. The State is a natural part of human existence, and its just authority comes from human nature. Therefore, in principle, it is ultimately divinely sanctioned (CCC 1884). But the Church in its teaching does not confuse “the State” with the rest of society, but rather part of a social fabric that serves a particular role in helping the other parts—particularly the family and the Church—achieve their legitimate and good ends.
A society, as the Catechism defines it, is “a group of persons bound together organically by a principle of unity that goes beyond each one of them.” It is not just practical for man to have societies, but rather a “requirement of his nature” (1879).
The Church rejects individualism, understood as each person being an atomized self-contained unit that can be perfected and fulfilled all alone and against others. In the beginning, God declared that “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Adam and Eve were ordered “to be fruitful and multiply” and create the first family, and therefore the first society.
The Church is not “Libertarian,” or at least not the caricatured version that thinks taxation is always theft and that those in government should never build roads. But the Church just as fiercely stands in opposition to those who would have the State usurp the roles, responsibilities, and powers of the other parts of society.
Like a road, governments’ legitimacy and usefulness are integrally connected to their boundaries. We can drive quickly down highways because people, animals, and other things we don’t want to run over with cars are not there. We can have cookouts in the backyard, take naps on our living room couches, and close our eyes in prayer after Mass because we are confident that SUVs and semitrucks won’t come barreling through. As emphatically as it rejects atomized individualism, the Church sets up clear guardrails against collectivism and government overreach. Paragraph 1885 of the Catechism sums it up:
The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order.
Pope St. John Paul II reiterates this thought when reflecting on Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum. John Paul, carrying with him the memory of Nazi Germany and the reality of the Soviet Union, is clear that it is not a Catholic idea that the State ought to expand to solve every social problem. He reminds us that Leo “frequently insists on necessary limits to the State’s intervention,” “inasmuch as the individual, the family, and society are prior to the State, and inasmuch as the State exists in order to protect their rights and not stifle them.”
Resistance to those in government encroaching on the rights of the rest of society is practically in American DNA. We take for granted that the rule of law constrains not just citizens, but government action as well. But that is only because the United States and the West—albeit the mixed influence of the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation—is the fruit of Christendom. The Caesars proclaimed themselves god-emperors, and the pharaohs were deified. The unification of the Temple and State gave uncontested legitimacy to what we would consider absolute tyranny. The family, the individual, and religion itself were unified with and therefore subservient to the State.
Our Lord, through the Church, broke that mindset. The martyrs in the Colosseum gladly honor the emperor, as St. Paul instructs them to, but will not offer a pinch of incense to him. St. Ambrose bars Emperor Theodosius from entering the cathedral due to the unjust blood on his hands. From the conviction that Our Lord meant what he said when he commanded us to “render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but render to God what belongs to God,” society in the Christian West was transformed. The many parts of it—individuals, families, local communities, businesses, schools, ministries, etc.—were no longer slaves of the State, but instead partners in the enterprise of building the common good, having rights that came from the Creator that the State must recognize.
So what impact should this have on our attitudes, behavior, and political life?
Reflexively crying “fascist” or “communist” at every political candidate who advocates for some government program or agency would be inordinate. But it would be just as inordinate for Catholics to demand every proposed government initiative without critical thought, and even worse to accuse those who have concerns with a seemingly ever-expanding government of being “radical individualists.” Rather, when looking at societal problems, we need to keep in mind that there is a burden of proof that the State needs to clear if it starts intervening in the affairs of families, local communities, etc. There may be a case for such intervention, but a case must be made. Good intentions do not equate to prudent or just solutions.
The Church’s teaching is clear: the State is a part of (and not the most important part of) society. Catholics cannot pawn all problems off on the government. Government is not capable of solving all things, just as roads are not capable of giving shelter, warmth, or security. If we are good citizens and good disciples, we need to step up in our families, parishes, civic organizations, and local communities. These are the houses, yards, and parks that make our neighborhoods alive. Let’s not, as the poet sang, “pave paradise and put up a parking lot” by ceding responsibility for our families and neighbors to people in government because we are too lazy or self-absorbed.
G.K. Chesterton expertly sums it up:
Now, I know there is a feeling that Government can do anything. But if Government could do anything, nothing would exist except Government. . . . The State can only free society from the criminal; the Church sought to free the criminal from the crime.
Abolish religion if you like. Throw everything on secular government if you like. But do not be surprised if a machinery that was never meant to do anything but secure external decency and order fails to secure internal honesty and peace.