Subsidiarity

[argonian 12846]

Dear brothers in faith,

 

There is much talk today among secularists about the ‘rights of man’ which they purport to promise and guarantee, but in reality deny to the common man in the name of ‘democracy’. I ask you, dear reader, to consider for a moment the following two scenarios:

 

1. The community at large decide what your family must eat for dinner.
2. Your family decide for itself what it eats for dinner.

 

Which do you see as the more just? Fair? Favourable? Or just sensible? I imagine, my brethren in faith, most of you would pick the latter option for each of these. But as you may not be aware, it is the former that is the ‘democratic’ option. It is in the example of the former that the ‘democratic’ revolutionaries wish for you to live. For each and every choice a man makes for himself or his family to be up for vote by committee. For even the smallest of decisions men may make to be decided for them by mob rule. If you see this as tyranny, you are right.

Then what is the latter option, that which I imagine most sensible men find more favourable. This is the position known as subsidiarity, which declares that no larger unit should make a decision or perform a task which could be made or performed by a smaller unit. If a man can decide what he eats for dinner, why should the Government decide it for him? If a family can decide the way it ought to rear its children, why should the State interfere? If a community can police itself, why ought the State send the military in? 

 

Subsidiarity is not an anarchist proposition. It does not condemn or diminish the authority of the State or its Monarch, who rules by God-given right. Rather, it is merely a recognition of a basic fact: That each man, family, community, etc. should decide for itself the way by which it should be governed, and that these decisions should only be contradicted by higher authorities by necessity and not by arbitrary decision or whim. God made Man as a free-thinking creature so he could decide for himself; if He intended for Man to live as an an ant in a hive, He would have made it so. Yet... He did not. 

 

Every man was given the right, and indeed the duty, to lead and to rear his family in the manner he sees fit. Each community, town, and collection of the former was given the right to govern itself in the manner it sees necessary. And indeed, each nation was given the right to rule, protect, and govern groups of these aforementioned groupings in the same way. But no man, no Duke, no King, no Emperor, NOBODY, was given the right to usurp from those composite groups the right to govern themselves. Not even the greatest or most powerful of monarchs can claim the right to tell a father how to educate his children. No Government however empowered may usurp the power of a community that is well and fully capable of handling that power itself. 

 

The Lord God created this world in a hierarchy, but that did not mean that those on the top were granted total control over the lives of those beneath. Rather, those on top are charged with the protection of all those beneath them, including the protection of their ancient rights and liberties. This may at times require restrictions, such as how a Canonist nation may establish laws to lead its flock away from heresy(for Man has the right to the Truth, but not to lies). This may at times require taxation or levies, to fund or protect the very State which guarantees the rights of those constituent groups. But no moral or just law would ever require that the State revoke or gravely intrude upon the rights of its people. For there is no justice where there is no liberty.

 

Fr. Ailred Barclay.