Subsidiarity, Charity, and the Good Samaritan
- pastorcorner
- 7 hours ago
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Subsidiarity, Charity, and the Good Samaritan
The Parable of the Good Samaritan reinforces the truth that charity is personal, not bureaucratic. The Church includes all the baptized. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1 Cor. 12:27) The Catholic Church is universal. Many tribes and nationalities make up the Church. Like the relationship between Jesus and His disciples, the relationship between the clergy and the laity is personal.
The clergy are priests, prophets, and kings. They celebrate the sacraments, proclaim the Gospel, and rule the Church—especially parishes, dioceses, and religious orders. The Pope is also the secular ruler of the Vatican by necessity. But the Church does not permit the clergy to become politicians. (Some may remember the anomalies in Congress and during the Liberation Theology crisis many years ago. Pope John Paul II brought a painful but necessary resolution to the confusion.)
The laity are also priests, prophets, and kings by Baptism and according to their baptismal promises. They sanctify their lives by their encounter with Jesus in the sacraments. They proclaim the Gospel with their lives. They rule their personal lives, their families, communities, and nations. The lay sphere of life necessarily intersects with the religious sphere. In the Vatican II Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, the Council Fathers defined the rights and duties of the laity (as does Canon Law) according to our respective states of life.
The Catholic social principle of subsidiarity is central to Catholic thinking but neglected by most of us. The principle holds that the smallest, lowest, or least centralized component of authority should handle the responsibilities and circumstances of everyday living. The principle of subsidiarity derives from this fact of faith: God’s saving grace is personal.
The excesses of clericalism damage the complementary roles of priests and people. Clericalism ignores the duties of the laity and expects a kind of servile obedience. The all-too-common tendency of clericalism neglects to include the laity as essential members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
On the other hand, lay supremacy reduces the ministerial priesthood to a kind of pious trinket. Historically, particularly in the 19th Century, parish lay trustees attempted to wrestle control of parishes from their pastors. Modern versions range from outright dismissal of authoritative Church teaching to manipulation for unholy purposes. The twin excesses of clericalism and anti-clerical lay trusteeism violate the proper understanding of our respective and complementary roles as Catholics.
Violations of the Ten Commandments are always fair game for priests from the pulpit. So-called LGBTQ advocacy violates the Fifth and Sixth Commandments—and the First (because the LGBTQ ideology denies God’s creative supremacy). Government programs that fund Planned Parenthood violate the Fifth Commandment. The massive national debt steals from future generations and violates the Seventh Commandment.
A couple of years ago, a newcomer read my parish bulletin insert. The insert identified pro-Planned Parenthood and pro-(so-called) LGBTQ policies of the previous US administration. He left an irate message on my voicemail complaining that he didn’t come to the church to hear politics. He said he planned to report me to the IRS and the Washington Post. I told him to pound sand.
Except where budgetary questions directly violate the Commandments, the clergy should defer to the laity. Whether the government has the responsibility and should provide many services is a prudential judgment. The principle of subsidiarity suggests habitual caution.
When the clergy assert that the government must provide such services, it violates this basic principle. Alas, politicians only add to the violation by increasing the behemoth national debt, which will fall on the shoulders of the next generations of adults, an enormous injustice.
People often ask about the authoritative value of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB’s) recent comments on the budget recently approved by Congress and signed into law. The USCCB is the administrative arm of the American bishops and has no teaching authority apart from individual bishops.
Unfortunately, the USCCB often encroaches on the rights of the laity. The USCCB usually supports big government welfare spending programz. But as the principle of subsidiarity suggests, government programs are not charitable. Charity is personal, the result of God’s grace moving individual hearts. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a charitable Samaritan comes to the rescue, not a government agency. Without prejudice to worthy government programs initiated by the laity, the USCCB often blurs the distinction between the authoritative religious and the prudential political spheres.
The great Dunwoodie seminary moral theologian, Msgr. William Smith, once suggested that the bishops color-code their teaching documents. One color accentuates binding Church teaching. Another color highlights prudential judgements open to debate. Alternatively, the bishops could offer a complementary approach that would identify various prudential points of view, promoting dialogue and respectful argument.
The IRS recently signed a court agreement to allow churches to endorse candidates without risking their tax-exempt status. The decision reversed a 70-year ban that was in place based on the IRS’s interpretation of the “Johnson Amendment,” which prohibits nonprofits from engaging in political campaigns. (But liberal Protestant churches were always mysteriously exempt.) In response, the USCCB has confirmed that the Catholic Church will not endorse political candidates for public office in any elections, despite these tax code changes.
But the new IRS ruling doesn’t matter to Catholics who understand the distinction between Christian principles and prudential judgments. The clergy does not have a right before God to violate the rights of the laity by imposing their arguable prudential judgments upon them.
Priests must continue to preach against direct violations of the Ten Commandments and aim to respect the rights of the laity. The Catholic faith is personal, not bureaucratic. Here’s the good news with the latest IRS ruling: The gadflies who threaten to report priests to the IRS for preaching the Ten Commandments will have to be satisfied with the Washington Post.
St. Thomas More's final words before his execution provides the correct perspective: “I am the King’s good servant, but God's first."
**$$15 Ordinary Time Cycle C Subsidiarity, Charity, and the Good Samaritan
The all-too-common tendency of clericalism neglects to include the laity as essential members of the Mystical Body of Christ... On the other hand, lay supremacy reduces the ministerial priesthood to a kind of pious trinket.
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