Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Lowest Possible Level
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| Father Robert Behnke |
Once again in the announcements tonight, you will hear about the short course Father Campbell is presently offering. I refer to it as a short course because it is offered on the four Monday evenings in February, and the first of those Mondays has already passed. Nonetheless, I want to encourage you, as I did in my homily last weekend at another Mass, to take advantage of this special opportunity. I can vouch for this being an opportunity, since I attended last Monday’s first session with about ten others; several folks mentioned that, but for the cold and snowy weather, they would have come last Monday. I can understand how difficult it may be to come out again at night after a long and a hard day’s work; nevertheless, actually, I wish the whole parish would come, both because, as I already said, I can vouch that Father Campbell is doing a fine job in his presentation, but also because the topic of the course – the social doctrine of the Church – is so important, yet many Catholics are so unfamiliar with it, and the understanding of its importance is crucial for our times - our times in America and our times in the world. If you think not, reflect for a moment on the major news story of the past several weeks – Egypt: its radical, immediate, change in its government; its effect on the stock market; its effect on the price of oil and so on the prices gasoline and heating fuel and airline fuel and airline ticket prices and thus its effect on transportation and jobs and employment and unemployment; the prominence of what the media refer to as “the Muslim Brotherhood” – and what, in all these effects, are right and just and Christian and loving and pleasing to Our Lord. I have heard it often claimed that the social doctrine of the Church is among the Church’s best-kept secrets. I spoke at Mass last week about how, if the world had paid attention to what Pope Leo XIII wrote 121 years ago in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, many of the world’s problems and catastrophes of the last 121 years might have been avoided. To be a faithful Catholic means, as Pope Leo wrote 121 years ago, that each of us must grow in both knowledge and propagation of everything the Church teaches; how can we defend and how can we spread truths we don’t know?
Over the past generation or so, there has been a serious flaw in the implementation of Catholic social teaching in the United States. Many Catholics, including many Catholic leaders, have thought to promote big government solutions to social problems with little thought to the negative consequences of subordinating every aspect of the social order to the power of the State, something which all the popes going back 120+ years to Pope Leo XIII have stated is not what the Church teaches or wants to see practiced. Although this is slowly beginning to change, as our bishops are now finding themselves in an increasingly adversarial relationship with government on strictly moral grounds, it is important to observe that this long-time default position has been derived from a false understanding of the Catholic social principle of solidarity – a principle which Father Campbell explained well last Monday and something which I am certain about which he will speak again.
Many Catholics, especially Catholics and their leaders in the great industrial cities of America which have had such large Catholic populations, have confused solidarity with the adoption of governmental social programs. But right at the beginning of his most recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate – Love in Truth - Pope Benedict identified this as an error when he wrote: Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. He also discussed the propensity to rely on large, impersonal institutions, which can never be a substitute for solidarity…asense of responsibility on the part of everyone…and to mature into a love that ‘becomes concern and care for the other’…. I hear in those words of Pope Benedict a contemporary echo of the words Our Lord speaks in the Gospel tonight: …whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven….whoever is angry with his brother is liable to judgment….Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise….you will not be released until you have paid the last penny….everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart….whoever divorces his wife…causes her to commit adultery….Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one…. Over and over again, Our Lord – perhaps with more than just a hint of righteous anger coming from His knowledge of how often His commandments are broken, avoided, disregarded, passed over, or minimized in importance – is telling us you and I are responsible for what you and I do; you and I are responsible for what you and I do both for others and to others. Again, in the words of Pope Benedict – the Vicar of Christ - …a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone….
Unfortunately, in America, too much confidence has been placed in those social institutions of government, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective of personal care, personal solidarity, responsibility for the need of every citizen in any and all circumstances automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because personal responsibility for oneself and for others, for the authentic Christian, is primarily a dimension of the vocation received at the moment of baptism: …thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (not thyselves)….as long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it for me…. But this free assumption of responsibility in solidarity is precisely what is lacking when we always turn to government to implement broad social solutions rather than our doing our personal duty as baptized Christians.
In fact, a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity requires engagement with another key Catholic social principle, namely subsidiarity. The meaning of subsidiarity is that things should be done on the lowest level possible, and that if assistance is needed from higher levels of organization, the higher levels should, whenever possible, assist the lower levels rather than replace them. That is why, for example, most of the experience of the Church for most Catholics takes place in their local parish rather than at archdiocesan headquarters or in Rome, and why the Catholic Church does not, as do some Protestant denominations, have huge massive mega-churches. This is a foundational Catholic social principle which is written into Church law as well as Church practice. Subsidiarity is essential to human dignity because it ensures that people are directly involved in the solutions to their problems, and that these solutions are implemented and controlled at the levels closest to home, where they can be influenced or even managed by those most affected. That is why, for example, in this little parish there is a food pantry on site for those in need.
Subsidiarity encourages both personal responsibility and the creative development of community-level organizations to assist individuals in the resolution of particular problems. These could be neighborhood associations, churches, businesses organized to provide needed services, fraternal organizations, unions, professional associations, and charitable groups, with the involvement of formal government bodies only when the power of law and law enforcement genuinely needs to be invoked.
All of this has an intrinsic supernatural dimension, as we see clearly from the words of Our Lord in tonight’s Gospel. Can we ever expect the government – especially our current government – on its own, to stop, or even to curtail, certain sins and crimes like abortion, euthanasia, same-sex unions, research using human embryos, cloning, if we just sit back and wait and say to ourselves something like…it’s the government’s place to take care of this; it has nothing to do with me…? Is that the straight Yes or No Our Lord requires from me, or is my multiplication of excusing words something that is…from the evil one…?
In most cases, the invocation of the power of the State diminishes personal responsibility. We will like this only if we mistakenly think it gets us off the hook. In other words, the invocation of State power typically means: the State will make things right; therefore, I don’t have to worry about this any longer…. But, of course, in most cases, the State cannot make things right at all. As the Pope writes…institutionsare not enough, for human development…involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone….
Especially if you are a Chicago resident voting next week for mayor and city clerk and city treasurer and alderman, but no matter where you reside, keep in mind two definite truths: The Church’s magisterium – its authority to teach authentic apostolic truths - exercised by the popes especially in their encyclicals, including all the great encyclicals treating social truths and justice - this teaching magisterium operates always under the promised guidance of God the Holy Spirit. Western culture, including our American political system, while seemingly at the present time a greater and a stronger thing, sadly has no such supernatural guarantee. So, whom will you trust, with your life, and with your soul?
Father Robert Behnke
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