CST in the USA

As you may have noticed in today’s “First Links,” (and as Rob Vischer at  Mirror of Justice  has also noted ) Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan recently defended his budget proposal by invoking Catholic social teaching, specifically the challenging tenets of subsidiarity and the “preferential option for the poor.” On the first point:

Ryan said that the principle of subsidiarity — a notion, rooted in Catholic social teaching, that decisions are best made at most local level available — guided his thinking on budget planning.

“To me, the principle of subsidiarity, which is really federalism, meaning government closest to the people governs best, having a civil society . . . where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that’s how we advance the common good,” Ryan said.

I don’t think it’s nitpicking to point out that “subsidiarity” isn’t the same thing as federalism, even setting the formal legal and constitutional implications of the latter aside. Federalism implies divided sovereignty, not necessarily an equal division of labor or decisionmaking. And “localism,” which seems to be used as another synonym here, isn’t quite the same thing as subsidiarily either. Localism is a preference for the small-scale and close-by in nearly every instance; it is not at all incompatible with Catholic social thought, I would argue, but the specific principle of ‘subsidiarity’ states that decisions ought to be made at the lowest level possible . True,  implementing this in practice would likely result in a noticeable decentralization of our government. But it does imply, occasionally, that the federal or national level is the lowest level possible—say, when the question involves building a missile interception system, deciding the legal status of immigrants, or even running a broad public assistance program.

On the second element of Ryan’s claims—that wily “preferential option for the poor,” Ryan happily avoids the temptation to contort its meaning by enlisting it as another argument for laissez-faire economics. Focusing on the fact that the tenet’s ultimate goal is not only the material satisfaction of the poor but the elevation of the poor out of poverty through individual and societal improvement, he says: “don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty out onto life of independence.” All true, though as an addendum it is worth mentioning that there is a difference between “making people dependent on government” and simply establishing a welfare program—even if that births a dilemma requiring constant vigilance.

Ultimately, Vischer isn’t too surprised by the content of the remarks, admitting that this: “[is] simply another example of CST defying easy categorization; I have more respect for folks who acknowledge that. (And that’s probably why I’d be a disaster in politics, where nuance does not seem to go over well.)” I agree, though I think there is perhaps more than an abstract ‘politics’ at work: these views, however imperfectly espoused by Ryan and others, are a particularly tough sell in this country, which lacks a ‘Christian democratic’ tradition. Many are simply baffled by the Church’s insistence on positions which seem to be culturally “conservative” in one area and borderline-“socialistic” in others, and so selectively choose the ones which best accord with their favored ideology. For the most part, it seems, Ryan avoided doing that, and whatever one thinks of his budget proposal he does deserve credit for at least introducing these categories to American discourse.