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Funding Social Services Provided by Churches By Msgr. George G. Higgins The Yardstick March 26, 2001 President Bush's program of funding social services provided by faith-based organizations predictably has stirred up a public debate about the separation of church and state. Less predictably, serious questions about funding faith-based programs have been raised by conservative religious groups which fear, not that these programs will violate the separation of church and state but that they will limit the freedom of religious organizations to follow their own beliefs in the administration of social programs. Both of these issues are, of course, very important, but my own interest in the president's program has less to do with these two issues than with the real meaning of the principle of subsidiarity to which many proponents of the president's program have appealed as their primary argument in favor of funding faith-based social service agencies. The principle of subsidiarity is so central to Catholic social teaching that it has come to be thought of in some circles as an exclusively Catholic principle of social ethics. The principle says, in rough summary, that institutions closest to individuals should meet social needs to the extent that they can: families, communities, churches, voluntary organizations, local governments and state governments as opposed to the federal government. To borrow the title of an influential book by the late F.E. Schumacher, the principle of subsidiarity is condensed by some into the simplistic adage that “small is beautiful.” Maybe so, but a word of caution is in order. To say that small is beautiful is not to say, without a carload of qualifications, that government is best which governs least or that so-called big government -- i.e. the federal government -- is by definition a violation of the principle of subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiarity as we understand it today does not mean that that government is best which governs least. To the contrary, it means that while government should not arbitrarily usurp the role of individuals or voluntary organizations in social and economic life, neither should it hesitate to adopt such programs as are required by the common good and are beyond the competence of individual citizens or groups of citizens. Certain Catholic writers may themselves be partially to blame that some non-Catholics fail to see that this is the real meaning of the principle of subsidiarity in the Catholic tradition of social ethics. Such Catholic writers, in order to highlight the importance of voluntary nongovernmental organizations, may have left the impression inadvertently that they were playing down the proper role of government in the field of social welfare and social reform. If any Catholic writers in the past took such a one-sided view of the principle of subsidiarity, their definition of the principle was corrected by Pope John XXIII's encyclicals “Mater et Magistra” (“Christianity and Social Progress”) and “Pacem in Terris” (“Peace on Earth”). One of the most noteworthy features of these two encyclicals is their realistic and sophisticated emphasis on the need for government -- even so-called big government -- to play a crucial role in social life because of the complexity of the problems that have arisen since the publication in 1891 of Leo XIII's encyclical “Rerum Novarum” and the publication in 1931 of Pius XI's encyclical “Quadragesimo Anno.” Pope John XXIII's two encyclicals stressed the fact that, in light of the complexity of modern social and economic life, there must be the closest possible cooperation between voluntary groups and the government, and that the government, in addition to helping voluntary groups whenever feasible, is also required to do much on its own initiative in the field of social welfare and social reform. Papal Social Encyclicals Other Catholic Social Teachings General Articles of Interest Catholic Worker Connection Msgr. George Higgins Home Page E-Mail: Fr. Sinclair Oubre