Subsidiarity is good in theory, but often lacks justice in practice. It is human nature that when I have “got mine” through my own efforts that I do not want to share it with others. It is that multiplied many fold that becomes the problem with the Church’s notion of subsidiarity.
Maybe so. But if one walks (safer to drive) around in old inner city areas, one marvels at the churches that were built long ago, when people had barely enough to live on. Not only the churches, but the schools, the monasteries and the convents. Magnificent! I am old enough to have been around when the orphanages, the unwed mothers’ homes and so forth were just winking out of existence. I partially worked my way through graduate school working in the last true orphanage in a large city. It was old, but was a very well-appointed place; a real home. It had a chapel as big as some parish churches today. People obviously contributed incredible amounts to those institutions, at a time when they didn’t have all that much to contribute. I’m not sure human nature, per se, is quite as base as we might conclude from looking around us now.
One of the aspects of my occupation is that I have, for many years, examined land titles. In those old records are title summaries and old wills, probates and lawsuits. It absolutely amazes me, sometimes, to see the work that was lavished on some of those old documents…far beyond what was actually necessary to make them functional. Clearly, people had the time and resources to “fancy up” all kinds of things they did, yet made a living doing it all the same. It was plain they did it half for the joy of doing it, and had the time.
I have read old estate documents, and it’s fascinating to see not only how the relative values of certain things have changed, but how seemingly insufficient resource bases were very adequate in times past. Granted, those people did not have Ipods and flat screens to buy. But it’s plain that most lived fairly well. You look at the goods produced at the time, and things of the most lavish materials and craftsmanship were commonplaces. Something as simple as an electric fan made in 1920 will amost certainly run today; more smoothly and quietly and powerfully than something you might now buy at Walmart. Those old objects were built for a lifetime and more, and were unnecessarily aesthetically pleasing. The cheapest old treadle sewing machine you find at an antique store is a thing of art; durable, with good wood and steel and fancifully decorated for no functional reason at all.
But people were poorer then, weren’t they? Perhaps they were. But they also built those magnificent downtown churches and monasteries and convents and schools that are now converted or abandoned altogether.
I have also seen old tax records, and one thing is fairly plain to me. We are massively more taxed now, relative to what we make and what things cost, than was once the case. Granted, our governmental infrastructure now is more extensive. But is it really all that much better?
I remember my grandmother telling me she used to make day trips on the train to shop in a large city nearly 300 miles distant. She left in the early morning, and the train she chose was nonstop. The train station was right downtown in the city, and the way downtowns were concentrated then, you could walk to the major stores without significant difficulty. She would get back home in the early evening. Of course, she was able to nap on the way, have breakfast and dinner as well if she chose. No one but the most intrepid would do something like that by car now, (no passenger trains now) and it would take a lot more time to get it done than it took her. So, are we all that certain that all of the infrastructure we now have is all that essential?
I’m not one of those who think all things older were better. Manifestly many of them were not. But I am inclined to think we have been obliged to work harder and run faster for an end result that is not all that much better, giving due credit to the benefits of much of innovation. And why is that? My particular prejudice is that the governmental take, from the multiple taxes on bubble gum on up the scale, has reached a point that essentially “crowds out” a lot of the charity and local efforts that used to be affordable, both in terms of time and money. Sure, we get tax deductions for charitable donations. But if the government at all levels taxed us 10%, say, instead of 40% or more, we would have more to give to charity, and might not even care whether the donation was deductible or not.
Maybe there is no choice in all this. But I do think people have gotten so used the the idea that everything comes from the top and is directed from the top, that nobody even considers the possibility that many things might work as well or better from the bottom up. Not all, certainly, but many.
I am also old enough to barely remember the old parish “societies” that engaged in charitable work. Very substantial numbers of people contributed their time and resources to those. Those people knew who others were, and who had what happen to them, and who needed what. Those are also largely gone now. I suppose people do not now have the time to spend in that way, or the money. Nor do they know the people in their neighborhoods.
You can talk to retired people who spent their whole lives working in factories. They can often tell you exactly when their companies “speeded up the line”, and it happened a number of times throughout their working lives. Doubtless, corporate greed had something to do with that, and foreign competition. But I suspect government greed also had much to do with it. By the time a kid buys a piece of bubble gum, how many times has that little bit of nothing wrapped in paper been taxed before the kid pops it into his mouth?
