Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignity

"It is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community"--Pius XII

David H. Mcilroy, in an article subtitled "Christian Reflections on the Size, Shape, and Scope of Government," considers the strengths and weaknesses of two concepts in recent Christian political theory: subsidiarity, from Catholic social teaching, and sphere sovereignity, from the neo-Calvinist thought associated with Abraham Kuyper. Mcilroy suggests that each theory would help balance the weaknesses in the other.

Subsidiarity argues that policy and action decisions should take place at the lowest level of organization possible. The particular value of subsidiarity thinking is that it puts the burden of proof on the central authority to justify its involvement in more local matters. It also recognizes the basic nature of human dignity in its individual and local communal shapes. Human life is about personal responsibility, so centralizing too much decision-making is to deny growth in vrituous decision-making for people and their local associations. At its best subsidiarity is a principle of governmental restraint. However, the teaching typically doesn't think beyond the question of the level and type of governmental involvement.

Sphere sovereignity, on the other hand, is quite good at considering the relationship of all government to other spheres of life: family, church, art, science, economics, and other social associations. Sphere soverignity insists that these other realms of human life are to be separate from the state, and that each has its own concerns, practices, and authority because each sphere has its own tela that shape its decisions and traditions. The theory is especially useful in identifying the concerns of intermediate social institutions between the individual and the state. Unfortunately, by itself sphere sovereignity could be used to prop up the status quo and refuse to the state any concern in these matters.

Taking the two theories together, Mcilroy suggests that sphere sovereignity better identifies the levels of human life, while subsidiarity better determines when a central or higher government can make a case to become involved in intermediate associations. Namely, government may need to become involved when the actions of individuals within other spheres egregiously violate the telos of the tradition. For example, the parents who are child abusers need to be restrained by law. Educational institutions that are defrauding their students with poor education, if they cannot be corrected by internal review or by the accrediation of other education bodies, may need to be forced by state law to close down or reform their practices. The two theories taken together also argue that state involvement is to be brief, for the goal is to return the sphere in question to a healthy functioning in its own right.