A scholarly challenge to State over-reach

On the Dignity of Society. Catholic Social Teaching and Natural Law
F. Russell Hittinger, and Scott J. Roniger (ed.)
The Catholic University of America Press
May 2024
421 pages
ISBN: 978 0813238517

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When studying subsidiarity some years ago, I came across illuminating analyses of that principle from F. Russell Hittinger, so I was naturally drawn to this new collection of essays by Professor Hittinger, who is now Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of Tulsa in the US.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and St Louis University, Hittinger has taught and studied philosophy, natural law, American and Church history and Catholic social teaching. This impressive and thought-provoking book is the fruit of a lifetime of scholarship in these areas. There are three major sections – on Catholic Social Teaching, Natural Law and “First Truths”. Mary Ann Glendon contributes a Foreword while there is an informative introduction by the book’s editor, Scott J. Roniger.

A major theme is the development of Catholic social thought since the French Revolution, including the contribution to that tradition of significant Popes such as Leo XIII. Another theme relates to the challenges involved in giving a full and proper account of natural law.

The individual essays that are gathered together here for the first time had previously appeared in other publications. Chapter 1, for example, was published by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2008.

This first chapter examines the coherence of the four key principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: the dignity of the person, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good. It includes a penetrating analysis of the subsidiarity principle and can be warmly recommended to anyone interested in that principle.

Prof. Hittinger argues that Catholic social doctrine in its modern form can be traced to the French Revolution and its top-down, monopolistic view of the State and emerged in defence of two propositions. The first is that the State does not enjoy a monopoly over “group personhood”.  He also calls a group-person a “society” and defines it in more detail on page six and following. One example of a “group-person” would be a voluntary body. The second proposition is that “societies other than the State not only possess real dignity as rights-and-duties bearing unities, but that they also enjoy modes of authority proper to their own society” (p. 32).

Hittinger makes a strong case for the importance of the Revolution and its impact on Catholic social thought, though he and other scholars such as Chantal Delsol have also situated subsidiarity within a longer timespan, going back to Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas.

Chapter 1 usefully distinguishes between various conceptions of “devolution” – with which subsidiarity is sometimes confused – and the subsidiarity principle. Under the “concession” model of devolution, the State out-sources power to other groups for the purpose of efficiently creating and distributing certain goods and services such as charitable relief. Under an alternative, “power-checking” model of devolution, groups other than the State, sometimes called “intermediate powers’, are valued as a check on untrammelled State power. For example, private schools are seen as useful “not only because they efficiently allocate educational resources, but also because they check the untrammelled State power over education” (p. 29).

In the Catholic understanding, however, Hittinger maintains, drawing on Pope Leo XIII and other sources, there is a more positive bottom-up rather than top-down vision of societies other than the State. In other words, society does not devolve from the State or come into existence because of the State’s need to outsource power for socially useful ends.

Subsidiarity requires, Hittinger suggests, that the “sociality” of society be preserved and it requires the just treatment of self-governing societies. His argument is that there is a plurality of social groups, including the State, with distinct rights, but the State is not the sole legitimate entity. In aiding other bodies, the State should not, therefore, undermine their functioning.

The “sin” of the modern State, he argues, is that of claiming a monopoly over “group-personhood”.  He quotes the 1891 encyclical of Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, to the effect that if a public authority forbids its citizens to form associations, “it contradicts the very principle of its own existence, for both they and it exist in virtue of the like principle, namely, the natural tendency of man to dwell in society” (Par. 51).

Hittinger provides an amusing example of absurd overreach by the State – a Chinese Communist law of 2007 on reincarnation prohibited Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission!

In Irish public policy, in recent decades, we have also experienced a more prosaic overreach by the State. Thus, the contribution of voluntary organisations has sometimes been seen as an anomaly, the suggestion being that, in an ideal world, the Health Service Executive, for example, would run everything and voluntary bodies – many of which pre-date the modern Irish State – would conveniently wither away.

Modern conceptions of State sovereignty, Hittinger maintains, saw the human being as a citizen but not as a member of other societies, whereas subsidiarity provides an account of the “pluralism and sociality” of society.

I have focused somewhat here on Chapter 1 because of my interest in the subsidiarity principle but there are many interesting analyses from other essays in this wide-ranging collection.

Chapter 3, for example, returns to the theme of subsidiarity with a reflection on the pontificate of Pope Pius XI. Pius was the author of the famous social encyclical of 1931, Quadragesimo Anno, which championed the subsidiarity principle. For Pope Pius, social justice ensues when each person is given space to exercise his social “munus”, (a term going back to Roman times and meaning a solemn duty or service or gift), in order to contribute to the common good, and this “gift” may be individual or organisational.

Chapters 4 and 5 devote substantial attention to Pope Leo XIII. Chapter 4 looks at the three “necessary societies” identified by Leo XIII, and drawing on earlier traditions – that is, societies necessary for human happiness. They include domestic society (marriage and family), polity, and Church. These societies have been hugely impacted, Hittinger argues, by the “cultural revolution” of the 1960s and by the “techno-economic revolution” of modern times and he also touches here on Pope Francis’s vision of the Church as a “field hospital”.  Chapter 5 provides a fascinating overview of Pope Leo and his times and argues that Pope Leo re-discovered the teaching function of the Papacy.

Chapter 8 offers the author’s reflections on Pacem in Terris, the encyclical produced by Pope St John XXIII at a time of severe Cold War tensions. Chapter 9 looks at Pope St John Paul’s understanding of anthropological questions in Catholic theology, starting with his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979). Chapter 10 examines the perspectives on natural law of Joseph Ratzinger, who is described as “the most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century”.  This section traces Ratzinger’s ideas back to an important talk he gave in Cambridge in the 1980s.

Hittinger’s publication can be challenging in places. Chapter 7, for example – on Natural Law and practical reason – requires some background in theology and philosophy. In overall terms, however, most readers who are interested in Catholic social thought will find much of interest in this important publication and will benefit from the author’s vast learning and expertise in the topics covered. The publishers supply a useful index for those who wish to focus on particular topics.