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The Common Good: Chinese and American Perspectives pp 261–289Cite as

Who Is Responsible for the Common Good? Catholic Social Teaching and the Praxis of Subsidiarity

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Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture ((PSCC,volume 23))

Abstract

If there is an overlapping consensus emerging from our attempt at a dialogue, it is that the common good is both more prominent and more problematic than it may have seemed to previous generations. For a long time I have shared David Solomon’s concern over its fragility (Solomon 2013), although I suspect that the arid atmosphere generated by modern analytic philosophy—to which he attributes this fragility—is a reflection of far deeper fault lines in our ideological conflicts and culture wars. My own attitude is closer to that of Lo P.C. (Lo 2013), who regards these same symptoms as an opportunity for mutual learning and renewed efforts at consensus-building, given the uncanny convergences in the ways in which the common good is being rediscovered as well as undermined in both China and the USA. Our hope for further progress in dialogue, apparently, is not shared by Tristram Engelhardt, who believes that the “moral pluralism” that surfaces in any attempt to achieve a common understanding of the common good is intractable, unless we accept a “God’s-eye perspective” and obediently conform our own ideas about what is right and good to God’s own revealed preferences (Engelhardt 2013). To be sure, invoking a “God’s-eye perspective” risks scuttling any possibility of a Sino-American dialogue, for all of our Chinese colleagues who identify with one tradition or another of classical Chinese philosophy are agreed that Judeo-Christian or biblical understandings of God simply do not mean the same as what Chinese traditions mean by gods, or the Great Ultimate, or the will of Heaven.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Specifically relevant for understanding CST’s perspectives on the common good is Wittgenstein’s theory of “family resemblances,” articulated in his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides this clarification of family resemblances:

    There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally—and dogmatically—for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through “a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing” (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form—be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009).

    In my previous research on the common good, I deliberately set aside the quest or an essential definition in order to explore the “complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing” evident in CST’s use of the term. To be sure, within this approach, CST is properly regarded as a “language-game,” a Wittgensteinian formulation that, in my view, helps us to understand the actual content of any living tradition.

  2. 2.

    In a previous essay on the common good in CST (McCann 2005), I attempted to create such a map, and suggested that the diversity of concerns highlighted by that term were intelligible as representing phases in the Roman Catholic church’s ongoing struggle with modernization. If this explanation is valid, it ought to reinforce the interest in CST among Chinese moral philosophers, who are acutely aware of the challenges that modernization has meant for the current and future status of Confucianism in China.

  3. 3.

    Under Leo XIII, CST regarded both the State and the Church as “perfect societies,” in the sense that both possessed everything necessary within themselves to accomplish their institutional mission, unlike the family and other forms of association, which—though natural—were “imperfect” in the sense that they were dependent on both Church and State to fulfill their purposes. Thus understood, the common good refers to the good that only perfect societies can achieve, with the difference that the State was charged with enacting the common good in “temporal” or worldly matters, while the Church attended to it in “spiritual” matters. Given the Church’s basic claim to moral authority, it thus asserted the priority of the spiritual over the temporal, and thus regarded as normal the situation in which the State enacts and enforces laws that are consistent with the Church’s teaching—again, as one might expect in a “God’s-eye perspective.” Libertas, however, was struggling with the abnormal situation of post-revolutionary Western Europe, where Christendom—or, if you will, the traditional “Alliance of Throne and Altar”—had been destroyed, and where states no longer looked to the Pope for wise counsel about the common good. Thus, Libertas acknowledges the need for compromise, or continued engagement in public life, thus ending the church’s unilateral abdication of its responsibilities for the common good. Libertas’ argument for continued engagement even in a public life regarded as compromised and compromising is crucial for understanding what Leo XIII actually meant and did not mean to accomplish with Rerum Novarum, which would later be hailed as the point of departure for modern CST.

  4. 4.

    The conception of the social order outlined in QA may serve as a basis for comparison with current discussions in China concerning of the ideal of a “harmonious society,” as observed in Albert Chen’s essay (Chen 2013, 85–102). Clearly, QA, like RN, emphasizes amicable cooperation, based on the “strong bond” provided by a common understanding of the common good, achieved through social harmony rather than juridical imposition. CST is opposed in principle to the Marxist ideology of class conflict, denying both its historic inevitability and its revolutionary efficacy as in the praxis of class struggle. CST believes that the Marxist ideological error here is rooted in the deeper problem of its deliberate misrepresentation and rejection of the reality of God.

  5. 5.

    Because it is important to understand Pius XI’s ambivalence, as of 1931, about fascism, here is the relevant statement in QA quoted in full:

    We are compelled to say that to Our certain knowledge there are not wanting some who fear that the State, instead of confining itself as it ought to the furnishing of necessary and adequate assistance, is substituting itself for free activity; that the new syndical and corporative order savors too much of an involved and political system of administration; and that (in spite of those more general advantages mentioned above, which are of course fully admitted) it rather serves particular political ends than leads to the reconstruction and promotion of a better social order.

    To achieve this latter lofty aim, and in particular to promote the common good truly and permanently, We hold it is first and above everything wholly necessary that God bless it and, secondly, that all men of good will work with united effort toward that end. We are further convinced, as a necessary consequence, that this end will be attained the more certainly the larger the number of those ready to contribute toward it their technical, occupational, and social knowledge and experience; and also, what is more important, the greater the contribution made thereto of Catholic principles and their application, not indeed by Catholic Action (which excludes strictly syndical or political activities from its scope) but by those sons of Ours whom Catholic Action imbues with Catholic principles and trains for carrying on an apostolate under the leadership and teaching guidance of the Church (Pius XI 1931, pars. 95–96).

    Clearly, QA’s reasoning is consistent with the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of compromise outlined by Leo XIII in Libertas.

  6. 6.

    It is almost impossible to overstate the practical importance of Gaudium et Spes’ specific pledges regarding the role the Roman Catholic church seeks to claim for itself in civil society as a whole. Coupled with Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Vatican Council II 1965b), the chapter on “The Life of the Political Community” (Vatican Council II 1965a, pars. 73–76) means not only that the Vatican has quietly withdrawn its traditional claims regarding its privileged role in society and politics, but also that, in principle, the church is committed to assisting the State and the institutions of civil society rather than directing them toward the common good. While the Vatican’s subsequent policies have not always been consistent with these pledges—for example, in the struggle over the Polish constitution after the collapse of the Jaruzelski government in 1990—Chinese as well as Western scholars concerned about the basis for a possible reconciliation between the Vatican and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (中国天主教爱国会) need to understand these pledges, their historical context, and their relevance for establishing a modus vivendi that respects both the integrity of the church’s spiritual and moral mission and the legitimate security interests of the PRC government.

  7. 7.

    The emerging eschatological character of CST’s notion of the common good with its reformist practical implications makes it possible to pursue comparisons with Albert Chen’s provocative analysis (Chen 2013) of Kang Youwei’s philosophy of history, in which a utopian interpretation of “Datong” sustains a conservative approach to social and political reform in China. There are, of course, major differences between Christian eschatological perspectives and Kang Youwei’s utopian thinking. For one, CST’s biblically-oriented theology of history does not remember any Golden Age, and the expectation of the Parousia or the coming of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1–27) marks the end of history as we know it, rather than the inauguration of a “Datong” as a new phase of history. Nevertheless, both visions serve to sustain commitment to the common good, while moderating excessive hopes about its complete realization in the current era, however it is characterized.

  8. 8.

    Notice that globalization has thus also rendered obsolete CST’s traditional understanding of the State as a perfect society, as described previously in footnote six. If particular states cannot effectively oversee and direct their national economies without the assistance of “effective international agencies,” they cannot be regarded as “perfect societies” in the traditional sense. CST’s recognition of a universal common good thus logically requires the advancement of such agencies, and in fact is realized in the Vatican’s wholehearted support for the United Nations and the expansion of its authority in international relations. CST’s specific statements in support of the United Nations are evident beginning with John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (John XXIII 1963, pars. 142–145), where the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is explicitly and warmly endorsed. Cf. also Centesimus Annus (John Paul II 1991, par. 21) and Caritas in Veritate (Benedict XVI 2009, par. 67).

  9. 9.

    In order to reassure their readers still further, the bishops cite a list of then-innovative works on policy planning and management that they believe are consistent with the principle of subsidiarity (U.S. Catholic Bishops 1986, ch. 4, fn. 22). To be sure, this list would have to be updated in light of contemporary concerns for the common good; nevertheless, it ought to make clear that Economic Justice for All attempts a very detailed and innovative interpretation of the Principle of Subsidiarity that is meant both to enable the State to carry out its proper responsibilities for the common good and to ensure that it does not become “Statist” by overstepping the limits inherent in these responsibilities. The website containing this text (http://www.osjspm.org/catholic_social_teaching.aspx) was developed by the Office of Social Justice of St. Paul and Minneapolis. It is the single most convenient online source for all the major documents in the tradition of CST.

  10. 10.

    The point made here is substantively the same as that first articulated by Leo XIII in his conception of Church-State relations: both the church and the State have their own distinct responsibilities for the common good. But note CST’s shift from juridical to personalist rhetoric: the concept of a perfect society no longer guides the thinking here, with a distinction between the spiritual and temporal orders; instead, the language of love comes to the foreground. Here is the passage in full so that readers may appreciate the difference:

    We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human (Benedict XVI 2005, par. 28).

    Here the traditional assertion of full partnership between Church and State is quietly withdrawn in favor of a more modest recognition of the realities of institutional pluralism characteristic of fully modernized societies. The church is described as “one of those living forces,” just one, but one whose assistance may be indispensable for fostering the spiritual development without which the pursuit of the common good becomes impossible. This more modest claim is consistent with Vatican II’s pledge regarding the role of the church in politics and society (cf. fn. 9’s discussion of Vatican Council II 1965a, pars. 73–76). Benedict’s elaboration of the meaning of “charity” in both encyclical letters provides the basis for dialogue, not only over the significance of Christian spirituality for the common good ably developed for us in Mary Keys’ essay (Keys 2013), but also over the differing ways in which love is understood and enacted in Confucian and Moist thought, as developed in Ellen Zhang’s essay (2013). Coupled with Albert Chen’s interpretation of Kang Youwei’s critique of Confucian familism (Chen 2013), Zhang’s reconstruction of Mozi’s “inclusive care” suggests that the ongoing development of Chinese social thought is sure to recognize the need to go beyond any view of morality that finds its highest expression in the family. Those schooled in the traditions of CST, who like myself have been raised in Catholic families not all that dissimilar from traditional Chinese families, are likely to be sympathetic to both Chen and Zhang in their awareness of the limitations of family-oriented morality. Those limits are not likely to be understood apart from first-hand experience in traditional families where the opportunities of some members for personal self-realization are all too often foreclosed for the sake of the family’s progress as a whole. Sometimes, familial appeals to love may condone, if not actually mask, injustices that cannot be fully appreciated simply by intensifying one’s personal cultivation of filial piety.

  11. 11.

    Benedict’s association of subsidiarity with human freedom is reminiscent of the discussion of both these concepts in the essay on “Freedom” in The Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi (Mueller and Rahner 2004). In his philosophical analysis of freedom, Mueller characterizes the subsidiarity as the overriding “principle which regulates the mode of realization of freedom” (Mueller and Rahner 2004, p. 539). Mueller’s discussion of freedom also makes it clear—if it isn’t clear already—that the understanding of the freedom and dignity of the human person understood in Roman Catholic theology and ethics is strikingly different from the post-Cartesian “Billiard-Ball Individualism” (BBI) criticized in Stephen Erickson’s essay.

  12. 12.

    Since reciprocity or the so-called “Golden Rule” is common to the moral teachings of Jesus and Confucius, Benedict’s linkage of it to CST’s principle of subsidiarity may be useful in trying to renew “a fruitful dialogue of faith and reason” between this Catholic tradition and Chinese moral philosophy on the nature of the social order, and humanity’s responsibilities within it. The challenges involved in reconstructing an ethic of “charity” or “inclusive care” in which reciprocity is both an observable fact and a moral expectation is well illustrated by Ellen Zhang (2013). The various contemporary criticisms launched against Mozi’s moral philosophy find their parallels in modern analytic perspectives on Jesus’ teaching on love as central to Christian ethics. (Cf., for example, Frankena 1973).

  13. 13.

    Left unanswered, however, are questions concerning just how the reforms envisioned by Benedict may differ from the already controversial, and often counter-productive efforts of the IMF and the World Bank, who are routinely accused of imposing a Western model of international capitalism upon nations that are culturally and philosophically opposed to it, ostensibly in the interest of greater transparency and accountability in the struggle against corruption. Even more basic, in light of the papers given in this dialogue by our Chinese colleagues, Jue Wang (2013), Ruiping Fan (2013), and Jonathan Chan (2013), is the question whether Benedict’s approach to welfare reform has lost the critical edge that it should have received from the principle of subsidiarity. After all, welfare reform is primarily assistance provided by the State to families, particularly meant to help families cope with the needs of dependent children and the elderly. If welfare reform were truly guided by the principle of subsidiarity, it would have to focus, first of all, on whether such programs actually empower families or undermine them. There is ample evidence that welfare reform in the USA has often tended to undermine families, even to the point of breaking them up in order to qualify for assistance (cf. McCann 1984, where I discuss this problem in relation to the US Catholic bishops’ attempt to formulate their pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All). The strong defense of Confucian familism by Fan and filial piety by Wang should challenge promoters of CST, like myself, to be equally clear about precisely how the principle of subsidiarity would apply in proposals for welfare reform to ensure that these proposals do not unnecessarily expand opportunities for State agencies to intervene in ways that usurp the role of families in caring for their own children and aged parents.

  14. 14.

    Benedict’s eagerness to reconstruct CST as a contribution to “a new humanistic synthesis” once again confirms the relevance of CST to our Sino-American dialogue. Given the degree of overlapping consensus between CST and Confucian moral philosophy, one might be tempted to accept Ruiping Fan’s suggestion that Confucian morality be regarded as the common starting point for such an effort, with the differences among Chinese perspectives being marginalized as differences in merely “metaphysical” presuppositions. This detailed account of how CST conceives of the common good and the principle of subsidiarity, however, ought to suggest that differences in “metaphysics” are very important, and themselves need to be the subject of dialogue. For it is impossible to detach CST’s practical perspectives—as this paper shows—from the Christian theocentric presuppositions, its claim as a “God’s-eye view,” if you will. The differences apparent at that “metaphysical” level, however, are hardly intractable, if one takes into account the diverse history of Christian theology as well as the diversity of Chinese philosophical perspectives already represented in our Sino-American dialogue.

  15. 15.

    What Benedict means by introducing the concept of a “gift economy” to interpret the distinctive contribution of civil society to both the State and the marketplace requires further clarification. Generally, he sees civil society as the indispensable generator of an indispensable form of social capital, namely, trust and the social virtues in which it is rooted, without which in fact both the marketplace and governments must fail to make their own distinctive contributions to the common good. I have attempted to clarify this point in McCann (2011).

  16. 16.

    One immediately calls to mind the pioneering work of Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch Calvinist, and the contemporary reflections of Michael Walzer, an American Jewish philosopher, as well as the various studies on “mediating structures” presented by Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Religious Studies, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, USA

    Dennis P. McCann

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  1. Dennis P. McCann
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Correspondence to Dennis P. McCann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

    David Solomon

  2. Centre for Applied Ethics Shaw Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR

    P.C. Lo

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McCann, D.P. (2014). Who Is Responsible for the Common Good? Catholic Social Teaching and the Praxis of Subsidiarity. In: Solomon, D., Lo, P. (eds) The Common Good: Chinese and American Perspectives. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7272-4_13

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