Patrick Brennan graciously noted my engagement with his piece on subsidiarity, charitably calling it “substantive.” He takes issue, however, with my “pace Brennan.” He rightly responds that “the very point of the book to which my chapter is a contribution is a ‘comparative’ perspective on subsidiarity.” He continues, “My assigned task in writing the chapter was to tell the what subsidiarity means in Catholic social doctrine, period.”

To clarify, it seems to me that Brennan is quite ably articulating and explicating a particularly vigorous and metaphysically robust version of subsidiarity often associated with Catholic social teaching, and particularly the neo-Thomist revival of the previous two centuries. My quibble, and I’m not sure if it amounts to much more than that, is with the idea that this is identical to “what subsidiarity means in Catholic social doctrine, period.”

In the papers linked in the previous post I do make more specific claims with respect to subsidiarity in “other” traditions, particularly the Reformed. But given the shared medieval (and even to a great extent the early modern) background and the diversity there, I do wonder whether that more robust, ontologically-freighted version of subsidiarity is the only version at play in the specifically Roman Catholic tradition, either before or after 1891.
Read more on Defining Subsidiarity Down…

It looks like Congress will vote later today or this evening to raise the debt ceiling and avert a possible default by the United States Treasury. How the debt ceiling compromise will fair when measured against Acton’s Principles for Budget Reform it is too early to know, but one thing is certain: if the deal contains a single budget cut for even the most ineffective of social programs, we’ll hear screams of protest from Jim Wallis and his Circle of Protection.

Read more on What the Common Good Isn’t…

This from a new Uncommon Knowledge interview with Harry Jaffa:

The society of the future is one in which the moral distinction that is based upon the Judeo-Christian and Greek traditions will dissolve. We are moving into a Communist world; we are moving into the world that Marx wanted without knowing it and without having the kind of revolution that Marx predicted and thought was necessary. For example, the President always talks about our values. What does [President Obama] mean by values? Values are moral choices, which have no object or basis. The value is a subjective desire, not an objective truth. He does not know what he is saying; he does not know the importance. A hundred years ago, nobody would have spoken about our principles as being values.

Read more on Jaffa on How Marx May Win After All…