The Servile State

I was speaking at a Catholic parish not long ago, and during the question period someone asked how a Catholic could vote for Bush or Bush supporters, given all the President’s (alleged) “cutbacks” for the poor. The person made specific mention of a death benefit of some kind, perhaps associated with Social Security, that had just been abolished; it gave your family something like $250 or $500 for funeral expenses when you died. (As you can see, I wasn’t familiar with the program.)

I began my answer by making clear that I didn’t support the Bush Administration, though not quite for the same reasons. I went on to explain that the Catholic Church, although it teaches the “preferential option for the poor,” also teaches the principle of subsidiarity: that a more distant institution should not usurp tasks that can be carried out by institutions closer to the individual — families, churches, charitable institutions, etc.

The questioner again denounced the abolition of this death benefit program. To which I replied: “You see how dehumanizing the welfare state is? Here we are in a Catholic church, and we’re being persuaded that the sky will fall if people don’t get their $500. For one thing, why don’t we simply not tax it away from them in the first place? For another, couldn’t we take up a collection right here in the parish, for heaven’s sake? How pathetic have we allowed ourselves to become under the auspices of the welfare state that we need some anonymous institution hundreds of miles away to provide us with what in any case is a mere pittance, and we have absolutely no idea what we’d do without it? You see why the popes have insisted on subsidiarity and on the enervating effects of the welfare state?”

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5:20 pm on April 18, 2006