The Person in Community

Reading Rick's discussion about Randy Barnett's recent talk here at Notre Dame got me thinking about the relationship of Catholic social teaching to libertarian individualism. I am increasingly troubled by representations of Catholic understandings of individual liberty that seem to be rooted in a negative construction of rights and an understanding of the human person that proceeds from autonomous individualism. Although there has been an important shift in focus in Catholic social teaching to the person as a subject since Vatican II, this has led to a greater consideration of not only human freedom, but also of equality and participation. Equality and participation are inseparable from life in community in Catholic social thought, and this has consequences that libertarians and other Anglo-American liberals will not accept.

Indeed, one can never consider freedom in the Catholic context without being acutely award of the centrality of the social understanding of human personhood to Catholic theology. Human dignity is fully realized in community with others. Equality in community means that individuals have rights related to the participation in the life of a society that are not contractural in nature, but are central to their dignity as persons. We may, in other words, owe more to others and to the society at large than we choose to owe.

The necessity of government flows directly from human sociability and the essential realtion of sociablility to the dignity of the human person. The libertarian tendency to position government as a oppressive force, legitimate only when necessary to enhance the flourishing of individuals, strikes me as antaganistic to Catholic thinking. Government exists for Catholics to enhance our life in common, recognizing not only our dignity as individuals, but also our need for participation in communal structures that work to enhance and secure the common good.

In a pluralistic society like our own, Catholics will no doubt often find themselves in disagreement with certain choices made by the government and certain assumptions underlying various laws and policies. Yet, this is after all, is a wealthy, sophisticated participatory democracy, not a military junta, and what our government does is, or should be, affected by choices we make as citizens. When government action is used to limit individual liberty, Catholics should first ask why. Handing certain tasks over to a larger group within the society may be the only way to ensure to ensure meaningful equality and participation for all members of the community. Was this govrernment constraint on individual liberty necessary to enhance the flourishing and participation of weaker members of society? If, for example, education is necessary for social participation, it might be the obligation of all citizens to support public funding for schools, particularly if there are members of the society who would be denied an education if such funding were unavailable. Are there certain repressive economic or social structures within our society, perhaps due to unique culutural or historical experiences, that blind many individuals to certain kinds of injustices? If so, it may be our responsibility to support government programs that attempt to compensate for these injustices, assuming smaller groups within the society have shown themselves ineffective (or insufficiently effective) in addressing these problems.

Unfortunately, I think libertarian ideas are used in American political and social discourse (on both the right and the left) in ways that proceed from the a views of community and the claims on individual behavior that community creates, as necessary evils best. Nothing could be less Catholic. Our dignity, liberation, and redemption are bound up in life with others. When it comes to the individual and community for Catholics, it's both/and, not either/or.

Vince