Subsidiarity Begins at Home
A framework for discerning family responsibilities with Christian charity
Family flourishing, grounded in faith, virtue, and the principle of subsidiarity, requires Christians to embrace personal financial responsibility and a culture of charity distinct from the secular world. This essay will explore how subsidiarity informs financial management, the Christian response to Marxist culture, and the centrality of love and discernment in cultivating ordered, happy family life.
The Role of Subsidiarity in Family Life
Subsidiarity is a principle that ensures authority serves rather than dominates by prioritizing decisions at the most local level. It is grounded in the inherent dignity of the human person and the belief that individuals and local communities are best suited to understand and address their own needs. This principle recognizes the family as the foundational unit of society and emphasizes the importance of intermediate institutions, such as churches, schools, and voluntary organizations, in promoting the common good.
In practical economic terms, subsidiarity means that financial decisions should always be made at the lowest possible level or closest to where they will have their effect. For Christian families, this principle places the responsibility for discerning and fulfilling financial duties on the head of the household. Higher levels of authority, such as the state, should only intervene when necessary to support families and never to undermine or displace them.
The role personal finance plays in macro-economics is an example of the principle of subsidiarity. The financial responsibilities of a Christian household are inseparable from the call to love God and neighbor. The head of the household is in the best position to discern his family’s needs and fulfill obligations, but this requires a commitment to personal financial responsibility grounded in faith, virtue, and love.
Subsidiarity safeguards freedom, encourages self-government, and ensures that authority serves society without harming it, beginning with the family.
The Christian Distinction from Secular Culture
Christians have always been called to live differently from their secular neighbors. Clement of Alexandria, writing just 200 years after the birth of Christ, emphasized that Christians bear a moral obligation to stand apart from the pagan culture around them. However, this call to live a life set apart for life in Christ is increasingly under threat in a world shaped by secular ideologies, particularly those rooted in Marxism.
The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 70s marked the West’s Marxist revolution. Marxism was not solely an attack on business owners, it was an attack on the church, the family, and Christian culture at large. As family structures eroded, the responsibilities of feeding, educating, and caring for children and the elderly increasingly shifted from families to the state.
In his essay Leisure, the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper critiques the "total work" culture, a hallmark of the Marxist paradigm. In a society driven by "total work," human dignity and identity are reduced to economic utility. Individuals are either wage earners or dependents of the state. Economic equality is enforced by taxation, and those who do not contribute to the economic productivity of the state are seen as liabilities.
Outside of wage earning hours, the working class is encouraged to enjoy “time off” for rest, pleasure, and entertainment. Education is solely oriented toward ideological indoctrination and career preparation for the industrial machine. This Marxist worldview greatly undermines the Christian vision of family life, replacing worship and true leisure with entertainment, relationships with pleasure seeking, and the family with state dependency.
In this environment, Christian families must resist the temptation to measure success in terms of material wealth, convenience, or secular values. Instead, they are called to prioritize relationships, virtue, and spiritual well-being. In Christian family life, everyone is a valuable member of a family and most people are not wage earners. There is much more important work to do other than making money. Children need to be raised in virtue, educated, and protected from spiritual dangers. The elderly deserve to be cared for by their children. Prayers and sacrifices need to be offered for the people of God. We were created for relationships, not factories.
The Virtues of Discernment and Financial Responsibility
One of the key virtues necessary for financial management and family leadership is discernment. Discernment enables Christian families to apply the principle of subsidiarity in practical ways, ensuring that financial decisions align with their unique responsibilities to love and serve God and neighbor.
St. Peter, the Apostle and first Pope, emphasized the importance of virtue in his second letter, outlining a pathway to love and salvation that builds on faith, virtue, discernment... Personal financial responsibility, like every other aspect of the Christian life, is ultimately measured in terms of love. As St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us:
"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty."
To love is to will the good of the other person. Christians practice discernment when they recognize that financial stewardship is not just about budgeting or saving but about fostering relationships and meeting the spiritual and material needs of those entrusted to their care. Discernment calls for intentional decision-making that prioritizes love and virtue over convenience or worldly pleasure.
Practical Application and Vision for Thriving Families
If Christians are to be a light in a world marked by material and spiritual poverty, they must reclaim the family as the heart of society. This begins with a renewed commitment to personal financial responsibility and a reorientation toward love and virtue.
Healthy family life cannot be measured by secular standards. Christians have unique responsibilities—Sunday worship, the religious formation and education of children, and the care of the elderly—that demand sacrificial love and prudential decisions measured against eternal consequences. Flourishing family life is ultimately measured in terms of love: Are family members united in faith and oriented toward God and each other? Are they striving to grow in virtue and lead lives worthy of their end?
As St. Peter reminds us, virtue builds on faith, and discernment builds on virtue, etc. When fathers and mothers embrace their God-given responsibilities with sacrificial love, they not only grow in virtue themselves but also become a light to their neighbors. By well lived lives, they expose the deeper forms of poverty that afflict our culture—poverty of relationships, virtue, and love.
In a world shaped by secular values, the Christian family offers a countercultural witness. By practicing subsidiarity, discernment, and love, Christians can cultivate thriving families that transform society from the ground up. As Clement of Alexandria, Josef Pieper, and St. Teresa of Calcutta have shown us, a Christian way of life begins in the home and radiates outward, transforming the world according to God’s purpose.