Recognition and Social Justice: A Roman Catholic View of ...

Christian Bioethics

ISSN: 1380-3603 (Print) 1744-4195 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nchb20

Recognition and Social Justice: A Roman Catholic
View of Christian Bioethics of Long-Term Care and
Community Service

Christian Spiess

To cite this article: Christian Spiess (2007) Recognition and Social Justice: A Roman Catholic
View of Christian Bioethics of Long-Term Care and Community Service, Christian Bioethics,
13:3, 287-301
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803600701732066

Published online: 13 Dec 2007.

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Christian Bioethics, 13:287–301, 2007
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1380-3603 print / 1744-4195 online
DOI: 10.1080/13803600701732066

Recognition and Social Justice: A RomanCN173hC84rHi40s-Bt34ia61n0935Bioethics, Vol. 13,No. 3, October2007:pp.1–21
Catholic View of Christian Bioethics of
Long-Term Care and Community Service

CAhRriosmtiaann SCpaitehsoslic View CHRISTIAN SPIESS

University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 Contemporary Christian ethics encounters the challenge to communi-
cate genuinely Christian normative orientations within the scientific
debate in such a way as to render these orientations comprehensible,
and to maintain or enhance their plausibility even for non-
Christians. This essay, therefore, proceeds from a biblical motif, takes
up certain themes from the Christian tradition (in particular the idea
of social justice), and connects both with a compelling contemporary
approach to ethics by secular moral philosophy, i.e. with Axel
Honneth’s reception of Hegel, as based on Hegel’s theory of recogni-
tion. As a first step, elements of an ethics of recognition are developed
on the basis of an anthropological recourse to the conditions of inter-
subjective encounters. These conditions are then brought to bear on
the idea of social justice, as developed in the social-Catholic tradition,
and as systematically explored in the Pastoral Letter of the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All
(1986). Proceeding from this basis, aspects of a Christian ethics of
community service with regard to long-term care can be defined.

Keywords: Christian social service, community service, long-term
care, (ethics of) recognition, social justice

I. INTRODUCTION

A characteristic theme recurs throughout the New Testament Gospel stories:
Jesus encounters a blind man, a dumb man, a paralyzed man; he feels

Address correspondence to Christian Spiess, Ph.D., Institute for Christian Social Sciences
of the Faculty for Catholic Theology at the University of Muenster, Huefferstrasse 27,
Muenster 48149, Germany. E-mail: christian.spiess@uni–muenster.de

287

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compassion, has mercy on such patients, turns toward them and heals
them. A certain impulse thus seems to emanate from the needy person,
implying a request to be healed. This leitmotif of a Jesuanic way of acting
and of Christian care for one’s fellow beings can also serve as the leitmotif
for a Christian ethic of long-term care. Yet in this essay I shall not be argu-
ing biblically. Instead, I shall try to reconstruct this motive empirically and
systematically: Humans always encounter each other with certain expecta-
tions, the fulfilment or nonfulfilment of which becomes a normative, an
ethical, criterion. While intending to offer a systematic account later, I want
to begin with some historical explanations that serve as a basis on which to
relate an anthropology of intersubjectivity to aspects of an ethical concept
of recognition. The combination of both, of an anthropology of intersubjec-
tivity and of an ethics of recognition, offers, in my opinion, a helpful para-
digm for translating the aforementioned biblical leitmotif of concern for
ones fellow being as a response to his specific needs into an ethically sys-
tematic account. The question of how these considerations can be brought
to bear on the political level will subsequently be addressed. Here I shall
follow the idea of (social) justice, as developed in the Pastoral Letter of the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All, and
the principle of subsidiarity which was defined mainly in the papal encyclica
Quadragesimo Anno.

Within the context of a Christian ethics of community service, devout
members of the church, parishes, and church-related welfare institutions
acquire a special role, special importance, and an ensemble of special task.
On the basis of the first two—complementary—sections of my essay, I shall
summarize these tasks against the background of the diaconical mission of
the churches.

II. ANTHROPOLOGY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY—ETHICS OF
RECOGNITION

Early modern social philosophy reflects on man’s emergence from the ties
imposed by the social structure of his political community. This community
in turn had formerly been perceived as a (quasi self-evidently) moral com-
munity, in which the bonum commune and the bonum proprium were
intertwined. Prior to this emergence, political science had been understood
as engaged in defining the moral order that would ensure that any person’s
life would take a good course. Based on a strong conception of the good
life, fitting laws and institutions had to be developed. The legal system was
to be oriented toward the common good and had to be promulgated
accordingly by the political authorities: “omnis lex ad bonum commune
ordinatur” (Aquinas, 1901, I–II q. 90 art. 2); the law is “rationis ordinatio ad
bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgate”

A Roman Catholic View 289

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 (Aquinas, 1904, I–II q. 90 art. 4). Thus politics enabled the zoon politikon/
animal sociale [et politicum], who was thought to depend on the moral
order of the polis or civitas, to develop the social vocation implied in his
human nature.

This Aristotelian conception became the subject of doubt mainly due to
economic structural changes, which at the same time initiated the disinte-
gration of traditional structures and moral ties. In socio-philosophical
accounts, man was now increasingly conceived as individual or as subject.
Machiavelli portrayed man as a self-centered being, bent upon strategies for
profit maximizing, engaged in permanent competition, and living under
conditions of pervasive mutual mistrust (see. Machiavelli, 1992).

This new paradigm of a struggle for self-preservation also provided the
basis of Thomas Hobbes’ contract theory (see. Hobbes, 1996). For Hobbes,
man distinguishes himself first of all through his capacity for foresight. Yet
provision for oneself becomes necessarily precarious once one encounters
others who are intent upon securing their own well-being. Everybody is
compelled to enlarge his own power resources in order to be able to resist
possible future attacks by others. As is well known, the consequence is the
bellum omnium contra omnes as characteristic of the state of nature in Hob-
bes’ theory of social contract. After Hobbes, the idea of such a contract,
conceived as a (hypothetical) agreement among self-interested state-of-
nature agents, and as presenting an escape strategy against the destructive
implications of the general struggle of all against all, developed into a dom-
inant philosophical paradigm.

As a result, what was previously a “state community” is no longer a
moral community; instead it degenerates into a cooperative network for
mutual profit maximizing. Competing socio-philosophical accounts subse-
quently questioned the concept of man as a merely self-interested individ-
ual and instead emphasized man’s embeddedness into social contexts. To
be sure, these new approaches could also welcome the changes introduced
by modernity—individualization, growing functional differentiation of sub-
systems, de-traditionalization of the conduct of life. Yet they all, in addition,
highlighted man’s social nature. They thus endorsed man’s dependence on
the community. This view was developed most persuasively by Fichte. In
his view, humans can become “human only amongst humans.” The very
term man “does not refer to any single individual but to the genus” (Fichte,
1966, p. 347).

For G. W. F. Hegel, a central philosophical problem was how to relate
individuality to communality (as point of departure), individuation to asso-
ciation (as process), and individual freedom to social integration (as goal),
and how to render each of these compatible with their respective counter-
parts. In his view, society as the goal of the individual’s development
involves an organic whole, which implies the mutual recognition of each
individual’s specificity. Obviously—not least from our contemporary

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perspective—that goal faces a number of major difficulties. It is with a view
to solving those difficulties that Hegel develops his theory of recognition
(Hegel, 1967a; 1967b; 1969; 1986a; cf. 1986b). This development integrates
the background situation of the dawn of modernity (as invoked above) with
Hegel’s analysis of his own time, which discounted the Hobbesian theory of
natural man as involved in a struggle for self-preservation as dramatically
misleading. Instead, Hegel returns to topoi from the classical understanding
of man as integrated into a social framework of shared moral assumptions.
Hegel aims at establishing a vital unity of general and individual freedom,
which is realized in society or in the state (Hegel, 1986b, p. 471). According
to this account, public life does not result from a mutual limitation of the
scope of private liberties but—on the contrary—it offers the very chance for
realizing, rather, for fulfilling individual freedom (compare Honneth, 2003a,
p. 24). Very much in contrast to the concept of a primary struggle for self-
preservation, Hegel concentrates on intersubjective recognition and the
social integration of individuals.

Clearly, Hobbes’ and Hegel’s theoretical approaches rest on contrary
anthropological assumptions. In his Leviathan (1996), for example, Hobbes
describes man as a self-moving automaton. Endowed with the capacity for
foresight, man uses his dealings with other men for increasing the scope of
his own power. Those fellow men remain strangers, constituting a potential
threat to his welfare. Hegel, by contrast, follows Aristotle’s concept of
human nature as endowed with a social predisposition that fully realizes
itself in the political community of the polis (Aristotle, Politeia, I 2 [1252a24–
1253a40]). Starting from this conception, Hegel develops his political philos-
ophy as a system encompassing the preconditions for individual self-realiza-
tion. Here individual freedom and social obligations are not opposed to one
another. Instead, they are integral constituents of one and the same process,
which results in the intersubjective recognition of each subject’s individual
characteristics within the moral community of the state: “The state is the
reality of concrete freedom,” as Hegel later puts it in his Philosophy of Law
(Hegel, 1986c, p. 406). To be sure, a long process must take place in order
to get from each individual’s dependency on intersubjective recognition to
the realization of that recognition within a political community. Yet in the
present context, this process does not have to be delineated in detail. What
interests us here is only the possible contribution of community service, or
of Christian social service, to the achievement of that goal. How could reli-
gious communities, parishes, and welfare associations contribute to the rec-
ognition of the single individual, thus alleviating the modern and
postmodern “pathologies of individual freedom” (Honneth, 2001, p. 49) and
the “malaise of modernity” (Taylor, 1998)? For it seems as though the histor-
ical development just described is mirrored within our contemporary politi-
cal and social situation. On the one hand, we welcome individualization,
ongoing differentiation, and man’s accelerated detachment from the restrictive

A Roman Catholic View 291

influence of social obligations. Yet, on the other hand, we are uneasy when
we realize that there are losers in this process and that it gives rise to social
pathologies. If indeed the underlying problem arises from moral injuries,
which are caused by refused intersubjective or social recognition, then, on
the systematic level, we need an ethics of recognition, and, on the practical
level of community service, we need sophisticated strategies of recognition
(cf. Spiess, 2005). The position these remedies could take within an elabo-
rated concept of a general subsidiary social policy, as integrated into an eth-
ics of social justice, must now be specified.

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 Anthropology of Intersubjectivity

Our starting point for an ethics of recognition is, first of all, a careful anthro-
pological recourse to the conditions for the possibility of a person develop-
ing his own self-image, self-confidence, and personal integrity (cf. Honneth,
2003a, p. 310; cf. Trevarthen, 1998, pp. 35–46). Such an ethics must, second,
consider the practical conditions for such positive regard for oneself (cf.
Dornes, 2005). The human conduct of life is generally characterized by the
fact that individuals can attain a positive relationship to themselves only via
mutual recognition (cf. ibid., pp. 26–27; cf. Honneth, 1990).

This can be verified especially well—positively as well as negatively—
in view of humans’ neonatal development (cf. Dornes, 2005, pp. 5–19; cf.
Meltzoff & Moore, 1998). Ever since the famous empirical investigations by
Meltzoff and Moore (1977), the complex interaction between infant and
attachment figure has been explored with growing intensity (Honneth,
2003c, p. 16; cf. Meltzoff & Moore, 1999, pp. 9–12; cf. Hobson, 2003,
p. 126). It is this interaction through which the infant is constituted as a
social being. Already shortly after birth the infant establishes communicative
contact to the attachment figure, a contact that is characterized by imitation
(Honneth, 2003c, p. 16; cf. Meltzoff & Moore, 1999, pp. 9–12; cf. Hobson,
2003, p. 126). In doing so, the infant doesn’t merely imitate mimicked or
gestured acts that are directly provided, such as sticking out of tongue,
pinching of eyes, or certain shapings of mouth (cf. Meltzoff & Moore, 1977).
The infant also uses that reservoir of already appropriated mimicked and
gestured acts in order to create his own gestures, which it expects the
attachment figure to imitate (Trevarthen, 1998, p. 30). The infant expects
other persons to respond to its utterances, i.e. gestures, mimics, and vocal-
izations, in a way that expresses favorable recognition. Even if the interac-
tion fails, the infant feels only misunderstood, not ignored (see Dornes,
2005, p. 8). It derives the fundamental experience of being directly recog-
nized by its attachment figure as needy, lovable and precious creature. It
experiences immediate intersubjective appreciation.

It is not altogether far-fetched to transfer the anthropology of intersub-
jectivity verified in the special case of neonatal socialization to the social

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world in general (cf. Honneth, 2003c, pp. 10–27). Humans encounter each
other in the context of specific, ever presupposed expectations of recogni-
tion. These expectations of intersubjective recognition offer the possibility
of reassurance through the other as a condition for the possibility of devel-
oping a positive relationship to oneself. Yet these expectations also always
present the danger of moral injury: the possible experience of disrespect,
which can destroy a person’s identity completely (cf. Honneth, 1990, p.
1045). It is a characteristic feature of modernity that identity is no longer
defined socially. Each individual is confronted with the task of “discovering”
his identity for himself (Taylor, 1992, pp. 28; pp. 31f.), and to realize his
respective authenticity, originality, self-fulfilment and self-optimization (cf.
more in detail e.g. Taylor, 1989, pp. 3–107): “The genesis of the human
mind is in this sense not monological, not something each person accom-
plishes on his or on her own, but dialogical” (Taylor, 1992, p. 32). Because
“there is no such thing as inward generation, monologically understood,”
we have to develop our identity on the basis of this “dialogical character” of
human life in dialogue with “significant others” (Taylor, 1992, pp. 32f. with
reference to Mead, 1934). Even the ‘languages,’ i.e. the devices for expres-
sion that we can use for the dialogue (language, gestures, art, love, etc.) are
appropriated via interchange with others. The close link between identity
and recognition is based on this prerequisite of intersubjective communica-
tion. We can only develop our individual identity if we experience recogni-
tion in the intersubjective dialogue.

Our project of developing an ethics of recognition makes it advisable
to start with refused recognition. Here we use expressions like mortification,
violation, disrespect, and humiliation. These forms of refused recognition
can be qualified as moral injuries—they damage the intersubjective condi-
tions of a subject’s possible relating to himself, thus unhinging a person’s
identity. Following Axel Honneth (cf. 1990, pp. 1044–48; cf. Honneth, 2000,
pp. 183f ), three types of such moral injuries can be distinguished:

1. Fundamental moral injuries are those in which expectations of the recogni-
tion of bodily integrity are disregarded. The injured person is denied the
security of being able to determine its physical welfare. At issue here is not
the physical pain as such, since that does not differ much from the pain after
an accident. The point is the humiliating destruction of a person’s trust in the
value of its neediness, when he feels “subjected to another person’s will
without protection, and this to the extent of a sensual deprivation of reality”
(torture, rape, physical violence in general’). (Honneth, 1990, p. 1046).

2. A second kind of moral injury result from disregard of a person’s moral
accountability. Here the moral injury results from the compromising or
destruction of his self-esteem, insofar as that self-esteem is contingent on
the recognition of the value of our judgements by other persons (delu-
sion, fraud, legal discrimination).

A Roman Catholic View 293

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 3. The third type of moral injury is even more diverse. It results from others’
disregard of a person’s expectation that he is socially relevant for a given
community. Social humiliation and disrespect signal that a person’s abili-
ties and achievements are not deemed a valuable contribution to the
community (ridicule and dismissive behavior in the presence of others,
exclusion from a group’s common interests, social stigmatization). This
type of moral injury recalls cases in which members of certain social
milieus are refused chances of social participation, ranging from handi-
caps in the private realm to decreased chances of entering the educa-
tional system and the job market. Similarly, unemployment, and
especially permanent unemployment with its attendant speedy dequalifi-
cation and social exclusion, all of which tend to further distance the per-
sons concerned from the job market and from “social normality,” can be
recognized as indisputably morally relevant. “A man who has lost his job
has lost his passport to society . . . What hurts most is the knowledge that
his service is not wanted. His work is rejected, and that means that he
himself is rejected, as a man and a citizen” (Marshall, 1977, p. 234). One
could further adduce economic disrespect in the sense of tolerated rela-
tive material poverty (cf. Sen, 1981) or cultural disrespect as arising from
discrimination of specific minority lifestyles (cf. Fraser, 1995; 2003, pp.
27–35; cf. Fraser & Honneth, 2003).

Our use of metaphors invoking physical suffering and death (mental
death, social death, humiliation, injury) linguistically betrays our awareness
of the fact that the different forms of disrespect play a similar role for per-
sons’ psychic integrity as organic illnesses do for the body (not even to
speak of interactions between these forms of compromised integrity). The
experience of social degradation and humiliation poses an equal threat to a
humans’ integrity as does the incidence of illnesses to man’s physical wel-
fare (Honneth, 1990, p. 1048). Because the different forms of disrespect, for
the reasons adduced above, constitute moral injuries, it follows that a spe-
cial moral authority emanates from the persons affected—an authority that
demands from others the inter-subjective recognition without which they
are unable to develop a positive relationship to themselves.

Ethics of Recognition

Let us distinguish three levels of recognition, which form, as it were, three
positive counterparts to the various forms of disrespect described above.

1. On the first level, a person is recognized as an individual whose needs
and wishes are of unique value to another person (Honneth, 2000,
p. 187). As the basis of such recognition, one finds an emotional and
emotion-dependent (and in that sense conditional) dedication to another,

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which is offered for the sake of that person himself. This is the level on
which love and friendship, partnership, marriage, and family offer loving
care.
2. On the second level a person is recognized as a subject of law, and as
endowed with moral accountability. This legal level is of crucial impor-
tance for an ethics of recognition. The categorical and universal obliga-
tion to respect persons’ moral autonomy is central here. We have to
recognize all men as morally autonomous subjects and, therefore, as sub-
jects of law. This is why intersubjective relations of recognition ultimately
press for legal sanctions. Even marriage as epitome of affective (self-)
attachment for love gains legal status.
3. On the third level, a person is recognized as an individual whose abilities
are of constitutive value to a certain community. This kind of recognition
implies a particular esteem. It combines a cognitive with an affective
moment. The philosophical tradition does not provide any corresponding
term; one could therefore try “solidarity” (cf. Honneth, 2003b, pp. 162–
177). It presupposes the experience of shared burdens and responsibili-
ties and is, therefore, also contingent on the existence of such shared
experiences.

A special kind of moral authority emanates from disadvantaged persons
and from members of underprivileged social strata. This authority plays on all
three levels of recognition and recalls all three forms of possible moral injury
distinguished above. Undoubtedly those in need of long-term care belong to
these strata. On the other hand, it is obvious that in modern liberal constitu-
tional states and their societies different persons and institutions are subjected
to the moral authority of those in need in different ways. The gist of a Chris-
tian ethics of long-term care, as based on an ethics of recognition, can be
summarized by the following imperative: The expectations of recognition by
those who are in need of long-term care, as well as existing violations of
these expectations, must be detected and, as far as possible, fulfilled or,
respectively, remedied. This has to be achieved on all three levels of recogni-
tion (love, law, and solidarity). This requires that precise proposals for a defi-
nition of “responsibilities,” as borne by different federal and social institutions,
respectively, need to be elaborated. I shall undertake this task after clarifying
the idea of social justice and the principle of subsidiarity, as these concepts
were formulated and differentiated within Catholic social teaching.

III. SOCIAL JUSTICE, SUBSIDIARITY, AND MANDATE
OBLIGATION (MANDATSPFLICHT)

Reflections on the idea of justice are usually based on the famous fifth chap-
ter of Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea and Thomas Aquinas’ reception thereof

A Roman Catholic View 295

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 in the “Secunda Secundae” of the Summa Theologiae (Aquinas, II–II qq.
57–61). Both authors, of course, take as self-evident that questions concerning
the good life and questions concerning justice are intertwined. Political jus-
tice is defined as what serves the good life. The idea of political justice thus
presupposes a relatively clear, substantial idea of the good, which provides
the telos for political action. (see Krebs, 2002, pp. 167–181). Yet contempo-
rary positions more or less distance themselves from this classical under-
standing of justice. This is motivated especially in view of the separation of
questions regarding justice, or law, from questions regarding the good life, a
separation that has become characteristic of modern times (cf. Kant,
Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals]). In the present context, a
deeper account of contemporary discussions concerning justice as “equality-
of-what?” (cf. Cohen, 1993, p. 9; cf. Dworkin, 1981), as initiated by John
Rawls’s Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971) and critically pursued by Robert
Nozick (1974), cannot be offered. Against those who would prefer to alto-
gether dispose of the term justice, I prefer to follow the majority of political
philosophers who still endorse its meaning and engage in lively arguments
about it (cf. Roemer, 1996; cf. Miller & Walzer, 1995; cf. Miller, 1999; cf.
Krebs, 2000, pp. 7–37). After all, even most of those theorists who raise dif-
ficulties in view of the concept of equality as implied within given portray-
als of justice (cf. Anderson, 1999; cf. Margalit, 1996, 1997; cf. Raz, 1986, pp.
217–244) endeavor to account for the possibility of justice, rather than want-
ing to dispose of the term altogether.

This is why I still consider the Pastoral Letter of the United States Cath-
olic Bishops, Economic Justice For All (United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 1986), an excellent contribution to the discussion. In what follows,
I shall refer to the idea of justice as it has been analyzed in that document,
even though I shall of course modify it slightly.

From the very start, one needs to differentiate between justice as a vir-
tue, on the one hand and justice as a structural principle of society and
state, on the other. In this essay, I am concerned with justice as a structural
principle exclusively, or in John Rawls’s (seemingly paradox) words, with
“the virtue of social institutions” (Rawls, 1971, p. 3). The term “social justice”
was introduced in the context of Catholic social teaching (cf. Girnth, 2001,
pp. 196f.; cf. Taparelli, 1949) and was substantially developed there as well.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—claiming to speak in the
tradition of Catholic social teaching—distinguishes “three dimensions of
basic justice: commutative justice, distributive justice, and social justice”
(USCCB, 1986, no. 68). Social justice can also be called contributive justice
(ibid., no. 71). Yet I would prefer to distinguish at least four dimensions of
justice and to summarize them systematically under the term “social justice.”
Thus social justice can be differentiated into (1) commutative justice—as in
the demand for “fundamental fairness in all agreements and exchanges
between individuals or private social groups” including respect for all

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persons’ equal human dignity (ibid., no. 69); (2) distributive justice—
emphasizing that “the allocation of income, wealth, and power in society”
has to be “evaluated in the light of its effects on persons whose basic mate-
rial needs are unmet” (ibid., no. 70), including relative equality (or minimal
inequality) of income and consumption (ibid., no. 74); (3) contributive jus-
tice—representing, on the one hand, the obligation of all persons “to be
active and productive participants in the life of society,” and, on the other
hand, society’s duty “to enable them to participate in this way” (ibid., no.
71), including the demand “that social institutions be ordered in a way that
guarantees all persons the ability to participate actively in the economic,
political, and cultural life of society” (ibid., no. 78); and (4) legal justice—as
the guarantee of fair proceedings in judgement regardless of “race,” gender,
social, denominational or any other differences. In addition to those four
dimensions, one could refer to (5) the justice of achievement—as the obliga-
tion to consider individual achievement when allocating any of the goods
mentioned above, both in order to recompense efforts by high-capacity
people and in order to compensate for the lower activity of low-capacity
people, e.g. people in need of care; and finally (6) the justice of chances—
as the demand that all persons should be guaranteed a real prospect of
“participation in the life of the human community” (ibid., no. 77), which
evidently refers to distributive and contributive justice.

In my opinion, the Christian ethics of community service with regard to
long-term care should be based on both the idea of justice of the social
catholic tradition, on the one hand, and on elements from an ethics of rec-
ognition as outlined above, on the other hand. While these latter elements,
in defining the anthropological point of reference, provide the foundation
for such an ethics, the former idea offers guidance for the realization of that
ethics within social-political and social-solidaric institutions as well as vol-
unteer support. The resulting caring action can then be addressed on vari-
ous levels. In the first instance, obligations and responsibilities arise within
the close personal context of persons in need of care, as for example family
and friends. Second, such obligations and responsibilities arise for social
institutions like parishes and welfare organizations, and, third, they fall
under the competence of the state. On each level, this allocation of obliga-
tions must proceed, on the one hand, according to the principle of subsid-
iarity and, on the other hand, according to mandate. As is widely known,
the principle of subsidiarity is once again subdivided into different dimen-
sions. It firstly concerns individuals whose welfare must be the central focus
of community service in general and of long-term care in particular (cf.
Quadragesimo Anno, nn. 79f.). Second, subsidiarity concerns the way in
which, depending on the resources provided on different levels of societal
and social-political cooperation, responsibilities are allocated to these differ-
ent levels. In each case, the smaller units have priority over the larger ones;
i.e. what a person in need of care can accomplish without external support

A Roman Catholic View 297

Downloaded by [50.116.19.84] at 01:52 06 April 2016 should not be taken out of his hands; what the family can do should be left
with the family; self-help groups ought to have priority over welfare organi-
zations. Only when individuals, families, volunteer groups, parishes, and
welfare organization are overtaxed may the responsibility be transferred to
federal institutions, and lastly to the state.

According to the social-catholic, tradition which grounds its notion of jus-
tice in the ethos of human rights (cf. e.g. USCCB, 1986, nn. 79–84), the welfare
state is the final resort, when it comes to satisfying fundamental claims to rec-
ognition and to realizing justice in the differentiated sense outlined above.
Within the systematic framework of the principle of subsidiarity, two aspects
are distinguished. One concerns proscription to assume competence: It forbids
the respectively larger unit to take competences away from the respectively
smaller unit (e.g. the single person), as long as the latter can cope by itself. In
this regard the principle of subsidiarity implies a strong endorsement of
responsibility for oneself. The other aspect of the subsidiarity principle con-
cerns the imperative of support. It requires the respectively larger and superior
unit to help the respectively smaller unit (e.g. the single person) wherever the
latter cannot cope by itself. In such cases responsibility passes to that respec-
tively higher unit that is able to offer the needed support. Ultimately the state,
as welfare state, is required to step in. But of course even then the state is not
authorized to take over the respective tasks completely. Instead, the state is
required to take efforts towards enabling people to help themselves. Such
efforts, for example, can take the form of financially and structurally support-
ing parishes or welfare institutions. A social politics of long-term care, which is
guided by the principles of recognition, of justice, and of subsidiarity, will
focus on precisely such support of community service.

My own modification of these principles concerns the need to comple-
ment the principle of subsidiarity by a regard for the underlying mandate. The
respective service provider, before even being allowed to intervene in what he
perceives as a helpful manner, should be required to seek a special commis-
sion by the person in need of care. Such an obligation to legitimize one’s help-
ing efforts via mandate could protect persons in need of care from unwelcome
and intrusive actions, which might result from religiously motivated service
providers with a heightened sense of their mission. This obligation of mandate
is on no account opposed to the principle of subsidiarity; on the contrary, it
improves the latter’s efficacy: Quadragesimo Anno always stresses the pre-
eminence of the single individual’s welfare (Quadragesimo Anno, n. 79).

IV. COMMUNITY SERVICE AND LONG-TERM CARE: THE
PARTICULAR FUNCTIONS OF CHRISTIAN SOCIAL SERVICE

On the basis of what has been argued so far, particular functions of
Christian social service with regard to long-term care can now be

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defined. According to the social-catholic perspective, everything turns on
realizing expectations of recognition in a just society. Professional, as
well as voluntary, providers of social services, therefore confront two
tasks. As social service providers they support persons in need of care,
and as champions of the disadvantaged they engage in political discourse in
order to secure just social structures and to advocate just socio-political
institutions.

At least in the historical context of Western societies, which are charac-
terized by the division of society and state, welfare institutions and their
facilities occupy an intermediary position between the individual and family
level and the level of the state. It is this intermediate level on which Chris-
tian social services are provided.

In this essay, my intention has been to reconstruct the proprium of
such Christian services, as discussed in view of the example of long-term
care, in terms of a combination of a secular ethics of recognition with the
way in which Catholic social teaching conceives of social justice and
endorses the principle of subsidiarity. I have emphasized that there exists
no incompatibility between concepts and ethical guidelines developed from
such different (secular and Catholic) backgrounds. Instead, their common
features, possible connections and, as in the present case, often extraordi-
narily evident mutual points of reference could be exposed. As a result, the
two-fold task derived from this account for secular social service providers
can be established as equally valid for Christian providers. In both cases,
the first task imposes services that, in a therapeutic sense, offer immediate
support, or else the provision of advice, as in situations where expectations
of recognition (in all their variants developed above) have been disap-
pointed, whether in families, or because persons were denied their rights,
or because of social discrimination. Complementary to such in an immedi-
ate sense of caring services, the social service providers’ mandate extends to
efforts to establish that ensemble of formal frameworks in which intersub-
jective relations of recognition can be successfully realized. In this second
respect, the social service providers’ mandate focuses mainly on politics. It
requires efforts at transforming clients’ demands for recognition into laws,
administrative policies, or institutional rules. Whether in a Christian or in a
secular setting, social services, in realizing their twofold mandate, are there-
fore doubly legitimized. They at the same time care for actual persons
whose rights are injured, or who are otherwise in need, and promote the
general cause of universal basic rights and social integration. Or, con-
versely, Christian just as non-Christian social service providers, on the one
hand, contribute to bringing about conditions in which the expectations of
recognition inherent in any social interaction can be fulfilled, and, on the
other hand, offer a curative compensation wherever such expectations of
recognition are not fulfilled. It is in terms of this twofold legitimacy that the
solidaric practice of loving care that the Christian ethics of community

A Roman Catholic View 299

service imposes can be secularly understood, and thus understood in a way
that a fortiori transcends denominational affiliations.

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