Subsidiarity in America: the Legacy of Bishop Bernard James Sheil

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SUBSIDIARITY IN AMERICA: THE LEGACY OF BISHOP BERNARD JAMES SHEIL

Dissertation

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Theology

Justin Michael Yankech, M.A.

Dayton, Ohio

May 2021

SUBSIDIARITY IN AMERICA: THE LEGACY OF BISHOP BERNARD JAMES SHEIL

Name: Yankech, Justin Michael

APPROVED BY:

______Vincent J. Miller, Ph.D. Committee Chair

______Kelly Johnson, Ph.D. Committee Member

______David J. O’Brien, Ph.D. Committee Member

______William L. Portier, Ph.D. Committee Member

______Anthony B. Smith, Ph.D. Committee Member

Justin Michael Yankech

2020

ABSTRACT

SUBSIDIARITY IN AMERICA: THE LEGACY OF BISHOP BERNARD JAMES SHEIL

Name: Yankech, Justin Michael University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Vincent J. Miller

The principle of subsidiarity is a signature concept in Catholic social doctrine and papal teaching. Yet, an incomplete understanding of the full principle and papal refrain from prescribing policies or concrete examples of the principle has created difficulties in developing subsidiarity within specific social and cultural situations. This project uses theological and historical methods to investigate the social work and thought of Bishop

Bernard James Sheil, his collaboration with Saul Alinsky, and the results of their collaboration in the institutionalization of Alinsky-style community organizing in the

American Catholic Church in the form of the Campaign for Human Development, to determine how Catholic subsidiarity is influenced by an adaptation to American democratic culture and the demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American liberal democratic social imagination. This study shows that Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Saul Alinsky represents a full embodiment of the structural pluralism, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and associational subsidiarity that make up the principle of subsidiarity while also attending to American democratic culture’s focus on the liberal individual. In short, Bishop Sheil’s legacy, in the form of the institutionalization of his collaboration with Saul Alinsky in the

CCHD, is representative of a distinctly American and wholly Catholic form of subsidiarity.

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Dedicated to my wife and children

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Vincent Miller, my advisor, for providing his support and time during the many Summers it took to complete this, and for his expertise and much- needed editorial skills.

I would like to thank the staffs at the Archdiocese of Chicago Archives, the Archives of the University of Notre Dame, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the

Madonna House Archives. Their work and help made this project possible.

I would like to thank Leah Yankech, my wife, whose patience, support and motivation during this long process has been vital.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... iii

DEDICATION ...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Research Focus ...... 1

Background ...... 1

Findings ...... 4

Chapter Outline ...... 12

Methodology...... 16

Research Methods and Sources ...... 16

CHAPTER I: UNDERSTANDING SUBSIDIARITY ...... 18

Introduction ...... 18

Part I. The Current State of Subsidiarity...... 23

Part II. Structural Pluralism and Structural-Pluralistic Subsidiarity ...... 32

Part III. Subsidiarity of Associations ...... 60

Conclusion...... 69

CHAPTER II: “PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHARITY”: THE PRINCIPLE OF

SUBSIDIARITY IN BISHOP SHEIL’S DEPRESSION-ERA SOCIAL WORK AND

THOUGHT ...... 73

Introduction ...... 73

Part I. Charity in Depression-Era Chicago: The Loss of Structural Pluralism and the

Application of Associational Subsidiarity...... 76

Part II. Bishop Bernard James Sheil and a Charitable Catholic Experiment

in Subsidiarity...... 92

Conclusion...... 113

CHAPTER III: ORGANIZING FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ...... 116

Introduction...... 116

Part I. Origins of Alinsky's Thought: American Liberal Democracy and Corporate

Society...... 119

Part II. Alinsky's Original Thought: Before Reveille for Radicals ...... 134

Part III. Reveille for Radicals: Parallels with Catholic Social Doctrine ...... 147

Conclusion...... 169

CHAPTER IV: “MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK”: SHEIL’S AMERICAN FORM

OF CATHOLIC SUBSIDIARITY ...... 171

Introduction ...... 171

Part I. “To give the spirit of the Church its full place in the spirit of America”:

Sheil’s Career from 1939 to 1954...... 174

Part II. “Our Unfinished Business”: Sheil’s Catholic American Democracy...... 193

Part III. ‘Making Democracy Work”: An American Catholic Subsidiarity...... 211

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Conclusion...... 225

CHAPTER V: SUBSIDIARITY IN AMERICA: THE CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND THE LEGACY OF BISHOP BERNARD JAMES

SHEIL ...... 228

Introduction...... 228

Part I. From Sheil to the CHD: Institutionalizing Community Organizing

in American Catholicism...... 231

Part II. The Demands of Catholic Subsidiarity ...... 240

Part III. The CCHD: An American Subsidiarity ...... 256

Conclusion...... 269

CONCLUSION ...... 272

Introduction...... 272

Part I. Summary of Findings...... 272

Part II. Contributions to Knowledge...... 275

Part III. Recommendations...... 277

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 279

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INTRODUCTION

Research Focus

This project will use theological and historical methods to research the interpretation of the principle of subsidiarity into the American context through Bishop Bernard James

Sheil’s collaboration with Saul Alinsky in support of community organizing to better understand the interaction between American democratic culture and Catholic subsidiarity.

Background

Since the promulgation of the Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno almost a century ago, the principle of subsidiarity has become one of the signature principles of Catholic social thought and papal teaching alongside solidarity, the common good, and human dignity. As such, it has become both a great resource for understanding and developing social organization and a source of great misunderstanding of how it should be applied in concrete social circumstances.

At the root of any acculturation of subsidiarity lay two principal obstacles. The first is the tendency of papal encyclicals to refrain from supporting or encouraging concrete political or governmental policies that Catholics should follow. The reason for this restraint being highlighted by Pope Pius XI’s own mistaken support in Quadragesimo Anno for Italian corporations and syndicates, which were later recognized as a component of Italy’s rising fascism. Instead, popes have favored the articulation of basic principles and values that

Catholics around the world should use in order to properly order their own societies. Thus, papal social teaching has necessarily and intentionally lacked a clear sense of what subsidiarity could or should look like in the American context. That work of acculturation

1 and interpretation has been left to American Catholics themselves. This project is meant to provide a contribution to that work.

A second obstacle lies within the limited way in which subsidiarity has been articulated within papal encyclicals and the texts that were based on them. Specifically, Pope

Pius XI’s use of the principle in Quadragesimo Anno and the later explanation of it in the

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Because of the limited way Quadragesimo Anno applies subsidiarity to the “subsidiary function of the State,” the Compendium and most other explanations of the principle have failed to recognize and make use of its wider dimensions.

This is especially clear in how subsidiarity has been used and adapted within American

Catholic thought and the American context. Because of this limited understanding and application of subsidiarity, it is necessary to provide a fuller vision of the principle. Doing so makes it possible to better understand and explain what an American form of subsidiarity will look like.

The narrower background of this project is the incomplete understanding of the

American Catholic engagement with Alinsky-style community organizing as a practical approach to social action. A fuller understanding of subsidiarity sheds light on how

American Catholics have negotiated the intellectual space between Catholic social thought and papal teaching and Alinsky’s American pragmatic, democratic social action and community organizing. By better understanding subsidiarity, it is possible to better understand how American Catholics were able to see value in Alinsky’s community organizing and work to institutionalize it in the American Catholic Church.

In 1985, Charles Curran called for serious examination of the influence of Saul

Alinsky on the practical social action of American Catholics.1 One of the great values of

Alinskys thought, Curran believed, was the presence of subsidiarity. According to Curran,

“There can be no doubt that Alinsky’s thinking is totally in accord with that of the Catholic tradition [subsidiarity].”2 Curran claims, “Our pragmatic radical is deeply committed to the basic rights of the individuals but recognizes the significant role of the state in working for the common good.”3 He argues, “The term ‘principle of subsidiarity’ does not appear in

Reveille or in Rules, but the reality is ever present.”4 Curran ended his essay saying, “Hopefully in the future more discussion will take place on this very important but neglected development in American Catholic social practice.”5

In 1998, Lawrence J. Engel took up some of that work by examining “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development.”6 Engel’s essay concluded that

“Saul Alinsky had a profound, if indirect, influence on the origins of the CHD, a postconciliar Catholic response to an America in crisis.”7 Engel however recognized that this was one small part in both the development of the CHD and the American Catholic engagement with Alinsky. He stated, “Still to be further explored is the theology of the

CHD’s founders…the intellectual roots of Alinsky’s theory, as well as the hermeneutical and interdisciplinary examination of the encounter between U.S. Catholic social thought and

American pragmatism.”8 This project will stand in that space by providing an historical and theological analysis of one example of American Catholic social thought and Alinsky’s

1 Charles Curran, “Saul D. Alinsky, Catholic Social Practice, and Catholic Theory,” in Directions in Catholic Social Ethics, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 147 – 175. 2 Ibid,. 167 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 5 Ibid., 171 – 172. 6 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky On the Campaign for Human Development,” Theological Studies, no. 59 (1998), 636 – 661. 7 Ibid., 661 8 Ibid., 661. 3

American pragmatism through the lens of subsidiarity.

Findings

The two issues of American subsidiarity and the American Catholic engagement with

Saul Alinsky have multiple intersections over the course of the 20th century. This project will argue that the first significant, and most valuable, historical intersection lies within Bishop

Sheil’s collaboration with Alinsky from the late 1930’s through the mid-1950’s. Bishop

Sheil’s initial collaboration with Alinsky and his negotiation between Catholic social thought and Alinsky’s American pragmatism made later Catholic engagement with Alinsky and the formation of the CHD possible. Further, Bishop Sheil’s explanation of and support for

Alinsky-style community organizing provide a significant window into a distinctly American form of Catholic subsidiarity. By examining Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Saul Alinsky it is possible to get a complete vision of an American subsidiarity.

Central to this project is the recognition of the wider dimensions and far-reaching implications of the principle of subsidiarity. Simply put, subsidiarity is not merely a principle of governance in general, or regulating and limiting the state in particular. Rather, subsidiarity is a principle that requires a vast plurality of associations within society, and that structures society towards the realization of the common good born out of solidarity. This is because subsidiarity organizes the relationships between the vast plurality of associations at various grades in society towards one another and towards the members of the social whole according to how they all participate in the determination and realization of the common good. Subsidiarity, therefore, is premised on and requires a plurality of associations that compose and contribute to the social whole and the common good. As a result, subsidiarity can be understood in two ways. The first is what Oswald Von Nell-Breuning called

“subsidiarity of associations.”9 This form of subsidiarity, best exemplified by “subsidiary function” in Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, and the “positive” and “negative” senses of subsidiarity in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, is summarized by the responsibility of higher associations to aid or help lower associations but not absorb or destroy them. Though Pope Pius XI mainly applies the principle to the functions of the state, his application of the helping function of “all social activity” implies it holds for all associations in relation to lower associations and their members.10 This dimension of subsidiarity is characterized by a down-ward trajectory as higher, often larger, associations perform a helping function to lower associations and their members, without destroying or absorbing them.

The second dimension of subsidiarity that has received much less treatment, but which is visible within the early origins of the principle and implicitly present in later papal social encyclicals and explanations of social relationships, is what I have called “structural- pluralistic subsidiarity.” Where associational subsidiarity explains the downward trajectory by which higher associations aid lower associations and The social vision that Luigi Taparelli developed in the mid-19th century can best be understood as an attempt to apply the thought of St. Thomas to correct the problematic theoretical foundations of liberalism. In fact, his approach to natural law ought to be viewed as a Thomist revision of classical liberal thought on rights originating in the thought of figures like John Locke. Central to this argument are two points made by Thomas C. Behr. The first is his argument that Taparelli favored a moderated liberal project. Even after the 1848 revolutions, and the ongoing "Roman question," Taparelli continued to favor a moderated liberal perspective that made a place for

9 Von Nell-Breuning, Reorganization of Social Economy, (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1936), 206. 10 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #79. Accessed 7/22/16 at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius- xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html.. 5

Church and religion. Though he publicly fought liberalism on its troubled theoretical foundation and anti-clerical tendencies, he privately continued to approve of a liberal, unified

Italy. The second is Behr’s claim that Taparelli principally used Thomist thought to correct his own work. This coupled with Taparelli’s later claim that he acquired his ideas about natural law from figures like John Locke, further supports my argument that Taparelli’s social vision is best understood as a Thomist correction and realignment of classical liberal political theory.

In pointing to his background, Behr says "Taparelli came from an important

Piedmontese aristocratic background and, more importantly, as the brother of the liberal first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, Massimo D'Azeglio, he was under the limelight of public attention at all times."11 In 1946, Massimo published a report in which he "made a scathing indictment of the administration of the Papal States," and argued that "it was time for the leadership of an established state, with an established army, if the Hapsburgs and the

Bourbons were ever to be driven out of Italy." Behr continues, "The call had wide resonance among the liberals in the north of Italy, many of whom had warmed up to the idea of unification that had been popularized by Vincenzo Giobert, i.e. of a confederation of states under the symbolic presidency of the Pope. There was a substantial Neo-Guelf movement that brought together moderate liberals and moderate conservatives. Luigi Taparelli was a fervent Giobertian in this period."12

As a result of his interest in the unification of Italy, Taparelli saw the need to provide an argument for it on a foundation of solid principles. Behr says,

So interested in the cause of unification, Taparelli set out to demonstrate the natural

11 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000), 13. 12 Behr, Ibid., 58 - 59. Behr references Luigi’s being related to Massimo D’Azeglio in Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 18, but does not go into detail about the possible influence of Massimo’s liberalism. 6

law principles that should apply to the process, to the natural hopes of a people for independence, to the expansion of society towards more perfect unions, and to the settlement of conflicting claims of right....Taparelli hoped to bring together the meeting of minds that he hoped would lead to the peaceful unification of Italy, founded on law and justice.13

One element of this founding on law and justice was respect for the Church. "He wrote very openly to his brother on his respect for the liberal position so long as they could respect the rights of religion and of the Church."14 Thus, while Taparelli favored Italian unification, even under liberal principles, he still saw the need to maintain the role of the Church in society and the operation of the state within society.

Intellectually, "Taparelli's early attachment to Cousin tells us a great deal about his own moderate liberalism and progressive orientation that otherwise is so easily lost if one focuses on his dialectial clarifications of principles, especially as he streamlined those arguments in his Civilta Cattolica."15 With the end of the Neo-Guelf movement, Gioberti's attacks on the Jesuits and the tumult of the 1848 revolutions, Taparelli did not abandon his hopes. Rather, "Taparelli continually sought to establish that the problems with such liberalism as a politics and as an economic system were in its principles and that a liberalism informed by a Catholic respect for natural law, justice, and charity was still possible."16

Further, "Taparelli remained a convinced patriot and firm believer in the progress of society, and of institutions, so long as they had the principles of natural law, justice and charity at their base, for the rest of his life."17 According to Behr, Taparelli rejected an ideological liberalism based on individualist, anti-clerical principles. This was not a simple rejection of

13 Behr, Ibid., 59. 14 Behr, Ibid., 60. 15 Behr, Ibid., 157 - 158. 16 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000), 64. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Catholic Social Thought, (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2019), 69 – 72. 17 Behr, Ibid., 66. 7 liberalism, but a call for a better, moderate liberalism; respectful of liberty and the authority of the Church. Such a situation was the only way to attain the justice and liberty that liberalism sought.

Such a narrative puts Taparelli's philosophy in an important context. Most importantly, it shows the influence that his liberal leanings had on his use of Aquinas' philosophy and theology. Behr argues,

Taparelli was stating an essential point when towards the end of his life he related that [he] had taken the authority of St. Thomas as a check on his reasoning. This is very different from saying that he took him as his model.... Taparelli's ideas are driven by the need to respond to the issues which he read as fundamentally decisive, in the contemporary intellectual and historical moment, between the competing materialistic and idealistic schools of thought: the true nature of human freedom and the true nature of the constrictions imposed by contingent, historical reality.18

In order to pursue this goal, Taparelli engaged not only the thought of Aquinas but all available sources. "Taparelli clearly rejected any slavish adherence to the form of Aquinas' corpus....Secondly, he is obviously extremely interested in integrating the expansive date of the natural sciences that is available to him, and in engaging the alternative systems of thought on a comprehensive basis."19 Thus, he was "no mere 'restorer' but the independent and innovative thinker."20

The result is that Taparelli's social thought, as with many of the Neo-Scholastics, was not simply an application of Thomistic thought to the current problems. It was an adaptation to the current intellectual, social and political situation. For Taparelli, the primary concern was that liberalism was flawed in its principles, but not necessarily in its goals. In attempting to resolve the issues of authority, while also favoring a liberal approach to the political and economic situation, Taparelli developed a philosophical approach that was a

18 Behr, Ibid., 160 - 161. 19 Behr, Ibid., 162-3 20 Behr, Ibid., 163. Cf. Social Justice and Subsidiarity, Ch. I and II. 8 syncretic joining of St. Thomas’ thought and modern thought. This is particularly noticeable in his approach to natural rights. Fortin writes, "In a letter to his Jesuit Provincial, Taparelli admits that he knew next to nothing about natural right when he began to write on it at the age of fifty, and, moreover, that whatever thoughts he did have came mainly from Locke and the other modern authors on whom he had been weaned."21 This is one reason why Misner could state that, "At any rate, when Taparelli d'Azeglio was faced with the issue of property, he read Thomas in the light of modern arguments, notably John Locke's, and grounded private ownership in a natural-law argument of 'liberal' coloration."22 This syncretic approach to Thomistic thought is evident in Rerum Novarum's articulation of private property, and further supports the argument for Taparelli's mediated influence on the document through his students, Matteo Liberatore and Leo XIII.

The most important thing to take away from this is that the origins of one of the basic principles of Catholic social thought is derived not merely from a recaptured pre- modern Thomistic precedent. Rather, subsidiarity is a result of an attempt to adapt a modern notion of individual natural rights to a pre-modern notion of the social location of the person within a network of authority and obligations.

For Taparelli, what was necessary was a proper understanding of authority and freedom in order to properly order and organize society and social institutions. Such an organization would then be more just and more charitable. Further, such an organization would better relate the various societies in which members find themselves; from the family to the state and Society as a whole.

21 Ernest L. Fortin, "'Sacred and inviolable': Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights," Theological Studies, 53, (1993), 231. 22 Paul Misner, “Antecedents to Rerum Novarum in European Catholicism,” On the Condition of Labor and the Social Question One Hundred Years Later. Toronto Studies in Theology Vol. 69, Edited by: Thomas O Nitch, Joseph M. Phillips, Jr., and Edward L. Fitzsimmons, (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 217. 9

First, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity is characterized by an upward trajectory through which members of society and lower associations contribute to and build up the larger associations. In doing so, these members and lower associations are also performing a helping or “subsidiary” function.

In both dimensions of subsidiarity, the various associations and members in society are all related in their effort to help all other associations and memberss. Society, therefore, is bound together and given life by a shared sense of solidarity, ordered toward the common good, and structured by the ways in which members and associations at the various levels of the graded social hierarchy help one another both determine and work to realize the common good of the social whole.

These two dimensions provide a much wider understanding of the principle of subsidiarity. This wider understanding helps to better highlight subsidiarity’s presence in

Bishop Sheil’s and Saul Alinsky’s social thought. As it becomes easier to see the presence of subsidiarity, it then becomes easier to see how American democratic liberal tradition influences how subsidiarity functions within that context. This is especially visible in

Alinsky’s argument for the nature and value of community organizing and Bishop Sheil’s sense of American democracy. Because American democracy is rooted in a liberal appreciation and prioritization of the individual, so too do Alinsky and Bishop Sheil begin their social visions by logically prioritizing the liberal individual and their democratic acts of building up and contributing to society. As a result, both are forced to explain how to bind liberal individuals into a social whole that is more unified than an aggregate of individuals, and has a greater regard for the fullness of the human person. This liberally-inflected

American democratic social vision therefore emphasizes the upward trajectory of structural- pluralistic subsidiarity and the ways in which individuals contribute to the determination of

10 the common good and participate in the realization of it, most often mediated by local associations. It is because of this participation by members and lower associations that higher associations and the State should perform a downward helping function in the form of associational subsidiarity, which includes the Compendium’s “positive” and “negative” senses.

The most significant finding of this research, however, is not in how Catholic subsidiarity is impacted by American democratic culture, but in the demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American liberal democratic social imagination. Though subsidiarity is amenable to liberalism’s logical prioritization of the individual in its comparison with structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and participation, a wholly Catholic subsidiarity is not content with a simple pluralism of individuals, economic businesses, and the State. Rather,

Catholic subsidiarity recognizes the important subsidiary function of the individual, as a person and a constitutive member of society, but it also requires acknowledgement and support for the vast plurality of associations that give society its substance and its life.

This demand has three significant, concrete implications for an American form of

Catholic subsidiarity. The first is a greater recognition in the American social imagination of the corporate reality, integrity, autonomy, and internal authority of the vast plurality of associations within the social whole. This means a greater appreciation of structural or social pluralism. The second is the need to foster and support new and novel associations that will serve to empower members of society and local communities to participate in the determination and realization of the common good of the social whole. If American liberal society prioritizes the participation of the individual, then Catholic structural-pluralistic subsidiarity requires that they have the associations that will enable it. The third demand that

Catholic subsidiarity makes that is significant for this project relates to the subsidiary

11 function of the State. Because of the need for a greater appreciation for structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, Catholic subsidiarity demands that the State, as the highest temporal authority responsible for the common good of the whole of Society, perform the associational subsidiary functions of fostering structural pluralism, and regulating the relationships between the various associations within American society.

Specifically, the State is responsible for ensuring a just balance of power between social associations (families, labor groups, etc.) and economic businesses within society. It is because of the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of these groups that the State must perform its own associational subsidiary function by ensuring the just relationships between them. This means that the State has a much wider, expansive function that extends down to the level of the individual.

These characteristics of subsidiarity, how it is impacted by American liberal democratic culture, and what it demands of American social imagination are visible within the efforts of Bishop Sheil and Saul Alinsky. Further, they are represented as a distinctly

American and wholly Catholic form of subsidiarity in the legacy of their collaboration; the

Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Chapter Outline

In Chapter One, “Understanding Subsidiarity,” I will provide a fuller account of the principle of subsidiarity through an investigation of its origins in the thought of Luigi

Taparelli, S.J. in the mid-1800’s and how the principle is developed by Pope Leo XIII’s

Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. In light of research on the origins of the principle in Taparelli’s work, and the more current thought on the principle, it becomes clear that the principle of subsidiarity requires a greater appreciation for structural pluralism in society, and the significant

12 subsidiary functions that members and smaller, lower associations perform towards the determination and realization of the good. This investigation will show that current official accounts lack a full appreciation of three key characteristics. The first is a wider appreciation of subsidiarity’s foundation on structural pluralism. The second is the full recognition and support for the contribution of members and lower associations towards the determination and realization of the common good; what the Compendium calls “participation,” and what this study will call “structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.” And finally, the third is the full appreciation for the subsidiary function that higher, larger associations (especially the state as the highest and largest association holding organizational authority within a national society) perform in support of the previous two characteristics; what has been previously called

“subsidiarity,” and what this study will call “associational subsidiarity.” In later chapters, these three characteristics will highlight how subsidiarity is present with Bishop Sheil’s and

Saul Alinsky’s thought and work, and how Catholic subsidiarity interacts with American democratic liberalism as subsidiarity is interpreted into that context.

In Chapter Two, “ ‘Public and Private Charity’: The Principle of Subsidiarity in

Bishop Bernard James Sheil’s Depression-Era Social Work and Thought,” I will investigate how the principle is used by the Catholic response to the economic and social crises of the

Great Depression and how subsidiarity is present in how Bishop Sheil comes to understand the structural roots of the crises and the ways to address the crises. During this period,

Bishop Sheil shifts from what Paul Misner calls a “charitable Catholic” approach, which focuses on the virtuous formation of individuals, to a “social Catholic” approach, which emphasizes a structural approach to addressing the causes and effects of poverty. As Bishop

Sheil makes that shift, his understanding of poverty and how it must be addressed clearly shows an appreciation for structural pluralism, the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions

13 of members and lower associations, and the full associational subsidiary functions of higher associations, especially the American federal government. This shows that subsidiarity is present in Bishop Sheil’s thought even if it is not explicitly referenced, and that it is present in his thought prior to his work with Saul Alinsky.

Chapter Three, “Organizing for American Democracy,” will investigate the origins and characteristics of Saul Alinsky’s social vision and his account of community organizing. I will argue that Alinsky’s sociological and criminological training at the University of Chicago brought him to a structural and functional appreciation of society and the social ills of the

Depression, and how to address them. Further, this training brought him into contact with a

Durkheimian appreciation of solidarity. These intellectual roots brought him to an appreciation of the structure and structuring of society that compares to Catholic social doctrine on the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. Most importantly, Alinsky’s summation of his social vision in the Reveille for Radicals clearly shows the presence not only of subsidiarity, but the full appreciation of structural pluralism, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, and associational subsidiarity. These comparisons with Catholic social thought made it possible for Bishop Sheil and later Catholic priest-organizers to view Alinsky-style community organizing as a practical means of social action to positively impact American social structures.

Chapter Four, “‘Making Democracy Work’: American Democracy and Catholic

Subsidiarity,” will examine Bishop Sheil’s negotiation of the space between Catholic social doctrine and American liberal democratic culture. During this time, Bishop Sheil worked to expand American democracy through the Sheil School of Social Studies, and through collaboration with and support for Saul Alinsky and community organizing. Bishop Sheil’s speeches and writings during this period show a distinctly American and liberally-inflected

14 interpretation and adaptation of Catholic social doctrine. The influence of American liberalism further shaped Bishop Sheil’s appreciation of Alinsky’s community organizing.

Because of it, Bishop Sheil emphasized how it supports structural pluralism by complexifying the local social space through new and novel associations, and how community organizations perform structural-pluralistic subsidiary by mediating participation and empowering individuals to contribute to the determination and realization of the common good. Through this, Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Alinsky shows a distinctly

American form of subsidiarity as a negotiation between Catholic social doctrine and

American democratic culture.

Chapter Five, “Subsidiarity in America: The Catholic Campaign for Human

Development and the Legacy of Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” will examine the historical and intellectual connections between Bishop Sheil and the founding of the CCHD, as well as the programs run by the CCHD. Using the work of Lew Daly and his critique of compassionate conservatism, I will argue that the CCHD meets the demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American democratic culture. Specifically, a Catholic subsidiarity in

America requires three elements. The first is a fuller appreciation of structural pluralism that goes beyond American liberal and constitutional imagination. The second is a greater effort to foster and support new and novel associations and to empower them to perform the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions that only they can perform. The third is a greater effort by higher associations, especially the State, to ensure that there is a just balance of power between social associations and economic businesses. Through its programs, the

CCHD supports these very same goals. As such, and as the legacy of Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Saul Alinsky, the CCHD represents a distinctly American and wholly

Catholic subsidiarity.

Methodology

This project is focused on the interpretation of Catholic social thought into the

American social context. As such, it follows David Tracy’s explanation of systematic theology in The Analogical Imagination. There Tracy argues that systematic theology is a process of interpretation that requires an account of the cultural and historical development of doctrines and an engagement with the same of those for whom the systematic theologian is interpreting those doctrines. Thus the systematic theologian must also make use of historical and cultural disciplines.

In the case of this project, the systematic interpretation taking place lies at the intersection of both the historical development of the principle of subsidiarity and the historical and cultural realities of American Catholicism. For this reason, it will pursue a systematic theological understanding of subsidiarity by employing an historical methodology.

By using an historical methodology, it is possible to examine the principle of subsidiarity as a concrete reality rather than as a vague and disconnected social principle. Though the principle is taught as universal, and universally applicable, an historical methodology makes it possible to examine exactly how subsidiarity has been and might be made concrete in the

American context.

Research Methods and Sources

As a theological and historical project, this project makes use of both theological and historical research methods and will focus on textual sources.

Theological sources will primarily consist of official papal documents, specifically

Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, the documents and speeches of Bishop Sheil, the published works of the Saul Alinsky, and the official documentation and literature of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Secondary sources such as commentaries and historical texts locating the documents and their authors within their historical contexts. The goal of this research will be to better understand the primary texts themselves and their place within the historical contexts surrounding them. This will serve to provide a sense of how subsidiarity has developed over time and in response to the American cultural context.

The dissertation will also draw from archival sources. Key among these are Bishop

Sheil’s speeches and writings, both published and unpublished, documents regarding the

Sheil School of Social Studies, and the writings of those who worked with Sheil at the

School. The focus of this archival research is on determining the exact nature of Sheil’s thought as expressed by his public addresses and writings, the intellectual influences on that thought, determining any changes that take place over time, and highlighting his use of subsidiarity and its development.

Wider historical context will be provided by secondary historical sources. Focus will be placed on the wider historical context of Chicago and the United States surrounding

Sheil’s career, as well as those connecting Sheil to the founding of the CCHD.

CHAPTER I

UNDERSTANDING SUBSIDIARITY

Introduction

The purpose of this project is to examine the collaboration between Bishop Bernard

Sheil of Chicago and Saul Alinsky in terms of the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity.

While I will focus on their historical and intellectual origins and collaboration in later chapters, it is important to provide an understanding of subsidiarity in this chapter. A full understanding of subsidiarity will show that Sheil’s and Alinsky’s collaboration is a distinctly

American experiment in subsidiarity. To develop an understanding of subsidiarity, I will examine Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, Heinrich

Pesch’s Lehrbuch die Nationalekonomie, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and the social-moral philosophy of Luigi Taparelli, S.J. These sources form the basis of the contemporary understanding and application of subsidiarity as a social principle.

In this chapter, I will provide an account of subsidiarity that brings together these sources in order to provide a fuller understanding of the principle of subsidiarity. I will argue that subsidiarity is manifested in two distinct, but not separate, forms. The first dimension, as it is explicitly applied in Quadragesimo Anno and defined in the Compendium, focuses on the responsibility of the state to aid lower associations without absorbing or destroying them. I will refer to this dimension of subsidiarity as “subsidiarity of associations,” or associational subsidiarity, following Oswald von Nell-Bruening’s terminology in his commentary on

Quadragesimo Anno.23

These sources also show signs of another dimension of subsidiarity that has largely

23 Von Nell-Breuning, Reorganization of Social Economy, (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1936), 206. 18 gone undeveloped. The contours of this second dimension of subsidiarity are visible in the

Compendium’s discussion of participation as an implication of subsidiarity, and of the social pluralism in society. Similarly, Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, and Pope Pius XI’s

Quadragesimo Anno base their accounts of society on it being composed of a plurality of social structures. This second dimension of subsidiarity has also been the focus of contemporary scholarship in political theory, labor-management relations, the European Union, and

American social welfare programs. In those treatments, subsidiarity is used to refer to the positive contributions of members and lower associations to higher associations in the solidaristic realization of the common good. Though they are largely outside the bounds of

Catholic social tradition, their analyses help explain what subsidiarity could look like within a liberal democratic context. Following the example of Russell Hittinger, Stephen V. Monsma, and Lew Daly this dimension of subsidiary will be called, "structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.”24

Out of this it is possible to identify two terms. First, “associational subsidiarity” is the proper structuring of how higher associations relate to lower associations and the members of society. Most often for Catholic social doctrine this has been applied to the way that the state relates to all associations below it. The second is “structural-pluralistic subsidiarity,” which how lower associations and members relate to higher associations. Both of these have their corresponding activities or functions. Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno focuses on the “subsidiary function” of the state, which it largely equates with subsidiarity.

The Compendium discusses “participation,” which is a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of lower associations and members. All of these are narrow applications and manifestations

24 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism: On Law, Politics and Human Nature, (NY: Columbia University Press, 2007); Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012). 19 of the larger “principle of subsidiarity,” which organizes and structures all social relationships within the graduated hierarchy of society as it is derived out of solidarity and ordered towards the common good.

This chapter is broken into three main parts. The first will focus on the Compendium’s presentation of associational subsidiarity as it was derived from Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo

Anno. This will show that the Pope Pius XI’s application of subsidiarity, particularly its focus on the subsidiary function of the state, was assumed into the Compendium as the primary meaning of the principle. The result is that the total principle of subsidiarity is equated with the associational subsidiary function of the state and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of lower associations and members are equated with “participation.” Such a conclusion requires looking further back to the origins of the principle, whence Pope Leo acquired his social ideas. This will allow us to better understand and envision the fuller meaning of subsidiarity and see how the subsidiary function of the state and the structural- pluralistic subsidiary function of participation are linked in the structuring of society towards the solidaristic realization of the common good.

The work of recovering the origins and wider meaning of the principle will take place in the second part of this chapter, which will be broken into two sections. The first section will outline the pluralistic structure of society within the Compendium and papal social encyclicals. A pluralistic account of the structure of society makes subsidiarity applicable beyond the function of the state. If society is composed of a plurality of independent and autonomous associations, then those associations’ positive contributions to the social whole

(their participation) represent a distinct, but not separate, form of subsidiary function. Such functions then are ordered by their own dimension of subsidiarity, i.e. structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

The second section will make the connection between the structural pluralism of society and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. Luigi Taparelli, S.J., was a major influence on

Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI, and his work was known to Heinrich Pesch and Oswald von Nell-Breuning. Because little of Taparelli’s work has been translated into English, this section will rely on the work of Thomas C. Behr, and his translation and analysis of

Taparelli’s social thought. In the mid-1800’s, Taparelli’s work established a precedent for viewing subsidiarity as a principle for organizing the structures of society and the inter- relationships between the plurality of associations at various levels within the graded hierarchy of society. Further, Taparelli set the logical priority of subsidiarity on structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. In a structurally pluralistic society, members and associations positively contribute to higher associations, of which the state is the highest authority. In so doing, each association relates to those above by helping it, or offering subsidy; i.e. by performing a subsidiary function. Thus, subsidiarity is a principle that organizes and orders the pluralistic structure of society and the inter-relationships between associations, not merely political governance.

In the third and final part, I will show how the subsidiary function of higher associations, as it is used in Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno and presented in the

Compendium in terms of the subsidiary function of the state, is the logical result of the pluralistic structure of society and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of lower associations and associates as they participate and help higher associations. In a structurally pluralistic society, in which lower associations and associates help higher associations, higher associations have certain responsibilities and limits. Principally, these responsibilities are fulfilled by the higher association by helping lower associations achieve the common good of

21 all associates and doing so with a clear view of justice. Therefore, the subsidiary function of the state is the natural result of a much larger picture, not the fullness of subsidiarity.

As will be discussed in later chapters, Sheil’s and Alinsky’s parallel careers in social action are extremely helpful locations to examine these two dimensions of subsidiarity.

Particularly, their social theories and writings are representative of a distinctly American version of the structural pluralism that is the basis of Catholic social doctrine and the principle of subsidiarity. While neither explicitly uses the term subsidiarity, the ways in which they describe and characterize society clearly correspond to the structural pluralism that is very present in Catholic social doctrine. Further, premised on this vision of society, each understands the role of the state and higher associations as performing a helping function, which enables and empowers lower associations to perform their own proper functions and guides all associates towards the good of all. This associational subsidiarity is clear in Sheil’s approach to the role of the state in funding private religious charities for poverty relief in response to the severity of the Depression. In the 1940’s and 50’s, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity is present in Sheil’s articulation of American democracy and the role of Alinsky’s community organizations in it, as well as the subsidiary function of social education to help support American democracy in the fight against global Communism. Similarly, Alinsky’s

People’s Organization is representative of the need of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity to create wholly novel forms of associations to fill the vacuum left after the social disorganization of urban decay and the social ills of the Depression. The People’s

Organization both contributed to the plurality of social structures within society (helping to integrate communities into larger city, state, and national associations) and served the subsidiary function of organizing and guiding lower, smaller associations within communities. Thus, Alinsky’s and Sheil’s social careers, as well as their collaboration, is

22 representative of subsidiarity, and the legacy of their collaboration in the CCHD is a thorough and complete representation of an American form of subsidiarity.

Part I. The Current State of Subsidiarity.

Introduction.

In this part, I will argue that the contemporary understanding of subsidiarity, which emphasizes limited government or government at the lowest level possible, is an incomplete picture of the principle and fails to recognize the ways in which subsidiarity applies to the positive contributions of lower associations. This incomplete picture is the result of how

Catholic social doctrine has applied subsidiarity to the functioning of the state. This is represented in the Compendium’s delineation of the “positive” and “negative” senses of the principle. The result is the equation of the principle of subsidiarity with the associational subsidiary function of the state. The inadequacy of a state-focused understanding of subsidiarity is most noticeable in the Compendium’s discussion of the relationship between

“subsidiarity” and “participation.” In that discussion, the Compendium fails to account for the ways that “participation” is actually a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of members and lower associations towards the realization of the common good, and is therefore a form of subsidiarity. At the same time the Compendium’s presentation of these two concepts, in the context of a distinct sense of the composition of society, possesses the necessary characteristics to support its fuller understanding of subsidiarity as discussed above.

Extracting a fuller understanding of subsidiarity will, however, require going further back to the origins of the principle, which will draw out how “participation” is a form of subsidiarity and will be treated in the following part of the chapter.

The incomplete picture of subsidiarity in the Compendium is a result of the way in which social thinkers and social encyclicals applied the principle almost solely to the role of

23 the state in relation to society and the economy. Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum, because it was focused on a society’s need to care for the poor and working-class, focused on the ways in which the state could function to realize the common good. Similarly, Pesch’s Lehrbuch focused on the role of the state in the national economy as an expression of solidarity.

Finally, Pope Pius XII’s Quadragesimo Anno and its concern about the state’s expanding reach into social welfare and “social activity” applies subsidiary function to rein in the state’s absorption of social responsibilities, which would be better fulfilled by lower associations.25

Central to how the Compendium understands subsidiarity is a quote from Quadragesimo

Anno, saying, “It is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.”26 Such an application of Quadragesimo

Anno’s subsidiarity is important. It places the greatest emphasis on the need to protect lesser and subordinate organization from greater and higher associations. Further, even though

Quadragesimo Anno and the Compendium discuss theoretical “higher associations,” much of the responsibility of subsidiarity falls on the state in practical application.

The state-focused application of subsidiarity is noticeable when the Compendium outlines two distinct senses. The first is a “positive sense,” in which the higher association renders “assistance.”27 In the text, this assistance means a variety of things including social

25 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #78. Accessed 7/22/16 at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius- xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html. A state-focused understanding of subsidiarity is reinforced by the Catechism of the Catholic Church #1885: “The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order.” Catechism of the Catholic Church, NY: Image/Doubleday, 1995. Italics added for emphasis. 26 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #79. 27 The Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, (Washington, DC: USSCB Publishing, 2005), #186. 24 assistance and the welfare state, the promotion of human dignity, and supporting families.

As we will see later, this idea of assistance is more than providing goods directly to lower associations and members, but includes the work of directing and guiding all members of society toward the good of the social whole.

The second sense of subsidiarity is “negative.” The negative implications “require the

State to refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the existential space of the smaller essential cells of society.”28 As stated in Quadragesimo Anno, higher associations must not destroy or absorb lower associations.

These two senses of subsidiarity both show that the Compendium follows Quadragesimo

Anno’s focus on the state as the primary association where subsidiarity applies. While the

“positive sense” recognizes that subsidiarity is applicable to a wider array of associations, the

Compendium’s “negative sense” shows that it is still working with the assumption that the subsidiary function of the state is paradigmatic for the principle. The state is the typical location for applying the principle. This makes more sense when one recognizes that what is often taken as Quadragesimo Anno’s definition of subsidiarity is focused on the “subsidiary function” of the state.29 It is a practical application of a wider concept, which structures all social relationships, to the narrower functioning of the state within that same structural framework. The result is that popular understandings of the principle of subsidiarity have equated it with the associational subsidiary function of the state.

The solution to the inadequacy of such a problem is present in the Compendium’s understanding of subsidiarity and participation in the context of the composition of society as a whole. Early in its treatment of subsidiarity the Compendium recognizes the positive role

28 Ibid., #186. 29 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #80. 25 of civil society in the social whole.30 Civil society is “understood as the sum of the relationships between individuals and intermediate social groupings, which are the first relationships to arise and which come about thanks to ‘the creative subjectivity of the citizen.’”31 Further, “This network of relationships [civil society] strengthens the social fabric and constitutes the basis of a true community of persons, making possible the recognition of higher forms of social activity.”32 Thus, the “first relationships” are those in and through which most individuals live their social lives. Further, they allow for building up larger associations and participating in them. They are what makes possible the “higher forms of social activity.” These higher forms most notably include the state. Such positive contribution, however, is not understood or appreciated as a subsidiary function, but only as an implication of the subsidiary function of higher associations.

Within such a context, the Compendium understands subsidiarity as the structural means of “defending and promoting the original expressions of social life,” which is civil society.33 Further, subsidiarity is meant to “promote the dignity of the person [by] showing concern…for that aggregate of economic, social, cultural, sports-oriented, recreational, professional and political expressions to which people spontaneously give life and which make it possible for them to achieve effective social growth.”34 Thus, the Compendium recognizes that people and associations “spontaneously give life” to a plurality of

“expressions,” and it is important to “defend and promote” and “show concern” for the plurality of “social expressions.” It is toward the end “defending and promoting” that the

30 The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), #185. Accessed 7/22/16 at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_200605 26_compendio-dott-soc_en.html#Meaning and value. 31 Ibid., #185. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., #186. 34 Ibid., #185. 26

Compendium employs the principle of subsidiarity. Such is the purpose of the “positive” and

“negative” senses of subsidiarity.

The Compendium explains the role of participation as, “The characteristic implication of subsidiarity.” It is “a series of activities by means of which the citizen, either as a member or in association with others, whether directly or through representation, contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.”35

Such contribution is only appreciated as a significant implication of the subsidiary function of the state. Through participation members and associations can reduce the burdens placed on the state and combat the state’s overreach. Participation is required by subsidiarity and helps subsidiarity, but it is not another form of subsidiary function. The Compendium is aware that the principle applies to the wide variety of associations within the social whole other than the state. Yet it only explains subsidiarity as the downward trajectory of higher associations in their relationship to members and lower associations. It does not recognize the contributions of members and lower associations as similar subsidiary functions with an upward trajectory. For the Compendium, participation is implied by subsidiarity, but is not a subsidiary function itself.

The Compendium’s articulation of the relationship between the concepts of

“subsidiarity” (as it applies to higher associations in their relationship to lower associates) and “participation” (as it relates to the positive contribution of lower associations and members to the higher association) is representative of the incomplete understanding of subsidiarity because of how it fails to appreciate the social functions of lower associations and members in subsidiary terms. In the text, subsidiarity and participation are understood as separate concepts. Subsidiarity outlines the proper relationship of higher associations to

35 Ibid., #189. 27 lower associates. This protects the space in which intermediate and lower associations operate. Participation is an “implication” of subsidiarity. It is the relationship of lower associates to higher associations for the realization of the common good. Thus, subsidiarity allows for and encourages participation, and participation reinforces the boundaries of subsidiarity. The two are understood to be interdependent, but they remain distinct and separate. They are not presented as two sides of the same coin. As a result, most discussions of subsidiarity have focused on the “downward” subsidiary function of the state in aiding lower associations and failed to recognize that lower associations do perform a subsidiary function in helping higher associations realize the common good while refraining from doing work that is proper to those higher associations.

The solution to the problematic division of subsidiarity and participation can be found by recognizing how they are linked together by social, or structural, pluralism. As

Russell Hittinger argues, “the principle of subsidiarity…is not adequately represented as a question of scale (lowest possible level), and even less of devolution.” Instead, subsidiarity serves “a richer social ontology.” For this reason, “the principle is not so much a theory about state institutions, or about checks and balances, as it is an account of the pluralism in society.”36 This idea of the “pluralism in society” is critical for how we should understand subsidiarity in general, and how we can understand the collaboration between Sheil and

Alinsky as an exercise in subsidiarity in the United States. It will help to better define what subsidiarity is and explain why the subsidiary function of higher associations has the purpose and limits that it does.

36 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” in The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism: On Law, Politics, and Human Nature, ed. Ed. John Witte Jr. and Frank S. Alexander. (NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), 21 – 22. 28

Social pluralism is clear and present within the Compendium. In its discussion of the social nature of the human person, the Compendium discusses social pluralism as how “The different components of society… build a unified and harmonious whole, within which it is possible for each element to preserve and develop its own characteristics and autonomy.”37

The Compendium’s understanding of the role of civil society as discussed above also supports the idea of social pluralism. As we will see below, the notion of each component working to build a unified whole, while at the same time preserving and developing its own integrity, is critical for how we understand the fuller dimensions of subsidiarity. Unfortunately, the contributions that various components make to build the unified whole is not seen as a form of subsidiarity. Instead, it is placed within the context of participation. In the same section, the Compendium quotes the Catechism’s call to create “voluntary associations and institutions,” which will “promote the participation of the greatest number in the life of a society.”38

Finally, among the “corresponding needs” of subsidiarity, the Compendium recognizes the need for “the presence of pluralism in society and due representation of its vital components.”39 Like its discussion of participation, however, the Compendium sees social pluralism as the way to a fuller realization of subsidiarity, but not the structural foundation that gives subsidiarity its purpose. Thus, the Compendium presumes that society is composed of a plurality of social structures, but only understands their contribution as a means of participation.

The Compendium’s definition of participation similarly assumes social pluralism. In the section after discussing subsidiarity, the Compendium defines participation as “The

37 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #151. 38 Ibid. The Compendium’s quotation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church draws from Chapter Two “The Human Community,” Article 1 “The Person and Society,” Section I “The Communal Character of the Human Vocation.” 39 Ibid., #187. 29 characteristic implication of subsidiarity is participation, which is expressed essentially in a series of activities by means of which the citizen, either as an individual or in association with others, whether directly or through representation, contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.” Clearly imbedded in this are two important assumptions. First, social pluralism is a necessary means of participation. The citizen’s contribution “either as an individual or in association with others” presumes that the members of society express themselves through a plurality of social structures at various levels of society. Second, participation is a positive contribution to the social whole. It helps the society to realize its own distinct good and the good of each member. These examples show that the Compendium’s understanding of subsidiarity and participation presumes some understanding of social pluralism and the positive contribution that lower associations and individuals render to the social whole.

Conclusion.

What this has shown is that by looking at social pluralism, we can begin to see that the state and higher associations are not the only associations offering aid. Though much of

Catholic social doctrine has focused on the ways in which higher associations, especially the state provide subsidiary aid to lower associations, the Compendium’s account of social pluralism and participation show that lower associations also provide subsidiary aid to higher associations and the social whole. Thus, the incomplete understanding of subsidiarity that resulted from a focus on the associational subsidiary function of the state can be corrected by examining the social pluralism that composes society and the ways in which lower associations and individuals perform a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function.

In the following parts of this chapter, I will argue that participation as it is developed in the Compendium is in fact a distinct manifestation of subsidiarity. In comparison to the

30 subsidiary functions of higher associations, participation is the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function by which individual memberss and associations offer aid and subsidy to higher associations and the whole of society. In contrast to the associational subsidiarity that orders the functions of higher associations, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity describes the bottom-up trajectory of the relationship between members and lower associations to associations higher in the graded hierarchy of society. This means that subsidiarity is a much larger concept than the functioning of higher associations. It is a principle of total social structuring that orders all social relationships with both upward and downward trajectories according to how each member and association helps those below and above in the solidaristic realization of the common good of society.

The Compendium’s failure to fully develop structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, despite assuming its foundational elements, makes it necessary to look further back in the historical development of the principle. For this project, it is most helpful to look past Pope Pius XI’s

Quadragesimo Anno, and Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum. That means looking to the work of Luigi

Taparelli, S.J. Taparelli’s work shows how the twin notions of associational subsidiarity and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity have their origins in the organization of liberal society towards the common good. By looking at Taparelli’s thought, we can better understand how the two dimensions of subsidiarity cooperate and thus better appreciate how the collaboration between Sheil and Alinsky was an experiment in subsidiarity in the American context.

Part II. Structural Pluralism and Structural-Pluralistic Subsidiarity

Introduction.

In this part, I will outline the pluralistic structure of society, what the Compendium calls “social pluralism,” as envisioned by Luigi Taparelli at the origins of modern papal social doctrine. This will do two things. First, it will help to locate the intellectual origins of subsidiarity in the context of an overall account of the composition of society. Second, it will show that the subsidiary function of associations operates in both downward (associational) and upward (structural-pluralistic) directions. Both of these will serve to provide the proper context for understanding the place of associational subsidiarity and to fill out the incomplete picture of subsidiarity as represented by the Compendium. By locating subsidiarity in the intellectual context of the composition of society and by outlining the important role of members and lower associations in the composition of all higher associations it will be possible to show that structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity logically precede associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

My argument is that the pluralistic structure of society resulting from a solidaristic effort towards the common good calls for a certain ordering of relationships between members and all associations. In order to achieve the common good, and with a view to solidarity, all members and associations must perform certain helping functions with certain upward or downward trajectories. Thus, it is because society is structured in a solidaristic, pluralistic way that members and associations perform subsidiary functions. It is primarily in where they lie within the graded hierarchy of society that determines how they need to function in subsidiary ways. Further, because society is composed by a plurality of associations, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and the upward structural-pluralistic subsidiary

32 functions of members and lower associations logically precede and determine the natures of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary functions of higher associations.

This part of the chapter will be broken into two sections. The first will examine the thought of Luigi Taparelli and contemporary literature on subsidiarity to appreciate the pluralistic structure of society that supports the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of associations. It will also show how a pluralistic sense of the structure of society is present in

Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.

The second section will outline how, within a pluralistic structure, members and associations within the graduated hierarchy of society render subsidy to higher associations.

By understanding the nature of how members and lower associations relate to higher associations and perform structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions, it is possible to discuss concrete functions that will provide us an interpretive lens to examine the different experiments in subsidiarity in Sheil’s and Alinsky’s collaborations.

These two sections will lay the foundation for the final part of the chapter. There my argument will be that higher associations and the state have the purpose and limits outlined by associational subsidiarity because of the pluralistic structure of society and the structural- pluralistic subsidiarity that lower associations and members render to them.

Section A. Structural pluralism in Catholic social thought.

In Catholic social teaching and papal encyclicals, the social whole is composed of a plurality of structures. Structural pluralism, understood in the simplest way as society being made up of smaller societies, is present within Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.

Structural pluralism assumes 1) that society is composed of a plurality of smaller societies, 2) that those smaller societies have their own distinct and independent existence, autonomy, and rights, and 3) that they positively contribute to the larger society by pursuing their own

33 good and by helping society realize the common good of all members. Thus, the very nature of society determines the ways in which individuals and associations operate within society and how they are all structured in their relationships with one another according to how they provide help towards the common good. Such an understanding of society will help highlight how the positive contribution made by members and lower associations is a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function and represents structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

A full appreciation of structural pluralism makes two things possible. First, we can better understand subsidiarity beyond the social functions of the state. Second, we will better understand subsidiarity as a means of properly ordering the structure of society by the creation and support of the vast multitude of associations of persons. By appreciating subsidiarity as a principle of the structural relationships within society rather than of political governance we can better use it to examine the collaboration between Bishop Sheil and

Alinsky.

The most recent research places the origin of subsidiarity in Luigi Taparelli’s sociopolitical thought, especially his textbook Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto

(A Theoretical Treatise on Natural Law Based on Fact).40 As a major influence on papal social thought, Taparelli’s thought is the first formulation of much of Catholic social doctrine, especially solidarity and subsidiarity. In Hittinger’s words on the papal use of subsidiarity, “the idea came from Taparelli.”41

40 None of the Saggio has been translated into English. Here the most insightful work bringing Taparelli’s work into English has been done by Thomas C. Behr. Behr’s commentary on Taparelli in his dissertation and published articles is a major source of our understanding of Taparelli’s thought. Thomas C. Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000). Behr’s recently published Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, further develops these points and provides English translations of Taparelli’s Saggio Teoretico. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2019). 41 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” 22. 34

According to Hittinger, “[Pope Leo XIII’s] interest in St. Thomas began at the ripe old age of ten…and continued at the Roman College, where, at the age of fourteen, he became the student assistant of the Jesuit neo-Thomist Luigi Taparelli. In time, he would meet Taparelli’s neo-Thomist colleagues Matteo Liberatore and Joseph Kleutgen, who would work on the drafts of Dei Filius and Aeterni Patris.”42 According to Paul Misner, Liberatore, who was a student of Taparelli, was also the principal drafter of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum

Novarum.43 In the end, “Leo took inspiration from Luigi Taparelli.”44

Taparelli also influenced the work of Heinrich Pesch, and Pope Pius XI, who “was especially influenced by the writings of Luigi Taparelli…on social justice, subsidiarity, and natural rights.” These were “funneled into the Pian encyclicals of the 1920s and 1930s.

Indeed, Pius explicitly recommended Taparellian neo-Thomism in the encyclical Divini Illius

(1929).”45 Such a well-documented running influence on the principle authorities in the early period of modern Catholic social doctrine provides the warrant necessary to examine

Taparelli’s thought and to examine subsidiarity and the papal social encyclicals in that light.

The social vision that Luigi Taparelli developed in the mid-19th century can best be understood as an attempt to apply the thought of St. Thomas to correct the problematic theoretical foundations of liberalism. In fact, his approach to natural law ought to be viewed as a Thomist revision of classical liberal thought on rights originating in the thought of figures like John Locke. Central to this argument are two points made by Thomas C. Behr.

The first is his argument that Taparelli favored a moderated liberal project. Even after the

1848 revolutions, and the ongoing "Roman question," Taparelli continued to favor a

42 Ibid., 12. 43 Misner, “Antecedents of Rerum Novarum in European Catholicism,” in On the Condition of Labor and the Social Question One Hundred Years Later, ed. Thomas O’Nash, Toronto Studies in Theology, no. 69, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon, 1991), 213 – 217. 44 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” 15. 45 Ibid., 15. 35 moderated liberal perspective that made a place for Church and religion. Though he publicly fought liberalism on its troubled theoretical foundation and anti-clerical tendencies, he privately continued to approve of a liberal, unified Italy. The second is Behr’s claim that

Taparelli principally used Thomist thought to correct his own work. This coupled with

Taparelli’s later claim that he acquired his ideas about natural law from figures like John

Locke, further supports my argument that Taparelli’s social vision is best understood as a

Thomist correction and realignment of classical liberal political theory.

In pointing to his background, Behr says "Taparelli came from an important

Piedmontese aristocratic background and, more importantly, as the brother of the liberal first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, Massimo D'Azeglio, he was under the limelight of public attention at all times."46 In 1946, Massimo published a report in which he "made a scathing indictment of the administration of the Papal States," and argued that "it was time for the leadership of an established state, with an established army, if the Hapsburgs and the

As a result of his interest in the unification of Italy, Taparelli saw the need to provide an argument for it on a foundation of solid principles. Behr says,

So interested in the cause of unification, Taparelli set out to demonstrate the natural

46 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000), 13. 47 Behr, Ibid., 58 - 59. Behr references Luigi’s being related to Massimo D’Azeglio in Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 18, but does not go into detail about the possible influence of Massimo’s liberalism. 36

One element of this founding on law and justice was respect for the Church. "He wrote very openly to his brother on his respect for the liberal position so long as they could respect the rights of religion and of the Church."49 Thus, while Taparelli favored Italian unification, even under liberal principles, he still saw the need to maintain the role of the Church in society and the operation of the state.

Intellectually, "Taparelli's early attachment to Cousin tells us a great deal about his own moderate liberalism and progressive orientation that otherwise is so easily lost if one focuses on his dialectial clarifications of principles, especially as he streamlined those arguments in his Civilta Cattolica."50 With the end of the Neo-Guelf movement, Gioberti's attacks on the Jesuits and the tumult of the 1848 revolutions, Taparelli did not abandon his hopes. Rather, "Taparelli continually sought to establish that the problems with such liberalism as a politics and as an economic system were in its principles and that a liberalism informed by a Catholic respect for natural law, justice, and charity was still possible."51

Further, "Taparelli remained a convinced patriot and firm believer in the progress of society, and of institutions, so long as they had the principles of natural law, justice and charity at their base, for the rest of his life."52 According to Behr, Taparelli rejected an ideological liberalism based on individualist, anti-clerical principles. This was not a simple rejection of

48 Behr, Ibid., 59. 49 Behr, Ibid., 60. 50 Behr, Ibid., 157 - 158. 51 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000), 64. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Catholic Social Thought, (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2019), 69 – 72. 52 Behr, Ibid., 66. 37 liberalism, but a call for a better, moderate liberalism; respectful of liberty and the authority of the Church. Such a situation was the only way to attain the justice and liberty that liberalism sought.

In order to pursue this goal, Taparelli engaged not only the thought of Aquinas but all available sources. "Taparelli clearly rejected any slavish adherence to the form of Aquinas' corpus....Secondly, he is obviously extremely interested in integrating the expansive date of the natural sciences that is available to him, and in engaging the alternative systems of thought on a comprehensive basis."54 Thus, he was "no mere 'restorer' but the independent and innovative thinker."55

53 Behr, Ibid., 160 - 161. 54 Behr, Ibid., 162-3 55 Behr, Ibid., 163. Cf. Social Justice and Subsidiarity, Ch. I and II. 38 syncretic joining of St. Thomas’ thought and modern thought. This is particularly noticeable in his approach to natural rights. Fortin writes, "In a letter to his Jesuit Provincial, Taparelli admits that he knew next to nothing about natural right when he began to write on it at the age of fifty, and, moreover, that whatever thoughts he did have came mainly from Locke and the other modern authors on whom he had been weaned."56 This is one reason why Misner could state that, "At any rate, when Taparelli d'Azeglio was faced with the issue of property, he read Thomas in the light of modern arguments, notably John Locke's, and grounded private ownership in a natural-law argument of 'liberal' coloration."57 This syncretic approach to Thomistic thought is evident in Rerum Novarum's articulation of private property, and further supports the argument for Taparelli's mediated influence on the document through his students, Matteo Liberatore and Leo XIII.

The most important thing to take away from this is that the origins of one of the basic principles of Catholic social thought is derived not merely from a recaptured pre- modern Thomistic precedent. Rather, subsidiarity is a result of an attempt to adapt a modern notion of individual natural rights to a pre-modern notion of the social location of the individual within a network of authority and obligations.

For Taparelli, what was necessary was a proper understanding of authority and freedom in order to properly order and organize society and social institutions. Such an organization would then be more just and more charitable. Further, such an organization would better relate the various societies in which people find themselves; from the family to the state to the social whole.

56 Ernest L. Fortin, "'Sacred and inviolable': Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights," Theological Studies, 53, (1993), 231. 57 Paul Misner, “Antecedents to Rerum Novarum in European Catholicism,” On the Condition of Labor and the Social Question One Hundred Years Later. Toronto Studies in Theology Vol. 69, Edited by: Thomas O Nitch, Joseph M. Phillips, Jr., and Edward L. Fitzsimmons, (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 217. 39

Taparelli did not use the term “subsidiarity.” Instead, he used the term, “ipotattico,” taken from the Greek word for “hypotaxis,” and Latinified into “subsidiarity.” As Behr states, it refers to the “principles of positioning inferior clauses in relationship to the function of the whole sentence.”58 In his social-political thought, ipotattico is intended to outline the proper relationships of individuals, associations, and within the social whole.

Further, in context of solidarity, it outlines how all social relationships are oriented towards the common good of all.

Taparelli’s account of ipotattico is properly understood in the context of his vision of society as being composed of a plurality of structures. In short, “Societies…are always composed of other societies.” These other societies include “the myriad of associations that humans tend to form, ranging from the family to the State and beyond.” Within the composition of societies, Taparelli understood several types of associations: “deutarchie,” relatively smaller societies; “protarchie,” “relatively larger societies (epitomized in the state)”; and, “etnarchie,” “the largest society, that of the brotherhood of independent peoples.’59

Thus, societies (from the family to the global community of humanity) are composed of a plurality of associations, each of which possess their own scale and place in the graded hierarchy of society.

According to Behr, Taparelli groups “The natural and just relationships” between these associations “under the heading of ‘Hypotactic Right.’” Ipotattico, therefore, orders all the relationships between individuals, lower associations, and higher associations. It orders and guides the inter-relationship between the plurality of associations that compose the

58 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” (PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000), 232. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 103. Going forward I will use ipotattico when referencing Taparelli’s development of the principle, and subsidiarity when talking about the principle in general. 59 Ibid., 221. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 93 – 94. 40 social whole. As we’ll see below, the primary criterion for determining the relationship between associations is the extent to which the various associations provide a helping or subsidiary function to one another.

Russell Hittinger develops this notion of social pluralism further, claiming that

“subsidiarity presupposes that there are plural authorities and agents having their ‘proper’ (not necessarily, lowest) duties and rights with regard to the common good.” He argues further that “subsidiarity is a normative structure of plural social forms,” and “it is an account of the pluralism in society.”60 This notion of society containing plural authorities and agents and plural social forms is crucial for understanding the wider dimensions of subsidiarity.

Stephen V. Monsma uses the phrase “structural pluralism” to refer to the same notion. According to Monsma, structural pluralism:

means all societies consist of more than individuals and the national state; there are a host of intermediate structures lying between the individual on the one hand and the nation and the state on the other. They emerge out of the inherent, inborn, God- created nature of human beings. Therefore, the national community is truly a community of communities….As its name indicates, structural pluralism is a pluralism of social structures and associations.61

This final point is important because it recognizes that the societies that make up the social whole and the state are not simply smaller denominations of the nation or state. Rather, they are distinct societies, albeit incomplete and insufficient apart from the national society, with their own integrity, unity, internal authority, and rights. Further, all of these characteristics are derived from the nature of the associations themselves, and not from the state or higher authority.

60 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” 22. Italics added for emphasis. 61 Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012), 124. 41

Part of the importance of ippotatico and structural pluralism, is that it is a true pluralism. Rather than each subordinate society being a simple denomination of the associations higher and larger than themselves, each association has its own internal unity, integrity, and authority. As Behr says about Taparelli’s idea of ippotatico, “every grouping and level of society has its own end, its own authority…, and its own principles of action, its own being and unity.”62 The fact of the plurality of associations is rooted in two important factors: 1) the nature of associations as arising out of human social nature, and 2) the solidaristic goals that lead associates to form associations.

According to Monsma, associations “emerge out of the inherent, inborn, God-given nature of human beings.” As a result they “receive their right to exist and their powers not from the state nor from autonomous individuals entering into contractual arrangements, but from God – or, for the more secularly minded, from the necessary, inherent nature of human society.”63 It is part of human nature to join, enter into, and participate in associations and societies. Because of that origin, such “natural” associations and societies derive their rights, as well as their being, unity and authority, from their status as expressions of the social nature of human beings.

Jonathan Chaplin uses the phrase “communitarian pluralism,” to refer to the same idea. He says:

We can summarize the core ideas of this communitarian pluralism thus: first, there exists a diversity of essential, divinely created, human purposes each of which needs to be concretely pursued within a corresponding community with a distinctive character appropriate to that purpose; second, each of these communities must be enabled by the state (and indeed everyone) to pursue its purposes in responsible freedom and security.64

62 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” 223. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 94. 63 Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, 126. 64 Jonathan Chaplin, “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty: Catholic and Reformed Conceptions of the Role of the State,” in Things Old and New: Catholic Social Teaching Revisited, ed. Francis P. McHugh and Samuel M. Natale, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 196 - 197. 42

Thus, we join into, form and engage with communities or associations to fulfill distinct human needs. The associations, which are created or participated in, are directed towards the purpose of fulfilling one or a series of needs or goods. Further, they have a distinct character or nature due to the purpose they are directed towards. Finally, the solidarist origin, the good pursued, and the consequent distinctive character all impart onto each association rights, freedoms and duties; all without the need for concessions from the state.65

In the context of Catholic social thought, it is helpful to locate this natural social tendency in connection to solidarity. According to Heinrich Pesch, “Man is dependent by nature on his fellow man in various ways. In order to achieve many essential and legitimate objectives within our lives we cannot dispense with continual human assistance. For us there is no such thing as absolute self-sufficiency. Isolated man would not only suffer a deficiency of potential, but he would not even be in a position to eke out a dignified livelihood.”66

Solidarity, then, is the “social principle and moral virtue,”67 in which individuals and societies recognize that their private good is tied to and interdependent with the good of other individuals and other societies. Understood in terms of the “bond of interdependence,”68 individuals enter into, join, and engage in associations and societies in order to realize a greater good, which was unattainable on their own or in lower associations. At the highest level, individuals, associations and lower societies enter into, join, and engage with the state for the realization of the common good of the nation.

65 Taparelli does, however, recognize that it is wholly possible for the state to create associations whose authority, unity and integrity come from the state itself. 66 Pesch, Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics: Excerpts from the Lehrbuch der Nationaloekonomie, trans. Rupert J. Ederer, (Lanham, MD, Universty Press of America, 1998), 7. 67 The Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #193. 68 Ibid., #192. 43

According to solidarity, individuals enter into societies and associations in order to realize goods that are unattainable alone. Association, however, is not merely a utilitarian attempt to acquire greater temporal goods. The natural tendency to associate is necessary for people to achieve their full humanity. To achieve the fullness of their personality, one must engage in society with others. According to Franz H. Mueller, an intellectual descendent of

Pesch and von Nell-Breuning, "'society' is...already innate in man, so that the group and corporations neither can, nor should, be regarded as having merely been pieced together out of a number of volitional acts....Men belong together by nature, on account of their common origin and destiny. Their social relationships, thus, are not merely arbitrary or hypothetical ones."69

Catholic social thought understands that human societies arise out of an inborn social tendency. We join societies and associations for certain purposes and with a desire for particular goals.70 This solidarist tendency to associate through interdependence for the realization of determined goods is logically antecedent to the constitution of associations and societies. In other words, societies and associations are composed of individual members and lower associations; higher associations, though they play a unifying role, do not comprise the members and lower associations that participate in it. Because we join societies in order to realize goods, the societies we participate in have their “rights and powers” to the end of realizing those goods. An association has authority over its associates in order to help all associates achieve the purpose for which the association is formed, or towards which the associates have directed it. As Behr says in his commentary on Taparelli’s sociopolitical

69 Mueller, Heinrich Pesch and His Theory of Christian Solidarism, Aquin Papers, no. 7, (St. Paul, Minnesota: The College of St. Thomas, 1941), 16. 70 One way in which individuals and associations positively contribute to the associations they are part of is to participate in the dialogue necessary to determine the goods toward which the association will be directed. 44 thought, “Every association within the social hierarchy has its proper ends, its own authority

(relative to the concrete conditions of social formation), its own principles of action, and therefore its own being and rights.”71 Thus, it is each association’s “proper ends,” internal authority to achieve those ends, and the internal methods of working towards those ends, which render to it being and rights. Thus, the rights and being that associations possess from their nature, and independent of state concessions, arise out of their purpose and ability to achieve the goods for which there are formed. The plurality of structures, which builds up the social whole, then arises out of the natural solidarist tendency to create associations and societies in order to realize greater goods.

This structural pluralism is present within the papal social encyclical tradition. Pope

Leo XIII’s articulation of the family and workers’ associations mirrors the idea that each of these associations arising out of the God-given instinct to associate towards a purpose possess the being, internal authority, and rights necessary to pursue that purpose. 72 He argues,

A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, "at least equal rights"; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature.73

71 Thomas C. Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 – 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural- Law Thought as a Science of Society and Politics," Journal of Markets and Morality, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 106. 72 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #12 – 14, and #48 – 51. 73 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #13. 45

It is because of the nature of the family, “more immediately founded in nature,” and the purposes towards which it is directed that the family “must necessarily have rights and duties.” It is the purpose of the family, an expression of the natural human tendency to join together towards a determined good, which drives its very existence and renders to it the rights and internal authority necessary for that purpose.

According to Pope Leo, the similar relationship between the association to acquire certain goods and the rights and internal authority necessary to do so applies to the creation of worker associations and “private societies.” There, Pope Leo argues, “The consciousness of his own weakness urges man to call in aid from without.”74 In response, “It is this natural impulse which binds men together in civil society; and it is likewise this which leads them to join together in associations which are, it is true, lesser and not independent societies, but, nevertheless, real societies.”75 Thus, the need of others to aid them in their weakness leads individuals to join into or form associations. Further, these associations are “real societies,” though insufficient to provide for all needs and therefore “lesser and not independent societies.”

The existence and corporate reality of such associations having been established,

Pope Leo distinguishes them from the social whole according to their purposes. He says,

“These lesser societies and the larger society differ in many respects, because their immediate purpose and aim are different.” Such societies, “which are formed in the bosom of the commonwealth are styled private, and rightly so, since their immediate purpose is the private advantage of the associates.”76 Thus, for Pope Leo, the private societies that are created for a particular purpose, rather than the common good of the social whole, are distinct because of

74 Ibid., #50. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., #51 46 that purpose. And, as shown above, it is that distinct purpose which gives it its character, its being, and its rights and duties. This is supported in his argument that, “In order that an association may be carried on with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its administration and government should be firm and wise. All such societies, being free to exist, have the further right to adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce to the attainment of their respective objects.” Therefore, the corporate reality of lower associations arises out the determined good for which the associates join it or form it, and the internal authority within the association ought to be freely chosen by the association with respect to realizing that goal. Thus, the being, rights, and internal authority of an association all arise out of the good determined by a solidaristic need.

The same notion is present in Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesismo Anno. Following his call for the reform of institutions by the proper application of the “subsidiary function” of higher associations, Pope Pius looks to guilds and associations saying, “Moreover, just as inhabitants of a town are wont to found associations with the widest diversity of purposes, which each is quite free to join or not, so those engaged in the same industry or profession will combine with one another into associations equally free for purposes connected in some manner with the pursuit of the calling itself.”77 Thus, societies and associations are formed out of a need to associate in order to achieve goods unattainable as individuals.

Here, Pope Pius is assuming the basic presuppositions inherent in Rerum Novarum that people form or join into societies for a purpose. Further, the purpose of each society, for which it is formed or joined, drives its internal freedom and authority. This undergirds his call for subsidiarity when he argues, “Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing,

77 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #87. 47 watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands.”78 Pope Pius, in his very articulation of the need for the subsidiary function, is applying this notion that associations exist for a particular purpose and that their authority is derived from and directed towards that purpose. In this case, there are functions proper to the state and the state alone. While others might be able to perform them, it is proper for the state to do so.

Further, the state’s authority to perform these functions is derived from its having been constituted for such purposes. Were other associations to absorb those functions it would be a violation of their own purpose and an unjust intrusion on the proper function of the state and the state’s authority.

Conclusion.

From this account of social pluralism we can conclude several things. First, society is composed of a plurality of associations. Second, each association has its own distinct purpose arising out of the human social instinct and solidarity. Third, each type of association has a distinct character different from others owing to its distinct purpose. This rejects any sense that lower, smaller societies are “denominations” of higher associations.

Fourth, such associations ought to have the freedom, rights, autonomy, and internal integrity and authority necessary to pursue the purposes proper to them; and owing to their nature and purpose, not the concession of a higher association or the state. All of this arises out of the natural, human, social, and solidarist instinct to form associations in order to realize a desired good or to realize the common good. As will be discussed later, it falls to higher associations and the authorities of those associations to direct subordinate members and associations towards the good of the whole. In the example of the social whole, this directing or guiding role falls to the state.

78 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #80. 48

Going forward, I will call this pluralism of associations within society “structural pluralism”; following Monsma’s terminology. This term unifies the associations that make up society (the plurality of structures) and the organization or structuring of relationships between those associations within society (the structure of social plurality). Thus, society is composed of a plurality of social structures, and that plurality of structures is ordered and organized in a distinct way because of its being a plurality. The principle of subsidiarity outlines the proper ordering of relationships between the plurality of associations within the social whole, including the social whole itself and the state. It does so by arguing that all subordinate members and associations perform a subsidiary function for those associations above and that all higher associations perform a similar subsidiary function to those below.

This structural pluralism within Catholic social thought is critical for how we understand the principle of subsidiarity. First, it properly locates the subsidiary function of the state. The state’s purpose is to realize the common good. That very purpose and role, however, is to help the whole of society to achieve the common good by guiding and directing all associations below toward it.

Second, the pluralistic structure of society also helps to expand how we understand subsidiarity and the subsidiary function of higher associations. In short, all associations exist to “provide help.” All associations perform a subsidiary function. In particular, all intermediate associations between the individual and the state perform two kinds of subsidiary function. On the one hand, they help members and lower associations realize a determined good and enable them to participate in the common good of all. On the other, intermediate associations also help the state in a variety of ways. It is this type of help, in which members and lower associations help higher associations, that forms the basis of what

I call “structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.”

Section B. Structural-Pluralistic Subsidiarity.

The pluralistic structure of society is the backdrop against which subsidiarity must be understood. As was discussed above “the multiple needs of the human beings and their physically limited capacities…make him look for help (‘sussidio’) in the act of forming associations.”79 Structural pluralism, and its sense that society is formed out of the natural human need to associate in larger associations, logically leads to the category of the subsidiary, or helping, function of larger, higher associations. Because we need larger associations to acquire goods unattainable at lower levels of society, it is the purpose of those larger associations to help us acquire them. At the same time, lower associations and associates also have a role in the sustenance of the social whole and its pursuit of the common good. We form or join society to access its help in acquiring goods, and in order to acquire those goods we must help society attain them. Thus, because we form associations and societies to achieve certain goods (especially the common good) all social relationships ought to be oriented according to how each association and associate helps those above and below attain those goods.

In this section I will discuss the connection between the pluralistic structure of society and the principle of subsidiarity; particularly structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. I will focus on the thought of Luigi Taparelli, S.J., to place subsidiarity in the context of structural pluralism. Taparelli’s thought shows how individuals and lower associations provide help or subsidy to higher associations and the state. Taparelli’s concept of ipotattico integrates the fuller dimensions of subsidiarity into the Compendium’s limited view of the principle.

79 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” 223. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 95. 50

The goal is to show that lower associations not only receive aid from higher associations, but help the state and other higher associations in a number of ways. Taparelli’s thought is important because of its attempt to develop a “renewed liberalism” oriented towards the common good.80 For Taparelli, members and lower associations perform subsidiary functions that “help” higher associations by 1) building up the corporate body of society as a whole, 2) “translating” God’s authority to those within each society who wield it, and 3) helping the state do the work it is tasked with. In a final example, particular to liberal and democratic societies, I will discuss the role of dialogue or discourse on the common good as a way in which members and lower associations provide aid to higher associations and the state. These types of help or subsidy given by lower associations and members to higher associations through the pluralistic structure of society correspond directly to

“structural-pluralistic subsidiarity” and participation.

Thomas Behr’s commentary on Taparelli opens up a new avenue for viewing subsidiarity beyond its application in papal social encyclicals and its definition in the

Compendium. While we saw above that Taparelli’s sense of social constitution is premised on the help of higher associations to members, ipotattico, properly understood, points to another kind of help. Behr argues:

‘Help’ [from higher to lower] is actually the secondary meaning of the term subsidium which comes from the figurative use of its primary meaning, which is an ‘auxiliary troop’….Thus, the term [subsidium] specifically comes from the tactical arrangement of forces as they are interrelated in the common purpose of the cohort, century, and legion. It is the lower society, the support troops, ‘helping’ the larger society that is the primary meaning. It is a useful expression to describe the principles for the arrangement of the lower forces for the common purpose.81

80 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli on the Dignity of Man.” Paper given at the Congresso Tomista Internazionale, (Sept. 21 - 25, 2003), 2. Accessed: http://www.e-aquinas.net/pdf/behr.pdf, 1/9/2014. 81 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” 231. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 102. 51

In short, subsidiarity is primarily a principal of organizing the plurality of social structures within the social whole towards the common good of all; in particular, it refers to the ways in which lower associations “help” the social whole to achieve the common good. It also draws out the important subsidiary role of those in authority. In Taparelli’s legion analogy, the commander performs a subsidiary function to his subordinate structures. While such an analogy does not reflect Taparelli’s liberal political goals, it does emphasize the commander’s role of guiding and directing and his reliance on subordinates to directly realize the common purpose of the legion. The commander performs a subsidiary function for the legion by directing and guiding his subordinates to the common purpose. The subordinates perform a corresponding subsidiary function for the legion by performing the tasks which are proper to them to achieve the common purpose, and which the commander cannot perform by himself. Thus, subsidiarity is the way in which all of the various structures within the social whole contribute in the ways proper to them to the achievement of the common good

This accounting of ipotattico/subsidiarity has an important implication for our ongoing understanding of the subsidiary function of the state and higher associations.

Similar to Pope Pius XI’s articulation of the state’s function, Behr says, “Indeed, the concept of subsidiarity does stem in part from a utilitarian conception of the state as the necessary vehicle for the pursuit of the common good…but the specific help that the larger society can offer to members and lower associations is precisely in their proper arrangement and ordering towards the common good.”82 Thus, if subsidiarity is about the proper arrangement of lower associations towards the common good, then the help most appropriate to the role of the state is in knowing and making known the common good, and ordering, guiding, and directing lower associations towards it. This idea will be developed further below.

82 Ibid. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 102. 52

In distinction from the subsidiary function of the state, subsidiarity understood through ipotattico supports Jonathan Chaplin’s claim that “Subsidiarity has always been understood to apply comprehensively to all social relationships.”83 It is not merely the relationship of associations to those below them, but is also a matter of the ways in which mambers and lower associations work to help higher associations. Subsidiarity locates all associations within a graduated hierarchy and pluralistic structure and connects them in a web of subsidiary relationships. In that web, all associations seek not only their own private good, but also positively contribute to the common good of the nation.

From such a perspective of subsidiarity, it is possible to begin to look at specific ways by which members and lower associations perform structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions and positively contribute to and build up higher associations. For the purposes of this project and a later analysis of Sheil and Alinsky’s collaboration, we will focus on four concrete examples. Through these ways, we can examine subsidiarity in concrete terms that will allow us to better analyze Sheil and Alinsky’s collaboration.

The first form of structural-pluralistic subsidiary function relates to how members and lower associations contribute to the corporate existence of the social whole. Already in our understanding of structural pluralism, we can see the most immediate form of help given by members and lower associations to higher associations. Members and lower associations contribute to the corporate structure and body of higher associations by associating to create, participate in, or engage with them. Working with the presupposition that society is a community of communities, then the smaller communities of which society is composed must necessarily positively contribute to society’s corporate existence. In doing so, they build up society and render it subsidies.

83 Chaplin, “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty,” 178. 53

This is reflected in Pope Leo XIII’s sense that, “Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any state, the right of providing for the substance of the body.”84 While it is implausible that Leo saw the individual’s precedence as chronological, he is surely arguing for the individual’s logical priority before the state. This priority of the individual, coming before the state, upholds the idea that the individuals must logically come together to form or at least sustain higher associations. This puts the emphasis on the positive contribution “from below” by subordinate members and structures in the formation of society and societies.

A second subsidiary function performed by members and lower associations is the

“translation” of authority to those who wield it over the various associations. In that way, members and lower associations positively contribute to the authority that higher associations come to possess in order to direct and guide subordinate associations. This is visible in Taparelli’s “renewed liberalism.”85 Thomas C. Behr’s work on Taparelli makes it abundantly clear that part of Taparelli’s goal was to reconcile Catholicism and liberalism in a way that respects “natural law, justice, and charity.”86 This is indicated in Behr’s account of

Taparelli’s sense of a translational theory of authority. In rejection of a doctrinaire liberalism,

Taparelli developed a translational model of authority that was not contractualist or voluntaristic. Behr says, “That all authority is from God is a truism for Taparelli beyond elaborations.”87 Authority does not reside merely in individuals, their consent, or their will.

“Authority, he adds, as Aquinas and the Scriptures attest, comes from God, and so is

84 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #7. 85 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli on the Dignity of Man.” Paper given at the Congresso Tomista Internazionale, (Sept. 21 - 25, 2003), 2. Accessed: http://www.e-aquinas.net/pdf/behr.pdf, 1/9/2014. 86 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” 60 and 64. 87 Ibid., 177 54 conferred, as it were, on the designee,”88 through natural social forms. “In every case, political authority comes in principle from individuals, translated…in innumerable ways, always mediated in social forms, beginning with the family, that have their own existence and rights.”89 This means that “from the base of individual moral authority and the immediate authority of natural and domestic society, all subsequently formed societies take their authority from the lower forms, voluntary or involuntary, based on contingent circumstances, up to and beyond political society.”90 Thus, the authority that higher associations and the state are able to wield over their lower associates comes to them, not from their own decree, but from the authority translated to them from God through the historically and culturally contingent social forms of the society.

Such a translation theory of political authority is important for understanding the relationships between associations. While it is not the case that associations come to exist in time because of the association of members (nations often exist prior to the birth of its members, and children do not elect their parents or give them authority over them), the translation theory of authority holds that the individual’s act of association translates God’s authority to the higher association, which then exercises that authority over the entire corporate body. Thus, through Taparelli’s translation theory of authority, the authority of the state is “built up,” supported and maintained by the participation of its associates (both individuals and lower associations). This supports a sense of liberal democracy, but does not necessarily require it. The notion of “contingent circumstances” is a recognition that different nations and other associations will assume, as noted above, the necessary internal form, rules and regulations particular to the pursuit of their determined good.

88 Ibid., 207. 89 Ibid., 209 90 Ibid., 207 - 208. 55

This means that individuals, and the associations that they participate in, all render to higher associations a subsidy, help, or aid as they positively contribute to the building up of the authority of higher associations. Without their participation and translation of authority, the higher associations would not exist and they would not possess the authority necessary to guide and direct those below them. How this translation of authority occurs and through what structures is contingent upon the association, its character, the purpose on which it is focused, and the decisions of the associates.

A third subsidiary function, in which members and associations positively aid higher associations, is active participation in the realization of the good of the association and its members; or, the common good of the social whole. Behr argues, “lower authorities are the indispensable means to the superior authority’s pursuit of that good.” Quoting Taparelli he says, “Thus, ‘deprecating or weakening the inferior is to deprecate and weaken even the superior.’”91

Because, the higher association’s existence and authority depend on the participation of its associates, it cannot realize the good that is its purpose without the active participation of those same associates.

The necessity of the contribution of lower associates for the realization of the common good forms the substratum for Pope Pius XI’s argument for subsidiarity in

Quadragesimo Anno. Without a more robust and complex system of social government, “the

State has been overwhelmed and crushed by almost infinite tasks and duties.” If lower associations do not help in achieving the common good, then it will fall the highest social association and authority. This will overburden the state and disempower those lower associations. This is why observance of subsidiarity, negatively by restraining the state and

91 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 - 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural Law Thought as a Science of Social and Politics,” 107. 56 positively by encouraging the participation of lower associations, will lead to “stronger social authority and effectiveness” and a “happier and more prosperous” State.92

A final structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of members and lower associations can be found by examining the role of higher associations. Looking again to his commentary on Taparelli, Behr argues that a higher association should only interfere in the liberty of the lower associates “only to the extent necessary to orient them towards the larger common good, which it is obliged to know and make known.”93 This notion will come into play later in the final part of this chapter, but here I would focus on this notion of the responsibility of the higher association to know and make known the common good of the social whole.

Particularly, within a liberal nation-state, how is the state to know and make known the common good?

The final example of how members and lower associations perform a subsidiary function to higher associations joins together the two forms above. If we assume the state is responsible for knowing and making known the common good, and if members and lower associations are the indispensable means of realizing the common good, we might ask “How does the State come to know the common good and make it known if not through the positive contributions of individuals and lower associations?” In Taparelli’s social vision, such a process would be dependent upon the particular form of civil society and government that a nation has.

Thomas Kohler’s analysis of subsidiarity explains the importance of dialogue or discourse as a significant structural-pluralistic subsidiary function by which lower associations and individuals positively contribute to higher associations and the

92 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #78 – 80. 93 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 - 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural Law Thought as a Science of Social and Politics,” 107. 57 determination of the common good. He says, “Our natural sociality inclines us towards cooperation, but some commonality of understandings, judgments, sentiments, and aims is the glue that sustains it.”94 The means by which the association achieves and sustains cooperation and commonality is through what Kohler alternately calls conversation, dialogue, “social dialogue,” or discourse. Further, “Institutions organized to promote conversation offer yet a further benefit. They encourage and can take advantage of the insights of all their members about the most effective ways to achieve the organizations’ purposes.”95 Thus, it is through conversation, dialogue, and discourse that the common good and the means of its achievement can be found or determined by the associates. In the context of labor unions, this parallels with collective bargaining. Kohler argues that through collective bargaining workers can actively participate in the determination of the common good of both labor and management. They can actively help the higher association come to a knowledge of the common good of the whole. Kohler, therefore, sees dialogue between partners within an association as a principle means of that association coming to know and make known the common good of all of its associates. As such, the positive contribution by individuals and lower associations to aid higher associations is a distinct form of structural- pluralistic subsidiary function.

Each of these examples support the argument that, within a structurally pluralistic society, help and aid do not only flow down from higher associations to and lower associations. Instead, individuals and lower associations also perform subsidiary functions to aid higher associations. By contributing to the corporate reality, authority, active pursuit of the common good, and the determination of the common good itself, individuals and lower

94 Kohler, “Lessons from the Social Charter: State, Corporation, and the Meaning of Subsidiarity,” in University of Toronto Law Journal. 43 (1993), 611. 95 Ibid., 612. 58 associations provide important aid to higher associations. Therefore, the upward help rendered to higher associations supports and makes possible the downward help given by higher associations to individuals and lower associations.

By turning to Taparelli’s account of ipotattico, it has been possible to expand our understanding of subsidiarity. Based as it is in the pluralistic structure of society, arising out of solidarity, subsidiarity assumes that all members and lower associations perform an upwards subsidiary function helping higher associations and ultimately the state. It is this structural-pluralistic subsidiarity that builds up society, makes it able to achieve the determined good, translates to it the authority necessary to organize all associates to the determined good, and provides to the higher association a sense of the good it is ordered towards. Only after all of this occurs is the higher association able to help its lower associates achieve the good of the whole. Thus, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity logically precedes the subsidiarity of associations.

Conclusion.

Taparelli’s account of ipotattico and the examples above reorient how we understand the Compendium’s accounting of subsidiarity. This is particularly important in context of

Taparelli’s “renewed” or “moderated” liberalism. Whereas the Compendium argues that participation is the characteristic implication of subsidiarity, it is my argument that the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, of which participation is a function, actually logically precedes the subsidiarity of associations. It is because of how society is composed and the means by which lower associates positively contribute to the social whole, i.e. how they participate and the role of their participation in the formation and sustenance of society, that higher associations have the particular subsidiary function that they do. The notion that

“Man precedes the state,” emphasizes the logical priority of the participation of members

59 and lower associations. Further, since an association is directed towards the common good determined by its associates, and because it exists to provide or pursue that good, it is logically dependent on the prior action of its associates. Thus, when the Compendium defines subsidiarity in terms of the responsibilities and limits on higher associations and implies participation out of that definition, it is reversing the actual logical priority. The most logical relationship between subsidiarity of associations and participation/structural-pluralistic subsidiarity prioritizes the upward help of members and lower associations to higher associations.

In light of this wider understanding of subsidiarity, it becomes necessary to revisit the subsidiarity function of associations, especially the state. As noted above, common

American applications of subsidiarity as a “lowest possible level” principle of political governance are stunted examples of the principle. This is due to the more common understanding of subsidiarity in terms of the associational subsidiary function of the state that Pope Pius XI emphasized in Quadragesimo Anno. In the next, and final, part of this chapter, I will re-present the associational subsidiary function of higher associations in light of our fuller understanding of the principle. This new understanding will show, as Hittinger argues, that subsidiarity is not “lowest possible level” or devolutionary government. Instead, the state, as the highest association within the social whole, whose function it is to know and make known the common good, and to direct, guide and orient all associates and lower associations within the graded hierarchy of a plurality of structures towards that common good, has distinct responsibilities and restraints.

Part III. Subsidiarity of Associations

In this part, I will re-present associational subsidiarity in the general sense as it arises out of the new context of structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. After

60 discussing associational subsidiarity, I will discuss the implications it has for the nature of the state’s associational subsidiary functions as the highest association within a society. By locating associational subsidiarity in this wider context, we will better understand what it is and what implications it has for the American context and for our examination of Sheil’s and

Alinsky’s collaboration. It will enable us to appreciate how each of the experiments represent the downward trajectory of associational subsidiarity, and the upward trajectory of structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

It is my argument that the pluralistic structure of society and the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity fulfilled by lower associations and associates logically precedes associational subsidiarity. The pluralistic structure of society relies on the freedom and autonomy of lower associations and associates for the proper functioning of higher associations. Coupled with the purpose of higher associations to help lower associations and associates, it becomes clear that higher associations are responsible for helping, enabling, and empowering lower associations and associates while at the same time refraining from infringing on their rights, integrity, or internal authority. Thus, higher associations must help, but not destroy or absorb, lower associations and associates. This means that the subsidiary function of all higher associations is the result of the logically preceding pluralistic structure of society and the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity of lower associations and associates.

The Compendium understands subsidiarity in terms of positive and negative senses.

The first is the higher association’s responsibility to promote and aid members and lower associations. The second is the higher association’s corresponding responsibility to refrain from actions that would undermine or absorb members and lower associations, their freedom, autonomy, and internal integrity, or destroy them outright. These two senses of subsidiarity compose associational subsidiarity. They are critical for understanding the

61 subsidiary function of all higher associations in relation to all individuals and lower associations.

The positive, helping, sense of subsidiarity is derived from the notion that associations and society come to exist out of the solidarist tendency in human social nature to join together out of a sense of interdependence to achieve goods unattainable individually or in smaller associations. The associations formed out of solidarity are, by nature of their formation, intended to help their associates and not for their own sake.

Looking back to Taparelli’s ipotattico, subsidiarity is responsible for “positioning inferior clauses in relationship to the function of the whole sentence.”96 As such it outlines the ways in which members and lower associations positively relate and contribute to the function of the social whole. Ipotattico, however, also implies some “superior,” a higher authority that does the work of positioning and relating “inferior” associations toward the function of the social whole. This work is proper to higher associations. Higher associations best aid lower associates by directing, guiding, and organizing them toward the good.

"Indeed, the concept of subsidiarity does stem in part from a utilitarian conception of the state as the necessary vehicle for the pursuit of the common good...but the specific help that the larger society can offer to individuals and lower associations is precisely in their proper arrangement and ordering towards the common good."97 Thus, individuals and lower associations join into a greater, larger, higher association to realize goods unattainable on their own, and that higher association’s primary role is to aid them by directing, guiding, and organizing them towards the common good of all associates

96 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli and the 19th-Century Neo-Thomistic ‘Revolution’ in Natural Law and Catholic Social Sciences,” 232. Cf. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 103. 97 Ibid., 231. Italics added for emphasis. CF. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 102. 62

This parallels Peschian conceptions about the role of higher authorities. In his commentary on Pesch's understanding of the state as authority, Franz H. Mueller explains,

"there is always need, for the establishment and maintenance of the social body, of some competent organ to interpret and promulgate the purpose of a particular society....Thus, authority must be regarded...as the true informing, realizing principle of the social integration." Further, "the leading power of authority" is "the vital principle" of the society that is formed out of solidarity.98 Higher associations, by wielding authority over their associates, perform the work of maintaining social unity, integrity, and cohesion, as well as ordering lower associates towards the common good.

This understanding of how higher associations help their associates is important for how we understand the role of the state. As the highest natural association in and over society, "the state does not take the place of society." Instead, "the state is the controlling factor."99 In its performance of its subsidiary function, “The state’s role is one of enabling, complementing, and coordinating, but not overwhelming.”100 Thus, if the role of an association is to wield authority over its associates in order to realize the determined good of all, it is the state’s proper role to wield authority over the nation in order to direct, guide, and organize all associates towards the common good of the nation. This being the case, “The state’s authority is in principle as wide in scope as the attainment of the common good requires.”101 Further, as Pope Leo argues, the state’s authority, “not only guides the whole, but reaches also individuals.”102 Thus, the state, as the association responsible for the

98 Mueller, Heinrich Pesch and His Theory of Christian Solidarism, 17. 99 Pesch, Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics, 72. 100 Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-based Organizations in a Democratic Society, 130. 101 Chaplin, “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty,” 182. 102 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #35. 63 common good, wields authority over the entirety of society and down to the level of the individual.

The means by which the state exercises this authority, however, is principally in organizing and ordering society and its associations. As Pesch says, the work of the state is in:

Providing, preserving, and fulfilling the sum total of those public conditions and institutions which would provide, preserve, and enhance the potential of all members, through their combined energies so that they may freely and independently achieve their true temporal welfare according to their own particular capacities and situations, and to preserve what they have achieved in an honest manner.103

This work is broken into two distinct parts. First, the state is responsible for creating the necessary set of conditions in which all members may flourish. Second, the state is not responsible, per se, for directly providing all temporal goods; only the conditions in which its members might achieve them “according to their own particular capacities and situations.”

The way in which Pesch articulates the helping function of the state as a means to the common good bears within it the basis for the limits of higher associations. These limits correspond to the Compendium’s “negative” sense of non-destruction and non-absorption.

Returning to our understanding of structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, we must recall several points: 1) solidarism gives rise to associations with their own unity, integrity, authority and rights, which do not rely on concessions from the state; 2) lower associations support higher associations by translating authority to them; and 3) lower associations are the indispensable means by which higher associations are able to achieve the good determined. These three points form the basis for the limits of a higher association’s and the state’s actions.

103 Pesch, Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics, 23. 64

Because lower associations have their own rights, freedoms, and authority, it would be unjust for higher associations to violate those rights and authority. For the state to do so would violate its own purpose and the purpose for which it possesses authority. As Pope

Leo argues, “the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them.”104 For this reason, “If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.”105 Thus, if the state were to unjustly violate the rights, freedoms, and internal authority of an association, it would violate its own purpose and violate the proper ordering of society.

This being the case, Behr says, “One of the first laws [of hypotactics] is that the larger society must promote the liberty of association within and among the consortia, interfering only to the extent necessary to orient them toward the larger common good.”106

This “proper sphere of liberty” is necessary “since the lower authorities are the indispensable means to the superior authority’s pursuit of that good.”107 Thus, while it is the place of the higher authority and association to know and make known the common good, and direct all lower associations toward it, it must also respect the important liberty of those associations because their free participation is the only means of justly achieving the common good of all.

In a similar way, Pesch’s outline of the state’s effort to organize society reflects the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity performed by lower associations as agents of the common good. Pesch outlines that it is not the place of the state to realize the good of each member

104 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #51. “Office” here could also be read as “subsidiary function.” 105 Ibid., #13. 106 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 - 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural Law Thought as a Science of Social and Politics,” 107. 107 Ibid. 65 individually. Instead, it is the proper place of the state to enable and empower them to realize their own good and fullest potential. This means, "The direct and positive actualization of the private good of individual citizens, of and by itself, lies beyond the state's purpose." This is because it first violates the internal authority of the individual; "each person is the master of his own destiny," and the goal is that "he can achieve his private well- being by his own activity." Second, the state could not hope to fulfill such a task adequately.

Third, "civil liberty would be the victim, because the supervision of all private life would have to be the inevitable consequence."108 Thus, the rights of the individual and lower associations, as well as the autonomy, liberty, and independence of lower associations, mandate that the state enable them to achieve their private goods, but withhold from directly providing it as much as possible.

Such limits being established, however, the state is not strictly prohibited from intervention. Rather, the pluralistic structure of society and the state’s associational subsidiarity determine the appropriate means by which it intervenes. In his discussion of the family, Pope Leo argues, "if a family finds itself in exceeding distress...it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid." It is not the place to directly provide the private good of the family, but when necessary it is part of the state’s responsibility to provide public aid.

Further, the state is not limited to intervening during times of economic distress, but even into the functioning of the family. Leo argues, "if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them."109 Thus, the state is responsible for

108 Pesch, Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics, 22. 109 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #14. 66 ensuring that all members of society have access to the necessary goods, that all members and associations relate justly towards one another, and that the rights of all members are observed.

These limits, however, do not exist for themselves. As Simeon Iber points out, “the principle of State subsidiarity is not meant to suppress the State, but to promote the view that the State carries out the functions that are proper to it while, at the same time, allowing the other associations their proper roles.”110 As Hittinger pointed out above, subsidiarity is not about “lowest level possible” or devolution. The state does not pass functions proper to itself to lower associations simply because they are able to do the work. Instead, certain functions are the responsibility of the state while others are proper to lower associations. For this reason, “Subsidiarity by nature has within it an inner dynamism as a principle of competencies to assign roles to the State which [are] proper to it and at the same time allows the State to render functions to the lesser societies that are directly aimed at protecting the universal common good and ensuring distributive justice in the process.”111 Subsidiarity therefore can be understood not in terms of devolution or lowest-level governance but in clearly articulating the subsidiary functions, which certain associations, including the state, are competent to perform.

This returns the argument to structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. As individuals and lower associations join into larger, higher associations up to the state, each association that comes into existence exists for a distinct and particular purpose, and seeks to fulfill certain specific needs. That purpose, that need, the good of the association, and the means by which the association will pursue them are all determined by

110 Simeon Iber, The Principle of Subsidiarity in Catholic Social Thought: Implications for Social Justice and Civil Society in Nigeria, (NY: Peter Lang, 2011), 53. 111 Iber, The Principle of Subsidiarity in Catholic Social Thought, 54. 67 the associates. The state, whose purpose it is to pursue and secure the common good of all, is limited to that role. When necessary it can intervene between lower associations or directly provide for the good of individuals or associations, but such behavior should be under exceptional circumstances. Even when Pesch argues for the state’s ongoing support of charities and social organizations, such action is meant to enable those associations to better perform their proper function, not to assume the function itself.112

Conclusion.

In this part, I have shown that subsidiarity as it is articulated in the Compendium is only one part of a larger principle. By beginning with structural pluralism, as the basis for

Taparelli’s social-political account of ipotattico and papal accounts of society, we can better understand why the subsidiary function of higher associations has the exact contours and limits that it does. If associations arise out of a solidarist need for the help of others, those associations will have a natural helping, or subsidiary, function. Because those higher associations come out of the free human tendency to associate, they must also necessarily respect and support the freedom of their associates.

This understanding of the subsidiary function of higher associations and its limits has important implications for how we understand the subsidiary function of the state. If the purpose and function of a higher association is to provide for a previously unattainable good, then the good for which the state is intended is the common good of the entire nation. As a result, the state’s authority expands over the entire society and penetrates to every level of society. This authority, however, is not meant to directly realize the good of every individual, but to enable and empower individuals and associations to realize their own private goods and the common good of the society under the guidance and direction of the

112 Pesch, Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics, 24 - 25. 68 state. Thus, subsidiarity is not a principle meant to suppress the state, to limit governance to the lowest level possible, or to force the state to devolve its functions to lower associations.

Rather, subsidiarity, especially associational subsidiarity, calls for the clear recognition of the functions proper to certain associations and their competency to complete such work.

Subsidiarity, therefore, is a principle meant to order and organize the relationships between the plurality of associations within society along the lines of how they help their associates and higher associations achieve the common good.

Conclusion.

By showing that the principle of subsidiarity goes beyond merely limiting the actions of the state, we will better see Sheil’s and Alinsky’s collaboration as a distinctly American experiment in subsidiarity. In our examination of American subsidiarity, three corollaries will be significant. These are indicated by the Compendium’s “corresponding needs” to make a full expression of subsidiarity possible.113 The first is support and promotion of structural pluralism. Particularly in terms of the social ills that resulted from the economic crisis of the

Depression, and the social disorganization that results from neighborhood impoverishment, it is necessary to support structural pluralism within society by actively creating and supporting associations with the appropriate scope of authority over a community.

This is not merely supporting and funding charitable or religious organizations.

Rather, it entails the necessity of creating and supporting wholly novel forms of associations to re-unify and re-integrate communities. As Himes argues, subsidiarity is “a norm meant to prohibit reducing the richness of human association to one form – the state.”114 Instead, it seeks “a rich diversity of associations.”115 It is the place of the state to support and foster

113 The Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #187. 114 Himes, Christianity and the Political Order, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 211. 115 Ibid., 212. 69 such richness. This is because society and the state exist as a result of the participation of their associates. Such participation, as the Compendium points out, is not only performed by individuals as individuals but also in and through the various intermediate associations to which individuals belong.116 In order for the state to support participation, which is necessary for its own purpose, it is part of the helping function of the state to not only aid intermediate associations, but also to create and foster wholly new associations (not only families, but religious, racial, gender, and labor groups) where they are needed. In doing so, the state is returning authority to communities, which is necessary for integrating and unifying those communities. This is not devolution, but the recognition that new associations are needed to facilitate the adequate participation of communities and the individuals that make them up.

As will be shown later, because much of the work in this arena was located in urban areas,

Sheil’s and Alinsky’s basic model and paradigm for these new associations was the urban neighborhood.

The second “corresponding need” is the further need to support and promote participation, especially in an empowering way, enabling individuals and associations at lower levels of society to wield the proper authority over their respective associates. As a necessary dimension of structural pluralism and the subsidiary function of associations, associations must be able to wield authority over their associates. This means that higher associations, especially the state and economic corporations, must recognize, respect, foster, and rely upon the internal authority of lower associations. In our examination of Saul Alinsky’s

People’s Organizations, and the CCHD’s development projects, this authority relates to the notion of “native leadership.” Only when associations are recognized as having and wielding authority over themselves and their associates can they truly participate. Thus, as structural

116 The Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #189. 70 pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity require a positive development of a greater plurality of associations, it will also be necessary to recognize that those associations have their own independent authority. That authority must be recognized and dealt with if its rights are to be respected. Further, it is the responsibility of the state to support and foster the authority and rights of those associations, and to interfere when there is an unjust imbalance to the relationships between lower, inferior associations.

A third implication for subsidiarity in the American context is the development of the interdependence and corresponding inter-responsibility between the various associations within society; especially, in context of the public/private divide within the American liberal system and recognition of the corporate status of business corporations within American liberal economics. Particularly important are two points made above: First, the state is responsible for knowing and making known the common good; and, second, the state is responsible for ordering and organizing all associations within society toward the common good.

Within the American liberal landscape, the American Constitution provides economic, business corporations protections from the state as distinct corporate social bodies. The Constitution, however, does not afford similar recognition of other associations except as it relates to their economic status.117 Thus, in the American system private society and the private economic sphere are protected from the state, but business corporations have greater rights as corporate entities than other social organizations, e.g. racial or gender groups. This insulates business corporations from state regulation, especially from any responsibility to the good of society and the common good. This means the state cannot

117 This will be part of the focus of Chapter 5 and will rely on the work of Lew Daly, especially his God’s Economy: Faith-based Initiatives and the Caring State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 71 direct and guide business corporations towards the common good of society. On one hand, this means that the American liberal economic structure militates against the full subsidiary function of the state. On the other, it means that there is no means of ensuring that business corporations, as higher associations, enable and promote the participation of their associates, or positively contribute to the common good of society. This does not mean that they would not or cannot. Rather, the state, whose job it is to direct all lower associations toward the common good, is constitutionally prohibited from doing so.

Because of this, subsidiarity has distinct implications for the way in which American society is organized and structured. Most significantly, it calls for an examination of the relationships between the state, economic corporations, and social groups. If we begin with the solidarist basis of social formation, then all associations, even private economic corporations, are expected to perform a subsidiary function to their associates and society as a whole. The result of this is that subsidiarity is built upon a notion of the state that possesses wide and deep authority over all of society in order to direct and guide all associations and associates to the common good of the entire nation. In short, subsidiarity requires a very strong, involved government, which wields authority over every association within society. This criterion of subsidiarity will be a significant factor in our analysis of our later experiments in subsidiarity.

Each of these corollaries will be significant for our examination of American adaptations of subsidiarity. As we continue through the following chapters, a structural pluralistic vision of society and an appreciation of the fuller meaning of subsidiarity will highlight how Alinsky’s Peoples’ Organization and the Back of the Yards Neighborhood

Council, Sheil’s appraisal of them, and the CCHD as the result of that appraisal are complete examples of subsidiarity in the American context.

CHAPTER II “PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHARITY”: THE PRINCIPLE OF SUBSIDIARITY IN

BISHOP SHEIL’S DEPRESSION-ERA SOCIAL WORK AND THOUGHT

Introduction

This chapter will argue that Bishop Sheil’s opening to the involvement of the federal government in the American response to the social ills of the Depression was possible through the principle of subsidiarity as it was widely understood and used by American

Catholic bishops after Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. Seated within Bishop Sheil’s explanation of how the federal government can and should be involved are the wider dimensions of associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, as well as the need to support and foster a greater plurality of structures within society.

As such, this chapter will have two goals. The first will be to locate Sheil and his public career during the 1930s in the context of American Catholic responses to the effects of the Depression on society and the efforts of Catholic charitable associations. As

American Catholics involved in charity saw their own associations becoming inadequate to meet the deep need of the Depression, and as they saw their own need for participation of the federal government to engage in public welfare, they made recourse to papal social encyclicals and Pope Pius XI’s discussion of “subsidiary function” in Quadragesimo Anno.

Though Bishop Sheil did not make explicit reference to principle of subsidiarity or the subsidiary function of the state, its widespread use by the bishops establishes it within the common understanding of the State’s function within society and in response to the

Depression. The second will be to show how Sheil opened to the involvement of the State in responding to the social crisis that resulted from the Depression and how his engagement

73 with state involvement was principally through a consistent, but unstated, appreciation of

“subsidiary function.” His own “charitable Catholic” outlook initially oriented him to viewing the solutions to the Depression in terms of private and religious charity and not to addressing the structural and systematic causes that led to the economic crisis and social ills that followed. Later, when the federal government entered the realm of poverty relief and welfare, he began to consider the structural relationships between the federal government and lower charitable associations in terms of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state. Thus, though Sheil does not use the term, the evidence supports that his understanding of the structuring of society and the role of the state within it is shaped by a Catholic subsidiarity.

In the first part of this chapter, I will show how the American Catholic response to the impact of the Depression on society and lower associations corresponds with that of papal social encyclicals and that the principle way in which they approached the issue of the structuring of relationships between associations was centered on associational subsidiarity.

In the first section, I will show how the historical situation of Chicago Catholicism during the Depression directly parallels the way in which Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum characterized the social crises brought about by the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno did in the early years of the Great Depression.

During this period, Chicago underwent the kind of “social collapse” both encyclicals described. The impact of the Depression destroyed the pre-existing social safety net of ethnic and community-based social welfare programs and capitalist welfare programs run by benevolent industrialists. As a result, it became necessary to rebuild, reconstruct, or adapt the lost social welfare institutions that supported the social lives of Chicago’s working class. This was made possible through the deep and intensive involvement of the federal government.

Because of the social collapse and the severity of the economic crisis, it became necessary for workers to turn to the state for relief. How Catholics discussed and argued for this turn to the federal government will be the focus of the second section. Like other smaller, lower associations, Catholic dioceses and archdioceses turned to the state as a major source of funding for its own work in welfare and relief. Under Cardinal Archbishop George

Mundelein, the Chicago Archdiocese adopted a position on state funding for Catholic efforts in relief that directly corresponds to the principle of subsidiarity. Unable to financially support its own social and charitable programs, Chicago’s Catholic Charities sought funding as an agency of FDR’s New Deal programs. In doing so, their efforts represent an American expression of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

In the second part of this chapter, I will discuss how Auxiliary Bishop Bernard James

Sheil’s early public career during the 1930s began as a “charitable Catholic” approach to social issues and to a “social Catholic” approached characterized by his use of subsidiarity in his understanding of the function of the State and the structural relationships between associations within society. In the first section, I will make use of Paul Misner’s typologies of

“charitable” and “social Catholicism,” to argue that Sheil was not principally concerned with changing the structures of society, but principally in concrete action in service to the poor.

Because of that, his social efforts were limited to the realm of charity work and social services, but not remedying the structural roots and causes of poverty. In the second section

I will argue that Sheil, like Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI and the other Catholics around him, found it necessary to turn to the state and argue for its responsibility in the care of the poor and needy. Further, influenced by papal social doctrine and American Catholic sources,

Sheil’s first efforts into articulating the structuring of society was focused on describing what

I referred to above as associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Though Sheil never made an explicit reference to the principle of subsidiarity, the principle itself was a significant characteristic of American Catholic episcopal thought on the role of government and thus deeply influenced Sheil’s articulation of the alliance between the church and state in the area of welfare and relief.118 Further, sources make it clear that Sheil was well-educated and aware of the major documents of Catholic social doctrine and

American Catholic interpretations of them. Still further, he was part of the conversations that were taking place at the national level among American bishops and archbishops that led to official American episcopal statements on issues like the need for federal engagement in welfare relief and funding for lower charitable associations and Catholic charities. Thus, though he never makes specific reference to the principle and never uses the phrase

“subsidiary function;” it is clearly that he was immersed in a social-structural imagination that was highly influenced by Catholic social doctrine on subsidiarity.

Part I. Charity in Depression-Era Chicago: The Loss of Structural Pluralism and the

Application of Associational Subsidiarity.

Introduction.

This part will show how the effects of the Depression on Chicago bear out the sense of social collapse that led Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI to compose their encyclicals in which they discussed the subsidiary responsibilities of the state. In the first section I will show that

118 This is evident in NCWC statements issued in the early 1930’s, in which the Bishops referenced QA’s articulation of the principle to support state intervention in the economy in order to ameliorate the plight of those affected by the Depression. This will be treated in greater detail below. Cf., USCCB, Our Bishops Speak, Huber, Raphael, ed., (Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1952). 76 the sense of history that informed the papal social encyclicals had direct parallels in

Chicago’s experience of the Depression and the federal government’s expansion of the welfare state. Most especially, the papal sense of the loss of a rich social sphere is evidenced in the breakdown of the private, local and ethnic or capitalist social safety nets that Chicago’s workers depended on, and the collapse of important low-level social associations. The

Archdiocese of Chicago and the federal government both stepped into the vacuum, providing funding and relief programs. As result, the inadequacy of lower agencies to cope with the economic crisis led to ever-higher associations stepping in. Eventually, even the

Archdiocese came to rely on federal funding in order to remain in the field of poverty relief and welfare aid.

In the second subsection, I will show how the American and Chicago Catholic response to this expansion of the welfare state was built upon Pope Pius XI’s articulation of the subsidiary function of the state in Quadragesimo Anno. By doing so, they relied on a principled account of the responsibility of the state to perform an associational subsidiary function in providing poverty relief and welfare aid, while also arguing for the continued presence of and financial support for lower private charities, especially Catholic charities.

Section A. The Collapse of Voluntary Charity

The time of the Great Depression in Chicago was not characterized by only great poverty and need, but also the depopulation of the social sphere. Much has been said about the impact of the Depression on families and on urban areas. Important for this project is the impact the Depression had on the local, private charities that dominated pre-New Deal social welfare and poverty aid. From the mutual-aid workers’ associations, to ethnic banks, to the company-led social welfare programs set up by industrialists, all foundered and collapsed under the weight of the Depression. The result was the need for greater

77 involvement from state and federal governments and the consolidation of smaller, ethnic

Catholic charities under the umbrella of the Archdiocesan Charities Bureau. Thus, it is during this time in Chicago that we can see the very same concerns that led Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI to compose their social encyclicals. Leo XIII was concerned about the precarious situation of the workingperson to protect themselves from economic crises and the need for the involvement of the state. Pius XI was concerned about the loss of a rich social life due to the collapse of the social sphere and the state’s absorption of important social work. Both concerns were very much present in Chicago during the Depression.

According to Pope Pius XI, writing in 1932 in the midst of the global Depression, the principal social problem was the "overthrow and near extinction of that rich social life which was once highly developed through associations of various kinds,” in which "there remain virtually only individuals and the state.”119 Such a situation arose because of

"individualism," what Pesch used at the turn of the century instead of the 19th century's

"liberalism,” and the rise of the omnicompetent state. What Pius saw in the 1930’s was the same individualist and statist tendencies implicit in economic and political liberalism that

Catholic social thinkers had argued against from the beginning of the 19th century and were solidified in Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum. Though Pope Leo XIII did not use the same vocabulary in 1891, he also saw the loss of social richness as a contributing factor to the social ills of the Industrial Revolution. In particular, he saw the loss of the guild system and the expulsion of the Church from society as important factors leading to the decay of the situation of the workers. On the one hand, "the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place.”120 On the other,

119 Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #78. 120 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #3. 78

"Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition.”121 What both popes saw taking place was the deteriorating effect of liberalism on the social sphere and the social relationships that provided for social stability.

In each case, we can see different manifestations of a similar problem as America and Western Europe adapted to the new social conditions that arose out of the Industrial

Revolution. Paul Misner's Social Catholicism in Europe, highlights how in each of these situations is an example of the reorganization of society. He argues that "the upward-striving bourgeoisie of commerce, finance, and industry could not settle for" the stable and hierarchically-structured social vision of early modern European Christianity. Instead, "they were a new human type" that needed "a complete emancipation from Christian attitudes" about the proper ordering of society.122 The result was "the slow dissolution of the ahistorical notion of an unchanging, static social order," which "Leo XIII and Pius X would still presuppose...”123 In the end, "two new industrial classes would take shape: those who owned the machines and those who worked them - the bourgeois entrepreneurs and the wage earners in their direct employ - capitalists and the laboring class.”124 The result was “a class society, the hallmark of which would not be interdependence but antagonism between the classes.”125

One concerning characteristic of this new social order was its complete separation of pre-existing social safety nets. Cut from the land and the interdependent peasant-noble

121 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, #2. 122 Paul Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe, 21. 123 Ibid., 21. 124 Ibid., 25 125 Ibid., 38. 79 relationship, laborers were reliant on the good graces of their bourgeois employers. The result was the loss of the social relationships that had provided for the poor and the failure to develop new ways of caring for them. The Catholic social tradition of the nineteenth century that Leo XIII consolidated and articulated in papal teaching was an attempt to reimagine society in response to these new types. Some Catholics accepted and endorsed these new conditions, others rejected them, still others accepted the new realities but sought a means of restructuring societies to better align with a Christian sense of the human person and the justice that should shape all human social relationships. Such a problem called for the necessary rebuilding, reconstruction, and repopulation of the social order. For Pope Pius

XI, this meant a full and complete application of the principle of subsidiarity to limit the state and foster a plurality of associations within the graded social hierarchy.

The history of Chicago during the Depression has direct parallels with the papal portrayal of history. Just as Pope Pius XI saw in Europe the near extinction of the social sphere and the expansion of the welfare state, Chicago’s experience of the decade that followed the encyclical was a case study in the loss of a rich social welfare system and the growth of an omnicompetent state. Lizbeth Cohen's Making a New Deal126 details the experiences of black, immigrant, and ethnic industrial workers before and during the

Depression and tells a story of a rich social sphere and welfare system decimated by the

Depression and the turn to the state for social welfare aid. The many social welfare programs that existed prior to the Depression could not adequately respond to the rapid growth of need, and eventually collapsed or could not operate without support from state and federal resources. As a result, only the federal government was able to pool enough resources, which

126 Lizbeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 80 were then funneled through federal, state, and local government agencies to local charitable and relief agencies. As Pope Pius XI understood, “it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations.”127 During the Depression the state was the only large association able to adequately address the economic crisis.

Prior to the Depression urban, social welfare programs were primarily a matter of small, local community efforts. In particular, workers made use of ethnic fraternal organizations, mutual aid societies, and the welfare capitalist programs set up by their employers. Cohen says,

In an era before unemployment insurance or social security, ethnic groups tried as much as possible to take care for their own. There were not many alternatives. Cities, counties, and states gave only minimal assistance during the twenties, whereas private philanthropic agencies often had limited resources, evangelical agendas, and little understanding of foreigners' needs, let alone their language....But ethnic populations shied away from outside help for their own reasons as well. In most ethnic cultures, there was a deep distrust of public assistance.128

In the lives of ethnic Americans, mutual benefit societies and fraternal organizations

"formalized the help immigrants gave their countrymen in times of need and provided a link to the Old World while helping people adjust to the New.”129 These institutions contributed to the development and stability of their members’ lives and the rich social life of the ethnic community. Alongside these programs was the system of “welfare capitalism,” which argued for “loyalty to the boss in return for good treatment and security on the job,” and believed

“the enlightened corporation, not the labor union or the state, would spearhead the creation of a more benign industrial society.”130 In an effort to tie workers closer to the company and

127 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #79. Accessed 7/22/16 at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius- xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html. 128 Cohen, Making a New Deal, 56 – 57. 129 Cohen, 65. 130 Cohen, 161. 81 to mitigate animosity that might lead to violent labor disruptions, the welfare capitalist programs built up worker ideas about what they could and ought to be able to expect from employers.

With the onset of the Depression, the locally-funded, small-scale ethnic social welfare programs began to collapse. "It did not take long for clients, agencies, and civic leaders alike to recognize that the traditional voluntary approach to relief was floundering in an economic crisis of unprecedented magnitude.”131 "These private charities could not handle the enormous demand for assistance" because "the depression increased the demand for welfare services, [and] undermined the financial resources of many religious and ethnic welfare societies.”132 Further, "To the frustration of Chicago's supporters of local, private welfare, even the emergency fund drives failed to solve the relief crisis.”133 Even as the local, private welfare programs showed themselves incapable of adequately responded to the needs of the Depression's victims, the rich social life of ethnic communities was taking a hit as well. Cohen says,

Private welfare was not the only pillar of ethnic life to collapse under the pressure of the depression. Other institutions that ethnic workers had depended on during the 1920s failed them as well, most importantly ethnic benefit societies, ethnic banks and building and loan associations, and ethnic neighborhood stores. The fraternal insurance policies, bank accounts, mortgages, and credit arrangement that had once symbolized security or even success had less and less to offer workers.134

In short, "the 'safety net' that their ethnic groups had previously provided had collapsed with the Great Depression.”135 Welfare capitalism didn’t fare any better because "frequent layoffs and employer mismanagement made welfare capitalism undependable....The Great

131 Cohen, Making a New Deal, 223. 132 Cohen, 222. 133 Cohen, 224. 134 Cohen, 227. 135 Cohen, 238. 82

Depression replayed this dynamic of employer promises and worker disillusionment in even greater intensity and left workers surer than ever that employers only valued welfare capitalism when it was convenient and cheap.” "Before long...most companies began cutting back...relief programs pleading unmanageable costs.”136 The result then was the near-total collapse of the voluntary social welfare programs that working-people in Chicago had come to rely on.

In this section I have shown that the experience of working-people in Chicago during the Depression parallels the social-structural concerns raised on the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. On the one hand, the Depression clearly shows the fundamental inadequacy of a voluntary social welfare system based solely on the local level and the need for the participation of higher-level associations to bring their greater resources to bear. Following Pope Leo XIII’s example, many Catholics called on the state’s responsibility to care for the poor. On the other hand, the Depression represents the impact of a deep economic crisis on the structural pluralism of a society. Not only did the

Depression undermine the social welfare programs that working-people relied on, it also excised important associations through which many members of the community lived their social lives.

The solutions to these two problems were solved in a variety of ways. In the next section I will show how the primary way in which most American Catholics involved in charity and social welfare was to follow the lead of Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno and can best be understood as an application of the associational subsidiary function of the state.

136 Cohen, 238 – 240. 83

Section B. The Charitable Catholic Response to the Depression.

In this section I will show that the primary way in which most American Catholics involved in charity, poverty relief and social welfare responded to the impact of the

Depression on their agencies was by applying subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state. The associational subsidiary function of the state allowed charitable

Catholics to do two things. First, it allowed them to forcefully call on the responsibility of the federal government to take on the role of collecting the resources necessary to respond to the needs of the poor and organizing their distribution at a national level. Second, it enabled them to argue for their own continued participation in that distribution at the local level and for the Catholic population as a whole. As they made these arguments, they articulated the role of the state and the role of lower, charitable organizations in terms that can best be understood in light of Quadragesimo Anno’s discussion of the subsidiary function of the state; they called on the state to help the lower, charitable organizations do the work proper to them, but also worked to ensure that the state did not gain a monopoly on relief and that they would remain important for the local distribution of aid.

With the collapse of the voluntary, local-level social welfare associations, Catholic charitable organizations sought to fill in the gap. In the beginning, Chicago’s Catholic ethnic charities and small Catholic charities independent of archdiocesan oversight were largely absorbed into the Archdiocesan Central Charities Bureau. Eventually, it became clear that even archdiocesan-wide organizations could not adequately respond to the need. As a result,

Chicago’s Central Charities turned to the state and federal government for funding aid.

At the same time that they fought for a place at the table they also fought for their independence as distinctly Catholic charitable organizations. Dorothy M. Brown and

Elizabeth McKeown, in their The Poor Belong to Us, outline the peculiar relationship that

Catholic charities had with government funding sources during this period. According to the authors, “During the first winter of 1930, private agencies across the nation strained to provide emergency relief for the millions of new unemployed.”137 As a result, “By the winter of 1932, 80 percent of relief was provided from city, state, and finally, federal funds.”138

Catholic charities were not immune from this impotence. Throughout the country “there was an initial effort to meet the crisis locally, followed by a call for state funds, and the realization that federal money was necessary.”139 Thus, it was not merely the absorption of welfare services by an ever-expanding state. Due to their inability to attend to social welfare needs, local charitable agencies had to turn to the federal government, which was the only entity capable of providing the necessary level of financial resources.

Within years of the beginning of the Depression, the Archdiocese of Chicago was losing its ability to fund these programs even in the subsidized way it had before. "On

February 6, 1932, the state legislature passed a series of relief bills creating an Illinois

Emergency Relief Commission (IERC) and providing initial funds of $19 million to prevent private relief effort from collapsing."140 Initially, the funding was made available to Catholic,

Jewish and other private agencies, but the loophole that made it possible was later closed.

Cardinal Archbishop George Mundelein, however, refused to allow Catholic

Charities to be cut out of state funding. “After several direct petitions to the IERC in the summer and fall of 1932, the IERC voted to permit the cooperative arrangement to continue and the Central Charity Bureau of the archdiocese was designated an official agent of the commission." The next year, the issue came under review again when the federal

137 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 153. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., 156. 140 Kantowicz, Corporation Sole: Cardinal Mundelein and Chicago Catholicism, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 143 – 144. 85 government became the primary source of funding to the IERC. The Federal Emergency

Relief Administration (FERA) mandated that federal money go through public organizations. This time Mundelein made use of his special relationship with the Roosevelt

Administration to arrive at an arrangement between government programs and Chicago’s

Catholic Charity Bureau. “Representatives from Chicago’s Catholic Charities met with

Hopkins in Washington and…won the (continued) designation of Catholic Charities as a public agency.”141 A loophole was found and "the Catholic Central Charity Bureau remained an agent of the state." In the end, "Catholic Charities was the only private relief agency that received state and federal funds in Illinois after 1933."142 As a result, Chicago’s Catholic charities retained a special relationship with FERA. As Brown and McKeown argue,

“Chicago’s Catholic leadership and the machine of Mayor Edward J. Kelly remained staunch

New Deal supporters; the support was reciprocated.”143

This response was representative of the overall Catholic response to the role of the state in welfare and relief. Brown and McKeown argue that the Catholic response to funding woes went through three main stages. First, “Their major campaign…was to continue a role in providing essential relief for Catholics.” For this reason, “they joined with other agencies and called for public local, state, and federal funding.” Next, as the federal government became more involved, “they fought to limit its extension to protect the religion of Catholic children and to maintain a role in child-care, albeit modified, under the new dispensation.”

In the end, as the state assumed the lion’s share of welfare responsibilities, “Catholic charities worked to organize Catholic voters to lobby local, state, and eventually federal agencies and legislatures to insure a continuing role in the care of Catholic children and

141 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 166. 142 Kantowicz, Corporation Sole, 144 – 148. 143 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 166. 86 families and to insist, more broadly, that the rights of all Americans to an adequate subsistence were protected.” This last point was part of the lasting Catholic influence on the

American welfare state. For Catholic charities, however, the results were more serious. No longer able to adequately attend to the needs of Catholics, they had to fight in order to remain involved in welfare services even as the state showed its greater effectiveness in acquiring resources and expanded its involvement.144

The expansion of the welfare state had mixed results for the place of Catholic charities. As Administrator of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), Harry

Hopkins established a set of rules that had important implications for private charities.

Brown and McKeown point to two in particular: FERA money could only be spent by public agencies and any private social worker or private agency that disbursed public funds had to be placed on public payrolls or identified as a branch of the public agency.145 This effectively meant that the expansion of government in funding relief services also meant the possible destruction and absorption of private charity agencies. As a result, Rev. John

O’Grady of the NCCC, who would come to be a close friend of Saul Alinsky’s, “reported a drift toward public agencies administering relief.”146 In response, O’Grady fought for “the utilization of existing agencies (including Catholic Charities) rather than setting up an entirely new [purely governmental] structure.”147 After the establishment of FERA, he saw “that in cities where there had been no, or poorly administered, public relief, there was a tendency,

‘quite pronounced,’ ‘to use existing relief structures.’”148 So, as the state expanded its role in funding relief, the result was a patchwork of public and private agencies disbursing funds.

144 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 152. 145 Ibid., 164 – 165. 146 Ibid., 164. 147 Ibid., 163. 148 Ibid., 164. 87

This patchwork was where Catholic charities found their place within the expanding welfare state of the New Deal. Without a wholesale refusal to fund private agencies and the practical reliance on existing private relief structures, the ad hoc expansion of state relief funding made it possible for Catholic charities to argue for and retain some place in welfare and relief. It was by drawing out the associational subsidiary function of the state that Catholics were able to make their argument for their continued inclusion.

During the period from 1931 to 1933, Quadragesimo Anno was the most significant document in American Catholic thought on the resolution of the social and economic crises of the Depression. Shortly after the publication of Quadragesimo Anno, the US bishops issued their statement “On the Economic Crisis.”149 Following the encyclical’s guidance, they stated, “we are convinced, because of the vastness of the number of suffering, that federal and state appropriations for relief in some form will become necessary.” The bishops continued to argue in favor of a living wage, the development of industrial conferences with the help of the government, and a better system to protect labor from further economic crises. In April, 1933, the administrative board of the NCWC released a statement “On the

Present Crisis.” The statement’s core ideas were from Quadragesimo Anno. Among the many remedies, the bishops made use of subsidiarity to outline the role of the state in economic affairs, and quoted Quadragesimo Anno on the subsidiary function of the state.150 Thus, very quickly the basic teachings of the encyclical found their way into the popular and episcopal articulations of the Catholic position on social issues. For these reasons, Catholic engagement with welfare and relief during the Depression was guided by Quadragesimo Anno’s articulation of the associational subsidiary function of the state.

149 USCCB, Our Bishops Speak, 194 – 196. 150 USCCB, Our Bishops Speak, 292 – 293. 88

Papal social doctrine on subsidiarity was also important in the specific negotiations of Catholics and the Roosevelt Administration and the New Deal. As early as the 1932 campaign Catholics saw parallels between Roosevelt’s approach and papal social thought.

Many made note that, “The President himself referred to Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo

Anno when speaking to Catholic audiences.”151 This led to an increasingly favorable Catholic opinion of the New Deal.

Specifically in reference to the state’s relationship to private agencies in relief,

Roosevelt’s speech before the National Conference of Catholic Charities endeared him to

Catholics. His address,

stressed the need for continued relief work by private agencies; the federal government could not carry the load alone. Furthermore, the success of relief work depended to a large degree on personal contacts that were better achieved by small private associations. Private church relief was also important because…the people believe ‘spiritual values count in the long run more than material values.’152

As the federal government entered further into social welfare and relief, the Roosevelt administration appeared to articulate the proper relationships between lower social bodies and the state in terms that Catholics recognized as a subsidiarity.

By the National Catholic Charity Conference (NCCC) of 1933, “Catholic speakers…suggested the influence of the 1931 papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, on the

New Deal.” The “Charter of Catholic Charities,” which came out of the Conference sought to articulate the continued Catholic role in relief arising out of the Church’s unique mission to the world. It was necessary for the Church to remain involved and “never think of turning over our entire responsibility to the state or any other agency.” 153 Thus, though Catholic

151 David J. O’Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1968), 52. 152 George Q. Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency: 1932 – 1936, (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968), 58. 153 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 151 – 152. Source, quoted in B and M. 89 charities had begun to accept their own financial inadequacy and the need of state funding, they articulated the inclusion of the state in relief in terms of the associational subsidiary function of the state. Because it was the state’s duty to aid individuals and agencies, the state must provide relief funding. That increase in funding, however, did not translate into a state monopoly, or the state absorbing the duties proper to lower charitable organizations.

The greatest Catholic fear was that government funding would mean government control, because “federal aid…eventually means Federal control and domination.”154

Catholic thinkers made use of subsidiarity in their attempts to outline the proper ordering of relationships within the new realities of social welfare funding. The principle’s assignment of responsibility to the state to provide aid while also protecting and encouraging participation was an important way for Catholic charities to both assert their right to funding and a degree of operational autonomy. As an important characteristic of the Catholic response,

“subsidiarity provided both a theoretical basis for Catholics to seek aid from the government and an argument for a Catholic role in determining policy.”155 At the NCCC’s meeting in

1934, Marcellus Wagner, in his presidential address, quoted Pius XI on the principle of subsidiarity.156 Thus, subsidiarity quickly became a major element of the Catholic response to the expansion of the welfare state. Recognizing its significance, it was a necessary part of their argument for government support and Catholic charity participation in policy.

In the end, because of the reliance on state funding, Catholic Charities had to accept that the state would retain a major role in relief. Aiming to protect the Catholic religion of relief recipients, especially children, Catholics sought to retain a place in welfare.157 As a

154 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 162 155 Ibid.,155 – 156. 156 Ibid., 169 – 170. 157 Ibid., 180/182. 90 result, “In decisions about the care of children and the allocation of resources, Catholic

Charities had earned a significant voice in the development of American welfare.”158 Though public, government agencies became central in relief services, Catholic Charities had fought hard to retain a place in funding disbursal and policy. In this fight, subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state was an important theoretical framework for

Catholic understanding of the relationship between public relief and welfare and private

Catholic charity.

Conclusion.

With this picture of Catholic Charities’ experiences of the expansion of the role of government in welfare during the Great Depression, we can see a direct parallel between the stories of social decay told by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. I have also shown that the primary response of those American Catholics involved in charity was through an application of the principle of subsidiarity and the call for the state to perform an associational subsidiary function. During the Depression, Cohen's history of the small, ethnic social welfare programs and the private welfare capitalist programs represents Pope

Pius XI's concerns about the near extinction of the rich and complex social sphere. As the

Depression deepened and continued the older local social welfare institutions could not meet the needs of the people. With the loss of social charitable institutions, the state took up the slack in welfare and relief. Where necessary, government agencies built new welfare structures. Where it was possible it made use of existing ones. Thus, as the state expanded its role in relief, Catholic charities had to fight to retain a place in social welfare. To do so, they drew upon subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

158 Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 192. 91

Part II. Bishop Bernard James Sheil and a Charitable Catholic Experiment in

Subsidiarity.

In this part I will explain how in the early part of his career, Auxiliary Bishop

Bernard James Sheil was an embodiment of the American charitable response to the effects of the Depression of private charity and the call for the involvement of the government in social welfare. As a “charitable Catholic,” he was focused on poverty relief through parish- centered virtue development. When he began to consider the structures of society, he followed the example above and did so in terms of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state in order to argue for the state’s responsibility to aid small, local charitable associations.

In the first section, I will follow Paul Misner’s typology of “charitable” and “social

Catholicism,” to argue that Sheil was a charitable Catholic not principally concerned with the restructuring of society to make it more just. Rather, he accepted the structure of society as it was and sought to remedy the problems of the Great Depression through athletic programs, vocational training, virtue development, and other charitable endeavors. Because of his charitable concerns, when Sheil did begin to consider the structures of society he did so primarily in terms of how the federal government could provide funding aid to lower charitable associations.

In the second section of this chapter, I will show that Sheil’s concern with the relationship between the federal government and charitable organizations is most clearly represented in his 1938 speech, “Public and Private Charity.” In that speech, Sheil argued that it was necessary to develop “new instrumentalities” to facilitate the federal government’s provision of funds to lower charitable associations like the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

Sheil’s account of the role of the federal government and its relationship to the St. Vincent

92 de Paul Society is a clear example of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

As I will discuss below, Sheil was well-educated, but nonintellectual, and concerned with concrete charitable action. Because of that he did little work to develop a principled approach to the social ills of society and instead focused on what he could do to help the poor and marginalized. Well-educated and served by intellectuals, Sheil’s public speeches and writings make constant reference to the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.

Such references show that he was aware of and shaped by papal social doctrine and the literature of American social Catholicism, especially John A. Ryan. Similarly, as a major figure in American Catholic charity, Sheil was immersed in the national-level conversations among Catholics about the funding relationship between the federal government and

Catholic charities. This is significant because Sheil’s speeches never make direct reference to the principle of subsidiarity or the “subsidiary function” of the state. Much like other

Catholics involved in charity, however, Sheil’s efforts to talk about the relationship between the federal government and lower associations can best be understood in terms of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Section A. Bishop Bernard James Sheil as a Charitable Catholic

In this section I will argue that Sheil’s early public career during the 1930s was principally an exercise in “charitable Catholicism.” Inspired by the social ills facing Chicago’s poor youths, Sheil’s goal for the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) was to attract them through athletics and to lift them up through virtue development and other social services.

Over time, the CYO developed or absorbed numerous other social and charitable programs and expanded to be Sheil’s own charitable fiefdom within the Archdiocese of Chicago. As a charitable Catholic, however, Sheil’s primary concern was not to change the structures of

93 society that created poverty, but to serve the poor that their lives might be improved within existing social structures. When he did begin to consider the structural relationships between associations within society, his concern with private charity oriented him to focus on the associational subsidiary function of the state to aid charitable organizations like his own.

Paul Misner’s Social Catholicism in Europe discusses the distinction between two responses to the social question. The first was “charitable Catholicism,” which sought to provide relief to the poor but did not work to reimagine society in a more just form. The second was “social Catholicism.” According to Misner, "a certain degree of economic insight or at least alertness to new conditions distinguished social Christianity from traditional charitable Christianity. It is not enough for our purposes...that a person spend her means and her life in service to the poor...a necessary condition of social Catholicism is that one regard the misery of the working classes as a state of things that ought not to be and can be changed for the better." 159 Thus, the “social Catholic” sees the need not only for ameliorating the plight of the poor, but also addressing the social structures, the “state of things,” that lead to the poverty of the working classes. As I will show below, Sheil was very much concerned with the plight of the poor, and much of his inspiration for the CYO arose out of a need to serve them. At the same time, his concern was to serve them and was not based on “economic insight” or “alertness to new conditions.” Over time this did change and Sheil could be described as a “social Catholic,” but during much of the 1930s Sheil can best be understood in Misner’s terms as a “charitable Catholic.”

Following Misner's distinction between "charitable" and "social Catholicism," Joseph

M. Palacios's The Catholic Social Imagination provides a useful analysis of the ways in which

159 Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe, 39 - 40. 94

Catholic social actors carry their faith out into public life.160 Palacios’ sociological models will help to better describe Sheil’s charitable Catholicism and will provide a lens to better view how Sheil’s social imagination changes over time. In his sociological model, Palacios organizes Catholic social imagination along two continuums. The first identifies the

"strategic orientation" or "where social justice is enacted." This "axis encompasses organizing principles, philosophical frameworks, and social roles. At one end of it, the church orientation focuses on the institutional church's structures, doctrines, liturgy, etc., while at the other end, the world orientation focuses on contexts and situations outside the

Church, such as public culture, politics, economics, the media, and the social sciences.”161

The second continuum locates the normative approach or "the kind or type of social justice to be realized." At one end of this continuum, Palacios identifies the "integral orientation" that emphasizes "virtues, moral norms and organizing principles" and "stresses charitable programs either within or without the institutional church; spiritual growth practices such as prayer and meditation; maintenance of ethnic and cultural identities; and ritually oriented activities." The other "structural" end focuses on "analytical frameworks and organizing principles, since this orientation stresses institutions, structures, and social and behavioral sciences involved in their analysis.”162

As we turn to examine Sheil's public career, these intersecting orientations offer more specific and detailed ways of examining his work and thought. Particularly, as Sheil shifted the CYO from a charitable athletic program to a social and educational one, his focus shifted from integral to structural along the normative continuum and from church to world along the strategic. Though this section will focus on how Sheil and the CYO were examples

160 Joseph Palacios, The Catholic Social Imagination, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 161 Ibid., 60. 162 Ibid., 61. 95 of charitable Catholicism with a church and virtue-centered approach during the early 1930s, it will be helpful to first look at how Sheil’s career can be understood in terms of two main periods.

In an early historical account of Sheil and the CYO, Ralph C. Leo's "Historical

Survey of the Catholic Youth Organization," identifies two distinct phases. First, "From its founding to about 1938, the CYO was primarily concerned with athletic and recreational activities." Starting in 1938, however, "the CYO grew to full maturity both as a recreational and also as an educational and social service organization having definite and clear-cut goals." Second, "In 1939, began a radical departure from the traditional method of approach....CYO efforts shifted to the broader and larger aspects of community organization and socially-valuable projects."163 In his later study, Kantowizc supports this periodization,

“This two-phase analysis contains a good deal of truth, for after Sheil had organized his youth athletic programs in the early years, they expanded on a self-sustaining basis while the bishop turned his attention to broader questions of social justice.”164 Such a periodization helps to better distinguish the ways in which Sheil’s early career is identifiable as charitable with a focus on athletic and recreational activities and virtues that they develop in youth in contrast to his more social justice orientation from 1939 and after.

Using Misner’s typology, Palacios’ sociological models, and Leo’s periodization, it is possible to note that in the period up to 1938, Sheil’s public career and the CYO are representative of charitable Catholicism with and integral-church approach. The period from

1939, however, as I will discuss in Chapter Four, can be characterized as social Catholicism

163 Ralph C Leo, “Historical Survey of the Catholic Youth Organization,” August 1943, box 11, folder 8, collection CCRD, Edward V. Cardinal Papers, Archives of the University of Notre Dame (hereafter AUND). It is significant that in 1943 Leo was pointing to “community organizing” as a major characteristic of the CYO’s social focus. 164 Kantowizc, Corporation Sole, 189. 96 with a structural-world approach.

The reasons for this shift in Sheil’s social imagination and the direction of the CYO has much to do with Sheil’s own personality. Sheil was a well-educated man and had a capable intellect, but he was not an intellectual. He had a tendency to approach the issue of poverty according to how the situations around him demanded. Thus, in the period of the

Depression and in his contact with Chicago’s youths, he sought to help them in the best way he knew; athletics and recreation. Over time his approach changed, but for much of the

1930s Sheil was focused on charitable programs and not social change.

Roger Treat's Bishop Sheil and the CYO, written in 1951, three years before the collapse of the CYO, points to the key moment in Sheil's life that led to the CYO.

According to the legend, while working as chaplain for the Cook County Jail, following the execution of another young inmate, Sheil declared

I will make you a promise and I will not forget. Some day I shall devote my life to this problem of youth.... We will build a great organization in our city, in other cities, all over America. We will bring you a sense of security that comes from belonging to a group and being wanted. We will answer your challenge and your bewildered eyes that ask us what we are going to do about his hideous waste of our glorious youth.165

This episode in Sheil’s legend is hard to accept on its face; especially how it characterizes the future national scope of the organization. It does show, however, that Sheil was motivated by a very real concern for the plight of Chicago’s poor youth, and that his experiences spurred him to action. Beginning in 1930, Sheil’s CYO was a fulfillment of his promise.

Sheil’s desire to “build an organization” to provide poor youths a sense of security points to the Sheil’s focus on action and charitable work. Sheil’s response to the problem of youth was not to develop an intellectual system to understand it, but to act to remedy it. As

Timothy Neary argues, “Although Sheil was not an intellectual in the conventional sense (he

165 Treat, Bishop Sheil and the CYO, (New York: Messner, 1951), 39. 97 did not pursue graduate studies, do much serious reading, or write most of his own speeches), he attracted intellectuals with his enthusiasm for putting ideas into action.”166 Fr.

Cornelius McGillicuddy, who was the first chaplain to Northwestern University's Sheil Club, provides some insight into Sheil’s active character: "I think he was, maybe not a peer intellect, but he was a doer, he got things done.”167 In a similar way, Robert Burns, who handled Sheil's and the Sheil School's publicity from 1943 to 1949, said, "He was not an intellectual. He was well educated and all that but he was not an intellectual, although he attracted many intellectuals," and "He was not an intellectual but a learned man. He was a well educated man, the bishop.”168 Thus, though Sheil was capable of understanding the situations and systems that surrounded him, he was not the type to develop intellectual systems on his own. Instead, he wanted to act immediately to change their lives immediately.

According to Sorvillo, Sheil’s lack of a definite intellectual system came to be a strength of the CYO. He said, “Sheil’s pragmatism was one of the great strengths of the

C.Y.O. Not hindered by any doctrinaire vision of what such an organization should be like, the C.Y.O. was free to use what worked and discard what did not.”169 Unlike other ecclesiastics who turned to the social question (e.g. Reynold Hillenbrand and John Courtney

Murray) Sheil did not have the disposition to produce a positive account or system to answer it. Instead, he turned to the work and thoughts of others and made them his own.

Most especially, Sheil was more influenced by the social thought that was common in the air among Catholics. Sorvillo says:

166 Timothy Neary, Crossing Parish Boundaries: Race, Sports, and Catholic Youth in Chicago, 1914 – 1954, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016), 153. This remains the second significant work published covering Sheil’s work, since Treat’s, Bishop Sheil and the CYO, from 1951. 167 McGillicuddy, Interview with Steven Avella, HIST/H3300/362, Steve Avella Oral History Project (Hereafter SAOHP), Archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago (hereafter AAC). 168 Burns, Interview with Steven Avella, HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC. 169 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard J. Sheil: Hero of the Catholic Left,” dissertation, PhD, University of Chicago, 1990, 112. 98

Although Sheil was primarily a doer and not a thinker, his speeches demonstrate that he had a great depth of understanding of the difficult moral issues involved in the social problems he was addressing. Bishop Sheil was not, as certain critics have maintained, all heart and no head. The social encyclicals of the Popes and the ethical program expounded in America by John Ryan and others had a profound effect upon his intellectual formation.170

Thus, Sheil was focused on action but did possess training in and an awareness of Catholic social tradition. Though he never developed his own distinct systematic approach, he did possess and apply Catholic social principles fully. Indeed, his speeches show he knew Rerum

Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno and the work of John A. Ryan. As will be shown later, he was happy and ready to pick important parts of the encyclicals and borrow arguments about natural rights from Ryan. In most cases, however, he was borrowing and re-packaging the ideas of others, rather than formulating his own system.

Drawing on the influences around him was part of the reason Sheil came to hold the place he did in Chicago and American Catholicism. In her 1955 attempt to explain Sheil to the world, “Sheil: Prophet Without Honor,” Elizabeth Carroll claimed, “If it occurred to

Sheil to imitate anyone, it would probably be the man who gave him his title and his opportunity for action, the late Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, George Mundelein.” In regards to the political and social stands that Sheil took during his career, she states,

“Although Bishop Sheil’s career is sometimes pictured as if he followed innate conviction in the various steps of his public life, it is closer to the truth to say that he stumbled into liberalism through Cardinal Mundelein.” 171 While Carroll’s account is likely overly simplistic, it does indicate an important part of Sheil’s career. Throughout it, Sheil’s work possessed something of a pastiche character. Borrowing from all of the major thinkers of his time, he developed an approach to social issues that was his own unique blend of Catholicism and

170 Ibid., 17. 171 Carroll, “Bishop Sheil: Prophet without Honor,” Harper’s Magazine, (November, 1955), 47. 99

American values.

Even the very programs that made up the CYO were not all wholly Sheil’s own ideas. Edward Kantowicz argues, “The CYO did not spring full blown from the brain of

Bernard Sheil at the time of his prison chaplaincy, or at any other time; it had numerous forerunners." Further, "all the ideas and programs which became part of the CYO had been around since the beginning of Mundelein's administration...”172 Similarly, with the Holy

Name Technical School, which the legend credits to Sheil, Kantowicz argues, "Sheil probably supplied little more than sympathetic support...yet he furnished an idea which set the Holy Name Technical School apart from ordinary trade schools," he "conceived of making [it] a school of aeronautics."173 What Sheil brought to these programs and all of the programs he developed under the CYO was “the enthusiasm and drive to put all the ideas into an attractive and attention-getting package of youth work. He was a catalyst, publicist, organizer; but not all the ideas were his own.”174 In many of these cases "Sheil later took the same idea and organized it successfully.”175 And, when he did so it was to address a pressing need and not an expression of a principled account of the proper order of society.

Sheil’s tendency to address the immediate needs in front of him with little regard for an intellectual appreciation for the structural system that led to them is represented in Sheil’s work with the CYO in the 1930s. Further, because he saw his efforts in service to poor youths and was not inclined to develop intellectual systems, the primary way that he could imaging his social action was dependent on what he had at hand. Thus, his concern for concrete action to help Chicago’s youths focused on athletic and recreational activities that

172 Kantowizc, Corporation Sole, 174 – 175. 173 Ibid., 178. 174 Ibid., 174 – 175. 175 Ibid., 175. 100 could help them acquire important virtues to combat the social ills around them. As Sheil and the CYO developed throughout the 1930s as an actionable form of addressing the needs of the city’s poor youths, they are best characterized as charitable Catholicism with a focus on an integral-church orientation.

Sheil’s thought in during the 1930s is representative of his lack of concern with a structural or intellectual approach to resolving the social ills of the Depression. At the low- point of the Depression, he said, "It is useless for us to sit back and merely decry present day conditions."176 That same year, in his speech dedicating the Holy Name Technical School, which had been brought under the aegis of Sheil and the CYO, he said, "Nor, finally, have I any intention of criticizing our leaders, whether industrial, social or governmental or previous conditions that have led up to this collapse that has overtaken us. Such talk does not help any, it only creates bitterness, and many of these men have suffered perhaps more intensely than those whom they employed.”177 Sheil did not believe that the remedy of the present situation was in discerning the systematic conditions that led up to it. Instead he focused on the infusion of virtue into the lives of the youth through the selfless actions of older men. He said, "My own belief is that if we could have a large enough body of men who would forget self for awhile [sic] and would each one try to help another man or boy or child in a practical way to get on his feet, it would do more to bring us back to normalcy than all the projects and programs of all the legislative bodies of the land.”178 Sheil’s sense of the solution to the social ills facing the poor youth in Chicago was not in projects and programs of legislative bodies to affect the conditions themselves or to change the systematic roots of

176 Sheil, Paper given to the Youth Session of the National Council of Catholic Men, 1933, box 44979.01, folder 2, Bishop Bernard J. Sheil Papers (hereafter BBJS), AAC. 177 Sheil, Dedication of the Lewis School of Aeronautics, 1933, box 44979.01, folder 3, BBJS, AAC. 178 Ibid. 101 the conditions, but the help raise up the youth through the charitable, virtuous actions of others.

Charity and virtuous formation, rather than social action, permeated the work of the

CYO. Rooted in the CYO's athletic program, Sheil said in 1931, "The fact is that the Church cannot carry on her spiritual mission at all without being deeply concerned about the physical and material well-being of her children.” To do this requires the charitable efforts of individual men and women. "We are thoroughly persuaded that no finer or more beneficent service could be rendered these boys and girls, these young men and young women, than to be brought into frequent and intimate contact with cultured men and women of high character and noble purpose.” Roughly built on the model of St. Vincent de Paul Society conferences, the CYO was intended to bring youths and young people into contact with the

Church, her priests, and her "cultured" members through interesting and engaging athletics and recreational activities. The goal then, was "To lift these boys and girls out of the depths of despondence, to let into their all too darkened lives a little light, to uproot from their minds and hearts the growing seed of suspicion and hate, and to implant therein the good seed of an upright and hopeful manhood and womanhood.” Thus, the purpose of the CYO and its social services was not to effect change in the structure of American politics, economics, or society. Rather, focus was placed on charitable work and programs of small local groups focused on helping underprivileged youths get back on track and stay on track.

Even as the CYO expanded beyond youth programs to more adult-oriented programs, the focus remained on charitable work and virtue formation through the 1930s.179

Again in 1933, Sheil's address before the National Council of Catholic Men identifies the ultimate root problem of youth delinquency. "Our fundamental principle is ever the

179 Sheil, Radio Address on CYO Boxing on W.M.A.Q. Radio, 1931, box 44979.01, folder 1, BBJS, AAC. 102 same: Take away God, and you have no religion. Take away religion, and you have no morality. And with no morality, we can expect nothing else but delinquency, especially among our youth.”180 This indicates that his emphasis is on the integral development of individual youths. Looking to the work of the Catholic Boy Scout program under the CYO's supervision, Sheil points to the dual ways in which it trains youths in virtues. "The Scouting program, with its many way[s] of teaching natural virtue, is used in its entirety, and added to it is the religious aspect which is arrived at by incorporating each Scout into the Junior Holy

Name Society." At the yearly Catholic Scout retreat, "Individual spiritual treatment is given to the boys through the generosity of some 50 priests," which "teaches them the ways of

Christ." This coupling of Scouting "natural virtues" and Catholic spiritual teaching was "an excellent way of teaching boys, during the very dangerous time of adolescence, their duties to God, their neighbor and themselves.”181 Through these types of programs, the CYO protected youths from bad influences, immorality and error and trained them not only in the natural virtues of temporal life, but also the supernatural values for their spiritual lives.

For Sheil, such efforts were organized around the neighborhood and especially the parish. Following the parish-based organizational patterns of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Boy Scout’s troop system, Sheil organized much of his CYO around the Chicago’s

Catholic parishes. This was partly in order to bring youths in closer contact with the Church and her priests. Regarding the method, Sheil stated, "It is our job to lure them into the influence of the priest and his fine Catholic assistants." The purpose of the CYO was to do so through athletics and recreational programs. However, the reclamatory work itself must be located in the parish. "The real sport for all this gentle 'luring' of the shy boy and the

180 Sheil, Paper given at Youth Session of the National Council of Catholic Men, 1933, box 44979.01, folder 2, BBJS, AAC 181 Ibid. 103 hesitant girl is the parish. And if we don't make it the parish, all the work of the Catholic

Charities is going to be in [a vain] gesture and a foolish boast.”182 Thus, "The parish must remain always the logical center of a youth moment.”183

Sheil believed that the primary means to address the social ills of the Depression as they affected the poor youth of Chicago was to train girls and boys, young women and young men in the virtues and values necessary for them to do well in the world as it was.

There was no need to address to the systematic roots and causes of their poverty. It was only necessary to do the concrete, immediate work of helping to raise themselves up.

From this, Sheil’s public career during the 1930s can best be understood as charitable

Catholicism following what Palacio called the integral-church orientation. This is because the principle people to do this work were those selfless men and women of virtue and good standing. Further, by being connected through the parish system, the CYO’s programs would also help connect the youth to the Catholic Church as well. Finally, such work of reclaiming the youth of Chicago was properly the domain of not only charitable organizations but distinctly religious, and especially Catholic, charitable organizations. This is not work proper to the state, but instead work proper to the Church, to parishes, to priests, and upstanding men and women of virtue in the community.

As Sheil, began to approach the issue of the relationships between the associations that make up society, a concern for the important work of private religious charities dominated his sense of how the federal government ought to properly relate to lower,

Catholic charitable organizations. Partly because of Sheil’s charitable Catholicism and his integral-church social imagination, his articulation of the relationship between those the state

182 Sheil, “Outlook of Youth Today,” Paper given at National Conference of Catholic Charities, 1936, box 44979.01, folder 4, BBJS, AAC. 183 Ibid. 104 and lower associations is representative of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Section B. “Public and Private Charity”: An Experiment in Subsidiarity

Early in the 30’s, Sheil was less inclined to recognize the role of the state in relief and the resolution of the social ills caused by the economic crisis of the Depression. By the end of the decade, however, Sheil’s appreciation of the state grew to the point of associating federal involvement in relief with the charity work of smaller religious charitable organizations. In 1938, in his speech “Public and Private Charity,” Sheil depicted that relationship through a distinctly subsidiarist framework. By the end of the decade as Sheil transitioned from charitable to social Catholicism, his social thought on the role of the state, the inter-relationships between associations within the graded hierarchy of American society, and the structures of society can best be understood in terms of subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Given on October 9, 1938, "Public and Private Charity"184 provides an interesting insight into the on-going discussion about the role of private, non-governmental agencies operating on behalf of the government's work for social welfare. The title of Sheil's speech is particularly interesting. It implies that through the state and federal governments' funding relationships with the Central Charities Bureau and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, public funding was enmeshed in the charitable work of "private" religious organizations and infused with the virtue of Christian charity.

The speech highlights several important points. First, it shows Sheil’s growing

"social” approach that was still dominated by a “charitable” organizing logic. The focus is no

184 Sheil, “Public and Private Charity,” The Catholic Charities Review, (November, 1938). Reprint of talk given to the General Meeting of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, on Sunday, Oct. 9, 1938. 105 longer simply on the charitable work necessary to inculcate youths with the proper virtues; now it is necessary to deal with the very real and pressing structures of society in order to make it more equitable. Second, gone is his earlier claim "private charity will do more than legislative programs.” Sheil has realized the systematic need that private charity has for public resources and funding, and that it is necessary to make such an arrangement official.

Finally, Sheil's proposal for the relationship between private charitable groups and federal funding for relief reiterates the discussions of American Catholics involved in charity and is representative of an American attempt to articulate associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Sheil begins his speech by focusing on the need for a systematic approach to the crisis facing charity and relief. He said, "We cannot discuss any subject without a body of well ascertained facts out of which a problem grows and certain clearly defined, guiding principles which can be applied to the problem confronting us. This is just as true of the problem of Charity as it is of every conceivable subject of human thought or object of human effort.” The problem of charity that Sheil sees facing the nation was that "there are thousands, nay millions, of excellent men and women cut off from the means of normal human life through no fault of their own," who "cannot find employment by reason of unfortunate economic conditions which they have not created and over which they have no control." Thus, instead of focusing on the types of charitable programs best suited to dealing with youth delinquency and crime, Sheil is turning to the "maladjusted economic order which no longer meets the imperative demands of life." Further, "These dangerous maladies of the social and economic body are due to definite causes which must be ascertained by painstaking study and removed by reasoned, scientific methods."185

185 Sheil, “Public and Private Charity,” 293. 106

This above approach to the "problem of Charity" is more representative of a

Misner's "social Catholicism" and Palacio's structural-world orientation. Sheil was no longer focused on simply providing relief and charitable aid programs to the poor and needy, but is focused on the root causes and problems that create the conditions for poverty and need.

He is focused on the very structures of the "maladjusted economic order" and sees the need to change that order so to better provide men and women with meaningful employment.

Thus, in 1938 the speech represents the earliest stage of Sheil's shift from principally charitable work to a focus on “social” work. At the same time, his efforts remain dominated by the idea that the actual work of charity and relief is best done by religious charities and that the federal government should aid that work.

An interesting example of how Sheil sees the relationship between private charity and the government is his effort to parallel the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s founder,

Frederic Ozanam, with President Roosevelt. In applauding the St. Vincent de Paul Society's work in charity and relief distribution, Sheil does so with the President’s own words, "You bring to the work of Charity what the President of the United State has declared must never be absent from it - 'the religious motive.'" In doing so, the Society continued to "carry forward the glorious banner of Frederic Ozanam who, we all hope and believe will one day be elevated to the altars of the Church." Sheil continues by associating Roosevelt’s work in social welfare and relief through the New Deal with the religiously motivated efforts of the

Society. Though it is clear that Frederic Ozanam is the ideal, Sheil imbues the President with divine favor. "Never before, in the history of any country, as I believe, has it been highly resolved under God by any Chief Executive that millions shall not clamor in vain for bread, that millions shall not be denied the right and the opportunity of earning for themselves and their children a decent living by honest labor." For that reason, Sheil believes,

107

It would seem most appropriate at this moment that we as lovers of St. Vincent de Paul and imitators of the glorious Ozanam should offer a prayer of thanks to Almighty God, and a petition to the Holy Ghost that continued light be given to our Chief Executive President Roosevelt, that he may have the strength to continue His great services to the choicest of God's flock, the poor...186

Through his appreciation of Roosevelt, Sheil clearly arrived at a new understanding of the federal government and its role in relief and welfare. Where before legislative programs could never hope to do the amount of good possible for private charity, Sheil now sees in

Roosevelt the distinct image of the union of religious charity and public welfare. Further, this union goes both ways. Funding enables private charities to continue to do their work, and religious participation in relief distribution infuses secular funds with the virtue of

Christian charity. Thus, for Sheil, there is no problem with a merger of private religious organizations and federal power.

Looking for a "reasoned, scientific method" to solve the charity problem, Sheil identified three possibilities; "either we must entrust relief of the needy to private initiative or the work must be undertaken by public authority with properly organized resources destined for that specific purpose, or these two agencies may labor jointly to bring the largest measure of cheer and comfort to those who would otherwise suffer grievously." In support of the third option, Sheil argues in a distinctly American and Catholic fashion that the federal government has a responsibility to perform a subsidiary function in caring for the poor.

After quoting Thomas Jefferson's declaration of man's inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Sheil argues that to admit a right and not the means to it would be

"intellectual suicide." For this reason, "it is the primary and essential function of government to secure citizens in the peaceful enjoyment of their...rights," and therefore to "see to it that men are not denied the fundamental right of providing for themselves and the dependents a

186 Sheil, “Public and Private Charity,” 296 – 297. 108 decent livelihood by honest and efficient labor." For this reason, "If...private industry is unable to afford men the opportunity of a decent and honorable living, then government is bound by its very nature and purpose to employ all the resources at its disposal to secure to all its citizens...this essential right." Having thus established the government's duty to martial resources for the poor and needy, Sheil goes on to argue for the right of private charitable initiative to participate in the distribution of those resources.187

According to Sheil, private charity played an important and effective role in poverty.

Because of this private charity should not be cut out of relief and welfare. According to

Sheil, “private charitable organizations can administer the available means of relief more efficiently, more expeditiously and more economically than hastily devised public agencies."

In other important ventures, "The important question is not by whom these necessary services are rendered, but how quickly, how intelligently and perfectly the work is done." For these reasons, "No one can doubt that when we all work together with singleness of purpose and effort, private initiative, energy and sacrifice together with public organized action, all tending to a common end the greatest possible good will be achieved." Private charity, because of its charitable motivations and because of its effectiveness, should retain a place in poverty relief and welfare.188

Following Mundelein’s example, Sheil’s sense of the roles of the federal government and private charities is representative of the already-existing arrangement between Chicago's

Catholic Charities and the FERA. Already by this time, Mundelein had secured for Catholic

Charities the distinction of being the only "private" charitable organization involved in the distribution of federal relief aid. Further, Mundelein had also maintained the relative

187 Sheil, “Public and Private Charity,” 294 – 295. 188 Ibid., 295 – 296. 109 autonomy of the Charities' subsidiary organizations, especially St. Vincent de Paul Society conferences. In truth, Mundelein had already accomplished the very relationships that Sheil is calling for. What makes Sheil's speech different is that he is calling for the government to make this arrangement official. He is calling for "new instrumentalities"189 to deal with the problem of charity that are exactly what Mundelein had already won for Catholic Charities.

Just as Mundelein's arrangement with the IERC and FERA was an example of subsidiarity, so too is the formal structure that Sheil is calling for in this speech. Sheil's claim that charitable organizations like the St. Vincent de Paul Society are better and more effective at distribution of aid is a pragmatic attempt to argue that the work of charity and relief is something proper to lower charitable organizations. That is because charity and relief work are based on charitable sentiments and religious motivations, and smaller, more local private agencies can do that work more efficiently, and more effectively, than federal agencies. The state, on the other hand, must garner the necessary resources and "organize public action." Thus, while the work of distribution of aid is proper to charitable organizations, the work of acquiring the resources to distribute is proper to the state.

The basis of Sheil's argument within the speech is a distinctly American application of subsidiarity to call on the state to help the poor. Such an argument parallels that which

Pope Leo XIII makes in Rerum Novarum. Making use of American political tradition, Sheil argues for what the Compendium calls the “positive” sense of subsidiarity in the role that the state must and ought to play in securing the temporal good of its citizens. Making use of

Jefferson's oft-quoted phrase, Sheil makes the argument that the role of the state is not simply the protection of rights. Sheil interprets it as arguing for the positive duty and responsibility of the state/government to make available the means to a decent living. Thus,

189 Sheil, “Public and Private Charity,” 294. 110 the state does not exist solely to protect individual rights, it exists to ensure certain positive goods for its citizens. Further, the state is tasked with actively providing certain goods to the poor and needy in the event that private charity is unable. For this reason, the state should and must take an active helping role in charity and social welfare. In this way, Sheil is arguing that the state is tasked with providing aid to lower social bodies, in this case lower charitable associations, in the form of funding so that they might perform the work that is proper to them.

In pursuing that goal, Sheil also makes use of Pope Pius XI’s argument from

Quadragesimo Anno, called the “negative” sense of subsidiarity in the Compendium, to restrain the state from over-reaching and destroying or absorbing the “social activity” proper to lower associations. In this case, the state's role in helping to provide relief is not in the actual distribution of charity and welfare. Instead, the work of distribution is proper to certain lower social groups that are neither explicitly public government agencies nor for-profit businesses. According to Sheil, the organizations best suited to relief aid and social welfare distribution are charitable organizations, preferably religious charities. His claim that they are more efficient, expeditious and economical might be hard to maintain, but he believes that, because they exist as a result of charitable sentiments for the poor, they will be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to make the greatest amount of resources available to the poor.

Thus, the actual work of relief distribution is proper to small, local charitable organizations rather than the omnicompetent state.

Whether we accept his argument about the greater effectiveness of private religious charities or not, the argument itself is a clear example of the “negative” sense of associational subsidiarity. For Sheil, the proper relationship between the federal government and lower associations is one in which the government aids lower charities through funding, but leaves

111 the actual dispersal of funds to those charities according to their greater expertise and effectiveness.

Imbedded in Sheil's primary argument for the state’s subsidiary function in relief is the secondary argument for a structural-pluralistic understanding of the relationships between the state and local organizations. Sheil not only to identifies the role of the state, but locates that role in context of the proper discernment of the roles of all social bodies.

That means that the state's role as subsidiary is not an arbitrary decision. It is understood as the consequence of the discernment of the work proper to lower social bodies. The state's work is not limited because it must be limited. The state's work is limited because there is certain social work that is properly performed at lower levels of society by lower social bodies. At that point it is the state's role to aid those social bodies and not absorb or destroy them. Thus, the subsidiary function of the state is actually dependent upon the role of the lower social bodies. The regulation of the state's subsidiary role stands as a consequence of the pluralistic structure of society, which determines the limits and boundaries of that role.

In this speech, Sheil follows in Mundelein's footsteps, arguing for an arrangement between the federal government and local charitable organizations that is an exact parallel to what Mundelein had worked to secure for the Central Charities Bureau. Sheil’s “Public and

Private Charity” is representative of a distinctly American and Catholic experiment in articulating the associational subsidiary function of the state. As an American Catholic involved in charity, Sheil believed that the state, whose responsibility it is to care for the poor and to ensure a living for all citizens, should garner financial support for charitable associations and organize the public towards the common good. At the same time, private charitable associations were more effective and more efficient than federal agencies and provided a religiously motivated form of service that was critical to relief but not available in

112 government agencies. This meant that the federal government should support and aid lower associations to perform the work that is proper to lower associations, but not destroy those lower associations or absorb the work that is proper to them. So, Sheil’s efforts also exemplify the Compendium’s positive “helping” and the negative “restraining” senses of the subsidiary. Thus, in responding to the situation of American charity and poverty relief during the Depression, Sheil articulates the relationship between the federal government and lower charitable associations principally in terms of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Conclusion.

In this chapter, I have argued that Sheil’s career in charity and poverty relief, his

“charitable Catholicism,” oriented him towards not focusing on the structures of society and how they might be reformed in order to address the plight of the poor. Instead, he believed for much of the 1930s that the proper way to help the poor was through the local work of private, religious charities. So, as the smaller, local social welfare programs (including small ethnic mutual aid societies and industrial welfare capitalism) began to collapse under the weight of the Depression’s need, Sheil’s CYO stepped in to the void. In doing so, he absorbed already existing programs and brought them under the Archdiocese’s umbrella.

Still, he saw the best way to serve the poor and the youths of Chicago was through charity and virtue formation. Only in these ways, could they both survive the economic crisis of the

Depression and thrive within the social decay that that crisis brought.

In time, Sheil found that it was impossible for private local charities, even those that spanned an entire Archdiocese like his own CYO, to wholly fund themselves through local support. Like all other Catholic charities in America, Sheil saw the need to turn to the federal government and its higher-scale resources for funding aid. This turn also forced Sheil to

113 begin looking at social structures, while not requiring him to consider the structural causes of poverty.

Like other American Catholics involved in charity, Sheil attempted to articulate how the federal government should aid lower, Catholic, charitable associations. As he did so, he turned to both American political tradition on natural rights and a Catholic appreciation of the importance of religious motivations and sentiments in charity and poverty relief work. In fleshing out how the federal government ought to relate to lower associations, Sheil argued that the state had a responsibility to engage in relief, but that the actual dispersal of funds was better done by smaller, private charities. Thus, though he never explicitly uses the term

“subsidiarity,” Sheil’s presentation of the relationship between the federal government and lower charitable associations is representative of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

This means that like other American Catholics, Sheil’s response to the collapse of local, small-scale, voluntary charity, and the depopulation of the rich social sphere, was through an application of the principle of subsidiarity in the form of the associational subsidiary function of the state.

As will be shown in Chapter Four, the changing situation in America led Sheil to new concerns. With the end of the Depression, the beginning of the Second World War, and the rising fear of fascism and Communism, Sheil’s concern for poverty relief shifted to a concern for the expansion of American democracy. Influenced by his relationship and collaboration with Saul Alinsky, Sheil’s efforts at the end of the 1930s through to 1954 were focused on building up American democracy; politically, economically, and socially. As he did so, his sense of the structure of society shifts as well. Moving away from charity towards building up democracy, Sheil carried with him a structural-pluralistic sense of the

114 composition of society. As he focused on democracy and argued for a way to build it up,

Sheil’s efforts can better be seen as experiments in structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of lower associations.

115

CHAPTER III

ORGANIZING FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Introduction.

In this chapter I will argue that Saul Alinsky’s social vision as it is outlined in his early writings and Reveille for Radicals is comparable to Catholic social doctrine on solidarity, the common good, structural-pluralistic and associational subsidiarity, as well as the structural pluralism that forms the basis of Catholic articulations of society. As such, Alinsky arrives at a subsidiary understanding of the structure of society through a distinctly American and sociological perspective. It is this understanding of the structure of society, and its comparison with Catholic social teaching, that made it possible for Bishop Sheil and later generations of priest-organizers to navigate the space between American liberal democratic social imagination and Catholic social teaching.

Alinsky viewed community organizing as a means of building solidarity and real community out of disorganized individuals isolated from one another by the atomizing force of the urban jungle. In Depression-era Chicago the pragmatic reality was a mass of urban, atomized individuals, who seriously lacked important and substantive goods. More importantly, acquiring the basic goods of life meant relying on jobs from the Democratic political machine, charity from “outsider” Settlement Houses, and relief from the welfare state. The experience, as was seen in the last chapter, was that the poor and workers did not have the means or organization necessary to care for themselves in a real and empowered way. Alinsky saw the need to reorganize communities by nurturing solidarity among individuals and their native organizations. With such a goal, a sense of mutual aid and help was the organizing principle of social relationships. From that basis, as we will see, Alinsky's

116 community organizing shared the same concerns as Catholic social thought, and he applies ideas that are comparable with the Catholic social principles of the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity.

In his People’s Organization, Alinsky addressed the same concerns present in the

Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, and “Public and Private Charity”; namely, the need for the support of a rich social life through the creation and support of new social institutions within the graded hierarchy of society. By reorganizing the broken Back of the Yards neighborhood through a “People’s Organization,” Alinsky created a space between the individual and the state, and made the social sphere more complex. The Back of the Yards

Neighborhood Council (BYNC) empowered members of the community to engage and contend with the social forces above their immediate, local, native organizations and community members. As such, the BYNC as a People’s Organization is an American sociological form of subsidiarity.

This chapter is broken into three main parts. The first examines the origins of

Alinsky’s social thought in his education and training by the University of Chicago’s

Sociology Department. There Alinsky was exposed to and trained in a social vision that was characterized by American liberalism and democracy. At the same time, Alinsky was exposed to the functionalism of Emile Durkheim, which influenced on his conception of society and the operation of the People’s Organization. I will focus on the role of Durkheim’s sociology as Alinsky’s source of social solidarity integrating liberal individuals into a unified corporate society. For Alinsky, Durkheim’s functionalism was a principal means of realizing and achieving solidarity in the People’s Organization.

The second part examines Alinsky’s early writings in order to show how Alinsky was influenced by Chicago sociology. These early writings also show Alinsky’s movement away

117 from his teachers in the development of his own approach to community organizing. Still further, this section will show that Alinsky’s conception of society and its composition was dependent upon a Durkheimian sense of functionalism and solidarity. Thus, even as

Alinsky’s social thought was dependent upon Chicago sociology, its development over time shaped it into its own variety.

Finally, this chapter will discuss Alinsky’s social vision as it was consolidated and presented in his Reveille for Radicals. The clear continuity between his early writings and Reveille shows that Alinsky’s thought on community organizing was well-established before he wrote the book and that it had its sources independent of Alinsky’s work with Catholic social theorists. This is all the more important because, as he drew on American democracy, sociology and Durkheimian functionalism and solidarity, he developed a sense of the common good and solidarity that closely resembled Catholic social thought on those principles.

From these origins, Alinsky arrived at a sense of the structure of society that compares with Catholic social thought on subsidiarity. Most significant is the dual functioning of Alinsky’s People’s Organization as exemplified by the Back of the Yards

Neighborhood Council. As a lower association the People’s Organization performs a structural-pluralistic subsidiarity by enabling and mediating the participation of community members and native organizations. At the same time, it performs an associational subsidiary function by gathering together the native organizations of a community and directing them toward the common good. Thus, from his own independent sources, Alinsky arrived at a social vision that closely parallels the basic principles of Catholic social thought.

118

Part I. Origins of Alinsky's Thought: American Liberal Democracy and Corporate

Society.

Introduction.

This part will focus on the intellectual origins of Saul Alinsky’s social thought. It will begin by locating Alinsky within the context of Chicago sociology. Such a context will help to later show that Alinsky’s social thought in Reveille for Radicals was founded upon his sociological training. Here I will focus on three characteristics of Chicago sociology that were critical for Alinsky’s social vision. First, within Chicago sociology the dominant ideological loyalty was American democracy. Such an appreciation of democracy was important to Alinsky, his understanding of the sociologist, and the purpose and function of his People’s Organization. The second is the tension in Chicago sociology between the individualism inherent in liberalism, especially economic liberalism and capitalism, and the corporate reality of society to support the common life necessary for democracy. The third is the resolution of that tension through Emile Durkheim’s functionalism and social solidarity.

For Alinsky, a Durkheimian appreciation of functionalism is critical within a People’s

Organization for the realization of solidarity and shared mutual interdependence. Thus, in his education during the 1930s one can find the foundational basis of Alinsky’s social vision.

Lawrence J. Engel's "Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School," makes it clear that

Alinsky's time at the University of Chicago during the 1930's was deeply influenced by his undergraduate and graduate coursework in the Department of Sociology. "During his five years at Chicago, Alinsky completed twenty-eight courses within the department. Eighteen of these courses were under the direction of three sociologists: [Ellsworth] Faris, [Robert

Ezra] Park, and [Ernest Watson] Burgess." These three men formed the core of the department. Of those courses, Alinsky registered for five with Faris (2 undergraduate, 3

119 graduate), three graduate courses with Park, and ten courses with Burgess (six undergraduate, four graduate).190

Much of Alinsky’s post-educational work-life was also an extension of his education.

In December of 1931, Alinsky began working with Clifford Shaw, a protege of Burgess's, at the Institute for Juvenile Research. In 1933, Alinsky began working for the Joliet state penitentiary "as staff sociologist and parole classification officer." 1936 saw Alinsky return to working with Shaw in the Chicago Area Project, begun by Burgess. Finally, in 1938, Shaw assigned Alinsky to the Back of the Yards Neighborhood to organize "the community to respond to juvenile delinquency." Though Alinsky ultimately broke with Shaw and the

Chicago Area Project over his method of organization, it is critical to see that Alinsky's first community organization efforts in the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council was a manifestation of his professional relationship with the University of Chicago's approach to sociology. Thus, Engel shows that the decade and a half leading up to Alinsky's work in the organization of the Back of the Yards were deeply influenced by Chicago sociology;

"Directly before the founding of the BYOC, Alinsky had worked with Burgess, either directly in coursework or indirectly through the IJR, for eleven years." This close and lengthy relationship was significant for how Sheil understood sociology and approached his later efforts in community organizing for American democracy.191

According to Engel, Chicago sociology originated in the work of Albion Small, who viewed sociology as a means for "democratic social change." In this conception Small "drew upon the works of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead." As a result, "the core elements of this thought were acceptance of the scientific method, empiricism, biological evolution,

190 Engel, “Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16.1 (2002), 53 and 56. 191 Ibid., 59 - 60. 120 and American democracy."192 As will be shown below, the concern for American democracy was an overriding force within Alinsky’s social vision.

Reflecting John Dewey's influence, the department also saw itself as a science to understand "the self-corrective processes of democratic life."193 Thus, sociology was understood not only as a science on par with the natural sciences, but it was also a means "to reconstruct our social order."194 Ernest W. Burgess represented this by his understanding of the sociologist "as a community organizer, a professional who entered into a neighborhood to organize a local committee" in order to enable it to develop "a constructive program for social advance."195 This type of "social advance" was understood in democratic terms. Engel tells us that the organizing principles of the Chicago Area Project included: "stress the autonomy of the local people in planning and operating the program"; "emphasize training and the development of local leadership; and, "create participation."196 Burgess’s influence will become obvious in Alinsky’s emphasis on community organizing as a means of building

American democracy.

For Robert Ezra Park, however, "the liberal economic spine of historical evolution was more important." As a result, "the competitive struggle for existence, waged through the market and social conflict, remained at the center of his thinking." This meant that for Park, competition was the "most basic form of 'interaction.'" Further, the structure of society was the never-ending process of competition, conflict and the resolution of that conflict through

"accomodation" and "assimilation." Park's understanding of society therefore assumed a

192 Engel, “Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School,” 51 – 52. 193 Ibid., 52. 194 Ibid., 53. Here he is quoting Donald J. Bogue, The Basic Writings of Ernest W. Burgess, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 5. It comes from Burgess’s dissertation “The Function of Socialization in Evolution,” dissertation, University of Chicago, 1916. 195 Ibid., 54 – 55. 196 Ibid., 60. 121 capitalist structure, in which "Economic competition was identified as a natural process leading to a natural order of competitive cooperation."197 This represents Dorothy Ross’s claim that Chicago sociology was “imbedded in the classical ideology of liberal individualism."198

Inherent to Chicago sociology was the struggle of binding liberal individualism into a democratic common life. Park’s account of competitive cooperation was drawn together through a "Spencerian social theory of functional interdependence," which would then provide only "minimal social cohesion among generically different kinds of people." This meant that "Park never explored how a functionally integrated society of unequals was to engage in a truly democratic 'common life.'" This problem of an undeveloped account of a democratic life is derived from Park's emphasis on liberal economic competition and conflict. In such a context, politics becomes a mere mediator of conflict. The result is a social order based on self-interested individuals.199

This problem in Park’s sociology highlights an important tension that exists within

Chicago sociology under Park and Burgess, and which will be an important issue within

Alinsky's own thought. It forced them to account for how society based on political and economic liberalism can also be treated as a single corporate entity. This tension is more evident in Park's and Burgess's influential Introduction to the Science of Sociology.200 In the text,

Park and Burgess provide a variety of selections from across the spectrum of modern sociology along with their own editorial commentary. Thus, they not only provide the works of others but do so in a way that accords with their own ideas.

197 Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 357 – 359. 198 Ibid., xviii. 199 Ibid., 361. 200 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 2nd Edition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924). First edition was published in 1921. 122

In the Introduction, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim can be viewed as stand-ins for the individualist-collectivist tension within functionalism and Park's and Burgess's sociological systems. Both Spencer and Durkheim were proponents of liberalism and structural-functionalism. Further, Durkheim is understood to have absorbed structural- functionalism from Spencer, but rejected Spencer’s economic, individualist emphasis.201 In a functionalist system, members, organizations and institutions each contribute in their own way to the stability of society. Those that do so well are useful and lead to greater stability and organization. Those that undermine stability contribute to its disorganization.202 The structure of how this occurs, however, is our primary concern. On the one hand, Spencer emphasizes the individualistic, liberal economic dimension of society and the division of labor. There society only exists in individuals. Durkheim, on the other, emphasizes the sui generis, corporate dimension of society in its distinct existence apart from the aggregate of individuals as a social fact, and its imposition of social controls (e.g. the division of labor) on the individual for the purpose of social solidarity.203

In their account of Spencer's thought Park and Burgess point to the idea of society as "social aggregate." In this context, society is understood as a "living whole" "because of the mutual dependence of these units upon one another as exhibited in the division of labor" and "because each individual member of the community, finds in the community as a whole, a suitable milieu, an environment adapted to his needs and one to which he is able to adapt

201 Peter A. Corning, "Durkheim and Spencer," The British Journal of Sociology, vol 33, no 3 (Sept. 1982), 359 - 382. 202 This understanding of the composition of society is closely related to our accounting of structural-pluralism in relation to subsidiarity. Most importantly, like structural pluralism, structural functionalism holds that individuals and all social structures in society perform positive functions to contribute to the stability of society. Functionalism, however, accounts for how society remains stable and is not concerned with a “common good.” 203 Corning, "Durkheim and Spencer," 359 - 382. 123 himself."204

While understanding society as a living whole, Spencer maintains a liberal understanding of the individual's relationship to that whole. They say, "the social organism, as Spencer sees it, exists not for itself, but for the benefit of the separate organs of which it is composed."205 This means that "Society lives, so to speak, only in its separate organs or members, and each of these organs has its own brain and organ of control which gives it, among other things the power of independent locomotion. This is what is meant when society is described as a collectivity."206 Thus, from Spencer's approach to society, the living whole of society is something that arises out of the collection of individuals related through mutual dependence, but it has no distinct reality itself. Society as such has no distinct independent existence. Instead it is no more than the sum of its parts, and "an agglomeration of sentient individuals who are pursuing their own ends, wants and interests."207 This is one reason why Park's sociological system only possesses minimal social cohesion and an undeveloped common life.

At the same time, sociology requires a distinct entity for study. Park and Burgess argue:

While it is true that society has this double aspect, the individual and the collective, it is the assumption of this volume that the touchstone of society, the thing that distinguishes a mere collection of individuals from a society is not like-mindedness, but corporate action. We may apply the term social to any group of individuals which is capable of consistent action, that is to say, action, consciously or unconsciously, directed by a common end. This existence of a common end is perhaps all that can be legitimately included in the conception 'organic" as applied to society.208

204 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 26. 205 Ibid., 27. 206 Ibid., 27. 207 Corning, "Durkheim and Spencer," 360. 208 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 42. 124

What Park and Burgess fail to indicate here is what exactly is meant by "corporate action."

The phrasing itself is ambiguous. It is clear, however, that their notion of a common end has little place in Spencer’s system.

In response to the individualism of Spencer's social organism, Park and Burgess continue discussing two distinct approaches to resolving the question, “How does a mere collectivity of individuals succeed in acting in a corporate and consistent way?”209 The

"nominalists" offer only a minimal cohesion. They point to Franklin Henry Giddings' "like- mindedness," and Gabriel Tarde's "imitation" as examples. Another school, which they identify as "realists," is identified with Emile Durkheim. They claim that Durkheim's approach "insists that the social group has real corporate existence and that, in human societies at least, men act together not because they have like purposes but a common purpose." This is represented in the moral formation of the individual. The individual’s

"Conscience...is a manifestation, in the individual consciousness, of the collective mind and the group will."210 Therefore, the corporate existence of society is seen to stand somewhat above the aggregate of individuals to impose its values upon them.

What fundamentally distinguishes Durkheim from Spencer, and what gives sociologists a real society to study, is that Durkheim "does not think of society as a mere sum of particulars." In fact, society imposes itself upon the lives of the individuals, and "the characteristic social phenomenon is just this control by the group as a whole on the individuals that compose it." Thus, society is a real thing that exists distinct from, but not separate from, the individuals that make it up. It has its own existence rather than being an

209 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 27. 210 Ibid., 25 – 26. 125 aggregate or accumulation of the individuals that make it up.211

Similarly, Durkheim's notion of "collective representations" points to the society’s existence distinct from and beyond the individuals that compose it. They quote Durkheim:

The collective representations are exterior to the individual consciousness because they are not derived from the individuals taken in isolation but from their convergence and union....The resultant [representation] derived therefrom extends beyond the individual mind as the whole is greater than the part. To know really what it is, one must take the aggregate in its totality. It is this that thinks, that feels, that wills, although it may not be able to will, feel, or act save by the intermediation of individual consciousnesses.212

Thus, society is not simply derived from the voluntaristic aggregate of individuals bonded by like-mindedness or imitation. Rather, it is the higher totality that provides context for the individual. Further, the totality that is society is mediated by the individual, not the conscious creation of individuals.

Though Park favored Spencer’s liberal economics, his and Burgess’s Introduction relies upon Durkheim’s corporate society for their very object of study. It provided the social fact that sociology needed in order to maintain a scientific approach parallel to the natural sciences.

Within the Introduction to the Science of Sociology, Durkheim's thought shows up in two places. The first, in Chapter 3 on “Society and the Group”, is a selection from The Elementary

Forms of Religious Life.213 Beside a selection from John Dewey on "Social Life," and his own

211 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 34. This notion that society stands “above” or “transcends” the individuals that make it up implies a loose sense of hierarchy between the individual collective. In his more political thought, Durkheim also accounted for economic corporations of workers and owners whose authority was autonomous but lower than the state. Thus, there is some implicit comparison here with Catholic social teaching on structural pluralism. 212 Ibid., 39. Quoted from Charles Elmer Gehlke, “Emile Durkheim’s Contributions to Sociological Theory,” Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, 63, 29 – 30. Ghelke translating from Emile Durkheim, “Representations individuelles et representations collectives,” Revue metaphysique, 6 (1898), 295. 213 This indicates the important role that Durkheim's thought plays in Park's and Burgess's conception of society. Spencer is also included twice; one selection, titled "Ceremonial Control," in the chapter "Social Control"; and another, titled "Progress and Organization," in the chapter "Progress" 126 selection on "Behavior and Conduct," Park included Durkheim's thoughts on “Collective

Representation and Intellectual Life.” In all three there is a clear tension between the individual and the collective.

For Dewey, "Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication."214 However, community and society require more than simple communication between individuals. "If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community." This requires consensus, and "Consensus demands communication."215 Thus, that which forms a community is a unity of ends and action achieved in consensus, which is made possible by communication.

This accounting of the relationship between the individual and the collective, however, places the emphasis on the individual. Society exists within the communication of individuals.216

For Durkheim, the necessities of communication point to the corporate existence and reality of society. Communication requires concepts that are common to all. This common character indicates from whence concepts and therefore communication arise. "If it is common to all, it is the work of the community. Since it bears the mark of no particular mind, it is clear that it was elaborated by a unique intelligence, where all others meet each

214 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 185. 215 Ibid., 186. 216 This notion of communication and its role in the formation of society and consensus on a common end will be important for both Alinsky and Sheil. Further, Dewey’s advocacy for the role of education for American democracy is a significant precursor to Alinsky’s and Sheil’s social action. For Alinsky, the People’s Organization is tasked with “popular education,” which corresponds to the same notion that when joined together in communication and dialogue people will come to a realization of a common good. Similarly, Sheil’s efforts for social education for democracy rely on the same idea of realizing a common good and solidarity out of dialogue between people. Finally, this notion of communication leading to consensus and a shared common end reflects structural-pluralistic subsidiarity as individuals and lower groups help to both form the social whole and to discern the common good of society. 127 other, and after a fashion, come to nourish themselves."217 Further, the concept is a product or reflection or property of the "mental status of society."218 Concepts "are collective representations," which "correspond to the way in which this very special being, society, considers the things of its own proper existence."219 Thus, society not only has its own distinct existence/being, it possesses its own corporate experience and the ability to consider that experience.

Just as important, however, is Durkheim’s argument for the historical priority of society over the individual. If individuals communicate through common concepts, which are the intellectual product of the corporate society, then the individual's conceptualization of their own thoughts is dependent upon the preceding collective representation. In this way, the corporate experience and concepts of society impose themselves upon the intellects of the individual. For example, Durkheim claims "Every time that we are in the presence of a type of thought or action which is imposed uniformly upon particular wills or intelligences, this pressure exercised over the individual betrays the intervention of the group." Thus, in intellectual affairs, the collective representation of society precedes the particular conceptualization of the individual. The collective precedes the individual.220

At the same time that Durkheim sees the collective pressure of society imposing itself on the conceptualization and communication of the individual, there is still a need to account for how the individual is integrated into the social whole. Durkheim assumed political liberalism’s appreciation of the rights of the individual. Further, his acceptance of competition also endorses a basic understanding of economic liberalism. The result is that

217 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 196. 218 Ibid., 196 219 Ibid., 197. 220 Ibid., 196 – 197. 128 there is still a need for an account of how a basic assumption of liberalism can be merged with a corporate account of society. For this, Park and Burgess turn to Durkheim’s account of social solidarity.

Their selection from The Division of Labor in Society is included in their chapter on

"Accommodation," under the subheading "Competition, status, and social solidarity."221 As a major concept in their sociological system, "accommodation" is the adaptation of society to regulate competition, and resolve and curtail conflict. Park and Burgess describe it as "a process of adjustment, that is, an organization of social relations, and attitudes to prevent or to reduce conflict, to control competition, and to maintain a basis of security in the social order for persons or groups of divergent interests and types to carry on together their varied life-activities."222 Accommodation then is necessary adjustment and organization of society and social relationships in response to conflict that arises out of the natural human instinct of competition.

Park's and Burgess's use of Durkheim indicates the significance of Durkheim's social solidarity in sociology. Within the liberal sociological tradition, competition arising out of humanity’s struggle for existence has led to specialization and the division of labor. In this division of labor individuals are differentiated and distinguished from one another. Such differentiation, however, brings solidarity. Park and Burgess write, "The interdependence of differentiated individuals and groups has made possible a social solidarity that otherwise would not have existed."223 The accommodations that society makes to competition by increasing differentiations through the division of labor then contributes to an increase in

221 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 708. Text included was "translated and adapted from Emile Durkheim, La division do travail social, pp. 204. 24 - 209. (Felix Alcan, 1902)" 222 Ibid., 735. 223 Ibid., 671. 129 social unity. Thus, the division of labor and social solidarity rely on a structure of society premised on the differentiation of functions among individuals, social groups, and institutions, and the interdependence of social solidarity draws them together towards the common purpose.224

In their selection on his ideas of division of labor and solidarity, Durkheim argues that "The most remarkable effect of the division of labor is not that it accentuates the distinction of functions already divided but that it makes them interdependent." Further,

"Individuals are mutually bound who otherwise would be independent." This bond comes about not because of similarities between individuals, but rather "they are united only because they are distinct." The division of labor itself is "if not the only, at least the principal, source of social solidarity." Even more is not "a mere luxury" of society, "it is rather a condition of its very existence." Division of labor "assures the solidarity of social groups."

Thus, the division of labor provides the sense of mutual interdependence that draws people together and induces social solidarity; it promotes the cohesiveness and stability of society.

Further, the solidarity of the individuals is a necessary condition for society’s existence. This union of the division of labor, functionalism, and solidarity will be critical for Alinksy’s sense of how the People’s Organization re-organizes a community.225

This account points to the distinctions between Durkheim’s two senses of solidarity.

According to Durkheim, “mechanical solidarity” is found principally in lesser-developed

224 There are parallels here between structural functionalism and structural pluralism. In each case, individuals and associations freely function and contribute to society. Functionalism lacks pluralism’s defining concern with authority likely because it assumes political liberalism and is not attempting a full political theory. Durkheim’s political corporatism, which is not relevant to this discussion, does possess elements regarding political and economic authority similar to structural pluralism. 225 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 714 – 716. Durkheim’s understanding of solidarity compares closely to Catholic solidarity. First, social solidarity is a principle that accounts for the nature of society as it arises from the mutual interdependence of individuals. Second, solidarity is imposed on the individual and the individual acts out and works to realize the shared interdependence and values of the community. Thus, it is a social principle and a “virtue.” 130 societies and is identified by similarities between members of a society and the lack of individuality between them. Thus, there is a single unifying force of social similarity moving all members of the society as parts in a machine. Durkheim’s second sense of solidarity, discussed above, is “organic solidarity.” In organic solidarity, the members of society are individual persons performing individual functions. In other words, they are particular organs within the social body, and they perform specific functions on their own and independently. Organic solidarity arises as individuals realize their interdependence on one another. They realize they rely on others to perform their highly specialized functions and that others rely on them perform their own.226

Recognizing one's function within the division of labor and organic solidarity carries with it the obligation to fulfill that function for those that rely upon it and depend on it, and forces the individual to think beyond their own limited interests. This is because, "Every function which one individual exercises is invariably dependent upon functions exercised by others and forms with them a system of interdependent parts."227 For this reason, each person caught within the society organized by the division of labor is "imprisoned in a net of obligations from which we do not have the right to free ourselves."228 In this view, the division of labor does not simply create the experience of interdependence; it also carries with it the necessary articulation of the relationships between interdependent parts and functions. It is not enough to recognize one's own interdependence, though that is deeply important. It is also necessary to recognize one's duties and rights in relation to other functions and parts. Solidarity therefore forces the individual to think beyond themselves

226 Sally Scholz, Political Solidarity, (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 22 – 23. 227 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 718. 228 Ibid. These obligations are socially determined by the moral norms and values of society. As a secular sociological account, Durkheim discounts all religious references to an absolute moral good founded in a sense of the divine. Instead, the good is determined by how one contributes to society and follows society’s norms. 131 and “to act with a view to ends which are not strictly his own, to make concessions, to agree to compromises, to take into account higher interests than his own."229

Solidarity, however, is not only located in the individual’s sense of interdependence.

It is also a social pressure imposed by the social whole, and this social pressure points to the function of the state. In the process of distinguishing functions and ensuring interdependence, "The division of labor...gives birth to regulations and laws which determine the nature and the relations of the divided functions..."230 From out of the division of labor arises an ordering of the society that outlines the way in which the various individuals, parts and function relate to one another in both free action and mutually dependent obligation.

The principal way in which this is made known is through associational regulations and state laws. For Durkheim, society’s rules and regulations lead naturally to the function of the state,

"There is especially one organ toward which our state of dependencies is ever increasing - the state. The points at which we are in contact with it are multiplying. So are the occasions in which it takes upon itself to recall us to a sense of the common solidarity."231 The state’s regulations and laws make known to all the proper ordering of relationships between individuals and groups in order to increase and protect social solidarity.232

Because the division of labor relies upon the distinctiveness of the individuals, the organic solidarity that arises from it "is possible only if each has its own sphere of action,

229 Kenneth Thompson, ed., Readings from Emile Durkheim, Revised edition, London: Routledge, 1985, 40. Here, Thompson’s articulation of the “higher interests” of the social whole points to an appreciation of the common good, which, if not aligned with the theologically based Catholic social doctrine on the common good, does indicate something beyond individualist self-interests. For Alinsky, it will be used to argue for a sense of the common good that compares closely with Catholic social doctrine. 230 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 717. 231 Ibid. 232 Here one can see a comparison between Durkheim’s understanding of society’s and the state’s efforts at building solidarity and the Catholic conception of associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state. 132 and therefore a personality."233 Further, as labor becomes divided among freely acting individuals, the individual experiences greater freedom. This means that "The burden we accept is less heavy than when the whole of society weighs on us, and it leaves much more room for the free play of our initiative."234 Thus, since the division of labor emphasizes the distinction of the individual, it must also recognize the freedom of the individual.235

Conclusion.

The above section has done three things. First, it has shown that Alinsky’s educational and early professional career was deeply influenced by the University of

Chicago’s Sociology Department. Second, it has shown that one of the major issues embedded in Chicago’s sociological theory was tension between the individual and the collective. The centrality of economic liberalism and American democracy made it necessary to for how a society premised on the liberal individual could lead to the very real and corporate existence of society itself. Third, I have shown the importance of Durkheim’s sociological account of society, the division of labor, and social solidarism. Durkheim’s social solidarity explains how the individual and society relate in a way that accounts for the reality of society and a respect for the freedom and rights of the individual.

As I will argue in the remainder of this chapter, Alinsky’s rejection of economic liberal individualism in favor of American democracy and his use of functionalism and

233 Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 718. 234 Thompson, Readings from Emile Durkheim, 38. 235 Here one might recognize the application of the principle of subsidiary function in QA 79 - 80. There recognition of the proper function of the state and a respect for the free initiative of individuals and lower associations will free the state from the unnecessary work it has taken upon itself after the loss of the rich social life. Clearly establishing the proper functions of the different parts then provides a clear delineation of both freedom and obligations. This also works to support structural pluralism’s reliance on the freedom of association and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity’s need for the freedom of individuals and associations to contribute to and participate in the social whole. 133 solidarity show that he was influenced by Durkheimian sociology. As a result, Durkheim’s thought provides Alinsky the tools necessary to articulate the relationships within society between individuals, intermediate associations, society as a whole, and the state. Particularly,

Durkheim provides a way for talking about the relationship between those social structures that account for the unifying role of society for building solidarity while at the same time recognizing the free and distinct contributions of individuals and lower groups to the corporate whole of society. Thus, Durkheim’s sociology contains elements that compare to

Catholic social doctrine on solidarity, the common good, associational subsidiarity and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. As a result, those elements are imbedded within and drawn out by Alinsky’s community organizing, People’s Organization, and popular education.

Part II. Alinsky's Original Thought: Before Reveille for Radicals

Introduction

In this section I will discuss the basic contours of Alinsky’s social thought prior to the 1946 publication of Reveille for Radicals. Alinsky’s early articles are important because they represent his reliance on his sociological training and the ways in which he went beyond it.

Most importantly, the articles show that Alinsky’s early social vision is a secular, sociological articulation of ideas comparable to Catholic social teaching on the pluralistic structure of society, solidarity, the common good, and subsidiarity.

Alinsky's second major article, from 1937, argues against liberal individualism in favor of an appreciation of the social factors that lead to criminal behavior, and shows where he leans in the individual-collective debate. "The Philosophical Implications of the

Individualistic Approach in Criminology,"236 rejects the individualistic and capitalistic

236 Alinsky, "The Philosophical Implications of the Individualistic Approach in Criminology,” Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the American Prison Association, vol. 67, no. 10 (1937), 156 - 171. In Alinsky’s first article in 1934, titled “A Sociological Technique in Clinical Criminology,” he makes clear his training in Chicago 134 tendencies within sociology that failed to recognize the criminal’s social formation. Engel claims that by "Critiquing individualism and capitalism, Alinsky argued that the

Park/Burgess ecological studies had demonstrated that social disorganization, not individual pathology, was the cause of delinquency."237 By putting himself in clear contrast to the inherent individualism in the capitalistic competitive social order, he is arguing against the inherent individualist and capitalist tendencies in Park's thought.

Alinsky begins his article recalling that the individual and its personality arise out of its social context. Citing Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct, Alinsky states "The human individual is born into a world of culture....To this milieu he must adjust and conform. As he participates in society and secures status so does he become a person." Quoting Park's and

Burgess's Introduction to the Study of Society (1924), he states, "By personality we mean 'the sum and organization of those traits which determine the role of the individual in the group.'"

Thus, for Alinsky, this notion of the social origins of the individual is central to the remainder of his sociological-philosophical argument.238

From this starting point, Alinsky argues, "it can be assumed that the general prevailing social order would be of profound significance in the suggesting and shaping of the character of the methodologies developed and projected by these students [of social problems]." His argument is that American capitalism shapes sociologists. As a result, capitalism shapes the sociological methodologies. "It would therefore follow: that the individualistic approach is largely the result of, and the expected product of the individualistic competitive social order of our present times.'" Since social thinkers are imbedded within an individualistic,

sociology. The stated purpose of the research was to develop an interview process for working with delinquents. Full of case studies, the article is summed up with the notion “When studying the gang boy it can be generally stated that: To know your community is to know your delinquent.” “A Sociological Technique in Clinical Criminology.” Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the American Prison Association, vol. 64, no. 9 (1934), 179. 237 Engel, “Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School,” 60. 238 Alinsky, “The Philosophical Implications of the Individualistic Approach in Criminology,” 156. 135 capitalistic social order then their social methods will be similarly individualistic, in contrast to the corporatist sense of society that dominated Catholic social thought into the early 20th century.239

Over the next several pages, Alinsky provides a rough historical survey of the various individualistic approaches to criminology. He begins with the Catholic Church's feudal, pre- capitalistic understanding of crime "as behavior inspired by the devil," through biological theories of hereditary criminal behavior, and ends with psychological theories of the mental deficiency or abnormality of criminals. His argument is that "The doctrine of individual determinism which is implicit in the individualistic approach has indirectly, but logically and definitely, tended to absolve or at least ameliorate societal responsibility in criminal activities."240 The further problem is that "This major characteristic of the individualistic approach has served as a primary element of our thinking and methodology.... Nowhere is this broad bias more vividly displayed than in the evading and distorting of the positive, definite conclusions of the modern ecological approaches to the study of crime." Following

"C. R. Shaw's outstanding and penetrating studies," Alinsky argues that the "findings strongly suggest the presence of certain peculiar configurations inherent in the slum picture which foster and stimulate crime." Thus, where the individualistic, capitalistic approach to crime has ameliorated society's responsibilities, Shaw's and Alinsky's sociological approach shows that the very society in which a person is shaped fosters and stimulates crime.241 The roots of the problem then are found in the social order that gives rise to the slums.

According to Alinsky, "The delinquent sequence can be roughly stated as follows:

Delinquency areas are due to social disorganization which, in turn, are largely the result of

239 Alinsky, “The Philosophical Implications of the Individualistic Approach in Criminology,” 157. 240 Ibid., 164. 241 Ibid., 164 – 165. 136 economic defections in our social order. The effects of competition in social disorganization cannot be ignored."242 Thus, for Alinsky it is the economic defects of the American capitalist system that has led to social disorganization. Further, it is the individualistic, economic liberal emphasis on competition that has led to social disorganization, delinquency and crime.

For Alinsky, the cooperative competition that is the root of Park's social theory has led inexorably to the individualistic approach and a misapprehension of the problems of crime and delinquency. Capitalism, the result of economic competition, brought about the individualist approach. Where Park believed in the notion of the eventual "competitive cooperation," Alinsky sees the inevitable individual determinism. Alinsky says, "As the birth of capitalism ushered in the individualistic approach; and as the increasing strength of capitalism resulted in the increased development of the individualistic approach, so has the present chaos and threatening collapse of the capitalistic system resulted in disorganization and a crisis situation among the adherents of the individualistic approach in the social sciences."243 Thus, Alinsky places the blame for the social disorganization of the Depression and the resulting crime at the feet of the individualism of what he sees is the dominant capitalism social system. Capitalism has both led to the current social crisis, and has been the source of sociology’s inability to understand the very crime that that social crisis has caused.

This parallels Pius XI, Bishop Sheil, and Alinsky view the roots of the social ills they faced.

For all three, the social ills of the Depression were rooted in the individualistic tendencies of economic liberalism. Further, the individualism of the economic order has great effects on the social order; resulting in social disorganization and crime.

242Alinsky, “The Philosophical Implications of the Individualistic Approach in Criminology,” 167. 243 Ibid., 169. 137

The solution for Alinsky seems clear; "Today we find an increasing tendency among students of crime to stress the extreme significance of the social factors in the attempt to understand criminal behavior."244 As a result, "It is this group which is beginning to formulate the philosophical precepts and weave the outlines of new methodologies based upon cultural determinism.... They realize that we have been studying end products rather than causative factors." Instead, they believe that crime should be "viewed is a product of general social disorganization."245

Addressing such “social disorganization” was the purpose of the “Chicago Area

Project,” headed by University of Chicago sociologist, Clifford Shaw. In the fall of 1938,

Shaw assigned Alinsky to the Back of the Yards Neighborhood as part of the Area Project.

The Area Project was conceived of as an approach to resolving the ills of juvenile delinquency. Sanford Horwitt says that "Shaw believed that social dis-organization - the failure of institutions within a community to provide social controls - was a root cause of most delinquency, and that delinquency rates might be reduced if local institutions were strengthened or if new ones were created.”246 As part of this effort, Alinsky was tasked with helping to develop programs to supplement community institutions in the Back of the Yards and to help them respond to the problem of youth delinquency.

This "community-based" approach was distinct from the Settlement Houses in the area. The locals of the Back of the Yards experienced the Settlement House as a well- meaning but ultimately patronizing institution. The wealthy, socially-conscious women offered useful charity and aid but they did not tackle the foundations of the problems that faced them. Shaw and Alinsky represented a more social approach to the problems of youth

244 Alinsky, “The Philosophical Implications of the Individualistic Approach in Criminology,” 169. 245 Ibid., 170 – 171. 246 Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 49. 138 delinquence. By focusing on the social institutions of the area rather than on more charitable work, the Area Project attempted to support the local community to develop the skills and institutions necessary to combat their problems on their own. This notion of supporting local institutions to attend to the problems of local communities is one foundational element that would find its way into Alinsky's conception of community organizing.

The Back of the Yards consisted mainly of immigrants and their first-generation

American-born children, the majority of whom were Catholic. For many of these communities the transition from their homelands to Chicago's urban jungle was difficult and was characterized by a loss of the social institutions for the care of the poor. Once in

Chicago, immigrant families and communities had to jury-rig new institutions and mutual-aid societies, as Cohen makes clear. For the immigrant communities of Chicago during the

Depression, Pius XI’s call for a "reconstruction of the social order” was their reality. Some institutions carried over, but the neighborhoods of Chicago were not the villages of Poland and Lithuania. The Area Project's goal of creating the necessary social institutions for dealing with juvenile delinquency where they did not already exist was responding to a real need of immigrant families and communities.

When Alinsky was assigned to the Back of the Yards as part of the Area Project, he quickly connected with Joe Meegan, director of the Davis Square Park Center. From the end of 1938 until the middle of 1939, Alinsky and Meegan worked on organizing the community.

It soon occurred to them that the dueling nationalities in the Back of the Yards could only be brought together through their shared Catholic faith. The area's Catholic priests, however, were just as divided along ethnic and national lines as their parishioners. In order to overrule their authority, Meegan and Alinsky made contact with Auxiliary Bishop Sheil through Joe's brother, Peter, who was Sheil's secretary. Sheil agreed to come on board and publicly

139 endorsed the growing Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. “Sheil agreed to accompany Alinsky on a visit to each of the Back of the Yards pastors. They got most of the pastors to promise support for the neighborhood council, and all but one priest agreed to stop condemning the packinghouse organizers.”247

In mid-July, the Council held its first constitutional convention. While knocking on the doors of existing community organizations, “Alinsky convinced them that the organization would be stronger if it were an organization made up of existing local organizations rather than a collection of just individuals.” At the first convention, “more than 350 voting delegates representing 109 local organizations agreed on a constitution for the new council and approved a one-year reorganization plan for the neighborhood.” Sheil’s importance is shown in the fact that the majority of the local organizations represented were parish societies.248

One of the votes that passed was for the BYNC's support of the Packinghouse

Worker's Organizing Committee (PWOC). The PWOC was attempting to organize and unionize the last major un-unionized Chicago industry.

Sheil, as one of the organizations two honorary directors, gave his support to the

PWOC efforts.249 As a result of his efforts, Sheil was “universally acclaimed as the inspiration and guide of the movement.”250 The claim is likely hyperbole. It does indicate,

247 P. David Finks, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, NY: Paulist Press, 1984, 17. For accounts of the organization of the BYNC and the PWOC rally of 1939 see: Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, 68 – 76; and, Mark B. Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard J. Sheil: Hero of the Catholic Left,” Dissertation, PhD History, University of Chicago, 1990, 207 – 218. 248 Mark B. Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil: Hero of the Catholic Left,” Dissertation, University of Chicago, (1990), 209. Alinsky’s approach shows an appreciation for the pluralistic structure of the BYNC community. By emphasizing the role of mediating institutions, Alinsky recognized the importance they had for integrating individuals and the entire community into a cohesive whole. 249 Sorvillo, 209 – 210. 250 Sorvillo, 210. Quoting Edward Skillin, Jr. “Back of the Stock Yards,” The Commonweal, November 29, 1940, 144. 140 however, the very significant role that Sheil played in organization and stability of the BYNC and the level of power he brought to bear on the side of the PWOC.

On the night of July 16th, 1939, Sheil stood with CIO leader John L. Lewis and gave the benediction to the Packinghouse Workers's organizing rally. He did so despite numerous calls by conservative businessmen of Chicago, who threatened to withhold contributions to the CYO and ruin his chances of gaining his own diocese. According to legend, Sheil was even shot at while eating lunch one day before the rally. While on his way to the rally,

"Chicago police had to clear eight blocks between his office and the Coliseum, and a personal bodyguard of 50 police had to be assigned for protection." That night he stood before "20,000 packing-house workers inside the Coliseum, and 10,000 outside..." and delivered both an invocation and a speech in favor of union organizing.251

At the end of the episode, the PWOC successfully organized and unionized the last major industry in Chicago. While Sheil received much of the praise for the success of the

BYNC, it cannot be forgotten that its intellectual and theoretical foundation came out of

Alinsky’s social theory and his sociological training. In this way, Alinsky is representative of

Burgess’s sense of the sociologist as a “community organizer.” Most importantly, with the

BYNC’s successful support of the PWOC Alinsky and Sheil began a successful and mutually-beneficial collaboration that would last another decade and a half. The episode, and

Sheil’s involvement, were so important to Alinsky, that Sheil and those who stood with him at the rally were mentioned in Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals as representative of America’s radical tradition.252

Two years after this first great success, Alinsky attempted his first articulation of the

251 Alinsky, “The Fights of Bishop Sheil,” Catholic Digest, August, 1951, 75 – 76. 252 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals (NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 15. Sheil is mentioned alongside other American “radicals” like abolitionist John Brown, the Knights of Labor, Henry George, and Upton Sinclair. 141 nature and purpose of a community organization and the BYNC in his article "Community

Analysis and Organization."253 Particularly important to Alinsky is the "functional nature of community."254 In the abstract to his article, Alinsky indicates that the BYNC was "an experimental demonstration of a community organizational procedure predicated upon a functional conception of the character of a community and its problems." Later in the text of the article Alinsky indicates the need for a "significant understanding of the social forces involved in the functional nature of a community."255 In that context, he points to the two main social forces in the community; the Catholic churches, and the Packinghouse Workers

Organizing Committee. The focus is on the way in which the two bodies function within the community and thereby promote the desires and interests of the community.

Alinsky’s application of functionalism is a point of contact with a structural pluralism because of his sense that society is composed of a plurality of social groups through which individuals live their social lives. His understanding of the composition or constitution of the

Back of the Yards highlights two of these significant "social forces": the Catholic churches and the labor unions. An examination of these social forces indicates that the different organizations provide different "services" to the members of the community. The Church

"serves as the medium through which these people express some of their most cherished traditional hopes, desires, and aspirations." In the unions, Alinsky recognized "a common vocational denominator." They "serve as the medium through which these people express their secular hopes and desires for economic security." Thus, Alinsky believes the community in which the people live their social lives is made up of a plurality of

253 Alinsky, “Community Analysis and Organization,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 6 (May, 1941), 797 - 808. 254 Ibid., 797. 255 Ibid., 797. 142 associations.256

Further, these associations mediate the concerns of their members to the broader community and the authorities at various levels in the social hierarchy and help them to achieve certain goals and determined goods. This is because they are “representative of the people of the community and…by the very virtue of such representation, possess the necessary strength to effect constructive changes in the life of the Back of the Yards neighborhood.” Through their immediate organizations of parish and union, individual members of the community express themselves and effect change in the larger community.

What Alinsky lacks from the structural pluralism of Catholic social teaching is a means of accounting for the internal integrity and authority of these associations as a result of their nature as expression of human sociality. However, Alinsky does conceive of the community as being composed of a variety of associations in a loose hierarchy between the individual and the larger social organism, which build up the community and integrate community members into the larger social whole.257

A second important element of this functional approach to the community is how it corresponds to structural-pluralistic and associational subsidiarity. Success for Alinsky is understood in terms of the participation of all organizations, not all citizens of the neighborhood. This approach to organization of the community through the community’s indigenous organizations stresses the community’s pluralistic structure. It recognizes that individuals do not live their lives in isolation but through participation in a plurality of social organizations. Thus, as with the Church and the unions, their concerns are addressed through various organizations. By building an organization to organize pre-existing

256 Alinsky, “Community Analysis and Organization,” 799. 257 Ibid., 798 – 799. 143 organizations, Alinsky's Council taps into that rich social life of the community and the subsidiary functions preformed by native organizations in support of the community as a whole. By emphasizing organizations and organizing them, the Council does not place itself as a rival to the pre-existing organizations.258 This permits the organizations to remain independent and operate according to their own goals and objectives. Instead, the Council operates as a higher organization that directs and guides the other organizations. That being the case, however, the Council operates only as a means of mediation between organizations rather than as the supreme authority over them all. Thus, the organizational process of the

Council is based on a pluralistic structure in which the independence and integrity of individual organizations are respected by the higher organization. By only aiding the efforts of the community’s organizations to organize themselves, the BYNC is performing an associational subsidiary function without taking over the community or the work proper to indigenous organizations. In this way, the structure of the BYNC reflects both the structural- pluralistic and associational dimensions of subsidiarity.

For Alinsky, the best means of reintegrating isolated individuals with their myriad of organizational loyalties was through a process he would later call "popular education."

Through the Council, individuals and organizations were able to realize a sense of solidarity.

Taking a page from John Dewey, Alinsky believed that if you could get people talking together about each of their problems, eventually they would recognize themselves in the other person. He claims that

Through the medium of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, leaders in various interest and action groups have learned to know one another as human

258 This is an important distinction between Alinsky and Shaw’s purpose of the Chicago Area’s project. Alinsky’s approach the social ills was not only broader than juvenile delinquency, he also did not focus on building or supporting an organization within the community for that specific. Instead, he built a whole new type of organization to stand above and beyond local, native organizations in order to address all of the issues affecting the entire community. 144

beings rather than as impersonal symbols of groups, which in many cases, appeared to be of a hostile nature. The personal relationships which have been developed have to a large degree broken down that urban anonymity characteristic of all such communities.259

These relationships are activated by the recognition of interdependence and solidarity. They arise out of the recognition of the personhood of the other members of the community and the good they are due. Further, this shared personhood means that their solidarity is not merely paternalistic charity. "This community solidarity does not rest completely upon any special benevolence on the part of the members of the Council and the organizations for which they speak but upon the clear recognition that to a large extent they either stand or fall together."260 Their shared solidarity, therefore, was a recognition that working for the good of the community also entailed working for the good of the individual.

For Alinsky "The blunt fact is that common grave problems presented a fundamental threat to the welfare of all the people 'back of the yards' and all of their organizations."261 One result is that

This common immediate stake for church, business, and labor transcended doctrinal differences and has resulted in the development of an unusual understanding among them. It is this unity of purpose, this organized sentiment and opinion, which generates an almost irresistible force and explains the record of achievement and speed of accomplishment of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Because the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council represents the mobilized sentiment of the community as articulated through their indigenous organizations, it is not only a community council but a movement.262

Thus, for Alinsky, the unity that arises out of the organized community is not only a way for individuals to fulfill their needs; it is understood as the action of a unified community. The unity of purpose, realized through personal interaction, does not mean the simple creation of

259 Alinsky, “Community Analysis and Organization,” 805. 260 Ibid., 806. 261 Ibid., 802. 262 Ibid. 145 patterns to minimize or mediate conflict. It makes possible unified community action out of the recognition of the interdependence and solidarity of the many parts within the community. At the same time, Alinsky’s sense of “unity of purpose,” and “organized opinion,” does not possess the same corporate character more prevalent in Catholic social thought. It does, however, offer a much more substantive appreciation of the communal nature of association beyond the Spencer’s liberal aggregate of individuals.

Through this social solidarity, realized from the interdependence of the variously functioning individuals and organizations, the members of the community are able to act towards a sense of their common good. This is expressed in the Council's statement of purpose: "This organization is founded for the purpose of uniting all of the organizations within that community known as the Back of the Yards, in order to promote the welfare of all residents of that community regardless of their race, color or creed, so that they may all have the opportunity to find health, happiness, and security through the democratic way of life."263 As discussed above, Durkheim’s sense of solidarity was not ordered towards a sense of the common good. For Alinsky, however, solidarity and the corporate unity of purpose are both ordered towards the realization of the welfare of all residents. This is not a simple utilitarian solidarity or an effort toward the “greatest good for the greatest number.” Rather, the solidarity that unifies the community is directed toward the common good of the community.

Conclusion.

This section has shown that Alinsky's understanding of society, its structure and the functions of the institutions within it, are dependent upon his training in Chicago sociology

263 Alinsky, “Community Analysis and Organization,” 800. 146 and criminology. In his regard for the role of social factors to affect and contribute to crime in a community, he rejected individualism and blamed the individualist tendencies in economic liberalism for the social disorganization that plagued Depression-era Chicago. His analysis of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council shows that he was influenced by a

Durkheimian structural-functionalism. Over time, as he develops his ideas and consolidates them in his Reveille for Radicals, his appreciation for a unifying moral solidarity arising out of the People's Organization continues to place him within the Durkheimian school of structural-functionalism. Finally, his appreciation for the mediating and representative functions of community organizations shows a basic account of the subsidiarity and subsidiary functions, which compares to Catholic subsidiarity.

Part III. Reveille for Radicals: Parallels with Catholic Social Doctrine

Introduction

This section will discuss the social vision present within Alinsky's Reveille for Radicals.

My focus will be on Reveille because it is the clearest consolidation of Alinsky's understanding of the structure of society. His Rules for Radicals, from 1971, is better understood as an update and revision of the process or strategy of organizing and not a social vision. Further, Rules for

Radicals is a response to the social upheavals of the 1960’s and Alinsky’s loss of faith in the union movement. Thus, Reveille for Radicals better represents Alinsky’s understanding of society, how and why it forms, and how it is structured.

In this section, I will argue that the basis of Alinsky’s social vision compares closely with Catholic social teaching on the common good, solidarity, structural pluralism, and both associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. First, Alinsky’s account of the “radical” argues that a true radical is ordered toward the common good and the realization of the

147 fullest potential of all members of society. Second, Alinsky’s “popular education” represents the importance of Durkheimian social solidarity for both the creation and success of a

People’s Organization. Third, Alinsky’s ideas about “native leadership” compares to structural-pluralism and participation as a function of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. Like above, local, native organizations are the clearest expression of the concerns of the people, and their native leaders are the primary means by which individuals participate in the larger society.

This understanding of the nature of a community supports Alinsky’s articulation of the interesting function of the People’s Organization as an “organization of organizations.”

In Alinsky’s account, the People’s Organization performs both structural-pluralistic and associational subsidiary functions as an intermediate association between the lower, immediate, local, native organizations, and higher, distant, national organizations and the state. As a lower association the People’s Organization empowers itself as a whole and its members as individuals to positively contribute to the determination and realization of the common good. As a higher association, it directs and guides the individuals that make it up towards the common good of the immediate community and the whole of society. Thus, in response to the social ills of the Depression, Alinsky’s community organization to rebuild

American democracy through People’s Organizations represents a distinctly American experiment in subsidiarity.

In the years between 1939 and 1946, Sheil and Alinsky continued their collaboration in a mutually beneficial way. In 1940, Alinsky came to the realization that he could no longer work for the Institute for Juvenile Research. According to Finks, Alinsky approached Sheil, and “Sheil suggested that they set up a non-profit foundation to support Alinsky’s organizing

148 efforts in industrial communities.”264 Sheil then introduced Alinsky to Marshall Field III, who had committed his life and fortune to social philanthropy. That year, the three joined together along with other social reformers to establish Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation

(IAF). Field was its chairman until his death in 1956.265 The IAF’s stated purpose was “to restore the democratic way if life to modern society.”266 The IAF would remain Alinsky’s primary means to spread and support community organizing throughout the country and the world until his death.

Sheil also started the CYO Education Department in 1940 after Alinsky’s urging and the urging of Catherine de Hueck, founder of the Friendship Houses. Initially, the purpose of the Education Department was to support Sheil’s public speaking on social issues. In

1942, the Education Department expanded to include the Sheil School of Social Studies, which was an effort to establish Sheil’s social speaking in an institutional form. At its foundation, Alinsky was again a major influence. Further, during its decade and a half existence Alinsky was a major participant; offering courses, seminars, and talks to the students of the School.

A final example of the close working relationship between Alinsky and Sheil also comes from 1940. That year Alinsky and Sheil served as the “final negotiators” between

John L. Lewis of the CIO and President Roosevelt. At issue was whether Lewis would support Roosevelt against Wendell Wilkie. Both Alinsky and Sheil had worked with Lewis as part of the BYNC’s support of the PWOC and CIO. Sheil had close ties with the Roosevelt administration through his and Cardinal Archbishop Mundelein’s support of the President through the 1930s. In the end, no agreement was made, but it represents that Alinsky and

264 Fink, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, (NY: Paulist Press, 1984, 23. 265 Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 24. 266 Ibid., 104. 149

Sheil had a close working relationship and they had both achieved a high status on the national stage.267

In 1946, Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals was published. In the Chicago Tribune, Jacques

Maritain, who is credited with encouraging “Alinsky to go beyond thinking about writing a book and actually doing it,” called the book “epoch-making.”268 Bishop Bernard James

Sheil’s review in the Chicago Sun was titled “A Clarion Call for Complete Democracy.” In typical Sheil fashion, he called the book, “the one I would like most to have written,” and “a book that should be read by every thinking American.”269

A close reading of Reveille in context of Alinsky's sociological education and professional training clearly shows the text to be fundamentally a result of that training.

Though organizing tactics and strategies reflect the influence of Alinsky’s connections to union-organizing, the basic social vision present clearly reflects Chicago sociology. As Engel argues, "Alinsky's contribution was the melding of the principles of the [Chicago sociological] social survey with those of union organizing, creating a new form of community organization."270 More specifically, the text of the Reveille indicates not so much a

"melding" as the application of union organizing techniques, tactics and strategies to pursue the social vision of his training in sociology and the social survey. This has further importance for our comparison with Catholic social thought. Primarily, it shows that

Alinsky's social thought as it is presented in Reveille is in fact unique to his own background.

It is not a matter of Alinsky's absorption of Catholic social thought through his friendships with Sheil and Jacques Maritain or other social Catholics. Rather, it is the result of a wholly

267 Horwitt, 93. Quoting Alinsky’s, John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography, (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949), 176. 268 Horwitt, 165 and 167. Quoting Maritain’s review in the Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1946, 9. 269 Sheil, “Clarion Call for Complete Democracy,” Chicago Sun, January 13, 1946. 270 Engel, “Saul D. Alinsky and the Chicago School,” 61. 150 different American, sociological intellectual tradition that has strong comparisons with

Catholic social thought. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Alinsky had constant and continuous interaction with socially active Catholics. They did influence his work and career, even if they did not determine his social theory.

The root of Alinsky’s social thought in Reveille for Radicals is his conception of the

“radical” and the radical’s orientation toward the common good. At the base of Alinsky's understanding of "the radical" is what he alternately calls "identification," "deep feeling for the people,"271 and "liking the people."272 In each of these cases, the radical is understood to be first and foremost motivated by a sense of solidarity with others and a concern for the common good. He states, "There were and are a number of Americans - few, to be sure - filled with deep feeling for people." Alinsky included Sheil and those who walked with him to the PWOC-CIO Rally in 1939 in this category of “radicals.” For Alinsky, this notion of identification is best expressed by Thomas Jefferson, whom he quotes as saying, "

Men by their constitution are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.... 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.273

The true radical is truly "democratic." This democratic tendency, however, comes out of a genuine concern and care for "the people." The radicals then "were those few...who really liked people, loved people – all people."274

This genuine care for and trust in the people is most manifested in the radical’s concern for the common good. The radical “is that person to whom the common good is

271 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 6. 272 Ibid., 13. 273 Ibid., 8. 274 Ibid., 9. 151 the greatest personal value." Further, Alinsky argues that the radical’s common good is a true common good of the full flourishing of each and every individual. The radical “wants a world in which the worth of the individual is recognized. He wants the creation of a kind of society where all of man's potentialities could be realized; a world where man could live in dignity, security, happiness, and peace - a world based on a morality of mankind."275 Later,

Alinsky further elaborates on this future world as "the fulfillment of the vision of man.... A life for mankind of peace, happiness, security, dignity, and purpose."276 Drawing on religious imagery he calls it "A world where man is actually treated and regarded as being created in

God's own image, where 'all men are created equal.'"277

In such a context, the radical’s ideal future understands the common good in such a way as to be applicable for all humankind. Like his conception of unity of purpose arising out of solidarity, Alinsky’s sense of the common good reflects a thicker appreciation of the social than liberal individualism. It is not simply a matter of the greatest good for the greatest number, nor is it simply the expansion of the distribution of goods to more and more people. The common good is not only utilitarian and it is not only materialistic. Premised on a sense of the dignity of the individual, the common good is principally about those circumstances that will allow the full flourishing of individuals.

With the above understanding of the radical and their goal of the common good, we can turn to Alinsky's understanding of the structure and substance of society. In other words, a society based on the principle of solidarity toward the common good would

275 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 15. 276 Ibid., 41. 277 Ibid., 42. It is likely that this allusion to theological anthropology reflects a bare minimum of Alinsky’s religious tendencies and is more window dressing not reflected in the basic foundations of his thought. It also likely shows a minimal influence on Alinsky by Catholic social thinkers, e.g Jacques Maritain, Sheil, and others. Because it only makes a minor appearance in the text it likely means that his use here is mostly decorative, but also that he believes that his sense of the good compares to how he understands imago dei. 152 naturally manifest a subsidiary structure or form. There solidarity was understood as the internal disposition to associate with others in higher and larger social groups in order to pursue goals unattainable for lower social groups. The largest social group, capable of directing the entire nation towards the temporal common good, is the state. Solidarity then is what brings people together in association.

Subsidiarity, on the other hand, orders all of those social groups within the hierarchical structure of associations from the individual and the family through the intermediate associations all the way to the national society and the state that governs it.

Most importantly, solidarity toward the common good organizes such associations according to their purpose in helping achieve the common good. This same relationship between solidarity, the common good and subsidiarity is also present in Alinsky’s social vision.

For Alinsky, similar to Catholic social doctrine, the goal of the common good is not realized simply through the efforts of individuals. Rather, it is necessary that all of the community work together to realize that common good. For that purpose, Alinsky turns to a

Durkheimian approach to solidarity. As with "Community Analysis and Organization,"

Reveille for Radicals makes wide use of "functional relationships." Further, those functional relationships are important for helping member realize their interdependent, social solidarity.

In his fourth chapter, "The Program," Alinsky claims "From a functional point of view the problem of youth (or any problem) cannot be viewed as an isolated phenomenon."278

Instead, "Crime can properly be viewed only as one facet of a problem of general social disorganization." Similarly, he notes the importance of "a pragmatic understanding of the functional relationship between a local community and the larger social scene," which is "the obvious fact that the life of each neighborhood is to a major extent shaped by forces that far

278 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 57. 153 transcend the local scene." Within the community itself this awareness leads the members of the community to "fully understand that their own welfare and the welfare of their community is dependent upon conditions west and east of their town."279 Thus, for Alinsky, functionalism and the recognition of functional relationships carries with it the understanding of interdependence and social solidarity.

Helping people realize their solidarity is the purpose of the People's Organization.

Alinsky states, "In the last analysis the objective for which any democratic movement must strive is the ultimate objective implicit within democracy - popular education." He understands popular education as a manifestation of Jefferson's claim "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."

From these sources, Alinsky claims "The very purpose and character of a People's

Organization is educational.280"

By educational, Alinsky means two things: actual content or information, and social solidarity. This is because "The bringing together of the many diversified elements of the

American population results in the acquisition of knowledge and a consequent changing of attitudes on the part of all of these various elements."281 In sociological terms, by bringing people together, they learn actual information and that learning promotes "assimilation." These changing attitudes are arrived at because, "Through constant exchange of views and by sharing common experiences there comes not a so-called ‘better understanding' between these various groups, but simply an understanding. This mutual understanding is accompanied by a new appreciation and definition of social issues." 282 Such changing

279 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 61. 280 Ibid., 155. 281 Ibid. Italics added. 282 Ibid. 154 attitudes and mutual understanding are two elements of the solidarity that results from a recognition of the interdependence rooted in functional relationships.

This relationship between popular education and solidarity is especially noticeable in

Alinsky's discussion of the actual work and process of education within the People's

Organization. "Through the People's Organization these groups discover that what they considered primarily their individual problem is also the problem of the others, and that furthermore the only hope for solving an issue of such titanic proportions is by pooling all their efforts and strengths. That appreciation and conclusion is an educational process."283

Thus, out of an understanding of functional relationships, the individuals that make up society are brought to a recognition of their interdependence and from that interdependence they recognize their need to work together for the good of all. It is because of the educational role of the People’s Organization that "they think together, work together, fight together, hope together, achieve together, as people."284

At the same time that the People's Organization fosters solidarity, it also serves as the medium for that solidarity. The People's Organization is "a medium through which they can express and achieve their program," and "in which people band together, get to know one another, exchange points of view, and ultimately reach a common agreement which is the People's Program," which itself is the sentiment that "We the people will work out our own destiny." In this way, the People's Organization helps to direct the people towards their common good. By educating them in their functional interdependence and solidarity, and by providing them a means of arriving at their own solutions within the Organization, the

People's Organization serves as a unifier of the community into a single corporate

283 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 156. 284 Ibid., 197. 155 community with a particular vision and unified goal.285

In Chapter One, I argued that within a society comprised of a plurality of associations bonded together in solidarity and ordered toward the common good of all the social inter-relationships between individuals and associations would be subsidiary. To achieve the common good, a society bonded in solidarity would require all individuals and associations to perform helping functions. Each association would participate and function in ways proper to their nature and the goods determined by their associates. Lower associations would integrate individuals into higher associations, and higher associations would aid and direct individuals and lower associations toward the common good.

Within his account of the People’s Organization, Alinsky outlines a sense of the pluralistic structure of society that is more explicit than elsewhere in his writings. In it,

Alinsky parallels Catholic social doctrine on the internal authority of lower associations to determine their own good and participate within the larger community and the nation. From that understanding of associations, his accounting of the relationships between higher and lower associations, especially between the state and local organizations, clearly compares to

Catholic social doctrine on the associational subsidiary function of the state and higher associations. As a result, his sense of the function of the People’s Organization in relation to a community’s native organizations fully represents both structural-pluralistic as well as associational subsidiarity. Because it is an intermediate association, neither at the lowest level of the social hierarchy nor at the highest, the People’s Organization performs both functions.

Representative of his sense of the pluralistic structure of society is Alinsky's

285 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 196. "The People's Organization begins to learn, through its own practices, of the functional relationship between the community, the city, the state, the nation, and the world as a whole."285 156 understanding of democracy. "Democracy is that system of government and that economic and social organization in which the worth and dignity of the individual human being and the multiple loyalties of that individual are most fully recognized and provided for.

Democracy is a system of government in which we recognize that all normal individuals have a whole series of loyalties..." He goes further, "Democracy provides for the fulfillment of the hopes and loyalties of our people to all of the various institutions and groups of which they are a part. It is not a single, unqualified, primary loyalty to the state, as the totalitarians would have it.... It is loyalty by sufferance of the state." What Alinsky envisions is a society composed of individuals who participate in a vast plurality of social groups. Further, the loyalties that these more proximate groups hold over their members are prior to their loyalty to the more distant state. As I will discuss below, the proximity of these lower associations is important because they are also the locations in which most individuals live out their social lives. Thus, Alinsky understands that society is built out of a vast network of individuals participating in and through a variety of social groups for different purposes and their associated overlapping loyalties.286

Alinsky explains the importance of these lower community organizations further through the role of native leadership. Following Burgess, Alinsky's People’s Organization relies on “native leadership.” Alinsky argues that "The building of a People's Organization can be done only by the people themselves.” This means that the effectiveness of a People’s

Organization requires that the people actually be involved and participate. According to

Alinsky’s pragmatism, however, universal participation is not possible or realistic. It is necessary to recognize that most individuals will not participate directly. Rather, they will participate through their native organizations and the leaders of those organizations. He

286 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 85 – 86. 157 argues this is because, “The only way that people can express themselves is through their leaders."287 These native leaders are "the powers behind the scenes" of the "particular interest groups within the community."288 From Alinsky’s reckoning, therefore, in order to have the people participate it is necessary to have their organizations and their native leaders participate.

The inclusion of native leaders is equally important because they not only represent the organizations within the community, but they also represent the interests of the members of the community. He argues:

Just as people have a variety of interests, so, too, they have a variety of leaders.... A man belongs to a church, a religious society, a fraternal group, a labor union, a social club, a recreational club, a social or political group, and a host of other interest groups. Investigation will disclose that that man looks up to a particular person as a leader, one whose judgment he has confidence in, in political matters, but when he is confronted with a problem of finances he will turn to one of his associates in his fraternal society.... He may have in his orbit of activities five or six individuals to whom he will turn on different matters. 289

Thus, the native leaders are those members of the community who participate in the life of the community and who have demonstrated to other members their authority on certain issues. So, within the vast plurality of social groups that individuals participate there are leaders with authority that is respected.

These native leaders are significant for this study because they crystalize the subsidiary functions that their organizations provide to the members of a community and the community as a whole. On the one hand, they perform associational subsidiary functions by providing leadership and guidance to the members of the community. The organization and its leaders provide members a sense of the private interest of the group as well as the

287 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 64. 288 Ibid., 72. This same idea was present in “Community Analysis and Organization.” There, Alinsky pointed out that between their Churches and their unions, most individuals had allegiances to both. 289 Ibid., 72 – 73. 158 guidance of their authority.

Similarly, these organizations and their leaders are the conduits enabling the individual members of the community to participate in the larger social issues around them.

This same idea was present in his discussion of the role of the churches and unions in his

“Community Organization and Analysis.” These organizations, with their leaders as representatives, mediate between members and the larger society. By integrating the individuals into the larger social context and by mediating their participation, they are performing structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions. They make it possible for members and lower associations to participate in the realization of the private interests of the group as well as the common good of the community and society.

Because of this understanding of the immediate, native organizations through which members of a community live their lives, Alinsky has a particular understanding of the role of the state as it relates to individuals and their lower, native organizations. Such relationships are typified by associational subsidiarity, especially as it relates to the

Compendium’s “positive” sense of the higher association’s responsibility of helping and aiding lower associations, and the “negative” sense of its need to refrain from doing the work proper to lower associations unless necessary.

In Alinsky’s explanation of the radical and the radical’s regard for rights, he argues:

The radical places human rights far above property rights. He is for universal, free public education and recognizes this as fundamental to the democratic way of life. He will be for local control but will condemn local abuse of public education...and will insist if necessary upon its correction by national laws and the use of governmental authority to enforce those laws - but at the same time he will bitterly oppose complete federal control of education. He will fight for individual rights and against centralized power. He will usually be found battling in defense of local rights against federal usurpations of power, but he knows that... 'local rights'... have been the stars-spangled Trojan horse of Tory reaction.290

290 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 16. 159

Here, Alinsky's vision of the relationship between local and federal control of education possesses the same contours of Pius XI's application of subsidiarity in Quadragesimo Anno.

While it initially it appears that Alinsky reads the situation in terms of limited federal powers, ultimately it becomes clear that Alinsky groups both local and federal government together in their provision of education. Both the local and federal government are responsible for the “positive sense” by providing education. At the same time, they are both responsible for the “negative sense” by refraining from abuses. Thus, Alinsky’s understanding of the role of government in education compares to Catholic social doctrine on associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state.

Alinsky’s approach to the “Trojan horse” of “local rights” also represents an important link between Catholic subsidiarity as it was discussed in Chapter One, as well as how it will function in Chapter Five, and his sense of the role of authority in a society characterized by social pluralism. Alinsky’s argument about the use of “local rights” to balance the abuse of federal control, and the use of federal legislation to balance abuse of local control, points to the need for the involvement of a plurality of associations in education. It is not that local is the proper place, but that centralization of power, located in the local government or the federal, is not best for the empowerment of the people. In this way, he follows Hittinger’s reminder that “the principle of subsidiarity…is not adequately represented as a question of scale (lowest possible level), and even less of devolution.”291

Hittinger, however, further notes, “the principle is not so much a theory about state institutions, or about checks and balances, as it is an account of the pluralism in society.”292

Alinsky’s articulation of the relationship of local and federal control of education represents

291 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” 21. 292 Ibid., 22. 160 the difficulty of imagining subsidiarity in the American context. Alinsky’s appeal to the checks and balances of control between the local and the federal levels of government is a principle way that he can imagine social pluralism within the American liberal, democratic political tradition that recognizes few corporate social bodies apart from public governmental organizations and economic business corporations.293 Thus, his appeal to this

“Trojan horse” points to the need to develop an account of social pluralism in the American context and populate the social sphere with a plurality of social associations. In fact, Reveille for Radicals can be read best as an argument on behalf of the People’s Organization and community organizations as real, non-political, non-economic, social associations to add to the pluralism of American society.

Recognizing the real concern about the centralization of control in a single authority,

Alinsky reinforces the need for the People’s Organization to encourage pluralism within itself and the Organization’s association subsidiary function. The process of building a

People's Organization, he argues, must remain conscious of participation through native organizations and their leaders and the parameters of associational subsidiarity. Recognizing the plurality of social organizations within the community, the organizer must approach those organizations as the foundation of the People's Organization. Instead of one organization competing with the pre-existing, native organizations with their base of loyal members, the People's Organization takes a place higher on the organizational food chain.

293 This very same difficulty will feature prominently in Chapter Five in my application of Lew Daly’s critique in God and the Welfare State of the local-as-possible, small government approach of President George W Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” There, I will argue that compassionate conservatism makes much of the “negative sense” of what I have termed associational subsidiarity and the associational subsidiary function of the state, but that it fails to adequately attend to and develop the degree of social pluralism necessary to make a full realization of subsidiarity possible in the American. Following Daly, I will argue that compassionate conservatism’s limited-government, free market approach to society fails to adequately support social pluralism and empower the state and social associations to fully contribute in directing the American capitalist economy toward the common good of the social whole. 161

In that position, it does not assume the work of other native organizations, but takes on the work that is proper to its purpose and its level in the social hierarchy. Because of this, "The

People's Organization would take the initial form of an organization of organizations."294 He says later,

Furthermore, being built right up from the roots of the community, a People's Organization is not an outside movement coming into the community. The purpose of the organization should be interpreted as proposing to deal with those major issues which no one single agency is - or can be - big enough or strong enough to cope with. Then each agency will continue to carry out its own program, but all are being banded together to achieve sufficient strength to cope with issues that are so vast and deep that not one or two community agencies would ever consider tackling them.295

The People's Organization then stands as higher social body unifying and solidifying the vast plurality of social groups into a single cohesive and solidarist organization. The lower social groups remain distinct, with their distinct roles, purposes, integrity, and leadership. The

People's Organization operates as a means for all of them to join together in solidarity to pursue goals and goods that none can accomplish on their own. It directs them towards the good pursued and consolidates all of their available resources towards that goal, but it does not usurp their work and it does not work to get rid of them. Instead, it aids them by guiding and directing them to the common good.

This shows that Alinsky holds a vision of the structure of society with the same characteristics as Catholic teachings on subsidiarity. Alinsky sees society as structured on a vast plurality of social groups through which individuals participate in the social life of their community. In building a People's Organization, to bring them to the recognition of solidarity, the organizer must work with this structural-pluralism and the authority figures within the various social groups within the community. Further, the People's Organization

294 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 86. 295 Ibid., 87. 162 must recognize the internal integrity, authority and purpose of the variety of social groups when organizing them into a unified community. Only in recognizing this can the People's

Organization actually provide the help that it is intended to provide by unifying the plurality of social groups into a single, higher association capable of directing and guiding the community toward a common good that was unattainable prior to their organization. The aid that the People's Organization provides then is principally in directing and guiding the lower social groups, rather than direct aid. In providing it, the People's Organization must work hard at ensuring that it does not absorb the work proper to lower social groups nor work to destroy any of those social groups. Thus, Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals structures society according to an understanding of inter-associational relationships comparable with

Catholic social teaching on subsidiarity.

To conclude this section, it is helpful to examine two events that occurred in 1944.

In it’s conflicts with the University of Chicago Settlement House and the Chicago

Democratic political machine, the BYNC established itself as an organization representative of the wishes of the whole community, and the lower associations and individuals within it.

It also proved itself as a means by which individuals and organizations within the community of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood could engage with and have an impact on larger organizations higher in the social hierarchy of Chicago. In this way, the BYNC operated as a subsidiary organization in terms of unifying the community and directing it to the common good, and enabling and empowering lower associations and individuals. Finally, the BYNC was a wholly novel, urban association in Chicago working for the unity and organization for the common good of the whole community. The BYNC was not a charity, it was not a political organization, it was not an economic corporation, and it was not a single-issue social organization. It was a social association organizing an entire urban community around all the

163 common issues unique to the social decay that came with the economic crisis of the

Depression and the upheavals of World War II.

Starting in 1938, Alinsky and Sheil continued their collaboration through the 1940’s and into the 1950’s. After its initial success in the 1939, the BYNC “slowly and subtly during the first two years, a little less subtly by 1942 and 1943…became an alternative institution to which people could turn when they had problems.”296 In 1944, five years after its founding,

Alinsky took the BYNC to battle over the presence of the University of Chicago’s

Settlement House in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Though the conflict was initially focused on the relocation of an Infant Welfare Society infant welfare station to the

Settlement House, Alinsky made it into whether an “outsider” organization like the

Settlement House belonged in the Back of the Yards and whether it could properly address the needs of the people there. Further, he questioned, “whether social-work professionals and like-minded Settlement House boards of directors ought to control institutions and programs in lower-class industrial communities.”297 His goal became “to solidify community support for the BYNC and affirm its role as the community’s voice.”298 Despite having worked in the neighborhood for more than fifty years, the Settlement House was not well- liked. “In fact,” says Horwitt, “it and its workers were deeply resented, if not hated…”299

Over the course of the conflict and repeated negotiations, the Settlement House realized that it had to show that it was part of the community and applied for membership in the BYNC.

In its explanation of its decision the BYNC Board of Directors stated that the Settlement

House was “wholly unfit, by character, purpose, or spirit to be part of the movement known

296 Sanford D. Horowitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 148. 297 Ibid., 140 298 Ibid. 299 Ibid., 139. 164 as the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council.” Bishop Sheil, who was initially meant to serve as a neutral mediator, agreed arguing that those operating the Settlement House “Do not have the remotest understanding, feeling, or real heart-felt sympathy with the problems, the desire, and the hopes of the people of the Back of the Yards.”300 In the end, the infant welfare station was relocated to a facility controlled by the BYNC, and Alinsky and the

BYNC could claim an important victory against a much larger, better funded, and more socially connected organization. More importantly, the victory represented what the BYNC was for the associations and individuals in the Back of the Yards and how the BYNC could function on their behalf.

In this fight against “‘do-gooder’ outsiders,” Alinsky and the BYNC established two things. The first was that the BYNC was the principal voice for the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Organizations from outside the neighborhood could not be considered part of the neighborhood without the BYNC’s inclusion. The BYNC, therefore, became the clearinghouse of the desires and the primary group determining the identity of the community. In this way, it performed what I have called the associational subsidiary function of unifying and directing the lower associations and individuals of a community towards a common good. The second was that Alinsky and the BYNC were created a social space of operation for the BYNC that went beyond just the neighborhood. The BYNC did not merely mediate conflicts between associations and individuals within the neighborhood. As the lower associations and individuals within the community addressed the very local concerns of the community itself, the BYNC mediated between the community and associations outside of it that stood higher than any individual or association within the Back of the Yards. The BYNC had created a social space between the neighborhood and

300 Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 142. 165

“outsiders,” thus built up the graded hierarchy of Chicago. In doing so, the BYNC added to the structural pluralism and complexity of the social sphere in Chicago.

The second episode was a conflict between the BYNC and Chicago’s dominant

Democratic political machine and revolved around the BYNC’s use of the Davis Square

Park and its facilities, where it was headquartered. It showed that the BYNC was an organization that could not only go up against outsider social organizations, but also the

Democratic political machine that ran Chicago. As Horwitt argues, “The Democratic machine in Chicago was a great contradiction to the raison d’etre of the Council, which was summed up in its motto: ‘We the people will work out our own destiny.’”301 The BYNC had shown in the fight with the University of Chicago Settlement House that it was able to look after its own community and that Back of the Yards residents did not require the unwanted help of outside groups. Over time, this meant that people in the Back of the Yards no longer felt as dependent on the Democratic Party bosses and precinct captains, but could instead look to the BYNC. By 1944, the machine leaders saw this as a threat and “decided to squash the Council.”302 By early January, “the Chicago Park District had denied the use of the Davis

Park Square Park to the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council.”303 Further, Joe Meegan was being transferred from Davis Square. The problem was that while the BYNC would survive in new facilities, “it was less certain how well the BYNC could survive the transfer of

Meegan to a full-time job away from the stockyards neighborhood.”304 To save the Council,

Alinsky and the BYNC went head-to-head with Chicago’s Mayor Edward J. Kelly and

Robert J. Dunham, who was a former Armour executive and then chair of the Park District.

301 Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 147. 302 Ibid., 148. 303 Ibid., 148 – 149. 304 Ibid., 149. 166

Over the course of the months-long conflict, Bishop Sheil operated as a mediator and facilitator, setting up meetings between Mayor Kelly and the BYNC, and in the end offering his offices at the CYO Headquarters for the meeting during which Dunham agreed to make a public apology and allow the BYNC to continue to use the Davis Park Square.305 Despite the fact that Meegan would eventually resign his position in the Parks District, and the

BYNC would officially relocate to a new headquarters, Dunham’s statement showed “that the BYNC had held its own against Kelly and Dunham.”306 In the end, the conflict “had compelled the BYNC to become a real organization. Indeed, it could be argued that the organizing process that Alinsky had begun in the winter of 1939 was now finally completed five years later. The Kelly machine had forced the BYNC to stand on its own two legs – and to discover that it had two legs to stand on.”307 The result was that the BYNC had proven its ability to combat not only the industrialists of the meatpacking industry and the well-heeled

“outsiders” of the Settlement houses, but it could also take on the political machine of

Chicago’s political bosses.

Much like the conflict with the University of Chicago Settlement House, the fight with Dunham and the Kelly political machine showed the BYNC’s ability to repopulate the social sphere in two wholly novel ways. First, it showed that the BYNC had successfully created a thoroughly social space for itself to operate within, which was not limited to charity, social work, politics, or economics. It was, therefore, adding to the social pluralism of not only the Back of the Yards, but to the entire graded social hierarchy of the City of

Chicago. The Dunham conflict showed that an organization like the BYNC could operate outside the existing political structure. Especially viewed alongside its efforts in support of

305 Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel, 152 and 159 306 Ibid., 159. 307 Ibid., 161. 167 the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee, the BYNC’s victory showed it could go outside of the public-private typology of liberalism. It also showed it could unify and empower the individuals and associations of a community to participate in a truly “social” space that was irreducible to the political or economic spheres. Second, it performed the associational subsidiary function of integrating lower associations and individuals into the higher grades of society beyond their own families, parishes and neighborhoods. The BYNC ensured that economic businesses and political organizations were held accountable to the goals and goods determined by the community as a whole, not only the limited private good of those businesses or political parties. In this way, the BYNC performed the structural- pluralistic subsidiary function of integrating the desires, goals and goods of the Back of the

Yards into the decision-making processes of those associations and organization higher in the social hierarchy. Economic corporations like the meatpacking companies and political organizations like Chicago’s Democratic machine possessed a power whose scope encompassed and impacted not only one neighborhood in Chicago, but the entire city. Now they had to consider the input of the residents of the Back of the Yards in their calculations, because if they didn’t then the BYNC would force them to. Thus, the BYNC empowered the seemingly powerless residents of the Back of the Yard and enabled the community to positively contribute to the determination of the common good of the entire city, not just their own neighborhood. In these ways, the BYNC contributed to the complexity and structural pluralism of Chicago society and performed a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function.

These instances show that Alinsky’s People’s Organization was not merely an organization within a community. The result was something that Alinsky himself did not account for in his writings. In building the People’s Organization, Alinsky also created the

168 social space for it to exist. Not merely social, economic, or political, the People’s

Organization was a wholly new kind of association that gathered together the resources of the community and mediated between the members of the Back of the Yards neighborhood and the larger, higher associations above them. In such a way, the BYNC as a People’s

Organization was performing the dual functions of structural-pluralistic and associational subsidiarity.

Conclusion.

This chapter has argued that Alinsky's social vision, which was consolidated in

Reveille for Radicals, possesses strong comparisons with Catholic social teaching on the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. This social vision had its source in Alinsky's training in sociology and criminology at the University of Chicago and represents an

American and secular, sociological account of the same concerns addressed in Catholic social doctrine.

Like Popes Leo and Pius, and Bishop Sheil, Alinsky blamed the social ills and disorganization of the Depression on the individualist and capitalist social order that dominated American society. In light of the collapse of the social sphere, and the social decay that accompanied it, it was not enough to support existing organizations. Instead, it was necessary to re-organize and re-build communities that had been decimated by the

Depression. Unlike Leo, Pius, and Sheil, however, Alinsky deployed an American and sociological account of the structure of society to develop a fix for the disorganization of

Chicago’s social sphere. Particularly, Alinsky relied on both Durkheimian functionalism in support of a socially-minded solidarity toward the common good, and an American democratic appreciation of the important work done by local organizations and their leaders.

This meant the creation and support of a whole new form of organization within the

169 community. This new kind of organization would stand above and beyond the scope of the immediate local organizations and deal with problems larger and higher than any native organization could address. Thus, Alinsky’s effort in building a People’s Organization was an attempt at building a new social architecture. By building the BYNC, Alinsky was actively creating a new space for his People’s Organization and complicating the social space in

Chicago. He was also creating a novel form of urban association that performed both associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions.

In the next chapter, this dual nature of the People’s Organization carries over into

Sheil’s own support of Alinsky’s community organizing. Through his efforts in the Sheil

School of Social Studies, Sheil endorsed Alinsky’s community organizing as a way of perfecting American democracy in a way that was commensurate with Catholic social values and American democratic values. Further, Sheil’s sense of the value of the PO was in how it fulfilled functions that correspond to what we have called associational and structural- pluralistic subsidiarity.

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CHAPTER IV

“MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK”: SHEIL’S AMERICAN FORM OF CATHOLIC

SUBSIDIARITY

Introduction

Previous chapters in this project examined the origins and contours of Catholic subsidiarity, how Sheil envisioned the structuring of the relationship between the federal government and charitable organizations in a way that corresponded with Catholic subsidiarity, and how Alinsky’s community organizing and People’s Organization represented a sociological and American conception of the same structuring of society.

Though neither make use of the term itself, the way Sheil and Alinsky intellectually ordered the structure of society and the inter-relationships between the plurality of organizations within society are nearly identical and can be characterized as subsidiarity.

This chapter will examine Sheil’s support of Alinsky’s community organizing as a way to perfect American democratic society. As a result of their collaboration in the late

1930’s, Sheil turned the CYO towards the goal of recovering and perfecting American democracy. In the process, Sheil developed an account of American democracy that integrated Christian values and Catholic social ethics with American liberal individualism and democracy. The American democratic society that he envisioned was structured by an

American, liberally-inflected, Catholic subsidiarity. In this space at the intersection of

Catholic social ethics and American democracy Sheil argued on behalf of Alinsky’s community organizing as a means of perfecting American democracy in a way compatible with Christian and Catholic values.

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In the first part of this chapter, I will outline the basic history of Sheil’s public career as it pertains to the Sheil School of Social Studies. Sheil’s CYO was a constantly growing charitable and social empire. Throughout the Depression, the War Years, the post-War fight against Communism, and the Red Scare, Sheil took on every new issue with a new program in the CYO. Each of those agencies and programs represent subsidiarity in some way. At the center of Sheil’s personal, public social ministry, the Sheil School was an institutionalization of his social vision. As such, it best manifests his social vision and the means for acting it out through the perfection of American democracy. It is there where we can see both Sheil’s developed social vision as well as Alinsky’s influence on Sheil’s attempts to realize it.

The history of the Sheil School reveals that Sheil’s efforts in social education and restoring American democracy were influenced by his collaboration with Saul Alinsky. Over the course of the 1940’s and early 1950’s, Sheil and Alinsky maintained their close friendship and collaboration. When Sheil made changes to the Sheil School’s approach to social education in 1946, he did it in a way that shows the influence of Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals and his ideas about “Popular Education.” In line with this, the Sheil School during this period shows that Sheil was deeply influenced by Saul Alinsky and Alinsky’s community organizing as a means of restoring American democracy following the Depression and shoring it up in the fights against fascism and Communism.

Part II will outline Sheil’s sense of the origins and structure of American democracy.

It will show that Sheil’s sense of American democratic society is the merger of an Ameican liberal appreciation of the individual, and Catholic accounts of solidarity and the common good. The result is a social theory that begins with the logical priority of the individual, the mass of which is bonded by democratic brotherhood through a shared sense of solidarity and co-responsibility into a unified people ordered toward the common good. Thus, like

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Alinsky, Sheil attempted to provide an account of society that presumes the logical priority of the individual but is ordered toward a unified society working toward a common good.

Sheil’s sense of a democratic society, therefore, was structurally pluralistic and made up of distinct forms of associations that possess their own distinct natures and functions. This account of the structuring of society follows the dual dimensions of associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity, which are most evident in his discussion of the roles of the state, the economy and economic businesses, and labor unions.

Part III will examine Sheil’s presentation of the BYNC and the Peoples’

Organization as a means of making American democracy work. Seated within his sense of the pluralistic collectivity of American democracy, Sheil’s support of and advocacy for

Alinsky’s organizations focuses on the subsidiary functions that those organizations perform, and puts particular emphasis on participation and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

This chapter, therefore sets the stage for the larger Catholic engagement with

Alinsky-style community organizing and community organizations through the Catholic

Campaign for Human Development. During this period, Sheil worked to create an intellectual space to allow Catholicism to take its place in American democratic society. The result was a distinctly Catholic approach to American democracy as well as a distinctly

American approach to Catholic social ethics. At the center of this collaboration is a pluralistic approach to the structuring of society and the its organization along lines that correspond to Catholic social thought on subsidiarity. Thus, Sheil’s and Alinsky’s shared vision of society as originating in the liberal individual, who is ordered to the common good through solidarity, and is organized by subsidiarity, enables Sheil to advocate for Alinsky’s community organizing as a practical means of supporting, building, and expanding American democracy. As the 1950’s and 1960’s continued, Sheil’s intitial engagement with Alinsky and

173 his affiliated organizations ended. The work was taken up and expanded beyond Sheil by other Catholic bishops and priests. It was this initial work by Sheil, however, that made that expansion possible. And it was Sheil’s initial negotiation that ultimately made it possible for the institutionalization of Alinsky’s community organizing in the American Catholic Church in the CCHD. Thus, this broader, institutional support is based on a shared sense of the structuring of society as well as the principle of subsidiarity and its dual forms, associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. As the CCHD was formed, it was those very functions that became central to how the CCHD itself operates.

Part I. “To give the spirit of the Church its full place in the spirit of America”: Sheil’s

Career from 1939 to 1954.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Sheil worked to perfect American democracy through the creation of wholly new social organizations, one of which was the Sheil School of Social

Studies. The Sheil School was an important location for Sheil’s efforts to negotiate an intellectual and practical space between American democratic culture and tradition and

Catholic social thought and papal social doctrine. This would allow Catholicism to impact and perfect American democracy.

At the same time, Sheil’s efforts in the Sheil School embody his collaboration with

Saul Alinsky as he changed the School’s approach to social education in the 1940s. As Sheil sought to expand and perfect American democratic society through social education, he modified the School’s practical approach to social education in ways that show Alinsky’s influence. Specifically, Sheil’s social speaking efforts and the Sheil School’s changes in 1946 show signs of Alinsky’s social thought and Alinsky’s understanding of “Popular Education.”

Thus, Sheil’s approach to social education and the subsidiary functions of the Sheil School

174 were influenced by his collaboration with Alinsky.

Section A. Opening to Social Education.

The second period of Sheil’s public career was characterized by his opening to the need for broad social education for the purpose of perfecting American democracy. To that end, he founded the CYO Education Department and its Sheil School of Social Studies.

Through the Sheil School, Sheil was able to spread his ideas about American democracy, and the Christian and Catholic principles that would be integral to perfecting it. Seen as an extension of himself, the Sheil School was a mouthpiece for and an embodiment of Sheil’s ideas. This fact led to a number of conflicts with the school’s staff, especially its first substantial director, George Drury. Conflicts over authority and social educational pedagogy, eventually led to Drury’s firing. In the end, the event led to a new approach to social education that represented the influence of Saul Alinsky.

According Ralph C. Leo, 1938 serves as a marker for the end of Sheil’s focus on the athletic arm of the CYO and the beginning of his focus on the wider social efforts of working for American democracy through the Sheil School of Social Studies.308 The period from 1938 (when Sheil began to work with Alinsky on the BYNC) to 1942 (when Sheil started the Sheil School of Social Studies), therefore, can be better understood as a transitional period during which the organizing logic of the CYO ceases to be charitable work and begins to be social action and education, with a particular focus on American democracy.

Sheil’s transition to fighting for American democracy, like many of his endeavors, was derived from his relationships with other thinkers. In particular, Sheil closely followed

308 Leo, “Historical Survey of the Catholic Youth Organization,” August 1943, box 11, folder 8, Edward V. Cardinal Papers (hereafter CCRD), Archives of the University of Notre Dame (hereafter AUND). 175 the example of his mentor, Archbishop Mundelein. As noted by Elizabeth Carroll in Chapter

Two, “If it occurred to Sheil to imitate anyone, it would probably be the man who gave him his title and his opportunity for action, the late Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, George

Mundelein.” Further, Sheil “stumbled into liberalism through Cardinal Mundelein.”309

Mundelein’s great influence on Sheil is evident in a speech given in 1939.

In October, 1939, Cardinal Mundelein was slated to give a speech in support of the

Roosevelt Administration’s position on American war-time neutrality. The speech was written by two intermediaries between the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Roosevelt

Administration. The first was William Campbell, who had once been Sheil’s personal attorney, had been assistant director of the CYO, and who, in 1935, became the director of the National Youth Administration for the Chicago area. The second was Thomas Corcoran, a Chicago Catholic who worked for the Roosevelt Administration. Mundelein was originally expected to give the speech but on October 2, the evening before the scheduled speech,

Mundelein died. "The decision was made to go on the air with an addendum to the text eulogizing the recently deceased Cardinal” and the entirety of the original speech and the eulogy was given by Sheil.310 The eulogy shows Mundelein’s approach to American democracy and represents the influence that he had on Sheil’s approach to it.

In the speech, titled “America’s Catholics and Europe’s War,” Sheil began with a eulogy that pointed to Mundelein's "modern seminary" at St. Mary of the Lake as a place "to blend...all that was timelessly beautiful and inspiring in the art and the philosophy of democratic America as an eagerly welcomed part of the timeless and universal art and the timeless and universal philosophy of a universal Church." In its architecture, the seminary

309 Carroll, “Bishop Sheil: Prophet without Honor,” Harper’s Magazine, (November, 1955), 47. 310 Avella, This Confident Church, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 28. 176 blended the American with the Catholic. Mundelein's "palace was an architect's replica of

George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon. The chapel...was an adaptation of an American-

Colonial church..." In the chapel "not in mere juxtaposition -- but in a joyous sense of the mighty place of the art and the thinking of democratic America in the unity of the stream of man's achievements, were the Crucifix and the Blessed Mother, the Prophets and the Saints, the Schoolmen and the great Popes and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the

Signers of the Declaration of Independence."311 Thus, Sheil argued, in the very architecture

Mundelein merged American democratic culture with Catholic religiousness.

These elements represent Mundelein’s influence on how Sheil saw the collaboration between American democratic culture and Catholicism. In particular, Sheil pointed to

Mundelein’s desire "to give the spirit of America its full place in the spirit of the Church, and to give the spirit of the Church its full place in the spirit of America."312 This merger of

America and Catholicism would come to dominate Sheil’s social vision and efforts for the perfection of American society. This is particularly true in Sheil’s efforts for social education.

In 1940, Sheil’s career took an unexpected turn. Following “America’s Catholics and

Europe’s War,” Avella says, Sheil was "Mundelein's heir apparent. There were no two ways about it: Auxiliary Bishop Bernard James Sheil was probably the best-known Catholic bishop in Chicago and possibly the nation."313 For Sheil, this meant that he was likely to follow

Mundelein as the next Archbishop of Chicago or to be appointed to another diocese. In the end, however, the Vatican sent Samuel Stritch. According to Avella, President Roosevelt

“expended some effort to have [Sheil] named as Mundelein’s successor or assigned to the

311 Sheil, “America’s Catholics and Europe’s War,” Oct 2, 1939, box 44979.01, folder 6, BBJS, AAC. 312 Ibid. 313 Steven Avella, This Confident Church, 110. 177 soon-to-be-created Archdiocese of Washington, DC.”314 Unfortunately, “the Vatican was uninterested.”315 Sheil remained as an Auxiliary Bishop.

Following the success of his early public speaking, Sheil decided not to remain in the ecclesiastical shadows, but to “strike out and create his own ecclesiastical empire and hope his efforts would win support for a diocese of his own.”316 Baroness Catherine de Hueck, founder of the Friendship Houses in Harlem and Chicago, and Saul Alinsky both urged Sheil

“to continue and intensify his effective speaking out on issues.”317 According to George

Drury, “both Alinsky and de Hueck had the Bishop’s ear. Each of these great activists and organizers had a very considerable and intellectual side and communicated, also, this element of their social concerns to the bishop.”318 So, in 1940, Sheil established a new branch of the

CYO, the CYO Education Department. According to Avella, "The original aim of the

[Education] department was to be Sheil's brain trust and as such attracted scholars and writers who would provide fodder for the bishop's steadily increasing public speaking engagements."319

Over time, however, Sheil decided he needed to do more. He and the second director of the CYO Education Department, Fr. James V. Shannon, “agreed that more had to be done to amplify and build on what the bishop said.”320 To that end, Sheil and Shannon began new program within the Education Department, the Sheil School of Social Studies.

Sheil’s purpose for his public ministry and the Sheil School of Social Studies was to follow in Mundelein’s footsteps and give Catholic social tradition and papal social doctrine

314 Steven Avella, “The Rise and Fall of Bernard Sheil,” Catholicism, Chicago Style, Edited by Ellen Skerrett, Edward R. Kantowicz, and Steven M. Avella, (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), 100. 315 Avella, “The Rise and Fall of Bernard Sheil,” 100. 316 Ibid., 101. 317 Drury, Interview with Steven Avella, HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC. 318 Ibid. 319 Avella, This Confident Church, 115 – 116. 320 Ibid., 116. 178 its place within American democracy. Further, Sheil’s goal was to return American democracy back to its roots in Christian ideals so to combat the social ills that resulted from the economic crisis of the Great Depression, which, like Alinsky, he believed were caused by individualistic capitalism. A full appreciation of God’s fatherhood would lead us to a better care for our fellow citizens. It would also lead to a more complete American democracy.

In most cases, the programs that Sheil instituted in the CYO did not come from his own imagination. Often, he built his own version of programs that had already existed or he received ideas from individuals close to him. The Sheil School of Social Studies is one of the latter. Both Avella and Mark B. Sorvillo credit the origins of the Sheil School to Sheil's relationship with Catherine de Hueck.321 Specifically, the School was based on a proposal developed by de Hueck for a school of Catholic social education.322 As part of her proposal, de Hueck suggested four principle divisions: the Propaganda Department, the CYO-Youth

Special Department, Fr. James Shannon Personal Department, and the Bishop B. Sheil

Department. All of these departments were included in the framework of the Sheil School of

Social Studies. According to the proposal, the most significant parts of the Education

Department were Indoctrination and Adult Education sub-departments of the Propaganda

Department.323 These sub-departments were the sources for the major programs that made up the Sheil School.

During the organization of the School, Sheil and Shannon drew on de Hueck’s proposal. At the same time, Shannon regularly met and consulted with Alinsky. According to

George Drury, “Father Shannon had lunch each week with Saul Alinsky,” during this period

321 Avella, This Confident Church, 116; Sorvillo, Bishop Bernard James Sheil, dissertation, 131. 322 Catherine de Hueck, “Educational Department Catholic Youth Organization: Plan of the New Organization,” handwritten date 1942, CCRD, box 15, folder 8, AUND. 323 Ibid. 179 of the development of the CYO Education Department and the Sheil School.324

Shannon and Sheil began educational programs towards the end of the 1942 and opened the doors to the full Sheil School for its first Winter Term in February of 1943. As the director of the CYO Education Department, Fr. Shannon was nominally in charge of the

School as well. In truth, however, the School was run by George Drury.325 Drury was a former seminarian from St. Mary of the Lakes, and had studied under Msgr. Reynold

Hillenbrand, and was thoroughly trained in Hillenbrand's approach to social action.

According to Sorvillo, a conflict between Sheil and Shannon over a speech that Shannon had written resulted in Shannon's relapse into alcoholism.326 Within the first year of the School,

Drury became the official director of the Sheil School.327

Drury quickly got to work developing his own version of de Hueck’s

“Indoctrination” sub-department in the form of the Sheil School’s “Basic Course.” The

Basic Course represented what de Hueck had proposed for the intensive intellectual and spiritual training of highly motivated lay Catholics to take the Church's social message into the world.328 In the "Announcement of Courses" for the first term, September 20 to

November 20, of the 1943/44 school year, the Sheil School provided an explanation of the purpose of the School. Calling for all students to receive "an intensive program of social education," the announcement states that "This expansion is in accord with the Bishop's concept of its function, namely, to give to people, to all people, an ever fuller knowledge of

324 Drury, Interview with Steven Avella, HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC. 325 Avella, This Confident Church, 120 - 121 326 Sorvillo, 251. According to Sorvillo, a speech given by Sheil on fascism drew criticism. Sheil turned the blame on Shannon. This led to Shannon’s return to drinking. As a result of all of it, Sheil fired Shannon. 327 Drury interview with Avella, HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC; and Nina Polcyn’s diary, box 1, folder 1, CPOL, AUND. 328 De Hueck, “Educational Department Catholic Youth Organization: Plan of the New Organization,” 1942, CCRD, box 15, folder 8, AUND. 180 the truths of reason and revelation to enable them to build a better world."329 Quartering the schedule of courses into "arts, sciences, philosophy and theology," the Basic Course was

“designed to move from the concrete to the abstract, reiterating on each level the fundamental truths expressed on the lower plane."330 At the end of this series of courses

"The whole resolves into the figure of Christ, the Man-God, Whose Person is the summation, the epitome of all the truth previously presented."331 By the end, "the course reaches its climax with the presentation of the Mystical Christ, the inspiration of all Christian social action; of the Liturgy, 'the inexhaustible font of the true Christian spirit;' of the new

Christian Culture, which delineates the world social action is meant to bring to be."332 Thus, the basis of the course was to provide a clear, systematic and intensive training in the

"Christian Synthesis" in order to aid students in their social action.333 Drury’s goal for the

Basic Course was to ensure a select group of students of the School were intensively formed, spiritually and intellectually, so that they might then go out into the world and win it back for

Christ.

In time, Drury and Sheil had a falling out. In June, 1946, Sheil fired Drury and replaced him with Fr. Edward V. Cardinal, CSV. The Viatorian had already been a member of the faculty for years.334 Though it is unknown exactly why Sheil fired Drury, several theories have been given to explain the break. According to Drury, and Nina Polcyn, who started at the CYO’s St. Benet’s Library and became an assistant director of the School after

329 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, First Term, Sept. 20 – Nov. 20, 1943,” box 8, folder 1, CCRD, AUND. 330 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, First Term, Sept. 20 – Nov. 20, 1943.” 331 Ibid. 332 Ibid. 333 Ibid. 334 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 142 – 143. 181

Drury left, the firing had to do with Drury’s attempt to unionize the staff of the CYO.335

Sorvillo agrees that this was the principal reason for the firing.336 Robert Burns, Sheil's and the Sheil School's publicist from 1943 to 1949, provided another theory that points back to

Drury’s involvement in the form of Catholic Action espoused by Hillenbrand, and de

Hueck. Burns stated, “the Young Christian Workers, the Young Christian Students, had spun off from [Canon Joseph] Cardijn and the European experience. It wasn’t really suited to the American experience. In fact, Bishop Sheil and some of the people around him were a little bit hostile to that.”337

Sheil’s supposed hostility to the JOCist approach of Hillenbrand’s Specialized

Catholic Action is most likely not based on an American-European distinction. Instead, it is better understood in context of Sheil’s own ideas about Catholic Action. In a “Catholic

Action Catechism,” put out by the CYO in 1934, Sheil defined Catholic Action as the laity participating in apostolic work under the leadership of the bishops.338 This lines up with

Pope Pius XI’s call for the laity to be “united with their pastors and their bishops” in his encyclical Ubi arcano dei consilio.339 This approach to Catholic Action was given official sanction in the United States by the NCWC Administrative Board’s statement “On the

Present Crisis” from April, 1933, and an episcopal committee’s “Statement on Catholic

Action” from November, 1935. 340 In each case, Catholic Action is clearly understood as unifying the laity to the Bishops’ apostolate, with no regard for an “independent” lay

335 Drury, Interview with Avella HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC; and Nina Polcyn’s diary, box 1, folder 1, CPOL, AUND.. 336 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 142 – 143. 337 Robert Burns, Interview with Avella, HIST/H3300/361, SAOHP, AAC. 338 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 177. A copy of the Catechism can be found in box 44979.05, folder 14, BBJS, AAC. 339 Pope Pius XI, Ubi arcano dei consilio, 12/23/1922, accessed: 6/22/2018, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius- xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19221223_ubi-arcano-dei-consilio.html, #58. 340 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Our Bishops Speak, (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1952), 294, and 211 – 212 respectively. 182 apostolate. Thus, Sheil most likely opposed Hillenbrand’s approach to Catholic Action because it gave the laity too much independence separated from the episcopacy and undermined his control over his own apostolate and ministry.

While it is currently impossible to determine Sheil’s exact reason for firing Drury, the differences in their approaches to Catholic Action shed some light. For Sheil, the CYO and the Sheil School of Social Studies were not independent operations. They were part of his apostolate and thus were an extension of himself. For that reason, Sheil, who normally supported labor organizing, would have opposed the unionization of his own staff.

Unionization and Drury’s incorporation of a Hillenbrand-inspired approach to Catholic

Action would threaten his control over the various branches and thus over his own apostolate. This likely did not endear him to Sheil. Thus, unionization and Drury’s approach to Catholic Action are likely of a piece in that they threatened Sheil’s authority over and within his organization and apostolate.

By the end of 1946, the Sheil School had transitioned to a new approach to social education. No longer did it retain the intensive formational approach to education represented by Dury’s “Basic Course.” In time, the Basic Course was phased out and a new, more general approach to social education was incorporated. This new approach was believed by Sheil and others in the Sheil School to be more suited to the nature of the

School and its students. Most importantly, it represents the influence of Saul Alinsky.

Section B. “The Widest Possible Diffusion”: The Sheil School’s Transition to

Popular Education.

In the end, the change from Drury’s directorship to Fr. Cardinal’s is best understood in terms of a difference of approaches to the operation of the Sheil School. After Sheil removed Drury as director, the Sheil School went through a series of changes leading into

183 the 1950’s. The result was an approach to social education that was less aligned with

Catherine de Hueck’s and Drury’s intensive approach and one more in line with ideas drawn from Jacques Maritain and Saul Alinsky. Drury called this the difference between Drury’s own “intensive” approach and the later “extensive” approach from 1946 and after. Coming on the heels of the publication of Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals, which was accompanied by nearly simultaneous reviews by Sheil and Maritain, the transition to the new approach represents the influence of Alinsky’s approach to social education. Further, the transition to popular social education represents Alsinky’s influence on how the Sheil School performs the dual functions of subsidiarity.

In firing Drury, Sheil used as validation an untitled report prepared by some Sheil

School and CYO staff in 1945 and 1946 (hereafter referred to as the “1946 Report”).341 In the Report, Drury’s “Basic Course” is called “admirable” but ultimately not “wholly suited to

Sheil School” because the School is meant for “education, not indoctrination.” 342 Instead the

Report proposed an educational approach based on Jacque Maritain’s claim that “Education is…an art cooperating with nature,” which means “education must conform not only to the exigencies of an abstract concept of knowledge but also to the concrete exigencies and abilities of the student.”343 According to the Report, this meant “it is time to recognize that a rigid effort to preserve this synthesis is precisely to bury our treasure in a field." Instead, it argues that "The problem of the Sheil School is not to find students able to take it as written, but to make its essence – not its form – available to all." For the author of the report, this

341 Untitled, undated report, box 14, folder 5, CCRD, AUND. The document appears to be a draft of the report, with notes for parts to be removed and revisions to be made. It is included in the Edward V. Cardinal collection at the Archives of the University of Notre Dame. 342 Ibid. 343 Likely drawing from Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943). There is no citation or quotation in the report; only a reference to Maritain. By 1946, Sheil, Alinsky, and Maritain had an ongoing relationship characterized by regular dinner gatherings, which sometimes also included Marshall Fields III. 184 goal is expressed in “the Pope’s call for ‘the widest possible diffusion’ of the social teachings of the Church, necessitating therefore a positive effort to reach as many students as possible.”344

The inclusion of Maritain and his understanding of education points to another likely influence on Sheil’s shift in approaches to adult education; his relationship with Saul Alinsky and the publication of Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals in January, 1946. On January 13th, the

Chicago Sun, owned by Marshall Field III, ran a review of the book written by Sheil, “Clarion

Call for Complete Democracy.” Jacques Maritain also published a review of the book the same day in the Chicago Tribune. Sheil claimed that the book was the only one he wished he had written. By this time, the three already had an established friendship, which included

Field and G. Howland Shaw, who worked for the State Department of the Roosevelt

Administration. Sheil’s sparkling review of the book alongside Maritain’s clearly shows the ongoing relationship between the three. Further, Sheil’s speech later that year on the importance of the BYNC, titled “Making Democracy Work,” clearly shows that Alinsky and

Reveille for Radicals had an impact on his social thought and his efforts to affect change in

American democracy.345

Coupled with the 1946 Report’s quote of Maritain it is very likely that the two influenced Sheil’s change in course for the Sheil School of Social Studies. Particularly important is how the Report’s quote of Maritain coincides with Alinsky’s articulation of

“Popular Education.” According to Alinsky, “The very purpose and character of a People’s

344 Ibid. The uncited quote most likely comes from Pope Pius XI’s On Atheistic Communism. In it Pius argues, “Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to foster in all classes of society an intensive program of social education adapted to the varying degrees of intellectual culture. It is necessary with all care and diligence to procure the widest possible diffusion of the teachings of the Church, even among the working-classes.” 3/19/1937, Accessed at: https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p- xi_enc_19370319_divini-redemptoris.html, on 8/1/2017, #55. 345 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work,” Speech given to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, October 29, 1946, box 2, folder 22, BBJS, AAC. 185

Organization is educational.”346 Within the form of education that must attend to the community that the organization is attempting to educate. In the end, “Education instead of being distant and academic becomes a direct and intimate part of the personal lives, experiences, and activities of the people.”347 Alinsky’s approach to Popular Education, especially its disdain for abstract ideas and academics, runs counter to the approach embodied in the Basic Course. In the end, though Alinsky’s Reveille did not likely cause Sheil to fire and replace Drury and the Basic Course, it did impact the way in which Sheil and the

Sheil School staff changed their approach to adult social education.

Important changes were evident by the Fall of 1946. The course announcement for that period reflected the change in management. Father Cardinal was identified as Director, alongside Mary E. Carroll as Associate Director and Nina Polcyn as Assistant Director.348 By the January Term of 1947, the separation from Drury’s intensive and intellectual approach was becoming clear. The announcement declared, “You won’t be entangled with academic red tape at Sheil School, it isn’t that kind of place. It’s a place for workers, for ordinary people who like to talk over their problems and think them through with the aid of competent teachers and discussion leaders.”349 During the Cardinal era the School phased out the Basic Course and replaced it in 1947 with the Sequence Plan. Though something of the goals for the Basic Course remained, it had lost the intensive training element.

Eventually, the Sequence Plan failed to hold out, and was phased out by 1949.

Sheil had also begun to shift the focus of his public ministry towards the

346 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 155. 347 Ibid., 173. Such an approach reflects Alinsky’s own disdain for “academics.” In the “Introduction” of the 1969 Edition of Reveille for Radicals, Alinsky states, “An ‘objective’ decision is generally lifeless. It is academic and the word ‘academic’ is a synonym for irrelevant.” This is also similar to Alinsky’s popular education, Reveille for Radicals, (New York; Vintage Books, 1989), ix. 348 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Fall Term 1946, vol. 5, no. 1, Oct. 14 – Dec. 14,” box 8, 1946 folder, CCRD, AUND, CCRD. 349 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Notice for January Term,” 1947, box 8, 1947 folder, CCRD, AUND. 186 international threat of global Communism.350 While he remained focused on developing and perfecting American democracy and its role in fixing the domestic social issues, he now included American democracy’s role in international affairs. In 1946, he started the

International Department, which was meant to “mobilize Americans on international issues.”351 In 1949, he started the Institute for Foreign Relations to promote social work in developing nations.352 Now instead of combatting the “bourgeois”, individualistic liberalism of capitalism that led to the economic crisis of the Depression and the social ills that accompanied it, Sheil took on the “leftist liberalism” of Communism and its threat to liberty and God.353 At the same time, Sheil sought to use the same weapon against communism as he had against bourgeois capitalism; a more complete, and more Christian, American democracy.

Throughout the 1940s, Saul Alinsky was involved with the Sheil School in numerous lecture series. Beginning in 1943, Alinsky provided a single lecture on “Juvenile

Delinquency” as part of the School’s “Social Pathology I” lecture series.354 That Summer, he offered a lecture on “Community Reorganization,” for the “Social Pathology III” series.355

The next year, Alinsky and Joe Meegan taught a series of four lectures on “Community

Organization” that focused on their work with the BYNC. The first two lectures, taught by

Meegan, outlined the history of the BYNC. The second set, by Alinsky, were titled

“Community Organizing: Getting Together to Make Democracy Work,” and dealt with “the

350 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 154. 351 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 155. 352 Ibid., 156. 353 Sheil, “Catholic Leadership and the Democratic Ideal,” Address to the Students of the Sheil School of Social Studies, Aug. 2, 1944, box 1, folder 44, BBJS, AAC. “The Failure of the Liberals,” Address to Polish Newspaper Guild, September 7, 1950, box 3, folder 8, BBJS, AAC. 354 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Spring 1943, April 12 – June 22,” box 8, folder 1, CCRD, AUND. The series also included Ernest Burgess giving a lecture on “Domestic Discord.” 355 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Summer 1943, June 28 – August 13,” box 8, folder 1, CCRD, AUND. 187 theory, technique, and possibilities of community organization.”356 On March 1, 1946,

Alinsky gave lecture on Reveille for Radicals as part of the School’s marquis event the Sheil

School Forum.357 This is important because the Sheil School Forum was where Sheil himself gave his most important talks on the issues that drove and directed the Sheil School.

Including Alinsky in that was a clear sign of support for Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, and community organizing. In the following years, Alinsky continued to offer courses and lectures focusing mainly on labor, labor organizers, and CIO chief John L. Lewis.358 These were likely put together in conjunction with Alinsky’s work writing an unauthorized biography on Lewis, which was published in 1949.

Alinsky’s importance for Sheil was further reinforced in a Sheil speech in October,

1946, titled “Making Democracy Work” recalling Alinsky’s previous lecture series.359 The speech drew out the significance of Alinsky’s ideas from Reveille for Radicals and extolled the importance of the BYNC as an important model for people’s organizations.

The frequency and type of Alinsky’s involvement in the Sheil School shows that their collaboration continued throughout the 1940s. Further, it shows that Sheil still appreciated

Alinsky’s ideas on how to perfect American democracy through community organizing.

During this period, the School’s activity, size and prominent faculty won it the nickname of “Chicago’s ‘Catholic Times Square.” In his article of the same title, James

356 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Winter 1944, Nov. 29, 1943 – Jan. 29, 1944,” box 8, folder 2, CCRD, AUND.” 357 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Winter 1946, February 25 – April 12, 1946,” box 8, folder 4, CCRD, AUND. 358 “What is Ahead for Labor?” in Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Winter 1947, January 13 – March 15, 1947,” box 8, folder 5, CCRD, AUND; “John L. Lewis” as part of the “Modern Biographies’ series in “Announcement of Courses, Spring 1947, April 14 – June 7, 1947,” box 8, folder 5, CCRD, AUND; “Labor and Politics,” in “Labor Today” lecture series in “Labor Program Notice, Fall 1948, October 4 – November 27,” box 8, folder 6, CCRD, AUND; “The Psychology of a Labor Leader,” in “Labor Forum” series, in “Announcement of Courses, Winter 1950, Vol. VIII, no. 2, January 16 – March 11,” box 8, folder 8, CCRD, AUND. 359 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work,” Speech given to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, October 29, 1946, box 2, folder 22, BBJS, AAC. 188

O’Gara said, “Over the years the Sheil School has become the place in Catholic Chicago where people can meet, exchange ideas and acquire new ones….As a result the Sheil School has become a kind of Catholic Times Square in Chicago: stay here long enough and you can meet almost anybody.”360 Along with Saul Alinsky, lectures and courses were given by

Jacques Maritain, John Tracy Ellis, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Dorothy Day, Mortimer J.

Adler, Rev. Paul Hanley Furfey, Very Rev. Reynold Hillenbrand, Yves Simon, Maisie Ward,

Fr. John Courtney Murray, Fr. Jack Egan, Fr. George Higgins, and Theodore Hesburg, CSC.

Interestingly for its time, the Sheil School pulled from a diverse population.

According to O’Gara, during the course year of 1948 -1949 the school had almost two thousand students, offered 95 courses, and pulled from almost one hundred fifty parishes.361

The School’s annual reports support O’Gara’s claims of a young, between 20 and 30 years old, and mostly blue collar student body. Most years the School reported between 1500 and

2000 students, attending between 95 and 115 courses. What O’Gara’s article fails to note is that the School appealed to women, who made up between 75 and 85 percent of the student body, and those in clerical and secretarial jobs, who made up roughly 50 percent.362 Thus, the student body shows that the school appealed predominantly to those Chicago Catholics who traditionally did not have access to education beyond high school, young blue-collar workers and women. Along with these students, the course offerings on social and labor issues earned the Sheil School the reputation of “a poor man’s college” or “the university of the labor union.”363

Over time, the School continued its move away from Drury’s more theological and

360 O’Gara, “Chicago’s ‘Catholic Times Square,’” America (January 28, 1950), 492. 361 Ibid., 495. 362 Sheil School of Social Studies, Annual Reports, box 9, folder 9 – 10, CCRD, AUND. 363 O’Gara, “Chicago’s ‘Catholic Times Square,’” 493 – 494.” 189 philosophical emphasis to more general adult education more in line with Alinsky’s Popular

Education. Towards the end of its existence, courses identified as “Religion, Philosophy,

Theology,” only made up around 12 percent of the course offering that hovered around 100 courses per year. The Social Studies element of the School continued to dominate, but that included lectures on history, biographies, and languages (the most frequently attended being

Spanish). The School also began to integrate more cultural courses into its offerings. In its pamphlet for the Spring 1951 term, the School emphasized its CYO Theatre Workshop, its

Radio Workshop, and courses on modern artists and modern writers. The Annual Report for 1952 – 1953, showed more people attending general education courses like “the Teacher

Workshop,” “the Steward Training Course,” “English for Puerto Ricans,” and “Personal

Investment Policy,” then courses on “Theology of the Layman,” “The Ideal of Love,” and

“The Heart of Thomas a Kempis.”364 Thus, while the Sheil School had accomplished its goal of expanding its offering to more people, it had diluted its distinctly Catholic approach to social action.

By the 1950’s, the CYO as a whole was operating at a deficit each year and Sheil was hard-pressed to pay for it. Its 1949 Annual Report to the Welfare Council of Metropolitan

Council, which was and remains a major institution for coordinating and ensuring the quality of welfare organizations, shows the School running a deficit of 150 to 190 thousand dollars.365 According to its 1953 report, the CYO had an estimated need for 212,320 dollars.366 Thus, in the lead-up to his abrupt retirement in 1954, Sheil’s CYO “diocese- within-a-diocese,” was financially falling apart. By 1954 it was obviously unsustainable.

364 Sheil School of Social Studies, Annual Reports, 1952 - 1953, box 9, folder 10, CCRD, AUND. 365 Catholic Youth Organization, Report to the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, November, 1949, box 11, folder 1, CCRD, AUND. 366 Catholic Youth Organization, Report to the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, May, 1951, box 11, folder 3, CCRD, AUND. 190

According to Steven Avella, when Sheil resigned as director from the CYO in 1954

“he was out of money, isolated from many of his once close associates, ill, and without hope for advancement. His great hope to be the American Catholic voice for democracy and social reform could not sustain itself without the resources or the prestige of a significant diocese and predictable, expanding financial support.”367 Though it was rumored that Sheil had been forced to resign because he had spoken out against Joseph McCarthy’s questionable anti-Communist campaign in the preceding years, the reality was that Sheil wanted out. Carroll argued, “There seems to be no doubt that Sheil had been trying to resign for more than a year. He was not in bad health, but a long struggle with pneumonia two years before had left him finally weary of his burdens.”368 So, on September 2, Sheil called a press conference and stated his resignation. After his resignation, the Archdiocese assumed the CYO and promptly dismantled it. As Avella notes, the CYO was indebted to around half-a-million dollars.369 Some programs were abolished completely while others were absorbed into other existing offices and organizations. The CYO athletic program remained but in a loose, decentralized form.

Of all of the activities that Sheil had begun in the 1930’s the most important that was maintained by the Archdiocese of Chicago was his collaboration with Saul Alinsky. Sheil’s decision to leave the CYO was coupled with his break from Alinsky. That year, Alinsky and the IAF began working with Cardinal Stritch, to which Sheil responded, “You’ve sold out to the Catholic Church.”370 Sheil was no longer the primary contact point between the

Archdiocese and the IAF. Like other events, it showed that Sheil was losing his influence

367 Avella, “Rise and Fall of Bernard James Sheil,” 107. 368 Carroll, “Bishop Sheil: Prophet Without Honor,” Harper’s Magazine, (November, 1955), 51. 369 Ibid. 370 Finks, The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky, (NY: Paulist Press, 1984), 113. 191 and his power within the Archdiocese and Chicago.

At this time, Cardinal Stritch made Fr. Jack Egan, a former student of Msgr. Reynold

Hillenbrand at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, the liaison between the Chancery and the IAF.

Egan had a relationship with Sheil and the Sheil School, having given numerous lectures and lead programs as part of the Archdiocese’s Cana program at the Sheil School. He also had a relationship with Alinsky through Jacques Maritain. Egan and Alinsky’s relationship through the Archdiocese then held until the 1960’s when Cardinal Archbishop Cody cut the

Archdiocese’s support of both. The remainder of Egan’s story will be taken up in Chapter

Five.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, Sheil’s efforts to expand and perfect American democracy throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s were embodied in a new form of social organization, the Sheil School of Social Studies. At a time when the United States was still working to expand access to public education through High School, the Sheil School was distinct for being a Catholic school for social education that was open to all, being free apart from a 3 dollar registration fee, and putting students in contact with some of American Catholicism’s greatest thinkers.

In 1938, Sheil called for new instrumentalities to mediate between local communities and the state for disbursing federal relief and welfare funding. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, he was creating a new social association to build up American democracy, to direct and guide individuals toward the common good of the social whole, and empower them to participate in it.

The history of the Sheil School points to Saul Alinsky’s ongoing influence on Sheil and his ideas about the perfection of American democracy through education. Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Sheil and Alinsky remained in collaboration, even coordinating

192

Sheil’s and Maritain’s support for Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals. Though Drury and de Hueck had greater influence on its initial form, by 1946 the School had shifted its approach to something more in line with what Alinsky called “Popular Education” education in Reveille for

Radicals. This indicates that Alinsky’s approach to education was more closely aligned with

Sheil’s sense of social education in the American context than Drury’s and de Hueck’s.

In the next two parts, I will examine how Sheil accounted for the integration of

American democracy and Catholic social ethics and how his account of the structures of such a society corresponded to the principle of subsidiarity and the dual functions of associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. After that, I will examine how Sheil’s explanation of and advocacy for Alinsky’s community organizing pays particular attention to the ways they perform functions that correspond to associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. Thus, through his work through the Sheil School of Social Studies, Sheil created an intellectual space for the integration of Catholic social ethics and the American democratic society, and the articulation an American form of Catholic subsidiarity in

Alinsky’s community organizing.

Part II. “Our Unfinished Business”: Sheil’s Catholic American Democracy.

In this part, I will argue that Sheil’s account of American democratic society can best be understood as a merger of American liberal democracy and Catholic social tradition and papal social teaching. Specifically, Sheil’s democratic society begins with the logical priority of the individual of American democratic tradition. The American, liberal, democratic individual is then integrated into a Catholic sense of the social whole and ordered toward the common good of society through a sense of solidarity.

Within such a society, the relationships between individuals, lower associations, intermediate associations, and the state are organized by subsidiarity and the dual

193 associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions. In this way, Sheil follows a trajectory similar to Alinsky’s Chicago-school sociological account of democracy. Unlike

Alinsky, Sheil’s sense of the common good and solidarity follow papal social teaching rather than American sociology and Emile Durkheim. In the end, however, they share a sense of the functions of individuals and associations that correspond to the dual dimensions of subsidiarity.

Section A. Sheil’s Christian American Democracy

This section will argue that Sheil’s account of American democratic society is an attempt to merge American democratic and Catholic social thought. Most importantly, rooted as he is in American democratic tradition, Sheil’s sense of democratic society is based on the logical priority of the individual. Pointing to Thomas Jefferson and his Lockean influences, Sheil presents a sense of society that starts with the free, liberal individual. At the same time, however, Sheil also seeks to orient the liberal individual towards a social whole and the common good. To that end, Sheil makes use of the idea of co-responsibility to bond liberal individuals through solidarity into a social whole working for the common good. Sheil then structures the relationships and functions of associations within society according to the dual trajectories of subsidiarity. His explanation of these roles and functions will be discussed in the next section.

At the beginning of this chapter, we discussed Mundelein’s and Sheil’s efforts to blend the American and the Catholic and to "to give the spirit of America its full place in the spirit of the Church, and to give the spirit of the Church its full place in the spirit of

America."371 This blending is most evident in Sheil’s speeches of the 1940s and 1950s on the nature and expansion of American democracy.

371 Sheil, “America’s Catholics and Europe’s War,” Oct 2, 1939, box 1, folder 6, BBJS, AAC. 194

Following in Mundelein’s liberalism and affection for American democracy, Sheil believed that the only way to cure the social ills facing America, and then the world, was through the perfection and expansion of democracy. In 1942, he argued, “The best defense against Fascism in America is democracy – and more democracy.”372 The problem, as Sheil saw it, was that American democracy itself was incomplete.

In his 1943 speech, “Our Unfinished Business,” Sheil laid out the goal that dominated much of his public career.373 Because of its significance, Sorvillo referred to the speech as Sheil’s “1919 Plan” in reference to the US bishops’ 1919 plan for social reconstruction after World War I, which was written by Msgr. John A. Ryan.374 According to

Sheil, “Democracy was not a complete product when it came down from our revolutionary forebearers. The founding fathers did not consider it a finished product. They knew that changes would have to be made, and, that while basic principles would remain the same, those principles would have to be adapted to new situations and circumstances.”375 Further,

“We are still trying to make our Constitution live up to those promises of freedom and equality set down in our Declaration of Independence.”376 This desire to make the present

American society live up to its original democratic values and ideals drove Sheil’s public career.

Sheil’s trust in American democracy came from his belief that it was premised on a

Christian theology. In 1942, he argued, “It has been well said that at the root of every

372 Sheil, “The Role of Youth,” Paper given before the Social Science Research Conference at the University of Chicago, July 1, 1942, box 1, folder 23, BBJS, AAC. 373 Sheil, “Our Unfinished Business,” Address to Xavier, Apr. 8, 1943, box 1, folder 33, BBJS, AAC. 374 Sorvillo, “Bishop Bernard James Sheil,” 228. 375 Sheil, “Our Unfinished Business.” 376 Ibid. Sheil’s reference to the Declaration of Independence was consistent throughout his democratic efforts. It remained his single, most important reference in the American democratic tradition to support his claim that Christianity is at the heart of American democracy and that Christianity, and therefore he himself, should have significant involvement in shaping and perfecting it. 195 political theory there is a theology. It is certainly true for democracy.” For Sheil, that theology was outlined in the American belief in “The existence of God the creator, the brotherhood of man, the inalienable rights which man possesses, not because he is a citizen not even because he is a man but precisely because he is a creature of God who has endowed him with these rights.”377 According to Sheil, this theology was encapsulated and enshrined in American democratic tradition in Thomas Jefferson’s inclusion of the “age-old

Catholic truth so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence: ‘Man has been endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights.’”378 For Sheil, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was not a deist argument for the individual’s rights. Rather it was a recognition of God’s place within American democratic tradition. It was a window through which he could bring in ideas from Catholic social tradition and papal social teaching. It allowed Sheil to import his own theology and argue that American democracy was grounded on Christian theology, even though Jefferson’s account of the “Creator” lacked a deep theology.

Beginning in 1940, Sheil distilled his theology of American democracy into the twin ideas of “The Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of man.”379 Sheil believed that

American democracy was important and unique because “We believe with all our mind, with all our heart, and with all our soul in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of

377 Sheil, “The Role of Youth,” box 1, folder 21, BBJS, AAC. 378 Sheil, “Youth in a Democracy,” 1940, box 1, folder 14, Bishop Bernard James Sheil Papers (BBJS), AAC, 3. Starting in 1940, Jefferson’s 379 “Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man” are ideas that pre-dated Sheil’s own use. They were already popularized in the works of Archbishop John Ireland (tied to the Catholic Americanist controversy at the end of the 19th century) and Dr. Edward McGlynn (tied to Henry George and “Georgism”). As Patrick Carey’s American Catholic Religious Thought indicates, these ideas were applied by Ireland, and formed the basis of one of McGlynn’s most popular speeches. Carey, ed., American Catholic Religious Thought: The Shaping of a Theological and Social Tradition, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2004), 71, 328. “Brotherhood of mankind” was also used by Herbert Croly in his The Promise of American Life (1909), which was an intellectual source for modern liberalism associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with whom Sheil had a close relationship prior to his use of the phrase in 1940, and is believed to have influenced Roosevelt’s New Deal. Croly, however, does not argue that the brotherhood of man is derived from the Fatherhood of God. 196 man.”380 For the next decade and a half, Sheil continued to use these catchwords as shorthand for his sense of American democracy.

Sheil’s theology of American democracy, however, maintains Jefferson’s liberalism because of the connection he makes between the Catholic notion of dignity of the human person and the American democratic tradition of locating rights in the Creator’s endowment.

Starting with the identification of Christianity’s sense of God the Father and Jefferson’s right-endowing Creator, Sheil used the dignity of the individual as the support of individual rights. He says, “The idea of the dignity of man is best expressed by saying the human person is in possession of natural rights.”381 This equation of dignity with natural rights indicates that Sheil’s attempt to integrate Christian theology and American democracy resulted in a liberal view of the individual.

By taking Jefferson’s account of the origin of the individual’s rights as a reference,

Sheil’s Christian American democracy accepted liberalism’s assumption of the logical priority of the individual. In asserting the rights of the individual, Sheil argued that “we must remember that the basis of the democratic state is not differentiation of social classes; it is the individual citizen.”382 Further, Sheil’s sense of the dignity of the human person emphasizes a liberal appreciation of the individual. According to Sheil, accepting the dignity of the human person means accepting “the view of man as the master of his own destiny, as possessing within himself the capability of developing, if he so chooses, the potentialities of his own personality.”383 Sheil’s emphasis on personal freedom and internal liberty, therefore, is representative of the liberal impact on his view of the individual within society. Thus,

380 Sheil, “Youth in a Democracy,” 1940, box 1, folder 14, BBJS, AAC 381 Sheil, “Education for Democracy,” Before the Sheil School of Social Studies Forum, Nov. 19, 1943, box 1, folder 40, BBJS, AAC. 382 Ibid. 383 Ibid. 197

Sheil’s importation of Catholic theology through Jefferson’s Creator and in support of

American democratic rights, causes Sheil to reinterpret Catholic theology on the dignity of the person through a liberal mold. This influence was present throughout the decade as Sheil developed his theological account of American democracy.

Despite this influence of American liberalism, Sheil did argue for the social nature of the human person in his account of the “brotherhood of man.” The brotherhood of man allows Sheil to avoid, “Individualism, devoid of social consciousness,” because “Christianity and individualism are basically irreconcilable.”384 For Sheil, the human individual was innately social. He believed that the reconstruction of society relied on the idea that “We must revive the idea of men as an integral part of a community – not local, not national, but universal, that is, the community of mankind.”385 He goes further, saying, “Nor is man intended to live alone; he must live with and for all men.”386 Within Sheil’s social thought the brotherhood of man becomes the means of connecting the liberal inflection of the Fatherhood of God and the corporatist social theory of Catholic social ethics and papal social teaching. It is his way of beginning with the liberal individual and ordering them through solidarity toward the common good.

According to Sheil, it is in the recognition of our common brotherhood that we are drawn into social relationships and society. He says, “While recognizing the inherent dignity and autonomy of the individual, at the same time [the brotherhood of man] postulates service to society as the condition for complete development of the individual. ‘Love the neighbor’ is not only the summation of Christian charity; it is also the answer to a basic need

384 Sheil, “Education for Democracy,” Before the Sheil School of Social Studies Forum, Nov. 19, 1943, box 1, folder 40, BBJS, AAC. 385 Sheil, “Youth in the Post-War World,” Paper given before the Social Science Research Conference at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill, July 1, 1942, box 1, folder 23, BBJS, AAC. 386 Sheil, “Problems facing the Church Today,” Address before the Charles Carroll Forum of Chicago, Oct. 18, 1942, box 1, folder 26, BBJS, AAC. 198 in man’s nature.”387 The individual, therefore, must be in society to realize their own full potential. This universal need for others to serve is the root of the interdependence and solidarity that bonds individuals in society.

Within Sheil’s account of the brotherhood of man and solidarity, individuals are bonded together to realize the common good through a shared sense of co-responsibility. In the recognition of a common Father and interpersonal equality, Sheil sees the answer to

Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In his speech, “Education for Democracy,” he argues, acceptance of the brotherhood of man, “entails definite social attitudes which must admit a common responsibility for all humanity. Dostoievsky [sic] has well expressed this truth, so basically Christian, in his penetrating phrase; ‘We are all responsible to all for all.’”388 The brotherhood of man therefore is a means of bonding individuals together as they realize their equality with their fellow human beings. In that equality the individual realizes that they have a responsibility for their fellow human beings. He believed that “Most certainly if we are all equally the children of a common father without distinction of race, color or nationality, of social position, economic status or political organization, then we had the most powerful motives of abiding love of profound sympathy and generous good will.”389 This, according to Sheil, was the “one secure foundation for right human relations and, above all, for a genuine democracy.”390 From their shared equality individual members develop the sympathy, good will, and charity that compel them to realize that they are co- responsible with one another. The bond of society, the solidarity that draws liberal

387 Sheil, “Youth in the Post-War World,” Paper given before the Social Science Research Conference at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill, July 1, 1942, box 1, folder 23, BBJS, AAC. 388 Sheil, “Education for Democracy,” Before the Sheil School of Social Studies Forum, Nov. 19, 1943, box 1, folder 40, BBJS, AAC. 389 Sheil, “God and Moral Law as Basis of Right Education,” Testimonial Banquet, May 15, 1941, box 1, folder 13, BBJS, AAC. 390 Ibid. 199 individuals together, is not so much the virtue and disposition of interdependence, but the charitable feeling of responsibility for other individuals within society. Thus, the brotherhood of man, starting with the value of the individual in the Fatherhood of God, bonds liberal individuals together within a liberal democratic society by helping the individual to realize their responsibility “to all and for all.” In realizing their shared responsibility for their brothers, the individuals of society are bonded together in the effort to work for the good of all. Thus, Sheil achieves a unified society out of the liberal individual through a sense of solidarity that arises out of a form of interdependence rooted in co- responsibility.

In 1945, Sheil found an image that connected his American democratic brotherhood of man with Catholic corporatism. During his Christmas Message of December, 1944, Pius

XII characterized democracy using the image of “the people.” Pius’ use of it paralleled

Sheil’s own sense of liberal individuals ordered towards a corporate society and the common good. The people, Pius said, “lives and moves by its own life energy….The people lives by the fullness of life in the men that compose it, each of whom – at his proper place and in his own way – is a person conscious of his own responsibility and of his own views.”391 Like

Sheil, Pius’ image of the people is rooted in the idea that individuals compose society.

Further, the individual’s place within society arises out of their individual responsibility.

For Sheil, “the people” was an important image that merged his own liberally inflected sense of the origins of society in the individual with a Catholic sense of the corporate unity of society. In his commentary on the address, the people is “composed of

391 Sheil, “Pope Pius XII and the Dignity and Liberty of Man: A Commentary on Parts of the Christmas Message, 1944,” talk given to the Sheil School of Social Studies, February 2, 1945, box 1, folder 53, BBJS, AAC. Sheil is quoting Pius XII, “1944 Christmas Message,” December 25, 1944, http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p12xmas.htm, #23. 200 individual, living persons.” Further, it “is an organic thing, composed of persons endowed with all the natural and juridical rights inherent in the concept of real personality. From this it follows that society or the state is in turn an organism, in which all individuals composing it live and work cooperatively for a common goal, -- namely, the common good of all citizens.”392 Sheil’s use of “organic” in this way resembles something akin to Durkheim’s

“organic solidarity.”393 His use emphasizes the individuality and differentiation of the organs in the body and their work to compose it and build it up as they perform their own functions, whereas Catholic “mystical body” imagery emphasizes the top-down unity of the whole. It does, however, allow him to arrive at the goal of a unified community made up of individuals bonded through co-responsibility and working toward a common good. Through the image of “the people,” Sheil was able to connect the American democratic liberal individual and the Catholic corporate unity of society.

In response to the fascism of the 30’s and the communism of the 40’s and 50’s, Sheil believed that it was necessary to expand and perfect American democracy because democracy was the most American and the most Christian form of social organization and government. It is because of his emphasis on and rootedness in American democracy that his development of a Christian account of democracy was heavily influenced by liberal individualism. Though he never supported an absolute individualist liberalism, he did presume that the origins of society are in the individual. Using the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, he was able to presume that origin and orient the liberal individual through a bond of solidarity in co-responsibility toward the common good of the social

392 Sheil, “Pope Pius XII and the Dignity and Liberty of Man: A Commentary on Parts of the Christmas Message, 1944,” talk given to the Sheil School of Social Studies, February 2, 1945, box 1, folder 53, BBJS, AAC. 393 Sally Scholz, Political Solidarity, (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 22 – 23. 201 whole. Within that context, the relationships between the individuals and associations that comprise society are organized according to the principle of subsidiarity, which will be discussed in the following section.

Section B. Subsidiarity in Sheil’s American Democratic Society.

As was discussed in Chapter One, in a society that is bonded by solidarity towards the common good, the relationships between the parts of society are going to be organized according to subsidiarity and subsidiary functions. Thus, all parts will relate to each in their effort to help all other parts work for and achieve the common good. Lower associations and individuals do so through their structural-pluralistic subsidiarity by participation in higher levels of society, and higher associations do so through their associational subsidiarity of guidance and direction of individuals and lower associations. In the same way, Sheil’s articulation of a democratic society also entails the significant subsidiary functions of all individuals and associations. A true democratic society, he argued is a pluralistic collectivity of parts that all have their own function and that contribute to the common good of society.

This section will specifically treat Sheil’s accounts of the roles of the state, the economy, and labor unions to show the continued influence of Catholic subsidiarity on Sheil’s understanding of the relationships and functions of associations within society.

Though he never uses “subsidiarity,” Sheil’s accounts of the activities performed by individuals and institutions correspond to what I have termed associational and structural- pluralistic subsidiary functions. These subsidiary functions are most evident in his treatment of the state, the economy, and the union. These will be treated below in this part. Sheil also developed accounts of the associational and structural-pluralistic functions of Alinsky’s

People’s Organizations and his own Sheil School of Social Studies. Those will be treated below in the third part of this chapter.

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In a 1945 address to the Institute of Social Order, Sheil presented his clearest understanding of the pluralistic structure of society and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions performed by individuals and lower associations. The speech makes appeals to Leo

XIII, Pius XII, Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, and Jacques Maritain.394 In it, he argued a democratic society "would be a democratic collectivity of mutual effort on the part of all citizens."395 He continued,

In it, individuals, private institutions and agencies, the government, all these would retain their full liberty of particular function and action, but all would work towards a common goal, - namely, the social well-being of all individual citizens. In other words, such a pluralistic collectivity would be really a democracy of action, not merely of words; it would be a democracy, not of competition, but of cooperation. 396

Here two critical elements of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity are present. First, like

Taparelli, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, and Alinsky, Sheil argues that these organizations ought to “retain their full liberty of particular function and action.” This means that they each have their own distinct function for which they are created and which gives them their own purpose. Pushing against any kind of statism or fascism, individuals, families and private institutions are not merely tools or denominations of the state. Second, these groups form a “pluralistic collectivity” unified by a common goal and cooperative action. Thus,

394 While there is little historical analysis of Alinsky’s relationship with Sheil, there is even less study of the relationship between Sheil and Maritain. It is unclear the exact nature of Maritain’s impact on Sheil’s social thought. There is clear evidence, however, of a close relationship between the two. Maritain was a regular guest at the Sheil School of Social Studies and gave several lectures. Sheil had close connections to the University of Chicago during the time that Maritain was there, and it is unlikely that Sheil would have failed to make connections with such a shining Catholic intellectual. Further, Bernard Doering’s The Philosopher and the Provocateur: The Correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Saul Alinsky, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994) includes repeated references by Maritain and Alinsky to Sheil and dinners with him. Thus, while it is unclear the exact extent of Maritain’s influence on Sheil, there is a clear link between them. Further, Sheil’s repeated use of Maritain in Sheil School pamphlets, and his own speeches, and the use of Maritain’s ideas about education in the “1946 Report” reinforce that Maritain had a very likely influence on Sheil’s social thought and his approach to his own public social efforts. At this time, however, the exact influence is unknown. 395 Sheil, Address to the Institute of Social Order, Jan 20, 1945, box 1, folder 51, BBJS, AAC. 396 Ibid. 203 though they each have their distinct function and purpose, they pursue them in cooperation with the other associations of society in a solidarist effort towards the common good.

Arising out of a democratic sense of responsibility to the brotherhood of man, all parties, individuals and associations, work in a combined effort toward the common good of all. These diverse, pluralistic social structures, composed by individuals and building up the social whole, have unique and distinct functions. In pursuing those functions in light of their responsibility, they help to work for the common good of the whole. The resulting cooperation means that all individuals and associations within society perform a helping or subsidiary function.

Following his sense of the construction of the social whole on the logical priority of the individual, Sheil follows the Catholic sense that society is ordered toward the common good and that associations above the individual level perform functions to help all individuals access the common good. The activities that he assigns to higher associations correspond to what I have called associational subsidiarity. According to Sheil, such a society, “means that all our structures and institutions be directed towards the good of man, that they protect his dignity, that they offer each individual the opportunity for complete growth, physical, educational, moral and spiritual.”397 For Sheil, this notion of “opportunity” corresponds to papal social teaching’s sense of the common good as the necessary social conditions for personal fulfillment. Further, “political structures, economic systems, the state, government, social organizations and institutions – all these have but one proximate end, namely, to serve man, to enable him to serve God. That society is good, and only that is, which enables man to attain a full stature of human personality to which he is destined by

397 Sheil, Untitled Address, Receiving the National Human Relations Award From National Conference of Christians and Jews, undated, box 3, folder 23, BBJS, AAC. 204 his Creator.”398 Thus, Sheil’s articulation of the functions of higher associations corresponds to subsidiarity as it is discussed by Pius XI and the Compendium. The associations that stand at higher levels of society are ordered toward the common good and the “proximate end” of enabling all individuals to realize the “full stature of human personality.” In this way, Sheil is attempting to order American liberal society to more than just a balancing of individual interests. Rather, through the more subsidiary understanding of the State, he arguing that it should be ordered toward the common good.

These associational subsidiary functions are most evident in Sheil’s sense of the roles of the state, and the economy and economic businesses. In his articulation of the role of the state, Sheil clearly follows the precedent established by Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI. In a 1942 speech, titled “The Christian Concept of Man,” he outlines what the Compendium calls the “positive sense” of subsidiarity. He argues, “Man is not the creature of the state; - he is the creator of the state. Man is not the servant, and, still less, the slave of the state, but contrariwise, the state is the servant of man. It exists solely to secure more effectively the happiness and the well-being of the men and women in its boundaries.”399 To this end, the state has the authority to direct and guide society towards the common good. It is because the state arises out of the democratic participation of the individual, that it is tasked with

398 Sheil, “Catholic Leadership and the Democratic Ideal,” Address To the Students of the Sheil School of Social Studies, Aug. 2, 1944, box 1, folder 44, BBJS, AAC. 399 Sheil, “The Christian Concept of Man,” Address to the Boy Scouts Conference, 1942, box 1, folder 28, BBJS, AAC. This understanding of the logical priority of man before the State was first articulated in Rerum Novarum where Pope Leo XIII says, “Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body.” Leo XIII also argued that the family precedes the State, saying, “Hence we have the family, the ‘society’ of a man's house - a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.” Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 5/15/1891, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum- novarum.html, #7 and 12. Quadragesimo Anno reaffirms the logical priority of the individual and the family in how it quotes Rerum Novarum, saying, “‘For man is older than the State,’ and also ‘domestic living together is prior both in thought and in fact to uniting into a polity.’” Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 5/15/1931, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo- anno.html, #49. 205 helping all men and women within its boundaries to achieve their happiness and well-being.

Thus, its associational subsidiary functions arise out of the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of the individuals of society.

The “positive sense” of associational subsidiarity was how Sheil understood the federal Full Employment Practice Committee, started in 1941. Intended to remove discrimination against African Americans in all war-related industries and government agencies, Sheil saw it as a means of the federal government to order society toward the common good. He said, “To make the FEPC permanent is a most hopeful portent for the future of American democracy…. It is an attempt through legislation to make the equality of all men more than a phrase in the Declaration of Independence. Its objective is to acknowledge man’s dignity by providing him with the means for his economic emancipation.”400 The state, therefore, would be assisting African Americans to ensure that the dignity of all Americans is protected through full and sufficient employment.

At the same time, Sheil account employed what the Compendium would come to call the “negative sense” of subsidiarity. Continuing from his sense of the helping function of the state in “The Christian Concept of Man,” Sheil argues:

These are the eternal verities upon which all right and just government must be founded and by which it must function. Wherever and whenever the State subordinates man and the family to the arbitrary dictates of power; wherever and whenever the State sets up the monstrous pretension that it alone is the source of right and that in consequence [individual] men and women have and can have no rights save those which they derive from the State, it ceases at once to be a just government and becomes an odious tyranny.401

Because the state is intended to help and assist the realization of the common good, there are limits placed on the use of its authority and power. When the state then oversteps the

400 Sheil, “Our Unfinished Business,” Address to Xavier, Apr. 8, 1943, box 1, folder 33, BBJS, AAC. 401 Sheil, “Christian Concept of Man,” Address to Boy Scouts Conference, Minnesota, 1942, box 1, folder 28, BBJS, AAC. 206 limits required by its helping function, in this case by asserting that it is the source of rights, it undermines its legitimacy and its just function. Thus, the state, because it is built to perform an associational subsidiary function, is limited in its functioning by the requirements and restraints of that function. If it exceeds its intended function of helping achieve the common good, and instead begins to infringe on the individual’s ability to participate in it, then it has officially gone beyond the bounds of subsidiarity and needs to reined in.

Sheil’s articulation of the function of the state follows the “negative” and the

“positive” senses of subsidiarity as presented in the Compendium. Further, as noted in Chapter

One, Sheil’s sense of the subsidiary function of the state also recognizes that the “negative sense” of subsidiarity is the result of the “positive sense” as it arises out of structural pluralism and the building up of the state from the citizens below.

Coming out of the Depression, Sheil also articulated the role of the economy and economic businesses in terms of the associational subsidiary function of higher associations.

Like the state, businesses existed to help society achieve the common good. To the extent that they performed that function, they were participating and fulfilling their democratic responsibilities. However, if they were focused on the individualist search for profit, then they too were failing to perform the associational subsidiary functions for which they were created.

Sheil believed that the economic crisis of the Depression and the social ills that attended it were the results of economic liberalism. Capitalism, especially what he called

“bourgeois liberalism,” had let society down by failing to live up to its democratic responsibilities. In his speech, “The Failure of the Liberals,” he makes the distinction between different types of liberalism. The type to be preferred, which asserts the Christian freedom and liberty of all individuals is an authentic liberalism. “Modern liberalism,” he

207 called the “bourgeois struggle for profit and power.” Finally, communism is a “leftist liberalism.” According to Sheil, modern liberalism and leftist liberalism failed primarily because they rejected God and failed to give God His proper place in all aspects of society.

Modern liberalism was especially problematic for America and was at the roots of the economic crises of the 1930s and 1940s. This is principally because modern liberalism is far too individualist, and fails to recognize its responsibility to the democratic brotherhood of society. Further, Sheil lamented that economic liberalism has rendered labor into a commodity, and “has removed the human person from the center of society and in his place has enshrined a system.”402 The result is that the state had become an instrument of the economy or at least its watchman to protect capital, and had failed to adequately perform its function of working for the common good of the democratic brotherhood.

Throughout the 1940s, Sheil’s approach to the economy and economic business was focused on how to expand American democracy, make economic liberalism and capitalism truly democratic and have them positively contribute to the realization of the common good.

In 1947, he reminded his listeners of the House Sub-Committee on Education and Labor,

“An economic system in a democracy must itself be democratic; it must aim at the economic welfare of all the people.”403 The problem, he indicated in 1943, was “Many of us forgot that even economic systems can never be completely autonomous; they, too, operate within the delicately balanced frame-work of society whose end and purpose is the common good of all.”404 Sheil’s goal then was to reassert that the economy and businesses have responsibilities to society. For this reason, “Business must develop a social consciousness and be aware of

402 Sheil, “Catholic Leadership and the Democratic Ideal,” To the Students of the Sheil School of Social Studies, Aug. 2, 1944, box 1, folder 44, BBJS, AAC. 403 Sheil, House Sub-Committee on Education and Labor, July 2, 1947, box 2, folder 37, BBJS, AAC. 404 Sheil, “Social Implications of Today,” Washington, DC, 1943, box 1, folder 42, BBJS, AAC. 208 its community responsibility. It must drop its bland disregard of its obligations. Industry does not exist in a vacuum; on the contrary, it has marked and often terrible influence upon all of us.”405 In the end, Sheil believed, “An economic system is good only insofar as it approaches the fulfillment of the purpose for which it exists: to provide men with the means to life.”406 Sheil’s sense of the economy and economic businesses was that they were responsible to society and that they have obligations to help society achieve the common good. Thus, Sheil believed that the economy and businesses were expected to perform an associational subsidiary function.

Within the context of the associational subsidiary functions of the state and the economy, Sheil located the role of labor unions to perform what I have called structural- pluralistic subsidiary functions. Labor unions were central to Sheil’s plan for expansion of

American democracy into the economic sphere. This is because, “labor is composed of common men. Labor knows what is close to the heart of the common man everywhere.”

Further, “Labor knows that organization is the most efficient and most enduring way of achieving these things. Labor knows, then, that for the future peace and for the extension of democracy, labor unions are an absolute necessity.” The labor union’s role is the organization of common men into a unified association, which would positively contribute to building up and expanding American democracy.407

Positive contribution to society is “more than having ‘some voice in government.”408

In the case of the labor union, it “must become more than an agency which arbitrates hours and wages; it must enter intimately into the economic well-springs of our life.”409 From such

405 Sheil, “America: An Emerging Democracy," Gary, IN, June 29, 1945, box 1, folder 59, BBJS, AAC. 406 Sheil, “The American Society,” Address at Xavier, Cincinnati, OH, April 8, 1945, box 1, folder 55, BBJS, AAC. 407 Ibid., 408 Sheil, Address to the Institute of Social Order, box 1, folder 51, BBJS, AAC. 409 Sheil, “Our Unfinished Business,” Xavier University, 1943, box 1, folder 33, BBJS, AAC. 209 a perspective, the union is more than an organization to participate in the free market exchange of labor for compensation. The union is the means of incorporating the wider elements of human life into the economic sphere. The union’s job then is to ensure that economic activity accounts for all aspects of life; economic activity is in fact the “well-spring of our lives.” Through this, unions would make economic activity truly “social” and order it toward the common good of society, not only workers’ economic good. Unions, therefore, perform a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function by integrating the social and economic spheres and by integrating individuals into the larger associations of society, particularly their businesses and industries. By integrating individuals and empowering them to participate, labor unions make economic activity truly social, democratic, and ordered toward the common good.

For Sheil, true democratic society was comprised by a plurality of associations that built up society and worked for the common good, and were organized by the principle of subsidiarity and the dual subsidiary functions. As he outlined the role of the state in such a society, he did along lines that correspond to what we have called associational subsidiarity and what the Compendium calls the “positive” and “negative sense” of subsidiarity. The economy and economic businesses also perform an associational function by working for the common good by providing to all men the means to life. Finally, Sheil’s explanation of the role of the union is representative of the structural-pluralistic function of lower associations. Whereas the state and the economy are responsible for helping lower associations and individuals achieve their own goals, the labor union’s function is to organize individuals into a unified community and to give them a voice in the government and economy. Thus, the helping function performed by the union is to be a place where members can organize and gain power to participate in higher levels of society. In these

210 ways, Sheil’s delineation of the organization and functions of the associations that make up society is an example of how subsidiarity functions within the American democratic context.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, Part II has shown that the center of Sheil’s account of American democracy is the attempt to reconcile a liberal appreciation of the individual with a Catholic sense of the social whole. To do so, he begins with the logical priority of the individual in the composition of society and the state. He then bonds society together through the individual’s shared sense of equality with, and responsibility for and to, their democratic brothers. Through responsibility, Sheil ties the mass of liberal individuals into a unified, democratic “people” ordered toward the common good of all. In this way, Sheil was able to create an intellectual space that enabled Catholic social ethics to engage with and support

American democratic society. Central to the work of creating, structuring, and maintaining such a society was subsidiarity and associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions. Because society was made up of individuals and associations working for the common good, it was necessary for all to perform their subsidiary function to realize their own good and the common good. As Sheil turned to advocating for Alinsky’s Peoples’

Organization and community organizing, central to his evaluation was the way in which the

BYNC performed these very same subsidiary functions.

Part III. ‘Making Democracy Work”: An American Catholic Subsidiarity.

In his desire to perfect American democratic society, Sheil supported a variety of organizations, programs and services in the Chicago area. One was Alinsky’s community organizing. This part will examine how Sheil’s articulation of the functions of Alinsky’s

BYNC and Peoples’ Organization corresponds to the principle of subsidiarity, associational subsidiary function, and structural-pluralistic subsidiary function.

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During this period, Sheil’s support of the BYNC and Peoples’ Organization provides an insight into the negotiation between American democratic society and Catholic social thought and papal teaching. Specifically, Sheil’s discussion of the BYNC and the Peoples’

Organization, following Alinsky’s own presentation of it in Reveille for Radicals, shows that they perform both associational subsidiarity by directing the individuals of the community and their native associations toward their common good and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity by orienting and empowering individuals through the creation of a wholly novel form of association in the Peoples’ Organization itself. In this way, Sheil uses the space he created by his negotiation between American democracy and Catholic social thought to locate the subsidiary functions of the BYNC and Peoples’ Organization.

Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Sheil collaborated with Alinsky in his efforts with the BYNC and the IAF. Sheil’s CYO provided funding to Alinsky’s IAF, and more importantly Sheil used his standing as a bishop of the Catholic Church to support the BYNC and Alinksy’s community organizing. For Sheil, the BYNC and People’s Organization were premier examples of the kind of new association necessary for the expansion of American democracy. Sheil’s various speeches show that his sense of the functions of the BYNC and

People’s Organizations correspond directly to the associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of intermediate associations.

In early 1943, Sheil addressed the Annual Community Congress of the Back of the

Yards Neighborhood Council. Sheil commended the BYNC as a critical organization for

American democracy. In the address, Sheil characterized the work of the BYNC in ways that correspond to the dual trajectories of subsidiarity. As a higher association above the individuals and local associations within a community, part of the BYNC’s associational subsidiary function was to guide the people of the community to develop a common sense

212 of the good, and guide and direct their power toward “a unity of purpose.”410 As he said later, "This organization is founded for the purpose of uniting all of the organizations within that community...in order to promote the welfare of all residents...; so that they may all have the opportunity to find health, happiness and security through the democratic way of life."411

In this way, the BYNC was performing an associational subsidiary function.

Sheil pointed to the gathering of power as a principle function of the BYNC. In the speech he said,

That power is here unified and projected for definite commendable purposes – purposes that must be achieved in order that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness may become a reality. In your understanding of the dignity of man and of the essential rightness of right, you are not over-awed by any powerful opposition, and I am sure you never will be…Yours is a strength superior to them all because your strength is derived from great truths, great truths that you believe in and have made a part of your very lives.412

In this way, the BYNC was an organization that embodied and enacted to support their

“understanding of the dignity of man and of the essential rightness of right. The BYNC as an association gathered together all the power and strength of the community and projected them into higher levels of society. Thus, the BYNC performs the associational subsidiary function of gathering and directing the community’s resources and members towards the common good.

This function is also present in Sheil’s discussion of the BYNC’s relationship to its

“powerful opposition.” For Sheil, the BYNC was a means of integrating its membership into the larger social, political, and economic landscapes surrounding them. The BYNC joined community members together and directed them beyond their own neighborhood borders

410 Sheil, “Invocation,” Address before the Annual Community Congress of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, January 27, 1943, BBJS, box 1, folder 31, AAC. 411 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work,” Speech given to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, box 2, folder 22, BBJS, AAC. 412 Sheil, “Invocation,” Address before the Annual Community Congress of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, January 27, 1943, box 1, folder 31, BBJS, AAC. 213 to the broader and higher contexts surrounding them. In doing so, it also empowered them to act upwards to the larger social, political and economic issues surrounding them. This function, however, was principally the organizations relationship to the individuals and lower associations that participated in it. In that way, it was performing the associational subsidiary function of aiding, guiding and directing individuals and lower associations towards the common good of the group.

Sheil’s focus on “power” as representative of the function of the BYNC indicates the significance of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of individuals and lower associations. At the same time, it also draws attention to the difficulty of resolving the conflict between Alinsky’s pragmatic power and Catholic social doctrine’s moral and natural law conception of authority. 413 Specifically, Alinsky says, “the function of a People’s Organization is similar to that of any other kind of organization, which is to become so strong, so powerful, that it can achieve its ends.”414 Further, within the organization, the people come to determine a “common agreement” on their response to the social ills facing their community. That, Alinsky says, “is the people’s program.” After that, “Then the other function of organization becomes important: the use of power in order to fulfill the program.”415 Finally, Alinsky argues, “The people themselves will solve each problem that will arise out of a changing world. They will if they, the people, have the

413 Specifically, it is helpful to recall Leo XIII’s account of both structural pluralism and the natural law argument for the internal authority of the family in Rerum Novarum. There Leo XIII states, “A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, "at least equal rights"; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. Rerum Novarum, #13, italics added. Thus, Leo argues on behalf of the distinct existence of the family as its own society, with its own authority, which is intended to be used in order to fulfill its own distinct purpose, i.e. “the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty.” 414 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, (NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 53. 415 Ibid., 54. 214 opportunity and power to make and enforce the decision instead of seeing that power vested in just a few.”416 Thus, “power” in Alinsky’s conception is the ability for a community to determine, choose, and enact the means of realizing their own determined goals. It is not, however, based on a moral sense of the good or natural law, both of which are the grounds for authority in Catholic social doctrine.

Sheil’s use and account of power follows Alinsky’s and assumes the logical priority of the individual within his sense of American democracy and social action, but roots power in a Catholic sense of individual dignity. In Sheil’s articulation, “power” originates from the individual and their dignity. He said, “Here in the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council is recognized the worth and dignity of man and the power that is an integral part of that dignity.”417 For Sheil, the individual’s dignity is the origin of the individual’s rights and the individual’s power. The individual’s dignity, therefore, implies their power to do what you have the moral right to do, and what you have morally determined is the right thing to do.

As noted in Chapter One, structural-pluralistic subsidiarity is premised on the idea that associations have their own being, purpose, rights and freedom independent of state sanction, as a result of their distinct nature. Sheil’s account of the pluralistic collectivity of a democratic society supported this notion. Arising as they do from the individual’s or association’s nature, these characteristics naturally lead to the necessity of an association’s internal authority.418 For Sheil, coming out of American liberal democratic tradition, “power” is the ability of individuals and associations or communities to exercise authority over themselves in order to realize their own freely determined good, and to positively contribute

416 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, 55. 417 Sheil, “Invocation,” Address before the Annual Community Congress of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, January 27, 1943, box 1, folder 31, BBJS, AAC.

215 to the common good of society freely and of their own initiative. For Sheil, an individual’s or association’s natural being and dignity require the authority to freely determine and fulfill their own purpose. Power, therefore, becomes the means for the individual and the association to act on their authority to pursue their purpose and moral good.

The structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of the BYNC and Peoples’

Organization was more developed in a later Sheil speech titled, "Making Democracy

Work."419 Given in October, 1946, months after the January publication of Reveille for

Radicals, and Alinsky’s own lecture on the book to the Sheil School Forum, the speech reflected Alinsky’s ideas like “people’s organizations,” and “power,” and argued for Alinsky’s program as a means of expanding American democracy. Central to this project’s concerns are the middle section in which Sheil explains the need and function of the People’s

Organization, and the final section in which he outlines the actually functioning of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. In the process, Sheil not only repeats Alinsky’s own presentation of the organizations, he does so within his own integration of American democracy and Catholic social thought.

Like power indicated about the priority of the individual in 1943, Sheil’s sense of the

Peoples’ Organization started with the liberal idea that society and democracy are built up by the people; from the individual to the social whole. He argued that Americans "can offer to a tired and weary world a living, pulsating dynamic democracy; a society deliberately chosen and freely accepted by the people who compose it." Within such a framework, society and its government arise out of the people, "for the people are society." In a statement that looks as though it was taken directly from Reveille, Sheil argues that many of the solutions offered to

419 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work,” Speech given to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, box 2, folder 22, BBJS, AAC. Sheil gave this speech roughly three months after he fired George Drury and changed the educational approach of the Sheil School. 216 cure the world of its ills "are ready-made solutions which outline the structure of society- but completely ignore the substance of society, namely, the people."420

As a result, it was necessary for the people to participate. “Democracy, as a vibrant force, depends upon an active, participating citizenry,” he said. Further, “if democracy is to be really alive, everyone has to take part in it.”421 This participation is summed up in his conclusion to the speech, where he says:

If our democratic way of life is to survive in the welter of ideologies that confuse the world today, it is imperative that we, the people, regard ourselves as an integral part of America. We must all feel, believe, and know that our voices count, in making democracy work. If the reign of justice is to come into the world, it will come not alone through the actions of the highly placed; but more, through the daily actions of ordinary men and women, like those Back of the Yards, enjoying the fruits of shared justice and shared liberty.422

The recognition that “the people” are integral to the nation is an assertion that democracy only truly works when there is the bottom-up participation of individual citizens all the way up to the national scale of society. This means that it is not only the big decisions of “highly placed” individuals, but the minor actions of the “common” people in everyday life.

The problem, however, is that “It is increasingly apparent that many Americans have gone on strike and are refusing to work at the job of being a citizen.” The result is “we have an imperfect, faltering democracy because we are imperfect, faltering citizens.” According to

Sheil, however, the reason for this strike on citizenship is “because most of us, today, have no way of participating in the broad stream of American life.” This means that, “The vast majority of our people are cut off from an active participation in our democratic way of life.”423

420 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” This same idea is presented in Reveille for Radicals. There Alinsky argues, “It is significant and tragic that almost every one of these proposed plans and alleged solutions deals with the structure of society, but none concerns the substance itself – the people.” Reveille for Radicals, 40. 421 Ibid. 422 Ibid. 423 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” 217

The reason for this lack of opportunity is because of the failure of American society to integrate and empower the institutions and organizations that represent all citizens. He argued, “What the people need is an opportunity to express themselves.” This, however, is not by simply empowering individuals. Instead, “We need to unite the people by uniting all of the institutions and agencies now representing people.” Like Alinsky, Sheil does not presume the direct participation of every individual. Instead, he argues it is necessary to integrate citizens through their natural organizations. “And if we are to make our democracy dynamic, we need people's organizations: Organizations which include all of the people and all of the many groups to which they give their allegiance." Thus, the means of organizing individuals is through both their individual participation in social groups and by the organization of those "many groups to which they give their allegiance." Participation, therefore, can be direct, but it is most often mediated by intermediate associations that integrate the individual into higher levels of society. The problem, however, is a lack of the very kinds of groups through which Americans could participate and a disconnection between the lower level, smaller associations of peoples’ local communities and higher, larger associations that organize society. 424

In both Sheil’s and Alinsky’s experience the social deterioration of the urban jungle during the Depression tended to atomize and isolate city-dwellers from their surrounding neighborhoods and communities. As Lizbeth Cohen points out, the result was for higher associations, including corporations and political machines, to fill the vacuum. Social collapse left communities susceptible to associations occupying levels in society, i.e. economic corporations, Chicago’s Democratic bosses and political machine, and the federal governments New Deal programs.

424 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” 218

For Sheil and Alinsky, this social collapse was particularly significant because it disabled the participation of those individuals and communities cut off at the lowest levels of society. Sheil argued that, "There are numerous organizations that speak effectively for labor, for business, and for the farmers.” But, while these economic interests are represented at the decision-making levels of society, “such groups do not include more than 30 million

Americans. This leaves over one hundred million who have no effective way of letting the nation know what they think, how they feel, or what they desire."425 Because many do not participate in these more conventional, economic organizations, they are disabled from participating in the larger national determination of the common good and the means to attaining it. By not being able to express themselves, individuals and communities are not able to contribute positively to determining these concerns. Thus, "We need to unite the people by uniting all of the institutions and agencies now representing the people."426 By unifying all of these associations, empowering them to mediate the participation of individual citizens and their local communities, it is possible to rebuild and expand American democracy.

A People's Organization then is a clearinghouse of the people's sentiments and is a means of integrating isolated individuals into a unified community through organizing the organizations that comprise and compose their communal life. He said,

By peoples’ organizations, I mean those groups through which the people express their hopes and opinions, their feelings and their decisions. I mean, above all, organizations which are really of the people, by the people and for the people; not just ‘fronts’ for some particular group with a special ax to grind. They are the organizations through which the people can personally and intimately enter into the democratic way of life.427

425 Ibid. 426 Ibid. 427 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” 219

In this way, the Peoples’ Organization does not only perform the downward associational functions of unifying and directing the people of a community towards the common good of the group, most importantly it serves as their means of participating in the larger society beyond their local community or native organizations. The people express themselves and enter into higher levels of society through them.

In these ways, a Peoples’ Organization performs an important structural-pluralistic function. A Peoples’ Organization does not only tell the members of a community what they should or should not do. It does not only provide help or direction. A Peoples’ Organization is a means by which a community as a whole can determine its own good and contribute to the larger social determination of the good. A Peoples’ Organization does not only perform the associational subsidiary function of directing and guiding, it is a means of giving the people of a community a voice and means of participation in the larger context. This is especially visible in Sheil’s discussion of the BYNC itself; its history and its practical functions.

In the last half of the speech, shows some specific ways in which the BYNC itself, as a Peoples’ Organization, performed not only associational subsidiary functions, but more importantly structural-pluralistic functions. Sheil tells the story of the origin and function of the BYNC itself as a response to the Depression. In it, Sheil tells the story of the realization of a community solidarity based on interdependence ordered toward a shared sense of the common good. Through participation in the BYNC, the people of the neighborhood came to realize their solidarity with one another and work for the good of the social whole. At the same time, the BYNC was not only a local organization dealing with local issues.

Participation in the BYNC also meant participation in the larger issues of the nation through the mediation of the Council. Thus, though the BYNC functioned very much like a higher

220 level association to direct and guide the community, it served the structural-pluralistic function of mediation the participation of the individuals, and their native, local associations in the higher levels of the national society.

In the course of the Depression, Sheil said, the people of the Back of the Yards had a realization that they could not simply rely on outside or higher associations to solve their problems for them. Cut off as they were from the higher levels of society, and as disconnected as the higher associations were from them, they would have to deal with their community’s issues on their own. Sheil tells the story, “Inumerable agencies had come in from the outside, in an unending stream, to lead these people out of the depths of misery.”

But those well-meaning agencies could not deal with all the problems of the community. So,

“In the Back of the Yards during the ravages of the last depression, a strong conviction grew among the people that they themselves, through their organizations and institutions, must deal with the chronic problems of disease, delinquency, poor housing, and unemployment.”

What the people had realized was that while higher associations might have a responsibility to help them in resolving their own issues, it was also their responsibility to participate and contribute to the process as well. More specific to the Back of the Yards, they not only realized they had to participate in the process, but that they were the only ones able to adequately respond to the issues of their community.

The realization that they had to address their problems also led to growing sense of interdependence and solidarity within the community. “Fed up with partial and failing solutions of existing agencies, the people themselves came together and formed the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council.” In the early years, the people began to realize their shared interdependence. “Many of the council members cheerfully admit that the originally joined in order to further their own individual objectives,” he said. But, “They soon

221 discovered, however, that they would achieve none of their own purposes unless they were willing to work for the well-being of the entire neighborhood.” The result of this realization, was a “unity of purpose,” and a “community solidarity,” which “rests upon the clear recognition that to a large extent they all stand or fall together.”428

Sheil’s sense that the work of the BYNC went beyond helping individuals and local organizations to unify and work for the common good of their neighborhood points to its structural-pluralistic subsidiary function. This is visible in how it worked to integrate the individuals and local organizations into the national level of society. He said,

But the people of the Back of Yards are not interested in themselves alone. They are increasingly concerned with the problems of the state and of the nation. They know that their problems are not peculiar to them alone; that these problems are produced by forces which pervade all society. They keep close check on the policies of their political representatives. There is a lively interest in national affairs. The people realize that what happens in Back of the Yards is only a reflection of larger issues throughout the country.429

Through their participation in the Back of the Yards that they recognized the solidarity and common good that binds their own local community together. It also allowed them to see how their common good is interdependent with the larger common good of the nation as a whole. Thus, though its proximate goal is to unify the individuals and associations of the local community to work for their own common good, the BYNC also functions to orient the local community to the larger, higher levels of the national society.

This awareness of larger levels of society is not the furthest extent of the Council’s integration of its members. It not only gives them awareness of issues beyond their community and a sense of solidarity with the nation, it also serves as the means of working to affect those issues and levels of society. As he says,

And the people, through their council, work for the betterment of the nation, and of

428 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” 429 Ibid. 222

themselves. Thus the feeling of belonging and the knowledge that they do count are the most effective in ridding them of that modern disease of loneliness and anonymity. They no longer find themselves isolated from the life of the community and of the nation. The good of the nation and the preservation of our democratic way of life are not now meaningless phrases to them, but living, shared realities….Thus the Back of the yards Neighborhood Council has restored to the people the democratic way of life in modern industrial society.430

The Council therefore does not merely work to make the people aware of the national common good, but it also serves as the means of actually participating at those higher levels.

The BYNC, therefore, performs the associational subsidiary function of knowing and making known the common good of the community and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of serving as a location of integrating the local community and mediating their participation in the larger society.

In this way, Sheil’s explanation of the great significance of the BYNC is focused on how it performs structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. As an intermediate association, it performs both the associational subsidiary function of helping the local community to determine and work for their own common good, and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of both empowering them to participate in the larger society above them and serving as the means for that participation.

In conclusion, subsidiarity and its dual dimensions are central to Sheil’s appreciation of the role and function of the Peoples’ Organization and the BYNC. For both Sheil and

Alinsky, it is presumed that democratic society is rooted in the liberal individual actively participating in society. Through that participation, the individual comes to learn of their interdependence and solidarity with others of their community and the importance of working for their private good and the common good of their community. It is in participating, therefore, that the liberal individual comes to be oriented by solidarity toward

430 Sheil, “Making Democracy Work.” 223 the common good.

The centrality of participation for democratic life, then, points to the necessity of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and structural-pluralistic subsidiary function. For the majority of American citizens, however, direct participation in the decision-making and functions of national-level associations and the state, is often impossible on an individual basis. Instead, as noted above, individuals at the lowest levels of society often require representation by their native associations and leaders at those higher levels of society.

Further, their participation at higher levels is best mediated by their local organizations. The problem, however, is that with the economic and social collapse of the Depression, the intermediate organizations that could mediate between local individuals and associations and the higher levels of society had been lost and that social space had been absorbed by even higher, sometimes national level, associations. The role of the Peoples’ Organization, therefore, was to recreate that social space and occupy it. By doing so, the Peoples’

Organization was adding to the plurality of social structures and the structural complexity of society, and serving as a means of mediating between the local and higher levels of society.

The significance of the Peoples’ Organization and the BYNC, therefore, are in how they represent a distinctly American form of subsidiarity as they perform associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions. For Sheil, the presupposed priority of the participation of the liberal individual of American democratic society emphasizes the importance of the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of intermediate associations. The

Peoples’ Organization serves as a means for the people of a community to express themselves and their sense of the local and common good to the higher levels of society. It also serves as the way for local individuals to actively participate in the determination and realization of the common good by mediating and representing them in those higher levels.

224

Only by this kind of prior participation by the people can the nation and the State come to know and then make known the common good. In this way, Sheil and Alinsky accounted for a distinctly American form of subsidiarity that places priority on the liberal individual and emphasizes the deep significance of the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

Conclusion.

In this chapter, I have argued that Sheil’s efforts during the 1940’s and 1950’s for the expansion of American democratic society was due in part by the influence of Saul Alinsky.

Further, as Sheil turned to the work of social education, Alinsky’s influence is even more noticeable. Because of this influence, Sheil’s sense of American democracy and the means of perfecting and expanding it were influenced by Alinsky as well.

As Sheil attempted to develop a Catholic account of American democracy, his import of Christian theology and Catholic social ethics through the American democratic tradition resulted in a social vision that presupposed the logical priority of the liberal individual. From that starting point, he worked to orient the individual towards the common good of the social whole through a solidarity built on shared equality and co-responsibility.

The result is a sense of American democratic society that is structured by the principle of subsidiarity with an important emphasis on the structural-pluralistic dimension.

Within that social vision, Sheil’s appreciation of Saul Alinsky’s Peoples’ Organization was built upon the subsidiary functions that the organizations performed. Specifically, the

Peoples Organization and the BYNC helped “make democracy work” by not only directing individuals towards the common good of the nation, but by mediating their participation in the local and national levels of society. Thus, because Sheil’s social vision starts with the logical priority of the individual, the work of supporting and building American democracy is through the function of participation. The greatest value for intermediate associations,

225 therefore, is not in how they perform the associational subsidiary function of aiding, directing, and guiding. Rather, they have the greatest value in how they enable, empower, and mediate the participation of the individuals and lower associations that give them their substance.

This accounting of the functions of the BYNC and Peoples’ Organization are within the parameters of subsidiarity as it was discussed in Chapter One and is a distinctly American liberally-inflected form of it. Specifically, like the Catholic origins of the principle, Alinsky and Sheil maintain the idea that subsidiarity is premised on the idea that all social activities are intended and ordered to have a “helping” subsidiary function. This helping function is principally for achieving the common good of the community. At the same time, higher associations performing this helping function must respect the limits of the internal authority and integrity of the individuals and lower associations over which it has authority. Further, those individuals and lower associations perform their own helping function by participating and contributing to the determination of the common good and its realization. Because of this, higher associations, especially the state have the responsibility to attend to the structural pluralism of the community and to support it by creating and fostering new associations to represent and mediate the participation of lower associations and individuals.

These subsidiary functions, of supporting structural pluralism, and aiding and facilitating participation, will be central to the examination of the Catholic Campaign for

Human Development in the next chapter. Following this chapter’s focus on the mediation between Catholic social thought and American democratic society and its resulting emphasis on structural pluralism and subsidiary participation, Chapter Five will argue that the CCHD follows in line as a distinctly American form of Catholic subsidiarity. Coming as it does out

226 of the collaboration between Bishop Sheil and Saul Alinsky, it is representative of what the principle of subsidiarity would look like in the American context.

227

CHAPTER V

SUBSIDIARITY IN AMERICA:

THE CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND

THE LEGACY OF BISHOP BERNARD JAMES SHEIL

Introduction.

The goal of this chapter is to show what is necessary for an American interpretation of Catholic subsidiarity. I will argue that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is a result of the intellectual and social ethical space Bishop Sheil negotiated between Catholic social teaching and Saul Alinsky’s community organizing, which was then occupied by the priest-organizers who created the CCHD’s framework and early programs. As such, it is a full and complete representation of an American form of Catholic subsidiarity.

As Chapter Four showed shown, American liberal democracy shaped Bishop Sheil’s

Catholic subsidiary understanding of the structure of society by emphasizing the logical priority of the individual. Bishop Sheil’s social vision took on that liberal inflection because he was trying to create a space in American democratic culture for Catholic social teaching.

This chapter will examine the opposite side of the relationship. It will focus on the effects

Catholic subsidiarity would have on American democratic society because of subsidiarity’s greater appreciation for and development of structural pluralism, its articulation and support for the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of individuals and lower associations, and its locating the associational subsidiary functions of the state and higher associations within that constellation.

228

This chapter will comprise three main parts. The first part will discuss how the space

Bishops Sheil created between Catholic social teaching and Alinsky-style community organizing, and then abandoned, was later occupied by Msgr. Jack Egan and other Catholic priests. Central to this negotiation was a shared social vision represented by Bishop Sheil’s and the priest-organizers appreciation of Alinsky’s idea of “power.” Just as Bishop Sheil’s appreciation of Alinsky’s ideas about power highlighted a shared subsidiary sense of the structuring of society, so too does the inclusion of power language in the thought of the priest-organizers and their framing of the CCHD include a subsidiary social vision between them and Alinsky. Thus, the negotiation begun by Bishop Sheil was continued by Msgr.

Egan and his generation of priest-organizers, and led to the founding of the CCHD. By adding Sheil’s efforts treated in Chapter Four to the historical narrative of the development of the CCHD, one can see the way in which a subsidiary sense of society has been a critical element of the American Catholic Church’s engagement with Saul Alinsky’s community organizing. When looking at those who had more direct influence on the shape of the

CCHD, subsidiarity’s role becomes even clearer.

Part Two will examine Lew Daly’s critique of the George W. Bush Administration’s sense of compassionate conservatism and its creation of the Office of Faith-Based and

Community Initiatives (FBCI) as attempts at carrying Catholic subsidiarity into the American context. Doing so, Part Two will be broken into two sections. Section A will look at how

Daly argues that compassionate conservatism and the FBCI represent a valid but incomplete attempt to carry out a subsidiary social vision within the American political context. This is because it fails to fully recognize and realize the furthest extent of structural pluralism required by subsidiarity. Section B will then look at what Daly’s analysis says about what

Catholic subsidiarity would demand of the American context. It will argue that incorporating

229 the principle of subsidiarity into the American context demands a much greater appreciation of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic dimension of the principle. The need to recognize greater pluralism then would reorient the proper functions of the various associations that build up society, including economic corporations and the state. Within the structural pluralism of Catholic subsidiarity, the state would have to be more impowered to regulate economic corporations in order to balance their power with that of social groups and organizations. It would also have to be thoroughly involved in the work of coordinating and guiding the many associations within society toward the common good, as well as fostering and supporting new associations and social groups. These characteristics will then be important for understanding how the CCHD, as a result of Bishop Sheil’s initial negotiation with Alinsky-style community organizing, is a more complete fulfillment of

Catholic subsidiarity in the American context.

Part Three will then focus on the work and programs of the CCHD. An examination of its materials, the types of projects it funds, and its relationship to those organizations will show the presence of both structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and subsidiarity of associations.

This is evident in the CCHD’s work as a higher subsidiary association providing aid in various ways to grant awardees. Structural-pluralistic subsidiarity is even more significant and is embodied in the Community Development and Economic Development projects supported and funded by the CCHD. These projects exemplify the important subsidiary work that lower associations perform by both building up the social whole and mediating the participation of individuals and lower associations. By fostering such organizations and supporting community leadership within them, the CCHD works for a more complicated and graduated of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of individuals and lower associations. In light of the demands of subsidiarity in the American

230 context outlined in Part Two, these characteristics of the CCHD make it a far more complete form of subsidiarity in the American context; it being more faithful to the demands of Catholic subsidiarity and attending to the liberal contours of American democratic tradition as a result of Bishop Sheil’s negotiation with Saul Alinsky’s community organizing..

In the end, the efforts by Alinsky, Bishop Sheil, the organizer priests of the 1950’s and 1960’s, and the CCHD, show the need for the recognition and expansion of decision- making power and authority beyond the state, individuals, and economic corporations by the creation of a plurality of associations capable of mediating the will of the people and empowering them to participate in the larger social whole. They also show the need for the state as the highest temporal association within the nation to take on the work of fostering structural pluralism, coordinating the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of lower associations, and properly orienting the relationships between those associations toward justice and the common good.

Part I. From Sheil to the CHD: Institutionalizing Community Organizing in

American Catholicism.

This part will draw on the work of Lawrence J. Engel to complete the historical narrative presented in Chapters Two through Four. Engel’s narrative shows the Catholic engagement with Saul Alinsky, which was begun by Bishop Sheil in the late 1930’s, was carried on by a succession of priest-organizers associated with or trained by Alinsky himself from the mid-1950’s until the founding of the Bishops’ War on Poverty in 1969. At the same time that Sheil broke ties with Alinsky and retired from his public ministry, Mgsr. Jack Egan and others took up community organizing as an important tool in American Catholic social action and eventually institutionalized it in the American Catholic Church through the continuing work of the CCHD. Central to the intellectual negotiations by the early

231 generation of preist-organizers between Catholic social teaching and Alinsky-style community organizing was Alinsky’s concept of “power” and their various interpretations of it as an important means to structural change in the American context.

Engel locates the Catholic engagement with Saul Alinsky in the historical and social context of the American Catholic process of “acculturation,” which took place during the social upheaval of the 1960’s. As was already shown, the process had begun much earlier as

Mundelein and Sheil sought “to give the spirit of America its full place in the spirit of the

Church, and to give the spirit of the Church its full place in the spirit of America.”431 “At the end of this decade,” Engel states “the CHD was launched in November 1969.”432 “The moment,” he says, “called forth a new acculturated identity, as both U.S. and Catholic, and a new way of doing theology. It was either a time, as Gleason argued, of ‘identity crisis,’ that contained fundamental contradictions and problems or, as Dolan viewed it, a time that offered an opportunity for a ‘new Catholicism’ in America.”433 The foundation of the CCHD can be viewed within this larger context of the Catholic engagement with American democratic culture.

Engel argues that the story leading to the founding of the CCHD began with Msgr.

Jack Egan, “Alinsky’s friend and priest protégé” who was “at the head of the movement of the U.S. Catholic Church into community-organizing.”434 According to Engel, their connection was made possible through a letter from Jacques Maritain referring Egan to

Alinsky.435

431 Sheil, “America’s Catholics and Europe’s War,” Oct 2, 1939, box 1, folder 6, BBJS, AAC. 432 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” Theological Studies, no. 59, (1998), 641. 433 Ibid. 434 Ibid., 646. 435 Ibid. 232

At the same time, Alinsky and Egan were connected by Sheil and the Sheil School.

As Frisbie quotes Nina Polcyn, former assistant director of the Sheil School of Social Studies and student of both Dorothy Day and Catherine de Hueck, saying that Egan was “already a rising star, giving lectures on the social encyclicals at the Sheil School.”436 During the same term in 1945 that Alinsky gave a lecture as part of the premier “Sheil School Forum,” which

Sheil used to give his own big addresses, Egan was a guest lecturer for Polcyn on the issue of

“Labor,” covering the social papal encyclicals.437 In 1948, Egan gave a series of lectures and discussions on “Christian Marriage” as the Director of the Cana Conference of Chicago.438

By 1953, Egan was giving his own Sheil School Forum lecture on “The Task of a Mature

Laity.”439 So, by the time Alinsky and Egan came to work closely in community organizing, they already had the shared experience of working in the intellectual space that mediated between Catholicism and American democratic society that Sheil created in the Sheil School of Social Studies. Thus, even if Sheil did not make the introductions between Egan and

Alinsky, he did the work of making their shared efforts possible.

That being said, the story of the incorporation of Alinsky’s community organizing as an essential tool in American Catholic social action certainly begins with Egan. As Margery

Frisbie notes, Sheil had “earlier been a financial supporter of Alinsky’s initiatives. Now

Cardinal Stritch was moving into that role through the agency of Jack Egan. Stritch put up the money; Egan, the life.”440 Engel further explains the differences between Sheil’s and

Egan’s collaboration with Alinsky. He says:

Like Bishop Sheil in the Back of the Yards 20 years earlier, Egan gave community- organizing a Catholic mantle of credibility, accessed funds, motivated people, and

436 Frisbie, An Alley in Chicago: The Ministry of a City Priest, (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1991), 35. 437 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Third Term, Feb. 5 – March 23, 1945,” CCRD, box 8, folder 2, AUND. 438 Sheil School of Social Studies, “Fall Bulletin 1948, Vol VII, no. 1,” CCRD, box 8, folder 6, AUND. 439 Sheil School Social Studies, “Announcement of Courses, Fall, 1953,” CCRD, box 8, folder 11, AUND. 440 Frisbie, An Alley in Chicago: The Ministry of a City Priest, 77 – 78. 233

articulated the theological premises for church involvement in community organization. There was significant difference between the two. Unlike Sheil, Egan held a full-time archdiocesan position devoted exclusively to community organization, the first of its kind in the U.S. Catholic Church. Egan was the first person to develop community-organizing as an official mission and function of diocesan life.441

Though he had been the one to bring Alinsky’s community organizing into the Catholic fold,

Sheil had also mostly kept Alinsky to himself. At least in regards to the Chicago

Archdiocese’s relationship with Alinsky, Sheil was the sole go-between. He was also the one in charge of the financial relationship. After Sheil stepped away from the CYO he also gave up his singular relationship with Alinsky. Stritch assumed the financial role while Egan worked to further incorporate community organizing as a central and essential tool in

American Catholic social action. For Sheil, community organizing was a social movement that the Church could support and participate in but remain outside of and separate from.

For Egan it was a premier means for Catholics to change the structures of society that required a complete commitment and integration into the Church.

Because of this, Egan represents a shift in the American Catholic Church’s relationship with Alinsky. Where Sheil had been patron, Egan was a student. Where Sheil had created the space for interaction between Alinsky and Catholic social doctrine, Egan embraced community organizing and incorporated it as a major tool in Catholic social action. Sheil’s working with Alinsky, provided an established precedent that supported later

Catholic collaboration with Alinsky. Following Egan’s work with Alinsky, more Catholic priests and nuns were trained by the Industrial Areas Foundation. Their work dispersed

Alinsky-style community organizing further into the field of Catholic social action and became a central tool among urban Catholics who sought structural social change to

441 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 646 – 647. 234 empower the poor and marginalized. This generation of priests continued Sheil’s negotiation between Catholic social doctrine and community organizing. Fifteen years after Sheil broke from Alinsky, these priests institutionalized community organizing in the American Catholic

Church as a major means of structural change.

Egan, as “Alinsky’s first priest-intern,” soon set up the Office of Urban Affairs, to deal with urban issues.442 The Office also helped to funnel Archdiocesan support to

Alinsky’s Chicago-based community organizations. Along with Cardinals Stritch and Meyer,

Egan worked to make community organizing an official institutional program within the

Chicago Archdiocese. Rather than relying on Sheil’s haphazard help, this new arrangement provided Alinsky with greater and more stable financial support and a greater credibility both in the public and among Catholics.

Following his arrival in Chicago, Cardinal John Cody discontinued the Office and left Egan without a position within the Archdiocese. Eventually he was invited to the

University of Notre Dame by its President, Theodore Hesburgh. Under Hesburgh’s patronage, “Egan built a national Catholic network of socially active clergy, the Catholic

Committee on Urban Ministry.” As Engel points out, members of this organization who would become central to the history of the CHD included: “Monsignor Geno Baroni of the

Archdiocese of Washington’s Urban Office…Father Patrick Flood of the Archdiocese of

Milwaukee, active in race matters; Father David P. Finks of the Diocese of Rochester, active in Alinsky’s FIGHT organization…[and] Father John McCarthy who was assistant to labor priest George Higgins.”443

442 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 646 – 647. 443 Ibid., 648. 235

These organizer-priests continued to influence Catholic social programs around the country and, when the USCCB decided to formally address the issue of the national race crisis following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, several members of the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry sat on the Urban Task Force formed by the

USCC Social Action Department. “The task force included Jack Egan… [and] Baroni, Finks,

Flood, Boyle and McCarthy.” The next year in June, Geno Baroni, as chairman of the task force, recommended to the NCCB the possibility of a national “annual collection for human development in the United States.” As part of the program this collection “would be expended mainly at a diocesan level, for practical programs aimed at self-determination of all of our citizens.”444

For Engel, Baroni’s use of “self-determination” reflects the CCUM’s assumption of

Alinsky’s “power” language.445 Starting with Alinsky’s Rule for Radicals, Engel argues:

Alinsky would say, “we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people, to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation…the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance for live by values that give meaning to life.” McCarthy called this self- determination. Finks recognizes organizing for power. Baroni called them self-help organizations. Under whatever title, the common focus on power for the poor among these Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry priests was reflected three months later in the 1969 resolution to assist “organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power in their own communities.” Their recognition that the poor needed organized power sprang directly from their respect for Saul Alinsky.446

444 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 649 – 650. 445 Ibid., 654. 446 Ibid. Quoting Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 3, no other publication information is available. The quote is present in Rules for Radicals (NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 3. McCarthy’s use of self-determination supported by “Statement on Nation Race Crisis,” issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, April 25, 1968 in Pastoral Letters of the United States Catholic Bishops, ed. Hugh J. Nolan (Washington: USCC, 1983)3.154. Fink’s use of “organizing for power,” supported by Bishop John McCarthy, interview with Engel, August 26, 1995. Baroni’s use of “self-help organizations,” supported with Daring to Seek Justice, 13. “Resolution on the Crusade against Poverty,” in Daring to Seek Justice, ed. James Jennings (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1986), 69. 236

Engel’s statement indicates the ongoing influence of Alinsky’s social thought and methods for social action on those who drafted, or influenced the drafting of, the root documents that led to the CCHD.

Here then, the second generation of priests was mediating between Alinsky and

American Catholicism through a sense of the need of communities to have the necessary internal authority and integrity to address their own local concerns, realize their common good, and participate in the larger social context. Like Bishop Sheil, their use of Alinsky’s ideas about power shows that they were negotiating between Alinsky and Catholic social teaching through their shared sense of a society structured by structural-pluralistic and associational subsidiarity.

That August, Engel recounts, Baroni called together a number of CCUM and UTF members at Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s Combermeare, Ontario retreat house. There, they “put together the fundamentals for the Campaign for Human Development.”447 Again, including Baroni, McCarthy, Finks and Flood, the Combermeare group met out of their

“frustration that the Catholic Church did not seem to have any type of national mechanism by which to respond to the urban crisis.”448 For such a mechanism, the members turned to the most practical and effective method of social action that they had available to them:

Alinsky’s community organizing. “Flood and Finks had both been trained by Alinsky, as had

Egan.”449 Baroni, though he had never worked directly with him, knew Alinsky and his work and admired him.450

447 Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 650. Engel quoting Msgr. Jack Egan. 448 Ibid., 651. Engel Quoting Fr. John McCarthy. 449 Ibid., 651. 450 Ibid., 653. 237

Out of the Urban Task Force and through the Social Action Department, Baroni and Finks composed a proposal for what would become the CCHD for the November 1969

Bishops’ meeting. Following commentary from other bishops, Baroni and Bishop Francis

Mugavero of Brooklyn presented a resolution to the gathered Bishops’ Conference for a

“National Catholic Crusade Against Poverty.”451 By November, 1970, the Crusade was renamed the Campaign for Human Development. In 1998, it was renamed the Catholic

Campaign for Human Development, to reinforce the Catholic mission and character of the organization.452 The two central elements of the proposal included an educational initiative to the Catholic community to create awareness of the plight of the poor and the means to deal with it, and “a special poverty collection.”453 This collection was “designated to be used for organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power in their own communities.”454 Here, as before in Baroni’s proposal, Engel argues that the retention of “power” language reinforces the continuity of the Alinsky’s influence on the origins and formulation of the CHD. Thus, in the final resolution in support of the CHD, it remains clear that the central social theory used to address the social ills facing urban poor

(minority, ethnic and white) was dependent upon Alinsky. As stated by Finks, “the organization and selling to the bishops of the Campaign for Human Development – all were

451 Ibid., 657. 452 Jerry Filteau, “Bishops Defend Catholic Campaign for Human Development,” National Catholic Reporter, (Oct. 26, 2010), https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/bishops-defend-catholic-campaign-human- development. 453 Address of Father Geno Baroni in “The Minutes of the Seventh General Meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops,” November10 – 14, 1969 (Washington: USCC) 107. As sited in Engels, “Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 657. 454 Catholic Campaign for Human Development, “Resolution on The Crusade Against Poverty,” in Daring to Seek Justice, ed. James R. Jennings, (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1986), 69. As cited in Engel, “Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development,” 657. 238 an attempt to make available and find support for Alinsky’s approach to community organization.”455

The continued use of variations on Alinsky’s idea of “power” highlights how

American Catholic negotiations with Alinsky’s social vision can be understood in terms of subsidiarity. Alinsky’s power, as it was interpreted by these organizer priests leading up to the CCHD, indicates the correspondence between Alinsky’s social vision and what we have been calling structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. Looking forward to Lew Daly’s sense of

“social pluralism,” the organizer priests saw “power” as the “self-determination” and “self- help” that constitutes the “natural self-organized reality” and institutional integrity of social groups.456 Thus, the “power” that Alinsky-style community organizations pursue is not merely the amoral ability to exert their will arbitrarily over others. Power language, as used by

Alinsky and the priest-organizers that brought the CCHD into existence, and supported by

Bishop Sheil, means the ability to pursue their proper end.

In this case, the organizer-priests’ focus on and inclusion of Alinsky’s organizational goal of power, reflects the permeation of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity as a major character of their intentions for the organization that would become the CCHD. In supporting and funding “organized groups of white and minority poor” the CCHD worked to support the structural pluralism of society. By organizing a community “to develop economic strength and political power in their own communities” the CCHD supported and fostered the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of community associations to mediate between the community and other associations in society and to be the means of a community’s realization of its own common good and participation in higher levels of

455 Ibid., 660. Author quoting Finks, Oct. 28, 1994. 456 Lew Daly, God’s Economy, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 18. 239 society. Because of this connection, the institutionalization of Alinsky-style community organizing in the Catholic Church through the CCHD, and its being rooted in this understanding of power, is representative of a fuller appreciation of structural-pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity in a distinctly American way.

Conclusion

Engel’s history supports the argument that Alinsky’s social vision and program of social reorganization through community organizations was a fundamental part of the social vision embedded within the CCHD. The historical lead-up to the foundation of the CCHD highlights the pervasive presence of Alinsky and his ideas about “power” in the thought of those who formulated and drafted the proposals and documents that led to the founding of the CCHD. The influence of Alinsky on the drafters of the founding documents and their use of Alinsky-style power language shows that within the CCHD’s origin is a sense of the structural pluralism that composes society and how individuals and lower associations participate in the societal pursuit of the common good, which is inherent to Alinsky’s social vision and methods of social action. These notions (i.e. internal integrity and authority, and participation) are central to the structural-pluralistic dimension of subsidiarity and the overall meaning of the principle.

Part II. The Demands of Catholic Subsidiarity

While many have examined the wider dimensions of subsidiarity within the social vision of Catholic social teaching, very few have looked at the principle specifically in the

American context. To present, the work of Lew Daly remains the most substantive examination of the demands that subsidiarity makes on the American democratic context.

Daly’s work is especially helpful because it is seated within his examinations of the

“compassionate conservatism” of the George W. Bush candidacy and presidency, and

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President Bush’s creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (FBCI).

Daly’s work shows the flaws in the Bush Administration’s efforts and, most importantly, it shows the demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American democratic culture.457

Because of these elements, this chapter will examine Daly’s work before looking at the work of the CCHD and its programs. Daly’s explanation of the flaws of compassionate conservatism and the FBCI and the demands subsidiarity makes on American democratic culture highlight the ways in which the CCHD embodies the fuller dimensions of subsidiarity.

This part will, therefore, will be broken into two sections. The first section will examine Daly’s explanation of the ways in which compassionate conservatism and the FBCI both recognize the wider dimensions of subsidiarity while at the same they fail to fully realize the vast implications of those wider dimensions. This is especially important as it relates to the subsidiarity’s demands for the recognition of a vast, true plurality of social associations.

The second section will mine the work of Lew Daly to understand the demands that a Catholic subsidiarity makes on American society. Specifically, subsidiarity’s predication on a vast plurality of associations within and contributing to society requires a greater recognition not only of more associations within society, but the kinds of associations.

Further, subsidiarity’s call for a plurality of associations requires a change to the American

Constitution’s limited recognition of the reality, integrity, and autonomy of associations beyond individuals, government, and business corporations. Finally, Catholic subsidiarity’s dimension of associational subsidiarity assigns to the state very significant responsibilities in

457 Though this project is principally focused on how Daly’s critique of compassionate conservatism and the FBCI highlights important elements of subsidiarity in America, his work does provide a useful means of the use of the principle by American conservative politicians and political thinkers more broadly. Because compassionate conservatism does retain most of the major elements of contemporary American conservatism, Daly’s critique of how that ideology impacts policy and interpretation of subsidiarity would be effective to broader appropriations of the principle. 241 the form of regulating relationships between economic business corporations and social groups and associations.

These demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American society, economics and politics are very helpful for our examination of the Campaign for Human Development.

Because they are specific to America, rather than general explanations of the principal, they are especially helpful to see how the CCHD, as result of the negotiation between Catholic social teaching and American democratic and sociological community organizing, is both distinctly American and wholly Catholic. The final part of this chapter will use these demands to argue that the CCHD is one of the most complete representations of what

Catholic subsidiarity in the American context because it is an effort to support the vast plurality of associations within American society, to foster new types of associations to empower the poor, and to reorient the relationships between poor communities, economic corporations, and the government.

Section A. Compassionate Conservatism and the Office of Faith-Based and

Community Initiatives as “Still-born” American Subsidiarity.

Lew Daly’s books God and the Welfare State (2006) and God’s Economy (2009) offer the most sustained and significant considerations of the American implications of the principle of subsidiarity. As examinations of the George W. Bush Administration’s idea of compassionate conservatism, and their attempt to formalize it in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, they provide a full image of what is required for a full application of subsidiarity into the American social, political and economic landscapes.

Though a full presentation of compassionate conservatism and the FBCI are outside the scope of this project, some key elements and historical details are important to recognize how and why they are incomplete attempts at subsidiarity in America. First, compassionate

242 conservatism came to be associated with subsidiarity through the influence of John DiIulio, a Catholic criminologist, who tutored candidate Bush on subsidiarity and Catholic social teaching. DiIulio would eventually be the director of the FBCI. Second, compassionate conservatism was premised on the idea that poverty was rooted in the lives of individuals. As

Daly points out, President Bush announced in 2001, “Much of today’s poverty has more to do with troubled lives than a troubled economy.”458 Dealing with poverty, therefore, meant

“through ‘personal reform of individual men,’”459 and personal care and compassion from neighbors and one’s community. Third, state involvement through welfare programs was viewed as a negative influence on self-help, discipline, personal change and willingness to change.460 As a result, President Bush through the FBCI attempted to withdraw the state from welfare programs and funneled funding to religious charitable groups. Further, because

Bush identified compassionate conservatism with economic conservatism, did not seek to address structural economic issues in American capitalism that contributed to individual and community poverty. For Bush, this meant that the state should not be involved in the market economy or the structural relationship between associations like economic corporations and other social groups. Even though the Bush Administration did attempt to expand subsidiarity into the American context, these characteristics of compassionate conservatism and its social vision hampered any attempt at a thorough subsidiarity. They also highlight the demands that a Catholic subsidiarity would place on American liberal democracy.

458 Daly, God and the Welfare State, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), 111. 459 Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion, (DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992), 52. Olasky was an important influence, alongside John DiIulio, on Bush’s conception of compassionate conservatism and the FBCI, and is credited with developing the idea. 460 Ibid., 29. 243

For this reason it is interesting to note that in 2009, as one of his earliest acts,

President Barack Obama amended the executive order creating the FBCI, renaming it the

“White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” The new policy of the Office reflected the fact that President Obama himself had been trained in Alinsky-style community organizing and had been lead organizer of the Developing Communities Project in mid-1980’s Chicago. The DCP itself had received financial support from the Catholic

Campaign for Human Development to fund both Obama’s training and the work of building the organization. The new Office eschewed the Bush Administration’s focus on funding religious organizations, particularly Christian, and sought a broader inclusion of religious and community organizations and focused more specifically on the issue of poverty. It also included greater oversight by the federal government and the Obama

Administration.

Central to Daly’s consideration of subsidiarity in United States is “social pluralism”

(what we have called “structural pluralism”) and the difficulties facing attempts to incorporate it within the American social and political landscape. Because of an American lack of social pluralism, subsidiarity requires a change in our conceptions of the function of economic businesses, and the functional relationships between the state, economic businesses and social groups. By expanding social pluralism within American society, it is necessary to restructure the relationships between the plurality of social organizations that form the social whole.

As has been noted above, subsidiarity as a principle of social organization focused on structuring the relationships between the vast plurality of associations that make up the social whole. According to Behr, subsidiarity is “The natural and just relationships between the myriad of associations that human beings tend to form, ranging from the family to the

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State and beyond…”461 Further, subsidiarity is a “principle for arranging the order of all sorts of corporate social institutions.”462 Chaplin says, it applies “comprehensively to all social relationships.”463 According to Hittinger, it is “a normative structure of plural social forms” and “an account of the pluralism in society.”464 Subsidiarity, therefore, determines the way in which social institutions, from the family to the state, relate to one another. And, it structures the relationships between all societies and associations, not only the relationship of the state to lower associations. Most importantly, subsidiarity presumes that the social whole is made up of a vast plurality of smaller societies. Any full expression of subsidiarity must appreciate, foster and support such a pluralism.

This structural pluralism, as noted above, stands on the notion that the associations that arise out of a solidarist effort toward the common good possess an internal authority, integrity and purpose, which give them their corporate existence, rights and powers.

According to Daly, “social pluralism…depends on older ideas of the intrinsic sovereignty of natural social structures and morally integrated groups.” He continues, “it is an idea of political order in which multiple sovereign structures are acknowledged and protected within a framework of basic civil liberties and the general peace.” Within such an order “The family, the church, charitable associations, and confessional schools – these intermediary structures between the individual and the state comprise the natural community, and they are fully as

461 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 – 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural-Law Thought as a Science of Society and Politics,” Journal of Markets and Morality, vol. 6, no.1 (Spring 2003), 104. 462 Kohler, “Lessons from the Social Charter: State, Corporation, and the Meaning of Subsidiarity,” University of Toronto Law Journal, 43 (1993), 614. 463 Jonathan Chaplin, “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty: Catholic and Reformed Conceptions of the Role of the State,” Things Old and New: Catholic Social Teaching Revisited, Francis P. McHugh and Samuel M. Natale, editors, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 178. 464 Russell Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism: On Law, Politics, and Human Nature, John Witte, Jr. and Frank S. Alexander, editors, (NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), 22. 245 real as individual persons.” 465 According to Behr, this pluralism is rooted in the idea that

“Every association within the social hierarchy has its proper ends, its own authority (relative to the concrete conditions of social formation), its own principles of action, and therefore its own being and rights.”466 As Hittinger says, it “presupposes that there are plural authorities and agents having their ‘proper’ (not necessarily, lowest) duties and rights with regard to the common good.”467 In the words of Stephen V. Monsma, it is “structural pluralism” in which

“the national community is truly a community of communities,” or “a pluralism of social structures and associations.”468 Any attempt to apply subsidiarity in the American context must first attend to the necessity of structural pluralism. It must recognize the reality of the social entities, appreciate their integrity and internal authority, and the duties and work that are proper to them as a result. Thus, any subsidiarity in the American context must provide an account of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralism subsidiary function performed by those structures.

Daly’s critique of the FBCI focuses on its failure to fully realize the significance of structural pluralism and the extent of the state’s role in fostering and supporting it, despite its efforts to expand subsidiarity. Early in his work, Daly acknowledges that the FBCI was focused on expanding structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of intermediate associations. This is evident in two goals of the FBCI: “first, to increase the share of federal social-welfare resources going to religious groups; and second, to protect the organizational autonomy and religious identity of these groups so enlisted by the

465 Daly, God’s Economy, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 24 – 28. 466 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 – 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural-Law Thought as a Science of Society and Politics," Journal of Markets and Morality, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 106. 467 Hittinger, “Introduction to Modern Catholicism,” 22. 468 Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, ( Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2011), 246 government.”469 Following the developments of “charitable choice” laws in the late 1990’s, the FBCI continued to welcome “religious providers into public welfare systems by offering protections for their religious identity.”470 “Put simply,” Daly says, “the faith-based initiative embodies a pluralist vision of societal restoration, based on legal recognition of the real personality of social groups…coupled with requisite public provisioning for their security and special needs if this autonomy is infringed or reduced by other centers of power, whether public or private.” In other terms, it was based on “a theory of distributed sovereignty that focused on legal protections and enablement of group autonomy.”471 It expanded recognition of the real personality of social groups and structures, whose existence and rights are independent of state concessions, requires protections and “enablement” to pursue their proper purposes and competencies. Thus, the FBCI embodies social or structural pluralism by supporting the integrity and autonomy of these religious organizations.

In the end, the FBCI failed to adequately embody subsidiarity in its fullness because it failed to adequately expand the recognition of the integrity and autonomy to the full range of associations that individuals participate in in their natural, social lives. Daly contends,

faith-based social pluralism as its stands today in the United States [2009] remains completely trapped within a debilitating neoliberal framework….Quite simply, protecting church autonomy from the state, while families and communities grow increasingly powerless in the marketplace, is a still-born pluralism: it cannot achieve the genuine pluralist goal of restoring families, faith, and communities to their proper place of dignity in God’s creation.472

This “neoliberal framework,” focused on economic privatization and decentralization, and restricting state intervention and regulation of the economy, made it impossible for the state

469 Daly, God’s Economy, 29. 470 Ibid., 82. 471 Daly, God’s Economy, 193. 472 Ibid., 195. 247 to do the work of supporting and fostering the vast plurality of social groups. Because it was focused on church autonomy, the FBCI failed to empower the state to endorse and foster the real personality of the plurality of social groups and expand the social pluralism of society. As a result, the structural pluralism that undergirds subsidiarity was left incomplete.

Daly’s discussion of how Bush’s economic conservatism hinders compassionate conservatism from fully embodying subsidiarity indicates the greater problem that American liberal society has with structural pluralism and the wider dimensions of subsidiarity. This is because of the failure of the American constitutional imagination to conceive of the corporate existence, integrity, internal authority, and structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of intermediate social organizations apart from the state, economic corporations, and associations as holders of property. This is because in the American Constitution and constitutional interpretation and application “not all communities are treated equally...”473 He argues, “Our constitutional tradition does not contemplate the existence, let alone the rights of social groups. The protections it provides in terms of race and religion do not apply to the life and integrity of social groups as groups, only to individuals identified as members of a group.”474 In other words, it has little ability “envisioning entities other than individuals,

[business] corporations, and the state.”475 For these reasons, “Except as a holder of property, then the rights of a community to exist and thrive in its ways (whether in educating is members or otherwise) was constitutionally inscrutable.”476 Thus, the very goal of a true and full social pluralism is impossible without a change in constitutional interpretation and imagination.

473 Daly, God’s Economy, 195. 474 Ibid., 221. 475 Ibid., 197. 476 Ibid., 200. 248

A fuller realization of subsidiarity within the American context therefore demands these kinds of changes to our constitutional and social imagination. In the next section, we will discuss the different demands that Catholic subsidiarity makes on American constitutional and social imagination.

Section B. The Demands of Catholic Subsidiarity in America

Daly’s concerns about the “still-born” pluralism fostered by the FBCI points to a significant element of subsidiarity in the American context. Specifically, any effort to incorporate subsidiarity in the American context would require significant changes to

American social and constitutional imagination. This first means an increased appreciation and expansion of the structural pluralism of society. Without it, subsidiarity as a principle of organizing the structural pluralism of society can never be fully developed. Another concern that Daly raises about subsidiary in America is the extent to which the various associations within society are performing their proper subsidiary functions. Because of the failures of the constitutional imagination, the structure of American society fails to ensure that all associations, especially economic corporations, perform structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions for the realization of the common good. Further, the failure to recognize the structural pluralism of society hampers the ability of the state to perform its own associational subsidiary functions.

Subsidiarity requires that all associations within society perform functions that both pursue the good of the members as well as the common good of the social whole. As Pius

XI said in Quadragesimo Anno, “For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social.”477 As we have discussed, this “help” that is

477 Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, #79. 249 furnished can either be an aid or guidance of higher associations to individuals or lower associations, or it can be the positive contribution and participation of individuals or lower associations in aid to the higher. That being the case, all associations in society must in their own way furnish help to the members of the body social. Finally, because it is the Church’s understanding that the state is the highest temporal authority within the nation, it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that all associations within society know and are directed toward the common good of the whole.

The Constitution’s sense of the corporate personhood of economic businesses, Daly argues, “seemed to give corporate property undue right or, more simply, more protection than it needs.” Unfortunately, “The problem of corporate power as it relates to other social structures without constitutional standing (because without property) was never addressed.”478 The result is that corporate interaction with an individual is reduced to that individual, not the community/family that they are part of. This means that

among the many types of associations or organized social groups, business corporations have obtained an extraordinary degree of power and privilege from having corporate existence that is recognized and enabled by law in certain distinctive ways. Theirs is a supervening, statelike existence within society, exercising what is effectively a type of governing power over consumers, employees, resources, and living standards.479

Daly identifies this governing power as “economic lordship," which he borrows from Otto von Gierke. As a result of having a recognized corporate existence, which for other social groups is unrecognized by the constitutional tradition, business corporations are capable of wielding a great deal of power within our society. Further, their “statelike existence” is protected from the state. The resulting power relations between the state, economic corporations and social groups are lop-sided in favor of economic corporations.

478 Daly, God’s Economy, 218. 479 Ibid., 219. 250

As a result, business corporations are not held accountable for responsibilities to perform the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions necessary to pursue the common good of society. Further, “while protecting communities from government in many ways, the constitution also insulates economic power from pluralist needs and claims arising within society.”480 Because of their recognized status, and protection from the state, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that economic corporations work for the good of the social whole. Such a problem requires very significant social structural changes to re-order the relationships between the corporate bodies within the various spheres of the social whole.

And, it requires significant involvement from the state.

In this way, economic corporations, because of their privileged status as recognized corporate entities, are not formally bound by any requirement to work for or contribute to the common good. Because they are protected from the state, and there are no corresponding corporate social groups that bear authority and power, there is little to check their power. This insulation means that they are not responsible to the demands or needs of the social whole, but only their own limited sense of private good. In this way, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that economic corporations are performing a structural- pluralistic subsidiary function of contributing to the common good of the social whole. This points further to the failure of the American context to fully express the associational role of the state as guarantor of the common good and access to it.

In the Catholic social imagination, the function of ensuring that economic power is accountable to the needs and claims of society is part of the associational subsidiary function of the state. That is because, “the state’s role is one of enabling, complementing, and

480 Daly, God’s Economy, 195. 251 coordinating, not overwhelming.”481 In more positive terms, this means that “communities must be enabled by the state (and indeed by everyone) to pursue [their] particular purposes in responsible freedom and security.”482 The notion of “responsible” is important. It means that the state is the association tasked with ensuring that associations are attentive not only to their own good but also the good of the whole. Taparelli’s notion of hypotactics outlines that “One of the first laws is that the larger society must promote the liberty of association within and among the consortia [the unified whole of lower associations], interfering only to the extent necessary to orient them toward the larger common good, which the protarch [the one who holds and wields authority over society] is itself obliged to know and make known.”483 The state, therefore, as the highest temporal authority charged with pursing the common good is obliged to ensure that all social bodies know the common good and are ordered toward it. That means the state must have the scope and depth of authority to do so. Thus, “The state’s authority is in principle as wide in scope as the attainment of the common good requires.”484 Any systemic or structural impediment to the state’s authority of ordering society toward the common good undermines the state’s ability to perform its associational subsidiary function.

In the American context, therefore, any attempts to remove state regulatory authority or to withdraw the state from its function of pursuing the common good or ordering the associations in society toward it would handicap the state’s subsidiary function. Subsidiarity requires the state both to be involved in ensuring that all citizens have access to the common good as well as to properly order society to ensure the just relationships between social

481 Monsma, Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, 130. 482 Chaplin, “Subsidiarity and Sphere Sovereignty: Catholic and Reformed Conceptions on the Role of the State,” 197. 483 Behr, “Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, S.J. (1793 – 1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural-Law Thought as a Science of Society and Politics," 107. 484 Ibid. 252 groups. Daly argues, “what makes subsidiarity in social services something other than charity is the comprehensive system of social transfers that backs it up, guaranteeing a living family wage in good times and bad.”485 Further, it “repudiates charity in favor of the public transfer of resources.”486 Such transfers are part of the state’s associational subsidiary function to provide aid and to ensure the economic stability of families and social groups, as corporate social organizations.

The associational subsidiary function of justly ordering society also means that the state must protect families and social groups against the economic lordship of business corporations. It must justly orient the interrelationships between the economic and social associations. To do so, however, will not include the state’s retreat from welfare programs but its deeper involvement in the order and organization of the associations that make up the social whole. Part of this work would include social transfers as above, but also regulation of the economy and economic corporations to balance the relationships between them and social associations. As Daly states, “Logically, there could be no legitimate pluralist critique of the welfare state that did not also propose to limit or regulate ‘economic lordship’ in the nonstate realm.”487 Pluralism, therefore, requires not only the effort to balance the power of the state with the power of economic and social associations, but also to balance the lop-sided power relationships between economic corporations and social groups by way of the regulatory authority of the state.

Finally, the associational subsidiary work of the state is not merely the regulation of the economy and economic businesses. It also includes the recognition of the many corporate social bodies that contribute to the social whole as well as the creation and

485 Daly, God and the Welfare State, 105. 486 Daly, God and the Welfare State, 106. 487 Daly, God’s Economy, 222. 253 fosterage of new social forms and associations in order to help build up the structural pluralism of society. This last is particularly important. Historical events such as the

Depression show that there are times when the social groups that make up the structural pluralism of society can not be maintained and fall out of existence. They either become incapable of holding together, or they no longer serve their purpose and cease to exist. As a result, it becomes the state’s responsibility, in some way, to foster and support new associations to perform that work. Thus, it is not enough for the state to ensure funding to existing religious charities to deal with poverty. The state must also be involved in the creation of new associations that can address the origins and systems of poverty within the many communities impacted by it. In doing so, the state is fostering the kinds of groups that will enable members of communities to address their own problems and not simply rely on direct state involvement. The associational subsidiary function of the state, therefore, also includes the support and fosterage of the structural pluralism of society and the structural- pluralistic subsidiary functions of lower associations.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, interpreting subsidiarity into the American context requires several elements: First, the nature of subsidiarity requires the appreciation of the social and structural pluralism of society. Subsidiarity is premised on the idea that the associations that make up society arise out of the natural sociality of the human person in pursuit of the common good. Because of that origin, the plurality of associations within society have their own internal authority, integrity, purpose and autonomy, independent of the state. As a principle orienting and organizing the relationships between associations within society, subsidiarity is predicated on such a plurality of social structures and associations.

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Second, because these associations arise out of a solidarist effort to attain a good unachievable by a single person alone, subsidiarity requires that all social activity, and the associations that perform them, are ordered toward a helping function for its members and the members of the social whole. In the American context, this requires that social functions of the associations beyond the state and economic corporations be recognized and guided and directed toward the common good by the state. It also means that efforts should be made to ensure that economic corporations be regulated to contribute to the common good.

Finally, subsidiarity requires a re-evaluation of the role of the state in terms of mediating between the various social bodies that make up the social whole. In contrast to the constitutional imagination, Catholic subsidiarity would require the involvement of the state to perform four important functions. First, would be to regulate economic corporations and powers to ensure that the common good is realized. Second, subsidiarity would require a greater recognition of the other structures of society, their integrity, and their corporate reality. Third, subsidiarity requires the state’s involvement not only in the recognition of the corporate existence of social bodies but also the fosterage and support of new associations in order to ensure that all members of society are empowered by participation in associations with corporate reality. Finally, within this more complicated social space, the state must perform the association subsidiarity function of orienting and coordinating the relationships between the plurality of social organizations in order to ensure justice and the common good.

From this, it is clear that attempts to incorporate subsidiarity into the American context would require significant revisions of the American constitutional and political social imagination. These revisions go beyond efforts of devolution or government at the lowest level. Because of the significance of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic

255 subsidiary functions of the lower and intermediate associations in society, subsidiarity requires the clear articulation of the regulatory role of the state to ensure that all social bodies are contributing to the state and the other positive contributions of other integral social bodies. Subsidiarity therefore requires a greater appreciation of the corporate nature of social life and the efforts of the plurality of social structures in the realization of the common good.

Part III. The CCHD: An American Subsidiarity

This part will examine how the CCHD manifests subsidiarity in a distinctly Catholic and American way. Central to this examination is not necessarily the work that the CCHD performs itself but the social vision pursued and developed within that work. Specifically, while the primary function of the CCHD is to provide the guidance, direction, and aid of an associational subsidiary organization, the social vision embodied and pursued by its work and supported through its development programs shows a primary focus on structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of associations characterized by

Alinsky-style community organizations. Thus, as the organizer-priests, who framed and formulated the CCHD, mediated their engagement through “power” and its inherent structural-pluralism, so is the CCHD an embodiment of that same social vision. The CCHD, therefore, represents a manifestation of Catholic subsidiarity in a distinctly American way.

As an organization itself the CCHD performs the higher associational subsidiary function of helping lower organizations. Looking back to Baroni’s and Bishop Mugavero’s

1969 proposal, one can see the how it does this. Baroni and Mugavero proposed both 1) an educational initiative and 2) a special poverty collection. These two purposes remain central to the CCHD’s ongoing mission and identity. The first is exemplified in the CCHD’s

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“mission of educating on poverty and its causes.”488 Through this initiative, carried out by

PovertyUSA and its many educational initiatives, the CCHD works to educate Catholics and

Americans on the important social and justice issues surrounding poverty and its resolution.

In this way, it is knowing and making known the goods to be pursued and the proper structuring of society necessary for securing the common good and social justice. This work is a fulfillment of the associational function of higher associations to know and make known the common good, and to provide individuals and lower associations with direction on they can or ought to participate in its realization.

The second is present in the CCHD’s efforts “to break the cycle of poverty by helping low-income people participate in decisions that affect their lives, families and communities. CHD offers a hand up, not a hand out.”489 This is done through the CCHD funding program, which supports projects in economic and community development. The

CCHD itself does not do the work of organizing the community or mediating its participation, but it provides support and funding for the organization of such organizations.

In these ways, the CCHD itself, as a higher subsidiary association helping lower associations, is performing an associational subsidiary function.

The scope and budget of these efforts and the issues that they focus on can be seen in the CCHD’s 2018 Annual Report. There the CCHD reported that it had dispensed

$18,434,03, of which $17,801,005 were paid out for a total of 246 grants. The majority of those grants, 218 for $11,470,439, went to Community and Economic projects. Such grants are often granted through local diocesan offices to organizations and projects within local communities and neighborhoods. Just over 31% of these programs dealt with “Economic

488 CCHD, “Mission & Identity,” accessed: http://www.usccb.org/about/catholic-campaign-for-human- development/who-we-are.cfm, 7/21/2015. 489 Ibid. 257

Empowerment” through “new businesses, jobs, and financial opportunities.” Another

27.5% supported communities, providing access to housing, and education. Another 16 grants for $6,183,437, went to National Strategic programs. These grants are provided to organizations addressing regional, statewide or national issues that span beyond the borders of a given local community or diocese/archdiocese. These grants supported the rights of immigrants, increasing health care access, and economic justice for workers.490Despite that the CCHD itself performs the associational subsidiary function of a higher association, its focus is on structural-pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. Though the CCHD itself does not perform the work of creating communities or integrating individuals and lower associations into higher levels of society, its associational subsidiary function is to help create and support organizations that can. Further, its sense of subsidiarity focuses on the structural-pluralistic dimension of subsidiarity. The organization’s most current “Guide for

CCHD Grant Applicants” defines subsidiarity as “the principle that people who are experiencing a particular problem are best equipped to develop solutions to that problem.”491

Even though the CCHD does not perform structural-pluralistic subsidiarity itself, the social vision that it pursues is premised on the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function performed by the organizations and communities that they support. Through its projects, the CCHD works to support social associations that enable individuals and communities to participate in the determination of their own private good. These associations also mediate the participation of individuals and communities in the determination and realization of the common good of the social whole. In this way, though it principally performs an

490 USCCB, “Working on the Margins: The Collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Annual Report 2018,” (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2019), 4 – 5. 491 CCHD, “Guide for Catholic Campaign for Human Development Applicants,” (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2013), 12. 258 associational subsidiary function, its goal is the support of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of the associations and organizations that it funds.

One of the major differences between compassionate conservatism and the CCHD lies in its vision of how to address poverty and the causes of poverty. Compassionate conservatism sees poverty rooted in personal failures, and therefore emphasizes the work of religious charitable organizations to help the poor by both economic and religious and spiritual help. The CCHD, however, focuses principally on the structural causes and roots of poverty. As part of its stated goals, the CCHD is focused on changing “social structures and policies which undermine life and dignity, especially for the poor and powerless.”492 This is because “In Catholic Social Teaching, the causes of poverty are understood to be an aspect of ‘social sin’ rooted in our social and economic structures and institutions.”493 Just like

Sheil’s critique of the “maladjusted economic order” in Chapter One, and Alinsky’s critique of capitalism’s role in the economic crisis and social collapse of the Depression in Chapter

Two, the CCHD examines structural injustice and sources of poverty and works to change them, specifically through the support of new community organizations. The CCHD’s

“Guide for Applicants,” states the goal as “institutional change,” which it defines as “that which addresses policies and operational structures of government, corporations, or private agencies that create poverty, keep people poor, or impose injustice on low-income people.”494 In so doing, the CCHD helps, supports and fosters a network of organizations all directed in restructuring relationships between social organizations in order to empower

492 CCHD, “Gospel in Action,” brochure, accessed: http://www.usccb.org/about/catholic-campaign-for- human-development/upload/cchd-gospel-in-action-handout.pdf, 7/13.2020 493 CCHD, “Basic Principles of Catholic Mission,” accessed: http://www.usccb.org/about/catholic-campaign- for-human-development/principles.cfm, 7/21/2015. This is a crucial difference between the CHD’s subsidiarity and compassionate conservatism’s principal emphasis on charity. 494 CCHD, “Guide for Catholic Campaign for Human Development Applicants,” (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2013), 13. 259 communities in poverty and to counter the imposition of those wielding unjust power and authority over those communities.

The CCHD pursues this institutional change and restructuring of social relationships by performing the associational subsidiary function of helping and funding lower associations. These associations then perform the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of unifying and building a community up and integrating the community and its individual members into higher levels of society. These new associations and social organizations within the communities then work to change the structures of social sin that contribute to the poverty within the community. These goals are premised on the notion that people are poor and powerless partly due to a lack of associational or organizational power. As the unorganized mass of the poor, the decisions regarding their plight and their situation are made for them by others higher up on the social hierarchy.

Lizbeth Cohen’s history of the Depression-era loss of social institutions and their replacement by national commercial corporations and the federal government is representative of the disorganization and disempowerment of poor and working-class communities. Throughout the 1920’s and the Depression, the fabric of immigrant and worker’s social lives was unraveled as private ethnic social welfare organizations, ethnic banks, and fraternal insurance organizations collapsed. Even the welfare and insurance programs offered by the companies could not adequately respond to the need of workers.

This loss of local-level social welfare programs and a local social safety net left a vacuum where no existing organizations operated for the good of local communities. In that vacuum, new organizations, higher in the graded social hierarchy stepped in and assumed the authority that had once belonged to lower associations. These new organizations included national insurance companies to replace local ethnic and worker insurance companies, state

260 and federal social welfare programs to replace worker mutual aid societies and welfare capitalism, and even national banks and grocery chains to replace the lost ethnic banks and ethnic groceries. The result was that the local communities lost the power and influence over the economic and political associations that supported them. The new organizations that the

CCHD supports work to return that decision-making authority to the proper holders of authority; the community and its members. In Alinsky’s community organizing, this is

“retaking power”. For Alinsky, it initially meant recreating that local social space that collapsed with the Depression by recreating organizations that gathered together the will and power of disempowered communities. Though they were no longer the same organizations that were lost in the Depression, community organizations and People’s Organizations were meant to reassert and reinforce the community’s influence over and autonomy against the organizations that had taken up residence in their place. Though the Depression is long over, communities throughout America continue to find themselves within the same situation and require the creation of novel associations to help them retake power over their communities and reassert their autonomy. This is the very role of the CCHD. It supports the creation of organizations where none, or too few, exist so that a community might be able to regain authority over itself.

The two principal categories of organizations funded by the CCHD are 1)

Community Development (CD) and 2) Economic Development (ED). CD projects are representative of the Catholic social articulation of the building up of society. CD projects

“nurture solidarity between the poor and non-poor, facilitating participation of people living in poverty in institutional decisions that perpetuate poverty in their lives. In CD projects, low-income people gain the ability to identify barriers, brainstorm solutions, and take action

261 to change problematic structures and systems in their communities.”495 These CD projects support the creation of community and help the members of that community determine its own good and the means to achieving it. In doing so, they work toward the “intrinsic sovereignty of natural social structures and morally integrated groups” that Lew Daly says is at the root of structural or social pluralism.496 By nurturing solidarity, a CD project lends to the building up of social groups and associations, and the integrity and unity that given them real, and distinct existence. As such they are engaged in actively building up of the social body of a community beyond the simple geographical aggregation of individuals. By promoting solidarity, these projects and their organizations build up a community where none had existed. They contribute to structural pluralism by adding substantial social bodies, built on solidarity, to the graded hierarchy of society.

This feature of CD projects is representative of another major difference between the neoliberal framework that leads to the still-born pluralism of the compassionate conservatism, as well as the limited, incomplete pluralism of the American constitutional tradition. Because neoliberalism and the constitutional tradition fail to recognize and support the personhood and real existence of the wider range of social groups, they can never fully achieve the genuine pluralism that undergirds subsidiarity and the subsidiary structuring of society.

Another feature of CD projects that requires attention is “facilitating participation,” and giving the poor “the ability to identify barriers… and take action to change problematic structures and systems in their communities,” is representative of what we have been calling structural-pluralistic subsidiary function. Not only does the CD project empower the people

495 CCHD, “Guide for CCHD Grant Applicants,” (DC: USCCB, 2013), 3. 496 Daly, God’s Economy, 26. 262 of the community to address the structural problems of their community, it does so by enabling them to determine the good of the community that they wish to pursue and it them functions as a means of remedying those problems. The association that arises out of the

CD project does not only provide aid and guidance to the community, it also serves as the means of enacting the program that the community itself determined. Still further, the organization’s work to mediate that participation helps to integrate individuals and local organizations into the large surrounding community. Thus, by facilitating participation and mediating participation in higher levels of society, the organizations that are supported by

CD projects are representative of a structural-pluralistic subsidiary function.

Economic Development (ED) projects are similar in that “they significantly include the voice of the poor and marginalized people in developing new businesses that create social benefits, offer good jobs, and/or develop assets that will be owned and enjoyed by local communities.”497 Less focused on building communities as such, ED projects contribute to the overall building up the plurality of structures of society. These projects do structural-pluralistic subsidiary work by providing the poor and marginalized better access to those temporal goods, structures, institutions and relationships which allow for their fullest personal realization.

Still further, ED projects represent structural-pluralistic subsidiarity because they embody the integration of the social and economic spheres. This is because ED businesses are “owned and enjoyed by local communities.” As a result, they are concerned principally with “social benefits,” rather than simple profit-seeking. This is a recognition, along with

Sheil and Alinsky and in contrast to American constitutional tradition, that economic businesses within a capitalist society are not devoid of social responsibilities. ED projects

497 Ibid., 3. 263 therefore stand in direct defiance of the “economic lordship” that Daly argues “insulates” economic corporations from responsibilities to the social whole and the autonomous social groups that contribute to the whole social body of society. Rather, they assert that economic businesses are intended to support the common good of the community, and that the concerns of the community should be able to balance the profit-seeking dimension of an economic business. In this way, the ED project embodies how the social and economic structures of society should be integrated and work for the good of the social whole. This kind of work, helping to determine and realize the common good of the social whole, is representative of structural-pluralistic subsidiarity. On the one hand, it gives social groups and natural associations within society some say over the responsibilities that economic businesses have towards society, and it asserts a need for there to be a regulation of relationships between social groups and business corporations.

These two types of projects exemplify how the work of the CCHD develops structural-pluralistic subsidiarity through the active construction of new associations and social organizations. Recalling Cohen’s history of the evacuation of the social sphere during the Depression, the loss of the local social organizations created a vacuum. Into that spaced stepped the State, both local and federal government, and corporate businesses. In doing so, they assumed and absorbed the work that is proper to lower organizations and simplified the social sphere. Where there had been multiple levels between local neighborhoods and the national government or national corporations, now there was little to no separation.

The CCHD, in helping local organizations and associations to develop Community

Development and Economic Development projects, works to retake the immediate local space directly standing over neighborhoods and communities. This does two things: First, it complexifies the social sphere. As a result, it begins to look more like the graded hierarchy

264 that Pope Pius XI called for in QA. Second, it returns a degree, if not all, of decision-making power and authority to the people in the community most directly affected by the issues that their organizations address, especially those that exist at the intersection of their local community and higher levels of association. In complexifying the social sphere and creating new social organizations directly related to the local community, the CCHD enables and empowers communities to retake power over issues that directly impact them. Through those same organizations, the CCHD helps members and local organizations to participate in higher levels of society so to impact the structures surrounding them which contribute to their poverty. Thus, both types of projects actively and intentionally foster new organizations in order to build up structural-pluralistic subsidiarity that will empower local communities to address their community needs and engage with higher levels of association, and reallocate social work from the higher associations to the proper level and associations.

The CCHD’s support of structural pluralism and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity is also visible within its pursuit of local leadership and control. Corresponding with what

Alinsky called “Native Leadership,” the CCHD’s “Guide for CHD Grant Applicants” calls for “Low-Income Control” and “Leadership Development.” According to Alinsky, “A

People’s Organization must be rooted in the people themselves.” As discussed in Chapters

Three and Four, full participation of all individuals is unmanageable. Instead, both Sheil and

Alinsky recognize the need to mediate the individual’s participation through their native organizations and leaders. Community organizations, therefore, are built around native leaders. This is because “The only way people can express themselves is through their leaders….These indigenous leaders are in a very true sense the real representatives of the people of the community.”498 It is through these leaders, that the larger community is able to

498Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals, (NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 64. 265 participate in the operation of the organizations, and that the organization remains accountable to the community it is intended to serve.

Following the Compendium’s sense of participation as an implication of subsidiarity, the CCHD holds that “The participation of low-income people in the shaping and ongoing direction of organizations is a central criterion for CHD funding…. Low-income people must have and maintain a strong voice in the organization’s leadership, both in its governance structures and its policy decisions, especially through their direct participation in the board of directors.”499 The CCHD recognizes the need for the participation of the community through its representation by members on the board of directors. Through representation on the board, the community is able to ensure that organization’s governance and policies consistently account for their concerns. This ensures that the organization’s leadership is not only working from the charitable benevolence of people outside the community but by the very real concerns of the community mediated by their native leaders and representatives.

This is important in our understanding of the CCHD as an example of subsidiarity.

We have discussed structural-pluralistic subsidiarity as premised on the self-organized reality of social organizations and associations, which themselves are capable of discerning their own good and ordering their organizations and communities toward the good of the group and the common good of society. This means that the associations themselves retain their own internal integrity and authority to make its own decisions. The notions “Native leadership,” “Low-Income Control” and “Leadership Development,” are all efforts to support just this type of associational internal authority. By supporting low-income control and the development of local leadership, the CCHD is working to ensure that the

499Ibid., 12. 266 organizations funded have and retain their own internal integrity and authority and that the communities, having acquired power over themselves, possess the necessary leadership to both retain and wield the community’s internal authority over itself. Further, it supports the real personhood of the social groups that represent communities beyond those kinds accepted by compassionate conservatism and the American constitutional tradition. In recognizing the authority of these communities within themselves and within CD and ED projects, the CCHD is supporting and fostering a much wider degree of structural pluralism that than by compassionate conservatism.

This recalls the discussion above regarding the use of “power” language regarding the goals of Alinsky-style community organizations and the CCHD. Native leadership, low- income control, and leadership development indicate that the CCHD sets before itself the goal of empowering the people of a community not only by fostering new organizations, but by actively and intentionally building up the community’s integrity and internal authority, and the native leadership to wield it. In this way, the CCHD builds up structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of community organizations.

Conclusion.

What Part Three has argued is that the CCHD embodies subsidiarity through structural pluralism, and associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions. This is evidenced in several ways. The first is the way in which the CCHD focuses on reconstruction of society through reordering structural social relationships. As a norm of social organization and social relationships, subsidiarity sets the standard for the interaction of individuals, lower associations and higher associations in terms that support the freedom of individuals and lower associations in their pursuit of the good determined by their nature.

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Toward this end, the CCHD operates as a higher association, aiding lower organizations to freely pursue their own good and the good of their community.

At the same time, the CCHD by fostering CD and ED projects supports the creation of new social organizations and associations; repopulating the social sphere and adding to the structural pluralism of society.

Another way the CCHD embodies subsidiarity is by further supporting the internal integrity and authority of the communities affected by awardees. By emphasizing low- income control and leadership development, the CCHD fosters the development of a community’s ability to take power or authority over itself and to wield that authority well for the good of the community and the common good of society.

Finally, these new organizations make it possible for individuals and lower associations to more fully participate in and contribute to the social whole. Not only do they perform the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of building up the corporate social whole, but they also facilitate the participation of individuals and lower associations in higher levels of society.

These characteristics are very important for understanding the implications for subsidiarity in the American context. As we have discussed in previous chapters, American liberal democracy forces an American subsidiarity to emphasize the logical priority of the individual. The result is an emphasis on the democratic participation in building up society and contributing to the common good. What Catholic subsidiarity offers and forces

American liberal democracy to address is a greater accounting of the structural pluralism that makes up society because of the individual’s natural associative instinct, the structural- pluralistic subsidiary function of lower associations, and the depth of involvement required of higher associations, especially the state.

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Conclusion.

This chapter has argued that the work of the priest-organizers of the 50’s and 60’s occupied and continued Bishop Sheil’s work of providing Catholic support of Saul Alinsky’s and that the CCHD embodies a full vision of Catholic subsidiarity in the American context.

As such, the CCHD provides a useful reference for how to fully realize Catholic subsidiarity in the American context. It does this by not only accepting and incorporating the liberal and democratic assumption of the logical priority of the individual, but also by providing an example of the structural pluralism necessary for a full Catholic subsidiarity. In the end, it best represents the widest expansion of the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of lower associations as well as the fullest image of the associational functions of higher associations.

The work that Bishop Sheil started in the 1930’s was continued by Msgr. Egan and the priest-organizers of the 1950’s and 60’s. Their shared support of Alinsky-style community organizing and the social vision shared by Alinsky and the Catholic subsidiarity was institutionalized in the founding of the CCHD. The intellectual continuity between

Bishop Sheil’s support and that of the priest-organizers is particularly visible in their shared articulation and Catholic interpretation of Alinsky’s concept of “power.” Thus, the space that Sheil negotiated between Catholicism and Alinsky community organizing eventually came to be occupied by the CCHD.

Within the work of the CCHD, a subsidiary structuring of relationships, shared by

Bishop Sheil, Alinsky and the priest-organizers, is especially present within its Community

Development and Economic Development projects. These projects, as well as the CCHD’s support of them, represent the widest dimensions of subsidiarity. As a higher association, the

CCHD does the subsidiary work of fostering and supporting new organizations; providing them aid and guidance for the realization of the common good. The projects themselves are

269 attempts at adding to the structural pluralism of society and the structural-pluralistic subsidiarity function of building up society and mediating the participation of individuals and lower associations in higher levels of society.

When considered in light of the flaws of compassionate conservatism and the FBCI as attempts at subsidiarity, the CCHD exemplifies what Catholic subsidiarity requires within the American context. Specifically, subsidiarity requires a fuller expression and appreciation of structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of lower associations. Within such a context, the associational subsidiary functions of the state and higher associations necessarily go beyond limited-state governance and devolution of state welfare programs.

This means that an attempt to interpret the principle of subsidiarity into the

American context will result in an expression that is heavily influenced by American liberalism as well as a critique of the underdeveloped structural pluralism of the American constitutional imagination and the devolution-only understanding of associational subsidiarity. Beginning in Chapter Three and continuing to this chapter, it has been clear that the liberal and democratic foundations of American social thought logically prioritizes the individual and their participation. This emphasis on the individual is inescapable for any interpretation of the principles of Catholic social ethics in the American context. As a result, an American expression of subsidiarity is necessarily influenced by liberalism individualism.

At the same time, despite how American liberalism causes Catholic social ethics in

America to start with the logical priority of the individual, Catholic subsidiarity demands that

American liberalism develop a greater account of the corporate existence of a wider plurality of associations beyond the state, economic businesses, and organizations as holders of property. This treatment of subsidiarity shows that the American liberal social imagination is

270 fundamentally inadequate to fully manifest Catholic social ethics without a greater sense of structural pluralism. Doing so would provide an important context for understanding the associational subsidiary role of the state and higher associations, which is more than devolution and lowest-level-possible governance. Thus, though Catholic subsidiarity is shaped by American liberalism, a full Catholic subsidiarity in the American context would similarly reshape the structure of American social imagination.

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CONCLUSION

Introduction.

During the course of this research, this project has been focused on using historical and theological methods to investigate the interaction of Catholic social doctrine and

American democratic culture by looking specifically at the principle of subsidiarity through the historical lens of the collaboration between Bishop Bernard James Sheil and Saul

Alinsky. Through this research, I have found that Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Saul

Alinsky, and its institutionalization in the CCHD, is a distinctly American form of subsidiarity that remains faithful to the foundations of Catholic social doctrine.

This Conclusion chapter will provide the summary of research findings that support this conclusion. It will also provide how this research has contributed to current knowledge about the principle of subsidiarity, the interaction of Catholic social doctrine in the American context, and the American Catholic interaction with Alinsky and Alinsky-style community organizing. The final part of this chapter will provide recommendations for further research and application of this knowledge.

Part I. Summary of Findings.

While investigating the historical and theological development of the principle of subsidiarity, it became clear that the account of the principle that came to be standardized in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and applications of the principle based on it, was incomplete and failed to account for all dimensions of subsidiarity. This is represented by the Compendium’s failure to fully account for the more fundamental relationship between subsidiarity and participation. Tracing back to the principle’s origin, Thomas C. Behr’s explanation of the place of subsidiarity in the thought of Luigi Taparelli, S.J. shows how

272 participation is not only an implication of subsidiarity. Instead, participation is the flipside of the subsidiary function of higher associations. When looked at from Catholic social doctrine’s foundation in structural pluralism, therefore, the subsidiarity of associations and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity represent two distinct trajectories of the “helping function” of what Pope Pius XI called “social activity.” In this way, associational subsidiarity refers to how higher, larger associations perform a helping function in a downward trajectory to the lower, smaller associations and individuals below it on the graded social hierarchy. At the same time, lower associations and individuals perform their own helping function, building up the body of society as well as helping to determine and realize the common good of the social whole. In this way, each party is performing a subsidiary, or helping, function.

While investigating Sheil’s social thought during the 1930’s through the 1950’s, these twin trajectories of subsidiarity were clearly present. This was especially the case as Sheil came to a greater appreciation of the structural approach to the social ills of the Depression and an increasingly structural approach to solving them. As Sheil progressed through the

1930’s, it became clear to him that private and religious charity was not enough to deal with the economic and social crises of the Depression. He came to believe it was necessary to call on the State to aid local charities and social organizations, while also arguing for the continued involvement of those local organizations to perform the necessary social welfare services. Thus, as Sheil came to appreciate the structural roots and solutions to the

Depression, he found an appreciation for the structural pluralism that builds up society and articulated the relationships between the plurality of social structures in terms of what I have called associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity.

By the 1950’s, Sheil’s appreciation of and support for American democracy showed the influence that American liberal democratic culture had on Sheil’s Catholic social-

273 structural view. In Sheil’s thought, American democratic values influenced his view of structural pluralism by prioritizing the liberal individual and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions of individuals and lower associations. In contrast to more corporatist versions, Sheil’s social thought clearly began with the liberal appreciation for the individual rather than the social whole. As such, Sheil’s sense of how to expand democracy and solve social problems emphasizes structural pluralism and the structural-pluralistic subsidiary function of individuals and lower associations.

Sheil’s thought, therefore, shows two important elements for a distinctly American form of Catholic subsidiarity. The first is that a Catholic subsidiarity integrated into

American culture is going to tend to emphasize the logical priority of the individual. The second is that subsidiarity’s origins in structural pluralism makes it capable of accommodating that logical priority. Because of these elements, it is possible to integrate subsidiarity into the American liberal democratic culture, but not without prioritizing structural-pluralistic subsidiarity before associational subsidiarity.

This project’s examination of the social vision of Saul Alinsky has shown that his understanding of the origins and structuring of society are comparable with those of

Catholic social doctrine. This occurred despite how he arrived at his account of the structures and functions within society from a separate source in the Chicago School of

Sociology. Because of this, Alinsky’s explanation of the functional relationships between

People’s Organizations and community organizations, and other associations within society are comparable with subsidiarity in general, and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and associational subsidiarity in particular. Further, like Sheil, and other Catholic social thinkers,

Alinsky also saw the need to create, support, and foster new associations in order to build up the plurality of structures within society and to perform structural-pluralistic subsidiary

274 functions. Thus, though he arrived at his sense of society from different sources, Alinsky held a view of society that was comparable to that of Catholic social doctrine and that structured society according to the same forms as Catholic subsidiarity.

In the end, this research has shown that it is possible to integrate Catholic subsidiarity into the American context. During his career, Bishop Sheil navigated this space and developed a distinctly American and wholly Catholic form of subsidiarity through his collaboration with Saul Alinsky. After Bishop Sheil, other Catholic priests took up the work of negotiating between Catholic social doctrine and Alinsky-style community organizing.

Their efforts led to the institutionalization of community organizing as a practical means of

Catholic social action in America in the form of the Campaign for Human Development. As a full representation of subsidiarity in America, the CCHD is premised on the needs of expanding structural pluralism, supporting local organizations to empower communities and citizens to perform their structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions, and ensuring that the associational subsidiary functions and restrictions placed on higher associations is observed.

Thus, the legacy of Bishop Sheil’s collaboration with Saul Alinsky, was the institutionalization of a distinctly American form of Catholic subsidiarity.

Part II. Contributions to Knowledge.

This project provides a contribution to the larger understanding of the principle of subsidiarity. Primarily, it builds on the definition of the principle in the Compendium of the

Social Doctrine of the Church by showing that what the text calls “subsidiarity” and

“participation” are in fact two dimensions of the same principle. By placing the Compendium at the end of the historical development of subsidiarity that began in the thought of Luigi

Taparelli, S.J., it is possible to see how subsidiarity possesses much wider dimensions. By doing so, it is possible to see how what the Compendium calls “subsidiarity” and its

275 implication of “participation” are joined together through Catholic social doctrine’s foundation in structural pluralism. In light of Taparelli’s thought, it is possible to see how

“participation” is in fact the subsidiary function of the plurality of social structures at lower levels of society. This means that the associational subsidiarity possesses the characteristics it does, especially the Compendium’s articulation of it’s “positive” and “negative” senses, because it is based on structural pluralism. Thus, its function is dependent upon a plurality of social structures and the way it functions must recognize the structural-pluralistic subsidiary functions that they perform. A full appreciation of structural pluralism, therefore, provides a linkage between these two dimensions of subsidiarity.

This project builds on the work of Hittinger, Monsma, Daly and others, by showing the theological and historical roots between subsidiarity and the structural pluralism that forms part of the foundation of Catholic social doctrine. In this way it contributes to the understanding of how subsidiarity is more than a principle of limited government, devolutionary theory, or lowest-level possible governance.

This project also builds on the work of Curran and Engel by providing a clearer sense of the theological and historical interaction between American Catholics and Saul

Alinsky. Though Curran was correct that few Catholic social thinkers in recent decades have attempted to intentionally mine this historical moment for American Catholic social action, this project shows that Bishop Sheil did provide an initial effort to show the value of Saul

Alinsky’s community organizing. Further, this project shows the value of the interaction between American Catholicism and Saul Alinsky. Building on Engel’s argument and focusing on the principle of subsidiarity, this project has shown one aspect of how Catholic social doctrine has interacted with Alinsky’s social vision and how Alinsky’s intellectual roots led him to a social vision that is comparable with Catholic social doctrine. Though often

276 misunderstood, this research has shown that Alinsky’s community organizing represents an actionable form of social action for American Catholicism.

This project also builds on Daly’s work by providing a corresponding example of what Catholic subsidiarity requires in the American context. While Daly shows the inadequacy of compassionate conservatism, this project builds on that work to provide an example of a fuller form of subsidiarity.

Part III. Recommendations.

One element of this research that requires greater investigation is the longer historical development of the principle. Though this project has tracked the principle through Taparelli and Pope Leo XIII to Pope Pius XI, greater investigation is required to better understand how the principle was developed over time. As yet, there remains no systematic investigation of the historical development of the principle. One recommended direction of investigation would be to examine the linkages between Leo XIII’s Rerum

Novarum and Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. That means focusing on the work of

Heinrich Pesch, Gustav Gundlach, and Oswald von Nell-Breuning.

Following the work of Hittinger and Behr, this research shows the importance of a more systematic investigation of the interaction between liberalism and Catholic social doctrine; especially at their origins. In particular, since Taparelli is most likely the originator of much of Catholic social doctrine, the sources of his “moderated liberalism” and the influence of John Locke on his thought would be significant. Such a investigation would help better discern the interactions between Catholic social doctrine and liberalism, especially in how it has interacted differently between liberal democracy and liberal capitalism.

This project also shows the need for a greater investigation on the social, intellectual, and practical impact that Bishop Sheil had on American Catholicism. Because of the narrow

277 scope of this project, it was not possible to fully investigate all of the facets of Bishop Sheil’s thought and work. As such, he remains an untapped resource to investigate American

Catholic engagement with anti-Semitism, Catholic support for labor unions, and the

American Catholic fight against Communism. One particularly significant place for investigation is Bishop Sheil’s thought as an important location for investigating Chicago

Catholicism’s support for and involvement in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. At a time when few Catholic bishops were talking about racism, Bishop Sheil was already publicly decrying it as “anathema.” Though Bishop Sheil had largely left public life by the mid-1950’s, his speeches, writings, and work through the Sheil School of Social Studies were influential in how Chicago Catholicism engaged with the racial issues of the 1960’s.

A practical recommendation following Daly’s work is an investigation into the larger implications for Catholic subsidiarity in the American context. This is especially important in considering the American constitutional imagination’s failure to account for a greater structural pluralism. Further study would include discerning what implications a full subsidiarity would have for the American Constitution. That would also require further analysis in legal and political implications. In short, what would greater structural pluralism look like in the constitutional, legal, and political spheres? What would a full American subsidiarity look like?

A final direction for further study would be in the practical applications of the principle of subsidiarity in other social locations. This would include consideration of how associational and structural-pluralistic subsidiarity and their guidance for the use of authority in various fields. If authority is intended for the purpose of performing a subsidiary or helping function, what implications does that have for how holders of authority make use of it?

278

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