The Catholic teaching on subsidiarity

Last Thursday we wrote an article chastising the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) for questioning the proposed shift from our unitary form of government into a federal form of government. I felt that the CBCP should have first done a survey of the archdioceses all over the country to find out if this is what the Filipino people want. As I already pointed out, the great majority of the Filipino people who voted for Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte in the 2016 elections wanted this shift to federalism.

Reading that article, my good friend, Atty. Manuelino Faelnar from our Internet group Defenders of Indigenous Languages throughout the Archipelago (DILA), texted me his comment on my article on the CBCP, saying “The CBCP forgot about Subsidiarity when they opposed federalism. The principle of Subsidiarity is the basis for federalism.” So I asked him to email me a longer comment on subsidiarity. So here is his email to me.

“Bobit please remind the CBCP that subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word  “subsidiaries” and has its origin in Catholic social teaching. Federalism is an institutional means of recognizing the need for local communities to rule themselves in accordance with their own perceived interests. Here is where subsidiarity properly plays a significant role. Although not mentioned in so many words, this principle is embodied in the tenth amendment of the United States Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The intention of the founders was to allow the component states of the new federal union to retain much, if not most, of their powers, excepting those explicitly assigned to the union.” Atty. Lino added that this was a direct quotation from the book, Subsidiarity and Federalism by David T. Koyzis January 1st, 2004.”

Thanks Atty. Faelnar for enlightening our readers about this Catholic social teaching, which unfortunately the bishops of the CBCP failed to mention when they questioned the efforts of Pres. Duterte in pushing for a federal system. Like I said perhaps the CBCP listened only to the tirades of former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. who said that federalism would send our nation to the road to perdition. As I pointed out earlier each archdiocese performs like a unit in a  federal system, as they are autonomous from other archdioceses.

Meanwhile to add color to the issue of federalism, over the weekend, no less than Pres. Duterte directed his Cabinet members to learn the Visayan dialect so they can understand his instructions when he speaks in Bisaya. But even Pres. Duterte doesn’t know that Visayan languages are not dialects because a dialect is a branch of a spoken language.

As I have written many times before, the Pilipino that is taught in our schools is taken 99.9 percent from the Tagalog language; hence you can say that Pilipino is a dialect of Tagalog. The whole trouble is… ultra nationalists believe in that Marcosian thought, “Isang Bansa, Isang Diwa”. Even during the 14 years of Martial Law, the Marcos dictatorship could not push for this way of thinking. But when Tita Cory took over from the Marcos dictatorship, her 1987 Constitution still allowed the same Marcosian thinking about one nation under one language.

Why do you think federalism is very popular in the Visayas and Mindanao? It is because of the diversity of languages and cultures. Just last Jan. 29 my dear friend and daughter of the late Sir Max Soliven, Sara Soliven de Guzman wrote in her column entitled, “Kapampangan – a dying language, a serious threat to culture and identity.” Indeed, Kapampangan is dying because of its proximity to Manila… and efforts are being done in order to preserve the Kapampangan language.

Somehow we are lucky in Cebu because all our local radio stations broadcast in Cebuano… and our local newspapers have a Cebuano language edition… and this is also true to the Ilonggo language in Iloilo and Bacolod or the Waray language in Samar or Leyte. If at all, the satellite TV coverage of ABS-CBN promotes the Tagalog language…but then they only focus on the new in Metro Manila. Pres. Duterte is coming to Cebu on Feb. 12 and I hope to meet him so I can tell him more about the issue of languages… that Cebuano is not a dialect, but a language, which is unintelligible from the Tagalog language.

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