ADVICE TO MY DAUGHTER 11: SUBSIDIARITY

In the previous entry, I highlighted the charitable nature of the Proverbs 31 wife. The loss of such wives—or, to be more precise, the loss of strong godly families who both protect and are nurtured by such wives—has led to untold societal decay and dissolution. Absent such wives, and their well-respected husbands, services that should have risen upward from stable and vibrant families and churches have increasingly been replaced by bureaucratized programs that necessarily lack the personal, human touch.

Catholic social teaching of the twentieth century advocated a system known as subsidiarity, by which matters of public concern were to be handled on the smallest level possible. Bucking against the modern mania for centralizing all political, economic, and social authority, advocates of subsidiarity called for local solutions to such perennial problems as ignorance, poverty, and unemployment. It was a noble vision, but it can only be sustained by civic-minded women who embody all of the virtues of the Proverbs 31 wife.

Charity is vital, but it must exist alongside other character traits that are no less important: ^“Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness” (25-27).

A compassionate woman who lacks strength and honor will not have the confidence and the staying power to impact the community in which she lives. And that strength and honor cannot be merely superficial; she must wear them as she does her clothing. They must imbue all areas of her life, from the moral training of her children, to her participation in the local congregation, to her public acts of volunteerism.

To succeed as a force for familial and social stability, she must have a humble but firm sense of her own dignity. And with that sense of dignity, she must possess as well the wisdom to counsel others and to distinguish between those whom she can truly help and those whom she must turn over to the care of others. A free-floating desire to “do good” will not suffice in the absence of real discernment. Indeed, charity that is extended out of a sense of guilt or a flood of unfocused emotions can often do more harm than good.

Finally, for all the elements to work together, the giver of charity must possess a deep and abiding kindness. Such kindness simply cannot be conveyed through centralized programs whose operational centers are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the communities and people who are being served.

The Proverbs 31 wife is the ideal giver of charity for her inner strength of character, discerning mind, and kind heart enable her to address the real needs of her community. Knowing, from her experience as a mother, how to balance judgment with mercy and how to distinguish the truly sick child from the manipulator who wants a day off from school, she will be able to giver aid where it will do actual good and withhold it where it will negatively increase dependency.