As the end of the year approaches, Catholics across America will give generously to charitable causes. It’s a powerful expression of our Christian commitment to showing God’s love for the vulnerable. But it should also remind us that such love can only be shown by individual people—not impersonal bureaucracies.
One of the great injustices of our time is that charity has largely been outsourced to government. The federal government alone spends at least $1.2 trillion a year on social support and welfare programs. States and local government add billions more to the total. This massive system reflects the earnest belief among many Americans—including many Catholics—that only government is big enough to solve problems like poverty. But this view is a fundamental misunderstanding of how charity works. And far from being a sign of God’s love, it often blocks the most vulnerable from becoming who God made them to be.
Catholic social teaching insists that authentic charity—caritas—is always personal. It flows from one human heart to another, and is never reducible to tax policy, state programs, or impersonal redistribution. While the Church affirms the legitimate role of government in promoting justice and the common good, she consistently teaches that love cannot be delegated to the State. Charity is a virtue, not an administrative function; a personal act of encounter, not a bureaucratic mechanism.
At the center of this vision is the truth of the human person. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that man is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake” (CCC 356). Because each person possesses inherent dignity, the response owed to him—especially when he’s in poverty—is not merely material assistance but love, freely given. The Christian vocation to charity is therefore not satisfied by paying taxes or supporting public welfare programs.
No papal document articulates this more clearly than Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est. Benedict distinguishes sharply between the role of the State, which must pursue justice, and the role of the Christian, who must exercise love: “The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom… Yet the State cannot and must not take upon itself the responsibility for love. Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society” (Deus Caritas Est, 28). Even when a society succeeds in creating equitable structures, personal charity remains indispensable because the human heart longs not only for fairness but for encounter and compassion.
This principle is embedded in another foundational pillar of Catholic social teaching: subsidiarity. First articulated clearly in Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, the principle states: “It is an injustice, a grave evil, and a disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do” (Quadragesimo Anno, 79). Subsidiarity is not a technical principle of governance; it is a protection of human dignity. It insists that assistance should be offered at the most local and personal level possible—beginning with the family, then the Church, then civil associations. Only when these fail should the State intervene.
The Catechism reinforces this teaching: “A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order” (CCC 1883). The reason, the Church explains, is that subsidiarity “sets limits for state intervention” (CCC 1885), ensuring that society remains rooted in human relationships—not abstract systems.
St. John Paul II developed this further in Centesimus Annus, where he critiques what he calls the “Social Assistance State.” While acknowledging the necessity of governmental frameworks to support those in need, he warns that excessive state control “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients” (Centesimus Annus, 48). When the State replaces families, churches, and voluntary associations as the primary agents of care, the result is not only inefficiency but a loss of personal responsibility and the diminishment of the moral life of the community.
Government aid, though often necessary, can never produce the spiritual goods that flow from personal charity: friendship, solidarity, compassion, and evangelization. Pope Benedict XVI noted in Caritas in Veritate that integral human development requires more than technical solutions—“Charity goes beyond justice… but it never lacks justice” (Caritas in Veritate, 6). Structures of justice are essential, but they do not exhaust the Christian mission. Only persons—converted and animated by grace—can love other persons.
This point becomes especially clear when examining tax systems and government welfare. Public policy may encourage or discourage private giving, but it cannot replace it. Tax credits or deductions may incentivize generosity, yet they cannot substitute for the spiritual discipline of giving one’s time, presence, prayer, and material goods in love. As the Catechism teaches, almsgiving is “a witness to fraternal charity” and “a work pleasing to God” (CCC 2462). It is not merely a financial transaction; it is an act of worship and discipleship.
Moreover, Catholic social doctrine emphasizes that love is transformational. The one who gives and the one who receives are both spiritually enriched. Bureaucratic systems, while often necessary for large-scale social functions, cannot effect such mutual transformation. They deliver resources but not relationship.
Even the Church’s institutional charities remain rooted in personal love. As Benedict XVI writes, “Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies… It is love which gives the Church her credibility” (Deus Caritas Est, 31). Catholic institutions serve the poor not because the State is inadequate but because Christ commands His followers to love in His name.
Thus, the Church’s teaching is not an argument for eliminating government involvement in social welfare; rather, it is a reminder that the State must serve justice while Christians must serve love. The State may distribute goods, but only persons can give themselves. And without the gift of self, society loses the very heart of charity.
In the end, Catholic social doctrine returns repeatedly to this truth: a just society is necessary, but it will never be sufficient. The human person was made for love, and love is always personal. Therefore, the renewal of society and the uplifting of the vulnerable requires not merely better policies but deeper holiness—men and women who encounter Christ and, filled with His grace, carry that love to their brothers and sisters.
This truth is worth remembering, not only as we end the year, but also as we look to the new year. As faithful Catholics, we should begin thinking how we can begin to roll back the massive yet increasingly ineffective government bureaucracy—and replace it with our own charitable efforts. Lay apostolates in particular have a powerful role to play, as providers of social assistance and evangelization.
America needs our witness of Christian love. And America needs our witness, expressed in charity, far more than it needs more ineffective and unaffordable government programs.
