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6 OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2024 | DENVER CATHOLIC B I G G OV E R N M E N T V S . S U B S I D I A R IT Y Today, we face such a crisis, with the common good undermined by a culture of death that undercuts our transcendent identity to remake us in our own image. Government has become a leviathan larger than our ability to control, which doles out life and death on its unbalanced utilitar- ian scales. Technology has facilitated the rise of the Mass State, with its bloated bureaucracy stretching its tentacles into every aspect of our lives, creating passivity to political and economic forces that stretch across the globe. For the first time, society can be managed remotely on a vast scale, taking political direction out of local communities and away from those who know the needs on the ground. Through the principle of subsid- iarity, the Church encourages us to recover local participation in civic life, directing society locally when- ever possible. In Centesimus Annus, Pope St. John Paul II teaches us that "the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its func- tions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good" (48). He calls us to rediscover a genuine political sense rooted in our local communities. Even amid crisis, we remain polit- ical beings, meant to live in com- munion with others, and we cannot retreat from the problems of modern life in an individualistic fashion. To live the good life, we must learn to depend on one another, not in a passive way, but by building genu- ine communit y to realize the many unmet needs of our time. Guided by the principle of subsidiarit y, we can reclaim the order of societ y toward the good of the person and our coop- erative dependence on one another to achieve societ y's goals. Seeking selfish gain at the expense of others fundamentally undermines the common good. S O L I DA R IT Y This is why the Church also lays out the principle of solidarit y, which Pope St. John Paul II characterized as "defending the There is no authority except from God." ROM 13:1