Having the readiness to sacrifice
Todd David Whitmore
The Common Good
Last week I submitted an application for my daughter, Flannery, to attend the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) at Notre Dame next fall. For me, this action had an additional level of meaning because I served on the original University committee that helped convince the administration that on-site child care was both desirable and doable.
Flannery's birth was more than four years away at the time of my service on the committee. While I thought that at some point I would like to have children, I was motivated out of a sense that such child care was a good idea — something for the common good — rather than out of self-interest.
Catholic social teaching both guided the reasoning for child care and shaped how that care should be offered. The principle of subsidiarity stresses that those who are closest to a situation or person have the primary responsibility for it or her, but that larger and more remote associations and institutions still have the role of supporting — the Latin root for subsidiarity means "to support" — those with the primary responsibility. Parents have the primary responsibility of raising and educating their children, but schools — whether ECDC or public or private schools at other levels — can support this process.
The concepts of the common good and the option for the poor were key in shaping how the committee thought about the offering of such care and education. Following the common good, we designed the program so that it would be open not just to the children of faculty and administration, but to those of staff, students and alumni as well. In the registration lottery, students and staff receive the same priority as faculty and administration.
To assure that this common good could in fact be served, the option for the poor guided the committee's recommendation that tuition be on a sliding scale basis. For the 2000-2001 school year at ECDC-Notre Dame, full-time tuition for those making over $70,000 a year is $141 a week; for those making under $20,000, it is $63 (including breakfast and a hot lunch).
The need for such child care on campus demonstrated itself right away. While, on average, new child care facilities take five years to be operating at full capacity, at ECDC-ND this occurred in the first year. There are now more applicants than there are openings. This has necessitated a random selection process, the only fair option in such a situation if the driving force really is the common good.
The upshot of the random selection process is that even though I have given over 10 years of service to Notre Dame and served on the committee that helped make Notre Dame-sponsored child care a reality, my daughter may lose out to the son or daughter of someone else, someone who plans to remain at Notre Dame only a short while and who played no role in the founding of the facility. The important point is that given the relative scarcity of openings, if we are serious about Catholic social teaching, this — the possibility that another child rather than Flannery will get in — is as it should be.
While there is a great deal of discussion of the common good and the option for the poor in Catholic social teaching, there is less — and certainly not enough — discussion of the possibility and even necessity of sacrifice on the part of those who are more well off if indeed the common good and the less well off are to be served.
There are exceptions. John Paul II, in "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis," states that "solidarity demands a readiness to accept the sacrifices necessary for the good of the whole world community."
Paul VI goes even further and says that, "the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others." When the documents back such claims theologically, they speak about the Church itself as a sacrament-sacrifice in imitation of Christ.
I have to confess that I am not quite ready for this "readiness to accept the sacrifices necessary." To be so is counter-intuitive for a parent. It is much easier to say, "I am willing to sacrifice," than, "I am willing to have my child sacrifice an instance of a basic good." It is much easier to say, "I will pay more so that both Flannery and the child of a student can attend," than "I am willing to structure admissions such that it might happen that another child rather than Flannery gets to attend."
But the latter is what the social teaching requires if we look squarely at its implications. It is also one way that the university must move to get from "Notre Dame family" as metaphor to Notre Dame families as lived reality.
Todd David Whitmore is an associate theology professor. His column appears every other Thursday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, April 5, 2001
