A renewal of understanding of Catholic social teaching, and its intrinsic compatibility with an economic and social order in which families are at the centre of decision-making, can make a valuable contribution to enriching the free economy. Unsurprisingly, any analysis should begin with the application of the familiar principles in Catholic social teaching of solidarity and subsidiarity. Many commentators talk as if these two concepts are held in tension. Solidarity, it is argued, demands government action to help the poor, the homeless, the sick and so on, whereas the idea of subsidiarity provides a warning to politicians to use the lowest possible layer of government to implement policy and to leave decisions with the family if possible. This is an over-simplification.

When the popes have talked about solidarity and the "preferential option for the poor" they have almost always used it in the context of charity - love and service in providing for one's neighbour without expecting anything in return. It is a fundamental error to conflate the role of the political system in seeking to help the poor through redistribution with that of people acting spontaneously out of charity. As Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est (2005): "There is no ordering of the state so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love...There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help...The state which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person - every person - needs."

We do need a renewal of solidarity. The state should create a just order. The state may intervene, at times, to try and assist the poor. But the spirit of solidarity, represented by love and works of charity, arises in the first place from the individual, the family and spontaneously from the community. More generally, Christians need to put the state back in its place. They should make clear the need to give families, voluntary institutions and civil society room to breathe and fulfil their legitimate functions. After all, the first and biggest provider of welfare is the family. The working wife provides for the unemployed husband; husband and wife provide for the needs of their children; children will look after their parents; and so on. Yet, over a 20-year period at least, the state has decisively undermined the family as a provider of welfare and taken upon itself not only the provision of income but, increasingly, child-care too.