[2] In that work, Taparelli established the criteria of just social order, which he referred to as "hypotactical right" and which came to be termed subsidiarity following German influences.
[3] The term subsidiarity as employed in Catholic social thought was inspired by the teaching of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, who served as Bishop of Mainz in the mid- to late 19th century.
"[5] As with many social encyclicals in the modern period, this one occurs in the historical context of the intensifying struggle between communist and capitalist ideologies, exactly forty years—hence the title—after the Vatican's first public stance on the issue in Rerum novarum.
Promulgated in 1931, Quadragesimo anno is a response to German National Socialism (Nazism) and Soviet communism, on one hand, and to Western European and American capitalist individualism on the other.
"[7] Either interpretation indicates a hermeneutic of subsidiarity in which the higher social body's rights and responsibilities for action are predicated upon their assistance to and empowerment of the lower.
[11] Building on the personalist and social theories of Luigi Taparelli, the use of the term subsidiarity was advanced by German theologian and aristocrat Oswald von Nell-Breuning.
(Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 79)In their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, the U.S. Catholic bishops cited subsidiarity as an essential principal of a just society.
Distributism, a third way economic philosophy developed by Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton and originating in concepts associated with the Catholic social teaching, considers the principle of subsidiarity to be a cornerstone of its theoretical foundation.
[15] The Church's belief in subsidiarity is found in the programs of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, where grassroots community organizing projects are supported to promote economic justice and end the cycle of poverty.