Rejection of the “Bureaucratic Principle”
Even to the not so casual observer, it might sometimes seem that the primary evidence of anarchism in any Catholic Worker community is a determined unprofessionalism, a kind of seat-of-the-pants, ad hoc improvisational approach that intentionally seeks (as Piehl nicely terms it) a kind of “anti-bureaucratic formlessness.” This extemporaneous method is not based on any sense that the poor should be willing to make do with casual, unthinking, or slipshod efforts on their behalf, as in the hideous maxim “beggars can’t be choosers.” Rather, it grows from a conviction that long-range, elaborately structed schemes for social service inevitably become inflexible, devoting more energy, finally, to the perpetuation of their own programs and prerogatives than to the needs of those they were created to serve. The regulations and consistency required for the functioning of complex systems make it difficult, if not impossible, for one to act spontaneously and directly withing them to meet the unique human dimensions of particular need.
Further, the more complicated the organization, the more it distances the person serving from the person being served. The buffers of bureaucracy not only allow but even require a kind of psychological and spiritual anonymity. The “provider” is reduced to his or her function (“I don’t make the rules”). The recipient loses personal specificity and becomes a “case.”
What some have called the “bureaucratic principle” inevitable requires uniformity, depersonalization (often in the name of “professionalism”) and top-heavy administrative structures. There is a profound spiritual difference between the bureaucrat’s “I can give you a voucher” and the personalist’s “Come home with me.” In that difference lies the ultimate significance of Catholic Workers’ ongoing efforts at simple, direct responses to the needs of the poor among whom they live and serve. As is often pointed out in the movement, a primary goal of the personalist revolution must always be the recovery of that “I-thou” connection between individuals of which philosopher/theologian Martin Buber writes so compelling out of his Jewish tradition. In this “I-thou” interaction, the authentic personhood of one reveals itself in honesty and vulnerability to the personhood of another, accepting and loving that other as an image of God in his or her own right, worthy of full attention and care. In light of such an aim, a conscious repudiation of the bureaucratic principle is clearly the necessary first step toward a more human model of service.”
- Lawrence Holben in All the Way to Heaven