“Christianity is directed at the individual...”
I certainly agree with that although I see your
point about the responsibility of kings and rulers
as described in the OT.
Thank you for your response.
To the best of my knowledge, the Church doesn't even use the word "individual," it uses the word "person" --- because "individual" implies an isolated entity, while "person" implies a social context, beginning with the family.
It's subtle, but important: you could be an "individual" in a Petri dish, but you develop as a person in a family. And the Church teaches that human beings are intrinsically social, not intrinsically isolated (individual.)
There is also an essential Chrisian role for the societies directly founded by Divine and Natural Law, namely, the Family and the Church, and for a HUGE number of intermediate institutions, and for the State (King).
Don't forget that in the days of Joseph in Genesis, God's providence ended up using the Pharaoh seizing control of all agricultural production, imposing an Emergency Preparedness Program involving the stockpiling of grain and the building of Storage Cities, and appointing Joseph to control all buying and selling during the famine.
That's an extreme situation and shouldn't be taken as typical. However, it does imply that if the emergency is truly cataclysmic, "subsidiarity" will mean a whole lot of power going to the State when necessary to prevent the extinction of nations.
In non-cataclysmic situations, though, responsibility is always supposed to devolve back to the lowest, most local, and most voluntary level that can effectively carry out the task.
How to do that is not laid out in any kind of official blueprint. It's up to us. It's called 'prudential judgment.'