President Visits Canada: Redeemer Pacific College asks: `Who's Your Neighbor?'

Barack Obama gets some tips on being his brother's keeper as Redeemer Pacific College casts an eye on the Catholic Social Vision in the U.S.

LANGLEY (The B.C. Catholic) - U.S. President Barack Obama was on the right track when he campaigned on a message of solidarity during his run for the presidency, says Deacon Keith Fournier.

Unfortunately, Obama's call for us to be our brother's keeper never answered one essential question: who is our neighbour?

"Our first neighbour is the child in the womb," said Deacon Fournier as he spoke on The Catholic Social Vision and Barack Obama at Redeemer Pacific College's fourth annual Faithful Catholic Speakers fund-raising event. Deacon Fournier, a Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Va., is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who is also the Editor of Catholic Online. https://www.catholic.org

The Obama campaign's message of compassion for the marginalized was "a message that needed to be spoken," he argued to a crowd of 200 at the Langley campus of Trinity Western University Jan. 31.

"I pray for them; I want them to succeed; but I worry," said Deacon Fournier about the new Obama administration. Obama, he said, has positioned himself as standing in the legacy of Lincoln on freedom, that "persons can never be treated as property," but "in abortion, persons are treated as property."

Obama, in "a terrible irony," noted the deacon, has restored funding for international agencies that promote abortion worldwide. He observed that Obama has promised to sign "lethal legislation," the Freedom of Choice Act, which "will undo every pro-life advance we have made."

"I pray he's converted at understanding who our neighbour is."

Deacon Keith's lecture was introduced by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, who called the evening's event "extraordinarily timely" and praised the collaboration of Redeemer Pacific College with Trinity Western University as "intellectual ecumenism at its very best," already bearing fruit.

Archbishop Miller spoke of how the Church's mission of "proclaiming the Gospel" was primarily supernatural, to "help people in reaching their supernatural goal." He also affirmed the role for the Church's social teaching in evangelization. "Part of her mission of evangelization," he explained, is "ensuring that society serves the true good of persons."

Most of Deacon Fournier's talk was devoted to explaining Catholic social teaching: "Most Catholics don't even know there is such a thing," he said.

Catholic social teaching offers principles by which economic theories, for example, can be evaluated, by considering whether they serve the family and the common good. This teaching "cannot be constrained by any political ideology," he said.

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"We can't make a better world on our own. That's utopianism," he said. Our obligation, rather, is to be "seeds of the kingdom." Deacon Fournier praised the work of Redeemer Pacific College, saying that in its students it is fostering what is needed in the long run: "new language, new associations, and new leaders" to build a new "culture of life and civilization of love." Because in Jesus man was fully revealed, His incarnation is the heart of the Catholic social vision.

Deacon Fournier gave eloquent testimony to the eyes full of love for Jesus that he had seen during his visit to RPC and TWU.

As for the "new language" required in politics, the deacon argued, "We cheapen Catholic social teaching when we try to limit it with ideological categories," because its aim is not partisan, but rather to defend "the dignity of the human person." It is, therefore, vital to learn its principles, because "the political jargon of the age" is, for Christians, "miserably useless."

Only when guided by Catholic principles can we "speak the language of whatever government we're dealing with" and yet highlight the disconnect between, for example, Obama's rhetoric and its actual application.

To this purpose, Deacon Fournier offered a crash course in Catholic social teaching for the crowd, which included many RPC students. He summed up the teaching in terms of its "four pillars": life, family, authentic human freedom, and solidarity.

"The dignity of human life," he said, is "not a single issue," as our opponents falsely claim, but rather "a foundation through which we view all of reality," because "without life, there can be no other rights. Without people, there can be no human rights." Deacon Fournier noted that the womb is "the first home of the whole human race."

Family means marriage between a man and a woman, for life. This "is not a social construct," he said. When we defend marriage, this is "not a religious position," but rather what can be "known via reason," a truth knowable "from natural law." Therefore "to defend marriage is to defend the entire social order," since "family is the first school." Because "true progress passes through the family," it requires full recognition of the rights of the person, including that of the child to a mother and father.

For authentic human freedom, "Truth must be joined to freedom," so that "we choose what is true," he said. Otherwise, as Pope John Paul II warned, society will adopt "a counterfeit notion of freedom" which will lead to the death of true freedom.

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On solidarity, he explained that Catholic thought "begins with the person in relation" to others. Because "free market" economist Adam Smith's "`invisible hand' can also strangle the poor," the poor need help. Such help should come from an organizational entity "only as large as necessary" to meet the need, and this is the principle of subsidiarity.

During the question period of the evening, Deacon Fournier agreed with RPC Professor Robert Stackpole that central government should be "the brother's keeper of last resort." The deacon noted that Catholic social teaching warns against the temptation to rely too heavily on bureaucracies and governments because of their notoriously unjust inefficiencies.

Archbishop Miller contributed his expertise about papal teaching as he got involved in Deacon Fournier's discussion with the audience on the principle of subsidiarity, calling it "the undiscovered principle."

Deacon Fournier also explained subsidiarity as the need for non-government institutions to act as buffers between the family and the state, to keep state power from expanding unnecessarily.

He recommended the discussion of subsidiarity in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, available at Blessings bookstore in Langley.

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Dr. C.S. Morrissey teaches Latin and Philosophy at Redeemer Pacific College in Langley, British Columbia.He is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

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This article appeared in The B.C. Catholic, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Vancouver and is used with permission.