Love, Christians have always known, believes in both good fences as well as shared pastures.  We do this by, as St. Thomas defined love, “willing the good of the other”. Peoples who do not think alike and who would not likely live well together can still share much to the benefit of all, the entire world.

Without exploitation we can share goods through trade and goodwill gifts, educational exchanges (both academic & in the trades), the best and most non-offensive parts of our respective cultures. We can help one another lovingly in times of disasters, natural or otherwise. We can work in concerted efforts to save our beautiful and very wounded earth—especially our precious water supplies and forests and other open spaces, and without dislocating the poor through draconian population control measures.

Peoples who do not think alike and live at distances can still care for one another, even across different secured borders. This caring is imperative for peace and peacemaking. Instead of greed, envy and threats, we can seek to settle any differences through patient determined negotiations.

We can invite the sick to our hospitals for healing so the infirm can return to their own countries whole and with kind thoughts for the “foreigner” who, like the Good Samaritan in the Gospel, tended their wounds as brothers and sisters.

We can share scientific and artistic accomplishments and open our countries to tourism, work together to prevent drug smuggling.

The works of mercy know no borders, even if political realities must. Borders should never be absolute walls, or provocations, but merely a realistic recognition of very serious difference. As I wrote years ago elsewhere, Clearly, from a Catholic Christian point of view, hospitality toward “strangers” (of whatever race or religion) is a duty of charity. And any kind of arbitrary discrimination based solely on race or ethnicity is incompatible with the Catholic Faith. For we are all God’s children in Adam, whatever our race or ethnicity, even before we are adopted into that greater Community of the redeemed through baptism into Christ.

We must especially be solicitous for the poor, the sick, the weak and heavy laden. All of this is the only serious long term and moral solution to the problem of hostility to the West.

But some secular humanist globalists have coined the term Xenophobia as a ruse to go beyond merely showing concern for the “stranger” in his time of need, and would make it, rather, an all inclusive global mandate for a purely naturalistic world order, amounting to the abolishing or blurring of the natural sovereignty of nations (not to be confused with extreme, exaggerated forms of nationalism) towards an artificial and forced socially constructed homogenization of all peoples according to new values (even compelling the rejection of the Natural Law leading to lethal definitions of “compassion,” as in abortion and euthanasia, etc). This is unacceptable to the Catholic mind.

Putting Aside Utopian Schemes Without Loss of Love

All of the good can be done without naive utopian dreams of mixing world views and beliefs which simply do not mix at the end of the day. It is not a sin to be soberly realistic in this regard. Most Muslims or Hindus or Jews, for instance, feel more comfortable in lands where Muslim, Hindu or Jewish belief is honored as the law of the land.

We must be realistic and choose an imperfect peace today over no future at all, as we wait for the Promise of Jesus for that real and only Utopia, the Beatific Vision. But we can do so much more today, here and now. Together. —Stephen Hand

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G.K Chesterton once wrote: “There exists” in the following scenario “a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

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The Corporal Works of Mercy

Feed the hungry

Give drink to the thirsty

Give alms to the poor

Shelter the homeless

Caring for the sick

Visit the imprisoned

Bury the dead

The Spiritual Works of Mercy

Counsel the doubtful

Instruct the ignorant

Admonish the sinner

Comfort the sorrowful

Forgive injuries

Bear wrongs patiently

Pray for the living and the dead