As I was growing up my father volunteered with the local branch of St Vincent de Paul. I’d hear dad’s stories about visiting families doing it tough: about assisting with groceries or replacing broken whitegoods.
Other times, I would join dad while volunteering at one of the soup kitchens near Melbourne city. I saw all sorts of people there. This was my introduction to “solidarity”, one of the cornerstones of Christian social teaching, and one of the most human things about being human.
Solidarity involves seeing others as we see ourselves. In older terms, it is the corporal works of mercy, of seeing Christ in everyone and treating them accordingly.
It’s easy now to be suspicious of the term solidarity as it gets used by political activists to justify their agendas to remake the world. But just because something is used for the wrong reason doesn’t make it a bad thing.
Openness
Early on in my dad’s time at Vinnies, he met a Vietnamese refugee man and his family and we befriended them. These were the original “boatpeople” fleeing a war and a tyranny that was seeking to kill or re-educate every last one of them.
It’s easy for us to forget that the Vietnam War was not about us and it was not about the Americans. It was about Chinese and Soviet-backed communist revolutionaries seeking to wipe out the largely Catholic supporters of democracy under the South Vietnamese government.
Things were not easy for this family. They had to leave family behind and some of the kids had gotten quite malnourished during their harrowing journey to Australia. I’ll always remember how grateful they were for the Aussie families who made them feel welcome.
But I think we got more from them than they got from us. They were generous, they were respectful, they were faithful.
They were friends – but they were also, in a funny way, role models. Our openness to each other and our openness to each other’s experiences made us stronger and smarter than we would have otherwise been.
And this openness has made Australia stronger and smarter and more resilient. Much like the way B.A. “Bob” Santamaria led The Movement by introducing alternative perspectives and encouraging respectful discussion; or how Dr Joe Santamaria, Bob’s brother, strengthened the faith of countless young people through the Thomas More Centre by letting them question, doubt, and debate – an openness anchored in a transcendent foundation of truth that makes for a much better world.
Going through my head will be not just prayers for the departed, but prayers for our country, prayers that we can regain this openness of spirit and solidarity between us all, whatever our cultural heritage.
True Solidarity
Australia faces many challenges going forward. It has become easy for us to avoid hard questions. It has become easy for us to hide in our “filter bubbles” and “information siloes”. But in so doing, we make our neighbours into strangers, and our friendships get judged by ideological purity tests – as if we are all in some sort of communist dystopia.
We are running initiatives right now to counter this problem, and soon we expect to be able to bring them into a wider domain.
April 30 is the 48th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Local Vietnamese communities will mark the occasion with a mourning service. I will be attending the service in Brisbane, Queensland.
And going through my head will be not just prayers for the departed, but prayers for our country, prayers that we can regain this openness of spirit and solidarity between us all, whatever our cultural heritage.
Luke McCormack is national president of the National Civic Council.
