Whose Neighbour Can I Become?

Reflections from Ordo Amoris to Modern Politics

In our online home group this week, we found ourselves circling back to one of the most familiar stories in the Gospels—the parable of the Good Samaritan. We began, as always, with the question: “Who is my neighbour?” But a fascinating thread emerged when we read it alongside recent debates among Catholics about the concept of ordo amoris—the “order of love”—and some striking remarks from contemporary political figures.

J D Vance, for example, recently argued:

“As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

On the face of it, this sounds orderly, reasonable even. Love in stages. Prioritisation. But as we discussed in our group, it also struck a discordant note: does Christian love ever really fit into neat hierarchies like this?

Here’s where ordo amoris can help us think differently. Augustine’s idea of rightly ordered love reminds us that what we love shapes who we become and what we do. Love that is rightly ordered doesn’t mean “love in measured stages” according to convenience or nationality. Rather, it means orienting our affections toward the highest goods—justice, mercy, compassion—so that our love flows outward from its proper foundation. Misordered love leads to fear, exclusion, and indifference.

Reading the Good Samaritan through this lens, the question shifts: it becomes less about “Who counts as my neighbour?” and more about “Whose neighbour can I become?” The Samaritan doesn’t ask whether the wounded man is “deserving” or “belongs” to his circle. He simply acts. He enters the vulnerability of another’s life. He becomes a neighbour.

This reorientation matters when we consider debates like Vance’s. A politics of staged compassion: family first, citizens second, the rest of the world later, might reflect a kind of love, but it risks narrowing our moral imagination. What if, instead, we asked: Whose neighbour can I become today? What if our affections, rightly ordered, moved us to care across borders, across enmity, across comfort zones? What if global responsibility wasn’t an afterthought, but an extension of our ethical formation?

Of course, this doesn’t mean ignoring the needs of those closest to us. Families, local communities, and nations matter. But rightly ordered love asks us to measure our hearts by the capacity to act in mercy, not by arbitrary borders or hierarchies of obligation. The Samaritan shows us that neighbourliness is active and risky. It is not a question of calculation, but of initiation: stepping into need, offering help, bearing the cost of compassion.

In a world of intense debate over immigration, national interest, and civic duty, this question, whose neighbour can I become? offers a different starting point. It moves the conversation from defensiveness and limitation toward practical love, shared humanity, and moral courage. It reminds us that Christian ethics is not merely about who qualifies for our care, but about who we are willing to enter alongside, even when it challenges us, even when it crosses borders we would rather not cross.

Our home group ended with a quiet reflection: if the parable is an invitation, it is to a life of moral imagination and action. The Good Samaritan does not ask, “Who is my neighbour?” He simply becomes one. And in the messy, complicated, globalised world we inhabit today, that might be exactly the kind of question we need to take seriously: Whose neighbour can I become?