To view your country’s leaders from abroad can be an instructive experience ─ even when “abroad” is a country as near and as friendly as Canada. That happened to me last weekend when visiting with friends in Montreal.

Hearing French spoken and recognizing certain cultural differences create shifts of perspective about the United States. This helps explain why Barack Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame made such an impact on me. I watched it on a Canadian television channel that, to my surprise, broadcast the talk from beginning to end.

Many Canadians feel excited about Barack Obama. They see him as a person of color who has managed the previously unimagined feat of getting elected to the highest office in the United States.

His personal magnetism and charm won him great attention in Canada  during his visit to Ottawa in February. An old friend, then a resident of that city, happened to be at an outdoor market when the president stopped by. For my friend, it was an unforgettable moment.

After their experience of Obama’s predecessor in the presidency, Canadians surely appreciate his skill as an orator. Perhaps that helps explain why they carried the Notre Dame speech live on television.

I am grateful that they did so. For a variety of reasons, I consider this the best speech of Obama’s still young presidency.

For some weeks, tension had been building on the Notre Dame campus and elsewhere, because a pro-choice president had been invited to speak at a Catholic institution.  Feelings ran high in the university community, and many activists had gathered in the area. This situation created an atmosphere of dramatic friction.

His opening remarks were interrupted by loud angry outbursts from opponents; he kept his poise and insisted on the rights of people to protest. The skill with which the president handled the opposition ranked as one of the most impressive oratorical feats I have seen.

I have seen politicians in similar situations who resorted to hostile or humorous retorts. But, just as he had done in the presidential campaign, Obama managed to defuse the opposition while professing his respect for those disagreeing with him.

I will remember his reassuring words in response to loudly shouted protests: “It’s all right. We’re fine, everybody. We don’t do things easily. We’re not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable.”

By insisting on the need for Americans of all viewpoints and convictions to open their minds and hearts to those who disagree with them, Obama shared with his audience what he understands to be the requirements of our democracy.

These requirements can be challenging; and there was a challenge, too, in his message to the 2009 graduates. Instead of commiserating with them about the recession, with its obstacles for job hunters, he told these young people that they have “a privilege accorded to few generations.”

Echoing FDR’s “rendezvous with destiny,” he called upon them to “remake our world to renew its promise.”

In the economic realm, “your generation is the one that must find a path back to prosperity and decide how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before the most recent crisis hit.”

That also means discovering common ground in a diverse world. “We must find a way to live together as one human family,” he told them. “No one person or nation or religion can meet these challenges alone.”

He also proposed several approaches to abortion on which people might find agreement. That includes “reducing the number of women seeking abortions, reducing unintended pregnancies, making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their children to term.”

Beyond these measures, he called on everyone to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion,” but admitted that “at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.”

But much remains to be done together. Obama recalled his early work with organizations inspired by Chicago’s Cardinal Bernadin, for whom the search for common ground was imperative.

In one of the grace notes of his speech, Obama also singled out one of Notre Dame’s living icons, its former president, Father Theodore Hesburgh, now 92 years old.

An outstanding educational leader, Father Hesburgh was also one of the original members of the US Commission on Civil Rights, which was appointed by President Eisenhower in 1957, and whose work helped to establish the landmark legislation of the 1960s.

To good rhetorical effect, President Obama borrowed Father Hesburgh’s two metaphors for Notre Dame. The latter was fond of presenting the institution to students as both a lighthouse and a crossroads.

As a lighthouse, Obama said Notre Dame “stands apart shining with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition.”  By virtue of the second, it is a place where “differences of culture and religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.”

Richard Griffin