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That approach, they say, could mean clashes down the road with group rights, especially those of families, religions and nationalities.

“Stephane Dion is to be congratulated for setting the tone of the Liberal leadership debate that has now contributed to making the environment the key concern of Canadians,” said Joe Gunn, director of the Congregation of Notre Dame’s Visitation Province justice, peace, and integrity of creation office.

Daniel Cere, director of the Institute for the Study of Marriage, Law and Culture at McGill University agreed Dion’s proactive approach will “receive a sympathetic hearing,” noting John Paul II had called for “an ecological conversion among Catholics.”

“What Dion brings to the political debate is a sort of Generation X form of Trudeau,” Cere said. He described him as most “squeaky clean” Trudeau representative among all the candidates.

Cere assumes Dion will follow Trudeau’s “just society” approach that will also appeal to Catholics. Dion has made social justice one of his “three pillars,” along with a sustainable environment and economic prosperity.

Cere also sees Dion as in “lockstep” with the Trudeau legacy left by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The charter, however, Cere said is a “thin document” that does not go “far enough in the robust conception of rights that grounds the Catholic tradition.”

“His [Dion’s] position is so grounded in an individualistic conception of rights,” he said. “That kind of conception can be corruptive of forms of communal identity – family, religion or nationality.”

The Catholic tradition sees human rights grounded in an authentic conception of the human person that recognizes the communal dimensions of family, social and national identities, he said.

“I don’t think the Catholic community can feel completely comfortable with the Dion vision,” he said.

Cere is especially worried about religious freedom, especially the rights of religious institutions to hold views that are inconsistent with so-called charter values. He warned that the individualistic notion of rights is increasingly narrowing the conception of religious freedom to freedom of conscience even though the Charter and the courts recognize both conscience rights and religious freedom.

Luc Gagnon, editor of the French-language conservative journal Égards and president of Quebec Campagne-Vie agrees.

“He’s in the same line as Chrétien and Martin but worse, because Martin was a serious Catholic, and that placed some limits on his liberalism,” he said. Gagnon fears that Dion will go even further not only in the separation of church and state, but also in the separation of morality and politics.

Gagnon fears that the next “right” that might be championed is the “right to die.”

“I would say he is dangerous because he will let the left-wing of the Liberal Party govern Canada, the party and the agenda.” Gagnon does not see Dion as a man of principle on moral issues, either for or against. Instead he sees Dion as the spiritual son of Jean Chrétien, who he characterizes as more interested in power. For example, on the marriage motion, Dion initially contemplated whipping his caucus, but decided not to for tactical reasons, even though he told journalists same-sex marriage is a “right” and one does not “pick and choose rights.”

A profile in the Jan. 20 Globe and Mail newspaper seems to support Gagnon’s view. Author Konrad Yakabuski concludes that those who see Dion as the intellectual offspring of Trudeau are mistaken, that Dion is more interested in concrete reality than abstract ideas; in implementing ideas more than theorizing. He quotes Dion’s wife, political scientist Janine Krieber as saying that for Dion, “all that exists is the individual. Everything else is a social construction, hence does not exist.”

Born in 1955, Dion grew up in Quebec City, son of famous Laval University political scientist Leon Dion, who opposed the “priest-ridden” Quebec society under the Duplessis regime. Dion’s parents were ahead of the curve in the Quiet Revolution that swept Quebec in the 1960s.

Dion’s Paris-born mother told the Globe and Mail that she was criticized for not wearing a hat to church, but that soon the family stopped attending except to have the children baptized or receive their first communion. Dion attended Catholic schools, and, according to the Globe, during an obligatory confession “mocked the priest by seeking forgiveness for having lost his faith.” When he started attending College of the Jesuits, an elite high school, he told the Globe the Jesuits still held a lot of power in Quebec, but by the time he left, education was under provincial control and “it was bedlam. There was no authority anywhere.”

Dion and his wife, Janine Krieber, lived together from the ...