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One of the roles I promised to play in endorsing Senator Obama was to be a faithful witness to life. I am resolute in this.

MALIBU, CA (Catholic Online) - More and more, Barack Obama is demonstrating that he is a man of faith.

The nation will have another special opportunity to see this on Sunday in an important forum at Messiah College.

It was also evident today in the Senator's announcement that he had formed a Catholic Advisory Council from among his Democratic supporters to assist him especially in addressing sensitive religious issues as they arise and the remaining months of the Democratic primary.

Of course, I am especially pleased to see two prominent pro-life Democrats, Bob Casey and Tim Roemer in the leadership of this council.

Since endorsing Senator Obama it has been my pleasure to deal with the young men and women who on a day-to-day basis are considering the implications of various public policies upon the people of many faith beliefs in America.

One thing that is abundantly clear is that faith is not a side issue for the Senator either in his personal life or in his campaign.

In the forum this Sunday to be broadcast on CNN, religious leaders from across the ideological spectrum will participate. Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton will be there. Unfortunately, Senator McCain has thus far declined the invitation, which is still open.

What the public will see on Sunday is a sincere religious commitment that Senator Obama did not invent for success in the Pennsylvania primary. Indeed, it was Senator Obama's thoughtful public remarks about faith during his U.S. Senate campaign that first attracted me to him.

Just the other day the Senator was in my old hometown of South Bend Indiana, where indeed, I first got to know the friendly and astute Tim Roemer when he was but a student at Notre Dame.With a PhD, distinguished Congressional career, and service on the 9/11 commission, Tim is a genuine voice of Catholic reason and compassion.

Not surprisingly, Senator Obama teasingly played with the audience’s “go Irish” sensibilities, but there was no mistaking how much Senator Obama respected this flagship Catholic University that has contributed so much to the American Catholic Church.

Of course, in speaking near the golden dome, the Senator was only a short distance away from where the light of faith first opened in his heart when he recognized that while he could engage in community organizing for the poor, without faith he would always remain “apart and alone.”

The Holy Father will be arriving next week in America and while he appropriately will not be meeting with any of the presidential candidates, there is little question in my mind but that he would affirm Senator Obama’s thoughtful challenges to secularism and those who would urge that religion be banished from the public square.

In his speeches, it's not surprising to see references to the Lincoln and Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass, but Senator Obama regularly touches the Catholic soul as well by showing a genuine knowledge of the work of Dorothy Day. In this, Senator tells his audiences that it is an “absurdity” to insist that morality be kept separate from public policy.

Don't misunderstand me. Senator Obama is not the equivalent of a televangelist, nor should he be. Having urged his liberal colleagues to see how much of American life is grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Senator Obama makes a request of conservatives like myself — namely, that we try to fully understand the liberal perspective on the separation of church and state.

Not the infamous “wall of separation” that bizarrely mandates affirmative secularity disguised as neutrality, but the perspective, according to Obama, that separation more readily protects church from state than the opposite.

This sentiment, unlike the exclusionary view invented by the late Justice Hugo Black in the late 1940s, is as old and wise as Alexis de Tocqueville, who cautioned churches against aligning too closely with the state for fear of sacrificing “the future for the present.” “By gaining a power to which it has no claim,” Tocqueville observed, “[the church] risks its legitimate authority.”

There is nothing in that assessment of church-state separation objectionable to conservatives. Indeed, as I've written before, Obama’s thoughts could have been seamlessly added to Romney’s “Faith in America” speech without changing its meaning. And Senator, if you're reading this, don't be afraid to say so in your forum on Sunday, even as that name Romney might be jarring to some of the older partisans in the crowd.

Senator Obama's approach to faith is strong, but it is not exclusionary. He genuinely seeks to have his efforts bridge the religious and ideological divides on issues ranging from abortion to the importance of the American family to health care that respects the objections of ...