Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich both make a big public show of how their social conservative policies are in line with Catholic teaching, but they also take positions in complete contradiction of the church quite often. Juan Cole has a list of ten Catholic positions that they reject completely. He focuses on Santorum, but the same can be said of Gingrich:
1. So for instance, Pope John Paul II was against anyone going to war against Iraq I think you’ll find that Rick Santorum managed to ignore that Catholic teaching.
2.The Conference of Catholic Bishops requires that health care be provided to all Americans. I.e., Rick Santorum’s opposition to universal health care is a betrayal of the Catholic faith he is always trumpeting.
3. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty for criminals in almost all situations. (Santorum largely supports executions.)
4. The US Conference of Bishops has urged that the federal minimum wage be increased, for the working poor. Santorum in the Senaterepeatedly voted against the minimum wage.
5. The bishops want welfare for all needy families, saying “We reiterate our call for a minimum national welfare benefit that will permit children and their parents to live in dignity. A decent society will not balance its budget on the backs of poor children.” Santorum is a critic of welfare.
6. The US bishops say that “the basic rights of workers must be respected–the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions…”. Santorum, who used to be supportive of unions in the 1990s, has now, predictably, turned against them.
7. Catholic bishops demand the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Rick Santorum denies that there are any Palestinians, so I guess he doesn’t agree with the bishops on that one.
8. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops ripped into Arizona’s law on treatment of immigrants, Cardinal Roger Mahony characterized Arizona’s S.B. 1070 as “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law,” saying it is based on “totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources.” He even suggested that the law is a harbinger of an American Nazism! Santorum attacks ‘anchor babies’ or the provision of any services to children of illegal immigrants born and brought up in the US.
9. The Bishops have urged that illegal immigrants not be treated as criminals and that their contribution to this country be recognized.
10. The US Conference of Bishops has denounced, as has the Pope, the Bush idea of ‘preventive war’, and has come out against an attack on Iran in the absence of a real and present threat of an Iranian assault on the US. In contrast, Santorum wants to play Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and ride the rocket down on Isfahan himself.
It’s cafeteria Catholicism. When you’re trying to impress social conservatives, it’s all about standing shoulder to shoulder with the church; when your positions differ, they suddenly don’t matter.
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magistramarla
February 22, 2012 at 12:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I grew up with many Catholic cousins, and I graduated from a large Catholic University, (even though I wasn’t religious at all). Back then, I found the Catholics that I knew to be very intelligent, tolerant and decent people.
This guy seems to me to not be so much of a Catholic as he is an example of the very worst of the evangelical fundamentalist protestant churches.
lordshipmayhem
February 22, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He’s just cherry-picking Catholic theology, like so many Christians out there cherry-pick the Bible.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
raven
February 22, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
All xians are cafeteria xians. The bible is contradictory and cuckoo and there is no other way.
Santorum and Gingrich are just cafeteria Catholics. Picking and choosing from whatever the church has said over the last 2 millennia. I expect Rick to start ranting about witches and heretic next and talk about driving the Moslems out of Spain.
Santorum’s Catholicism seems to be something he just made up, his very own sockpuppet. Cross ancient Catholicism with modern backwoods fundie xianity. Add a little more rage and a lot more hate and there you go.
Chiroptera
February 22, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To repeat lordshipmayhem:
I have always found it remarkable how God likes and doesn’t like exactly the same things I like and don’t like.
raven
February 22, 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Something I’m seeing more and more.
Religions seem to evolve and quite rapidly.
It really looks like the Bishops and Santorum just stole a bunch of beliefs from the fundie xians and relabeled them Catholic. Call it horizontal belief transfer evolution.
Who Knows?
February 22, 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Everyone’s Selective Religion
I know, it could fill a book the size of War and Peace.
vmanis1
February 22, 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair, I very much doubt that it is impossible for any individual of conscience to adhere to any external code of ethics and moral behavior. You can call this hypocrisy, or you can call it simply agreeing to differ. I, for example, would not consider it hypocritical for a person to adhere to every aspect of modern (Vatican II) Catholicism except for: (a) calling the clergy to account for child and adult sexual exploitation; (b) opposing the church’s stand on abortion; and (c) supporting LGBT rights, including marriage equality. I would describe an individual with those beliefs as honorable.
To parrot a party line of any sort reduces to what George Orwell called `duckspeak’, the spouting of received orthodoxy without thinking about it. (Orwell’s duckspeak had an `ungood’ variant, which was the spouting of beliefs contrary to orthodoxy without thinking about it.) So for someone to say `I am a devout Catholic, but I part company with the bishops on X, Y, and Z’ can be honorable, and shows conscience in action.
That said, Gingrich and Santorum, not to mention the other Clown Car inhabitants, are vile creatures who shouldn’t be put in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone a state or federal government, and nothing they might say or do can change that. But I can’t really fault them for disagreeing with the bishops; they might show some gumption by being explicit about it, rather than sweeping it under the carpet.
Of course, their disagreements with the bishops might not be conscience-based at all, but really just a different form of duckspeak in which the orthodoxy is that of their perceived base. As with Franklin Graham on Obama’s qualifications as a Christian, I can’t say what’s in Santorum’s and Gingrich’s hearts. If someone calls them hypocrites, I can only respond in the words of the sleazy Prime Minister from House of Cards, Francis Urquhart: `You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.’
matty1
February 22, 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@5
The Bishops got opposition to preventive war from fundies? If only.
Anyway Mr Santorum’s position is totally Catholic if you make one change.Instead of the Pope being infallible when he speaks Ex Cathedra Rick is infallible when he speaks Ex Rectum.
raymoscow
February 22, 2012 at 1:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course, it’s not easy to square Newt’s serial adultery and repeated wife abandonment with his new-found ‘faith’ and its supposed intolerance for adultery, divorce, remarriage, etc.
‘Not perfect, just forgiven’ doesn’t really fit.
eric
February 22, 2012 at 1:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I beg to differ.
If his disagreements with the RCC sometimes supported the GOP and sometimes didn’t, it would be reasonable to think they were theological. But the fact that every single major disagreement aligns with the GOP position reasonably leads us to conclude that his Catholicism takes a back seat to his party loyalty.
Which has predictive implications for how he he would resolve other conflicts between the two in the future.
So, IMO, his position is far worse than a cafeteria catholic who is ‘conscientiously objecting’ to some specific ruling or another. His position says he asks his secular masters what he should eat before he picks his dishes.
MyPetSlug
February 22, 2012 at 1:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To me, this is about the double standard. In 2004, when Kerry was supposedly not in consonance with the Catholic church wrt to abortion, Republicans made a *huge* issue with it. Never mind that Kerry’s actual position was that he personally was against abortion but that he didn’t believe he could make that moral choice for others. Never mind that, Fox News would bring on priests denouncing Kerry and arguing that he should be denied communion. And I remember at least one priest in Massachusetts saying publicly that they would. But, Santorum (and Gingrich) can be pro-war, pro-death penalty, and anti-poor people and apparently that’s ok.
The one mitigating factor here is that the GOP didn’t really start attacking Kerry’s religion hard until late into the general election. I don’t remember it being brought up during the primary, so I guess it remains to be seen if Dems will do that same.
Chiroptera
February 22, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
MyPetSlug, #11:
To be fair, I think the Catholic heirarchy in 2003 just forgot that there were fetuses in Iraq.
I think they were hidden by the pregnant women surrounding them.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
February 22, 2012 at 2:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
When you press conservative Catholics on this issue, they claim that some of the shit the Poop/Vatican says is infallible and some of it isn’t.
unbound
February 22, 2012 at 2:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Santorum and Gingrich are certainly poor examples of…well, humanity, but certainly Catholics as well.
However, for all the positions of Catholics that are actually good and moral, there are just as many positions that are short-sighted and essentially evil when fully understood.
Santorum and Gingrich happen to be in the position of embracing all of the short-sighted and evil positions while abandoning the good and moral positions. I personally know a few other Catholics that are the same way.
d cwilson
February 22, 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The argument I’ve often heard is that some pronouncements by the
International Pedophile LeagueRoman Catholic Church are more binding that others. Apparently, abortion and birth control are the biggest no-nos of all, while the stuff about universal healthcare, the death penalty, worker’s rights, etc, are more like guidelines.Go figure.
raven
February 22, 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That is what the Protestants did.
The mainliners took all the good and benign parts of the NT and more or less ignore the OT.
The fundies took all the horrible parts of the NT and embraced the OT, especially the horrible parts.
They are inverses of each other. They are all sockpuppets but some sockpuppets are at best harmless or even good.
Chiroptera
February 22, 2012 at 3:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven, #16: That is what the Protestants did.
And the Catholic hierarchy as well.
As Slug points out, when conservative Catholic politicians supported and aided the war in Iraq, the Church could do nothing more than “tut tut.”
But when Catholic Democrats decide that maybe women need to be able to decide for themselves how they are going to lead productive, happy lives, suddenly they’re screaming about excommunications.
I actually noticed at the time. The Church hierarchy itself is pretty selective about which teachings are important. And it doesn’t seem to correlate well with either “life” or “well-being.”
Chiroptera
February 22, 2012 at 3:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
d cwilson, #15:
Yep. Governors sign death warrants to put people to death, and that’s merely a shame. Employers must make sure that their employees’ insurance plan covers contraception, and that’s An Assault on Religious Freedom.
Women who want to abort an unwanted pregancy should be made to go through a degrading and unnecessary “medical” procedure. Presidents who drop bombs on lots of fetuses (and also on actual real people) are merely have to get up to turn off the radio when the Pope is interviewed.
As I’ve stated on another thread, the Christian leadership can whine all they want about the “sanctity of life,” but I think that their true motivation is pretty clear and out in the open.
jnorris
February 22, 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Has there been any criticism of Santorum or Gingrich from any Catholics? Even the RCC’s pet toothless chihuahua Bill Donahue is quiet.
tacitus
February 22, 2012 at 5:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s not an argument, it’s a rationalization. Just recently I was listening to a call-in show called “Go Ask Your Father” on the local conservative Catholic talk radio station when some random Catholic called up asking how to respond to a friend who was calling the Catholic bishops hypocrites on the issue of life because they never speak out against the death penalty.
The priest’s response was to claim that they do speak out, but that the media isn’t interested in covering their opposition to the death penalty. But, of course, this is a lie, given the amount of free media coverage the Catholic Bishops have gotten over the contraception issue in the past few weeks. If the bishops put as much effort into opposing the death penalty here in Texas, I guarantee you the press would not ignore them.
But then, their own radio station–Relevant Radio–has no interest in covering death penalty issues either. It is it’s own 24/7 “pro-life” media outlet, yet I have only ever heard them talk about the death penalty twice in all the years I have listen to them, and then only as a neutral observer of events.
The bottom line is that it’s not just Santorum that’s a cafeteria Catholic, it’s also the vast majority of American bishops and Catholic laity too. Conservative Catholics, by and large, had no issue with the death penalty, just as liberal Catholics have no problem with using contraception to prevent pregnancies.
This all merely illustrates something I have believed for some time now. That the most fundamental divide in American society isn’t a religious one, it’s a political one. Liberal Christians have far more in common with liberal atheists than they do their fellow conservative believers. And no matter what their church’s doctrines and tenets say, it is their political beliefs that drive their actions, not their religious ones. If their religious beliefs happen to coincide with their political stance, they will use them to bolster their position, but if not, then they will just ignore or dismiss them as irrelevant.
chilidog99
February 22, 2012 at 5:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rick Santorum = Mell Gibson in a sweater vest.
Marcus Ranum
February 22, 2012 at 6:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gingrich is a catholic?? So when he got divorced he had an annullment from the pope?
pelamun
February 22, 2012 at 7:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Marcus,
Gingrich converted in 2009 from Southern Baptist…
Ace of Sevens
February 22, 2012 at 7:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@chilidogg99: No, Mel would have said the Catholic church is controlled by Satan post Vatican II. Santorum specifically exempts them from criticism.
tacitus
February 22, 2012 at 10:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Two, in fact, otherwise his marriage current marriage would not have been sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
How the Catholic Church can claim to be any sort of authority (moral or otherwise) on marriage when it can redefine two 19-year long marriages–the first of which produced two children–out of existence beats me.
Michael Heath
February 23, 2012 at 6:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tacitus referring to Newt Gingrich’s two annulments:
Beats me as well; so I’d love to see the official Catholic justification for their actions on this matter in general, not necessarily for Mr. Gingrich’s annulments specifically. Especially when those annulled marriages produced children.
timothyyoung
February 23, 2012 at 7:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He fits the classic definition of a facist. Anything that might actually help other people he just doesn’t want to hear about. Only the good and hard parts of religon that can be used to smash people in the face, that’s the only parts he cares about.
Dr X
February 23, 2012 at 8:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael Heath and Tacitus,
The Catholic Church doesn’t regard an annulled marriage as one that didn’t exist and therefore could not have produced children. A church annulment means that the couple did not enter into a “sacramental” marriage. The Catholic church recognizes that many valid marriages exist and produce children, but they aren’t sacramental, the same way they believe that other churches can offer communion, but it isn’t sacramental in their eyes. They call non-sacramental marriages “natural” marriages. They are valid marriages in the view of Catholic the church, but non-sacramental.
A sacramental marriage is one in which two baptized Christians marry, regardless of who marries them. If two Jews marry, in the eyes of the church, they have a valid, but non-sacramental marriage. If two Lutherans marry, they have a valid, sacramental marriage unless they can subsequently show to the Catholic church that they did not meet the requirements for valid reception of a that sacrament at the time they took vows. A Catholic can marry a Jew, have children, and the church recognizes it as a valid, “natural” marriage, but it’s not seen as a sacramental marriage. The Catholic Church permits Catholics, (with church permission), to enter these natural marriages with a non-Catholic and remain in good standing with the Catholic church. So if the marriage ends in a divorce, the Catholic spouse isn’t required to seek an annulment to enter a subsequent sacramental marriage to a baptized person.
The point here isn’t about whether “sacraments” are social constructions of the church versus something real. The point is that the underlying nature of a sacrament, whether a social construction or something real, has nothing to do with whether a marriage is recognized as real by the church and can produce children. It’s about whether the church regards the marriage as having been sacramental. In an annulment, the church has decided that though there may have been a valid natural marriage, one or both parties were not actually eligible to enter into a sacramental marriage for one of a number of reasons listed under Catholic church law.
Dr X
February 23, 2012 at 8:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@28 I’m not saying I agree with any of these distinctions. Just answering the question posed by Heath and Tacitus about what the church would say about annulments and children. I’ve submitted records in quite a few cases and learned about annulments the first time I received a records request in an annulment case.
Dr X
February 23, 2012 at 9:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Michael Heath:
I don’t really understand why you would see the existence of children a case in need of special explanation. The Catholic church, like the government, doesn’t view the existence of children as contingent on the either the existence of a marriage or the marital status of their parents. The church keeps no bastard registry for the children of unmarried people, and I assume there is no bastard registry kept by the state. And in the case of annulled marriages, the parents are viewed as having been, in fact, married; their marriage simply wasn’t sacramental. The existence of children born to non-sacramental marriages isn’t a “sin” on anyone’s part and their existence is in no way contingent on the marital or sacramental status of the parents.
Dr X
February 23, 2012 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Tacitus:
The same way that state courts can declare contracts null and void because they were entered invalidly. Court nullification of contracts doesn’t in and of itself invalidate the court’s legal and moral authority to recognize and enforce contracts.
Similarly, I don’t see church recognized sacraments and recognition that sacraments were not validly received as undercutting their moral authority on sacramental marriage. I do see the process of how the church tribunals actually handle annulments undercutting their moral authority, the same way state authority loses moral legitimacy if the courts administer existing law in a corrupt manner. For example, stretching and twisting the evidence to make it qualify for annulment which happens in many church jurisdictions undercuts claims of moral authority. Or granting annulments to powerful and wealthy people more readily than other people (difficult to prove since the records are confidential) undercuts moral authority. But it isn’t annulment per se that undercuts moral authority. It’s the corruption of the process that undercuts moral authority.
Incidentally, Catholic Church conservatives are the ones pushing to tighten up and clean up the corrupt adjudication of annulments, which is pretty laughable given that Gingrich was almost surely a beneficiary of such corruption. Gingrich can turn to the liberals when he needs them, and many conservatives manage to find their inner liberal when it comes time for an annulment for certain parties. Liberals, by the way, mostly want to get rid of annulments altogether and simply accept divorce, which is their moral rationale for corrupting the annulment process so as to effectively make it like the church simply recognizing legal divorce as a church divorce, which currently doesn’t exist.
tacitus
February 23, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Perhaps “redefining [Gingrich's] marriages out of existence” was overstating it a little, but not by much. From the Catholic encyclopedia:
That’s pretty close. Having children is important because it is evidence of consummation, without which (according to the Catholic Church) a marriage can be declared null and void.
And I think it’s hard to blame the present day policies of easy annulments on corruption, especially since there appears to have been no effort on the part of the hierarchy to even admit that such corruption exists. Indeed, the present Pope’s call to tighten up on granting annulments does not talk of annulment, but merely a lack of attention to the statutes of Canon Law and the succumbing of the pressure to be charitable to members of their church.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35143792/ns/world_news-europe/t/pope-urges-annulments-crackdown-all-costs/
And given the sheer volume of annulments in the US particularly, it’s hard to see how this is limited mainly to a problem of granting annulments to the rich and powerful, like Gingrich.
With all that in mind, any pronouncement by the Catholic Church against gay marriage, and its supposed detrimental effects on “traditional marriage” can only be seen as hollow and hypocritical.
Dr X
February 23, 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tacitus,
I don’t think you really addressed what I said. And to be clear, I do agree with you about the Catholic church’s lack of moral authority on marriage and on every moral issue; I don’t recognize their moral authority and that’s for more reasons than simple corruption. I think they’re so-called authority is flawed at its roots, based on faulty premises as well as flawed reasoning piled on top.
But as to the question of church annulment, your comment indicated to me that you simply didn’t understand what is. Of course it’s different from a legal divorce. Annulment is about annulling the ‘sacramental’ aspect of a marriage. It is not seen as comparable to a divorce or a legal civil annulment, and I didn’t say that the church sees it that way.
The pope’s comment may recognize a charitable impulse in the broadening availability of annulment, but he was also saying that these annulments are crossing lines in terms of church law. That it is charitable doesn’t exclude that it is a corrupt application of their laws. Lots of conservative Catholics simply say it’s a liberal corruption of church law, some may note note a good intent, but still say it’s a corruption.
As for children as evidence of consummation, you’re correct that lack of consummation is grounds for annulment, but consummation is not evidence that a marriage is sacramental. There are numerous grounds for nullity in canon law, in the same way that there are more grounds for annulment than lack of consummation in civil law. So when you point to consummation, that doesn’t mean anything if there are other grounds for the annulment. And in Catholic law, the grounds for sacramental nullity are actually much broader than the grounds for civil nullity. That’s just the way it is. I don’t endorse it, or approve it, or believe that it makes moral sense.
They’re picky and obsessively legalistic about their sacraments. Witness the freakout about people walking out of church with a consecrated hosts in their pocket. Not illegal under civil law, but a violation of canon law. If a non-catholic or a person in so-called “mortal sin” consumes a consecrated host, they also consider that to be non-sacramental communion, even though they ate Jesus. A cat can eat Jesus too, but they don’t consider the cat to have received a sacrament. If someone goes to confession, and they aren’t actually sincere in their sorrow, and only they know that, the sacrament of reconciliation is still considered null and void. The church has no civil authority to do anything about any of this. They may freak about it, and make sanctimonious statements, but there isn’t much that they can otherwise do about it.
I’m not defending any of this a good or true of reasonable.I was just explaining that this is the Catholic Church’s answer to these questions. I think they build a lot of nonsense philosophy and theology around marriage, and they employ a lot of legalese that is effectively obsessive-compulsive defense against their overwrought sexual anxieties, anxieties about women and anxieties about impulse control. I think that’s what plays out in all of their marriage and birth control blathering.
I also think human beings do a lot of this. Secular notions of natural law are, IMO, nonsense. They are lovely, sometimes elegant intellectual theories that satisfy some people’s needs for order, justification and certainty about rights and obligations, but I don’t think there is any natural law written into the fabric of the universe. IMO, morality and law are human constructions built on top of evolved moral sensibilities, and some of us struggle to decently and humanely sort it all out because moral fundamentalism and literalism don’t work for us.
pelamun
February 23, 2012 at 7:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Question:
how did Gingrich ask or even get an annulment when he only converted in 2009, nine years after marrying Callista?
Michael Heath
February 23, 2012 at 7:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dr. X,
Thanks a lot for the effort and comprehensive answer to my question regarding what a Catholic annulment actually is. It’s much appreciated.
Satan… I mean Santorum Has America in His Sights | Snot Rockets: Headline News, Politics, Entertainment, Business, World News, Weird News
February 23, 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
[...] that they reject completely. He focuses on Santorum, but the same can be said of Gingrich…. Read More. And here: Newsflash: Santorum Out of Touch With Catholic Theology. And here: The Catholic Case [...]