UPDATED: Bella Santorum Is Home: Pray for Her and Her Dad, Rick Santorum

After little Bella was hospitalized this weekend the Santorum campaign announced that the candidate would not return to the campaign trail on Monday. Again, the media jumped all over this as a sign of his pending departure from the campaign. However, it simply reveals the character of this good man. It explains Rick Santorum's priorities and values. It shows how he makes decisions. It explains why he would be a good President. 

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CHESAPEAKE, VA  (Catholic Online) - UPDATED: Hogan Gidley, National Communications Director for the Santorum campaign issued this statement concerning Bella Santorum and her family:

'Rick and Karen are happy to announce that their daughter Bella has been discharged from the hospital and returned home earlier Monday evening. The Santorums are truly overwhelmed by the prayers and support they've received -- and wanted to attach a picture of their daughter Bella so everyone could see their precious gift from God.'

"The campaign has cancelled its first two events of the day to allow Rick, Karen and Bella to settle in at home. To make up for the morning events, the campaign is adding a campaign stop in Gettysburg, PA at 2 pm."

It is Tuesday in the Octave of Easter, the eight day celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We celebrate Easter as a fifty day season in the Church. It lasts until Pentecost. Alleluias permeate our worship - and should inform our lives. That is because, in the words of the great western Church Bishop, Augustine, "we are an Easter people and alleluia is our song." Everything is different because that Tomb is empty. We are different because we have been raised with Christ. Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum left the campaign trail on Easter weekend because he, Karen and their family are Christians - the kind who really believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and seek to integrate that truth into their lives. Sadly, many in the media sought to "spin" the Santorum's Easter observance as a sign that Rick was reconsidering the campaign. I knew they were wrong. I was on a call last week where the candidate gave a status report. With deep conviction he spoke of being "even more passionate" about the campaign because "our liberty is at stake." A very serious candidate explained, "There are huge fundamental issues that drew me into this race" and insisted that he was in this race to stay and had a path to victory. Using a football analogy, he told those listening, "we are at halftime, we are in the locker room, making the changes necessary to come out for a strong second half". We also heard a report from John Yob, one of the strategists for the campaign, on the true state of the delegate count. Then, a determined and convinced candidate answered questions.  Rick Santorum entered this presidential campaign because of his love for the nation and his conviction concerning the urgency of the hour. He and his wife Karen discerned this decision seriously, especially given this time in their family life. There was no ego behind this decision. He was pulled by conviction and is being fueled by courage. He is not "posturing" for 2016. He is trying to help the nation avoid disaster. When I heard that Bella Santorum was hospitalized again this weekend, I prayed and asked everyone I knew to join me. Bella has Trisomy 18. My admiration for Rick, his wife Karen and their family is known to our readers. So too, is my love for little Bella. My life was changed when I met her in the Santorum's home after hearing so much about her from Karen and Rick.  Bella earns her name, which means beautiful. Her little smile and serene presence fills your heart with joy when you are with her. She is the little princess in that wonderful family. Their love for her, and for one another, is palpable, pure and profound. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's introduction of Bella is included in the beginning of this article so you can meet her - and her Dad. He is running for President.   This introduction to Bella is more than a "campaign spot", it zeroes in on something vitally important to our public conversation in this critical hour. It should be viewed by every American. When I hear Rick Santorum say of little Bella, "Bella makes us better" and of us, "We are the disabled ones", I am reminded of why I feel so strongly about this good man's candidacy. One of my favorite American commentators, Peggy Noonan, once wrote, "In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant; Harry Truman wasn't brilliant, and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever. White Houses are always full of quick-witted people with ready advice on how to flip a senator or implement a strategy. You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. " "But you can't buy courage and decency; you can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. If he does, they will give meaning and animation to the great practical requirement of the presidency: He must know why he's there and what he wants to do. He has to have thought it through. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create. This is a function of thinking, of the mind, the brain." "But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character--the courage and heart--to see it through.... (Reagan) had the vision. Did he have the courage without which it would be nothing but a poignant dream? Yes. At the core of Reagan's character was courage, a courage that was, simply, natural to him, a courage that was ultimately contagious. When people say President Reagan brought back our spirit and our sense of optimism, I think what they are saying in part is, the whole country caught his courage." Yes, Peggy Noonan wrote those words about Ronald Reagan. They are found in a book of essays on Presidential leadership written in 1996 entitled "Character Above All". However, I believe they can be applied to the Rick Santorum I know. They also describe his courageous wife, Karen. I think the political "left" knows that Rick Santorum is a formidable candidate from a working class family who the American public will agree with on the issues. They also know he is a formidable communicator who does not need to be scripted. They fear he will run circles around their candidate and his Teleprompters in a debate. They know he has the courage needed for the upcoming brutal campaign they intend to run. They do not want him to be their opponent in the fall. However, they may not be the ones who fear his candidacy the most. Though some in the Republican establishment like Rick Santorum's economic conservatism, they are offended by his moral coherence. His talk about protecting human life from conception through natural death and his defense of marriage and the family and society founded upon it makes them uncomfortable.  They want him to drop out of this race. They now speak and write of his "courageous" effort on the campaign trail. However, they do so with the kind of condescension which irritates people like me.  We are not comfortable with the "Nelson Rockefeller" blue blood image of the old Republican Party. Many of us are former Democrats inspired by the courage, character and manner of Ronald Reagan. His was the kind of "conservatism" which made sense to people like us who never thought we were "conservatives". He was real, honest and quintessentially American. He moved our hearts and made us want to be better. He helped us remember that we could. We are tired of the Republican establishment picking the nominee. I call myself a "Reluctant Republican" because I have no choice. I left the Democratic Party when the opponents of the fundamental human right to life took control of the leadership of that Party.  The Democratic Party claims to care about the poor but fails to hear the cry of the poorest of the poor, children in the womb. Those in leadership are hypocrites. A party which once prided itself on being the political home of blue collar everyday Americans has become the tool of cultural revolutionaries who seek to undermine the first institution of marriage - and the family and society founded upon it. They parade spokespersons on the media who sound and look like the people I grew up with in Dorchester, Massachusetts but espouse an ideology which will bring our Nation to ruin. We are concerned for the poor and disadvantaged. However, we learned the hard way that big government does a horrible job of providing care for them. We have learned that collectivism - be it of the right or the left - robs us of human dignity, discourages personal initiative, creates dependency and undermines freedom. We want a candidate who speaks of opening up economic participation in the American dream to everyone. One who cares about the loss of manufacturing jobs and offers a solution to fix it. One who comes from a blue-collar background like most of us and will not be able to be used by the Obama reelection campaign in their "1%" class warfare strategy in the fall.  Though we are not fans of overly federalized and bloated centralized government, the "States Rights" mantra being espoused by some in the Republican establishment scares us. It disturbs us to hear candidates assert that if some States decide that an entire class of human persons has no fundamental human right to life it is "O.K." It is NOT "O.K." The Right to Life is the most fundamental human right, endowed upon all of us by the Creator from the moment of conception. The idea that the decision over whether our first neighbors, children in the womb, can be killed by procured abortion should simply be returned to the States is wrong.  That was what happened in the old slavery, when people of color were denied their personhood. It will happen again in the new slavery of abortion on demand if we just "return it to the States". Another class of persons, our youngest neighbors, have been written off as not worthy of unalienable rights. We believe there truly are fundamental human rights and the American founders got it right when they asserted that those rights are endowed by God and not conferred by government. That was not a new idea but derived from the Jewish and Christian understanding that there is a "Natural Law" which can be known by reason and must inform our life together as a truly good society. We want a President with character and courage.  As Peggy Noonan wrote "you can't buy courage and decency; you can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. If he does, they will give meaning and animation to the great practical requirement of the presidency: He must know why he's there and what he wants to do. He has to have thought it through." After little Bella was hospitalized this weekend the Santorum campaign announced that the candidate would not return to the campaign trail on Monday. Again the media jumped all over this as a sign of his pending departure from the campaign. However, it simply reveals the character of this good man. It explains Rick Santorum's priorities and values. It shows how he makes decisions. It explains why he would be a good President.  Pray for Bella Santorum. The good news of her return home fills many with joy. Pray for her Dad, Mom and brothers and sisters. Pray for the United States of America.

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