Senator Rick Santorum: Charge to Revive the Role of Faith in the Public Square

9/14/2010

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the opposite.

Kennedy continued: "I believe in an America ... where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

Of course no religious body should "impose its will" on the public or public officials, but that was not the issue then or now. The issue is one that every diverse civilization like America has to deal with -- how do we best live with our differences. Our founders' vision, unlike the French, was to give every belief and every believer and non-believer a place at the table in the public square. Madison referred to this "equal and complete liberty" as the "true remedy." Admittedly our country hadn't always lived up to that ideal -- in particular with respect to Jews and Catholics, thus the legitimate reason for Kennedy's speech. But what JFK advocated sounded more like Ataturk than Madison -- that religious ideas and actors were not welcome in public policy debates.

Ultimately Kennedy's attempt to reassure Protestants that the Catholic Church would not control the government and suborn its independence advanced a philosophy of strict separation that would create a purely secular public square cleansed of all religious wisdom and the voice of religious people of all faiths. He laid the foundation for attacks on religious freedom and freedom of speech by the secular left and its political arms like the ACLU and the People for the American Way. This has and will continue to create dissension and division in this country as people of faith increasingly feel like second-class citizens.

Kennedy took words written to protect religion from the government and used them to protect the government from religion. It worked -- in the years following this speech the concept of an absolute "separation of church and state" gained wider and wider acceptance due to its inculcation in the academy. When I was in the senate I used to question student groups by asking them which phrase was in the constitution "separation of church and state" or "the free exercise of religion"? Separation always won usually by a wide margin.

Another consequence is the debasement of our First Amendment right of religious freedom. Of all the great and necessary freedoms listed in the First Amendment, freedom to exercise religion (not just to believe, but to live out that belief) is the most important; before freedom of speech, before freedom of the press, before freedom of assembly, before freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances, before all others. This freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, is the trunk from which all other branches of freedom on our great tree of liberty get their life. Cut down the trunk and the tree of liberty will die and in its place will be only the barren earth of tyranny.

This first freedom has now been placed on the lowest rung of interests to be considered when weighing rights against one another. The fruits of this misguided idea are increasingly evident. For example:
- The ACLU is currently pushing HHS to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions under the emergency care mandate of Obamacare.
- A University of Illinois professor hired to teach classes on Catholic doctrine was fired because he taught (well...) Catholic doctrine.
- Religious organizations are increasingly excluded from Public Universities unless they deny their deeply held religious beliefs. This year, the Supreme Court affirmed that The Christian Legal Society can be barred from the Hastings College of Law because they insist on holding their leaders accountable to Christian standards of sexual ethics.
- In 2006, Catholic Charities of Boston was forced to abandon adoptions due to a state law requiring that they assist homosexuals in adopting children.

Kennedy's error also unleashed a new form of censorship that would make vows to the Almighty a constitutional offense, rob clergy of their First Amendment rights and deprive our leaders and our country of their inspired wisdom and guidance.

When I served in the US Senate I often looked to the moral wisdom found in the writings of such religious figures as Augustine, Theresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas More as well as from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel.

Mother Teresa's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, spoken with a humility that made her quiet voice a loud alarm in our hearts, moved me to take a leading role in an issue that pulled at the moral fabric of our country: partial birth abortion. And it was Pope John Paul II and other Christian leaders' call for the ...
- - -

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

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1 - 10 of 10 Comments

John Flaherty
2 years ago
Mr. Carlton:
I wish I could say that your comments ring true with me. Unfortunately, I cannot. While I understand Kennedy's need to assuage the fears of Protestant voters, I think he went about it VERY poorly.

I once thought JFK a great man. War hero, President, Catholic, maybe even a martyr? Regrettably,as I've learned more of him, his family, and my faith, the more my awe and wonder has turned to horror and disgust. One of our own? Uh huh.
When a man hears about the vice of a sin in Church, then sits in his President's chair and encodes that same sin or others into law, what value does his faith truly have?

Kennedy could've used the platform of candidacy to better explain how the Church truthfully works. He could've articulated the ideas that Sen Santorum offered. Certainly he had the intelligence and gumption for it. Instead, he rendered his faith to be a mantel showpiece, a trinket to be hauled out on Sunday and provide some cultural references that many would understand.
I'm glad to see comments like Sen Santorum's. He may be able to undo some part of the ill that Kennedy inflicted.
Peter Carlton
2 years ago
Why would Rick Santorum be so negative about the only Catholic president, and may I say, a mighty good one, that this nation has ever had enough courage to elect.
He very lightly touches on the anti-Catholic sentiment in this country at this time 50 years ago, with very many protestant ministers and lay people actually believing that, if elected, he would be taking his dictates, orders, or whatever you might like to call them, from Rome and the Holy Father. And I might add they would not have referred to him as the Holy Father.
President Kennedy said, and you quoted him," I do not intend to disavow my views or "my" church in order to win this election."
How much stronger or clearer, do you believe he could have made this statement about" his " church and the fact that he intended to wear his Catholic faith in public.
The important decisions he had to make for this country and it's people were outstanding, and this holier than thou stuff you and some of the other supposedly "learned" Catholic scholars are writing about is mostly fodder for those who have always believed that us Catholics are going to hell in a hand basket anyway.
To blame this Catholic president for the moral decay in this country is quite a stretch. If you take a deep look at what this family has done, and continues to do, as well as asking the rest of us to do for our less fortunate brethern. I find your comments very narrow sighted. He was not elected to be our spiritual leader. Heaven forbid if that would have ever been as much as uttered out loud.
We have only had one, for crying out loud why would you continue to bash him.
I wonder if your mother has, or would have enjoyed, reading this article about the president she evidently voted for and loved.
Shame on you and the other Catholics who write this about our own. Leave this to the others who don't drink from the same cup at mass.
Bruce
2 years ago
Very educational article. I, too, was under the impression that the constitution allowed for the separation between church and state. At a time that I have very little respect for politicians, this comes as a breath of fresh air. The government is not by the people and for the people in this age--it is now a separate entity. It has evolved into a few rich people controlling the masses, clearly what our forefathers sought freedom from over 200 years ago. Our constitution does not advocate freedom from religion, but freedom of religion. Our religious beliefs and moral compass should always be part of of the civil law equation.
John Grimes
2 years ago
Jack Kennedy was cynical when he made this proposition 50 years ago. He wanted to be president and he would let nothing stand in his way. But to think that RIck Santorum has the charisma of Kennedy or that he will ever have even a quarter of that man's chance to be president is laughable. Santorum can deliver all the speeches he wants on any subject he wants and with whatever lucidity he can command, but I will bet everything I have that he will never give a speech from the Oval Office. Catholics and others cheering him on and urging him to run for president are simply wasting his and everyone else's time.
Pam
2 years ago
I would vote for Rick Santorum, in a heartbeat, too! However, I would not say that JFK accomplished a "good" in the short term because it helped to put an end to Catholic bigotry because Catholic bigotry is still alive and well. Moreover, JFK expressed a half-truth (at best--or rather, at worst) regarding the role of politics--a corrupt version that's growing in intensity more and more today and is expressed by most of the 161 Catholics in Washington (only about 46 of them voted 100% pro-life and 5-6 more of them 86% of the time). Such heinous moral corruption is literally killing us in matters of "health-care" (?); it's no wonder everything else is collapsing, as well! Mr. Santorum, himself, said: "Unfortunately, its lasting impact not only undermined the essential role that faith has successfully played in America, but it reduced religion to mere personal belief and helped launch a cultural revolution, proclaiming loudly that on matters of moral consequence, reason has no truths it can discern, nothing of moral significance it can claim to know, much less contribute to the public debate....That's the 'faith' that is being offered by those who want to change the time tested Golden Triangle of Freedom. You'll see it in the public square today, and it's popular because it pretends to impose nobody's values on anybody. Yet it's an illusion because it uses a cloak of "neutrality," "objectivity" and "rationality" that results in the imposition of secular values on everybody while marginalizing faith." Sorry for repeating this quote from Mr. Santorum's speech here, but Mr. Santorum "hits the nail on the head," on the reason for the dissolution of the "Beautiful America[n]" dream of our Founders in the new form of government in vogue today--Nevertheless, "we the people," who believe in "religion and virtue" (according to John Adams, et al) can vote to bring it back into the public square this November and in 2012--if only we will!
K.C.Thomas
2 years ago
As an Indian, I feel that in every country catholic leaders should uphold his religious teachings without a feeling of shame or inferiority complex. He has rightly said that having convictions does not mean that we dont understand the complexity of the world .... we should be able to prioritize the pursuit of truth and justice and call evil what it is . We need more dedicated and faithful catholic politicians in every country.
Tom
2 years ago
Such an inspiration. I was going to quickly scan through his speech and then print it out, but I carefully read every word until the last period. If he runs for President I'll vote for him too. Can't get over that speech!!! God Bless Rick Santorum!!!
Diane
2 years ago
If he ever runs for president I'll vote for him!
JeanCatherine
2 years ago
Amen brothers and sisters.
Jennifer
2 years ago
SANTORUM FOR PRESIDENT 2012

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