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

9/14/2010

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biblical concept of absolving debt at the Jubilee year of 2000 that motivated me to join Sen. Joe Biden to reduce third world debt. Should I have rejected the instructions from the clergy to relieve debt because it was inspired by the word of God? Did Kennedy reject desegregation because black ministers like the Rev. Martin Luther King arguing from a Biblical premise advocated it? Thank goodness he didn't.

There's a long list of Americans moved by faith who took on great causes for the nation they love: Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin shook a nation to war; Jeremiah Evarts, who defended American Indian rights; and Susan B. Anthony, who was inspired by Jesus' radical view of women as equal to men. What would our nation look like had the spirit not moved in them?

If there were any doubts about Kennedy's intent to devalue faith's role in shaping public discourse his concluding words erased it: "Whatever issue should come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject I will make my decision ... in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates."

So pressures or dictates from labor unions or environmental groups are smiled upon, and only the religious ones see a frown. To justify this suspicion toward the legitimate claims of faith, notice that Kennedy and his subsequent followers have invoked their conscience as their guide. All well and good. I too use my conscience as a guide, but you are not born with a competent conscience; it is formed and continues to be formed by something and reflects that formation. If faith in objective and eternal truths is no longer going to inform your conscience what moral code will? And where does that code come from? And what is the basis of its authority? Doesn't the public have a right to know? Yet Kennedy's followers never tell us.

What they do tell us is clear: that their consciences are not rooted in faith and as such they can be permitted to freely apply their ideas in making laws and deciding cases. On the other hand, consciences rooted in a belief in God are free to apply their ideas to personal matters, but if your beliefs, in the words of my former senate colleague Chuck Schumer, are "deeply held beliefs" that impact your public positions -- they must be excluded.

Writing in the nineteenth century, whose conflicts were prelude to ours, John Henry Newman said: "Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age ... it is the very right and freedom of conscience ... to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a license to take up any or no religion ... to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them." Without some objective moral touchstone, conscience is no more than self indulgence -- "I can do what I want simply because my conscience tells me to do it."

A major political offshoot of Kennedy's philosophy, sometimes referred to as the "privatization of faith," was best illustrated by Mario Cuomo's speech at Notre Dame in September 1984. There he espoused his nuanced position on abortion: that, as a result of his religious convictions he was personally opposed to abortion. But he then applies Kennedy's thesis and refrains from imposing his values upon others whose views, because the truth is indiscernible, are equally valid. A virtual stampede of self-proclaimed Catholic politicians followed Cuomo into this seemingly safe harbor and remain there today. This political hand washing made it easier for Catholics to be in public life, but it also made it harder for Catholics to be Catholic in public life.

Cuomo's safe harbor is nothing more than a camouflage for the faint of heart -- a cynical sanctuary for concealing true convictions from the public, and for rationalizing a reluctance to defend them. Kennedy, Cuomo and their modern day disciples on the secular left would resolve any conflict between religion and politics by relegating faith to the closet. I see it as a healthy tension that Jesus dealt with directly when he said, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." The early church under Pope Gelasius pronounced the two swords doctrine defining two realms, the realm of the sacred and the realm of the secular. Our founders understood that the secular realm of positive law would be at times unjust and that is why the more important sacred realm would arm people with, as one of our founder's James Wilson put it, a "principle of revolution" to strive to set things right.

As a senator, whenever I was confronted with an immoral law that was unjust or harmed society, I had an obligation to respect the law, but an equal obligation to work toward changing it to comport with what is moral. I agree with the founders that there is a natural law which can be ...
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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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