He's now trying to back out of this, but too little too late.

I gotta say, these Repubs are doing a great job of inserting foot in mouth and soul, and hopefully there is no political operation for removal that will not leave mega scars and pain.

It seems to me that the 'separation of church and state' has become blurred, if not worse.  There is no acknowledgement of the fact that the 'church' referenced is not just 'their' church, but equally embraces all faiths/religions.  Which translates into one shall not be put above others and to continue to ignore the mandate will surely lead us into a huge 'holy war', the likes of which will only lead to mass (no pun intended) destruction of much we hold near and dear.

Santorum actually sits on the very far right of the Catholic fringe. I read some election numbers yesterday and Romney did better with Republican Catholics than Santorum. I was in 10th grade when JFK died and was still in a Catholic school when he ran for president. Most people then got up on Sunday morning and went to church. There were blue laws then so people could attend church. We are a much more secular society today and a smaller percentage of citizens attend a church. We work 24/7 in our jobs and struggle to make our money reach. Socially interacting with a church is a luxury that some don't have the means to participate. I agree with Barney Frank that this election is going to be a referendum on the out of touch GOP.

I wonder how many would remember Father Coughlin.  The original Catholic haranguer.

Excellent article, Genghis. Succinct, what a pleasure. 

The enmity between Protestants and Catholics was highly evident in the 1928 election of Herbert Hoover over the first Catholic nominee, Al Smith. Apparently Protestant ministers were telling congregations that if Smith were to become President, the country would be taken over by the Pope, non-Catholic marriages annulled, and the children declared illegitimate. Hoover won in a landslide, including 5 normally Democratic Southern States.

A joke went around New York that the morning after his defeat Al Smith wired a short telegram to the Pope:"Unpack!" 

Forget Romney's Mormonism, turns out the real cultist in the race is Santorum. It's all in a front page NYT article today.  As Garry Wills said in an email to the Times for the article, Santorum is not a Catholic, but a papist. He's been  a strong supporter, if not an actual member, of the cults of Opus Dei and Regnum Christi. It's also noted that GOP Catholics aren't voting for him; I believe that's because they instinctively know the dif of which Wills. It's hard to explain, in a kind of thing like "gaydar," American Catholics can tell an anti-Vatican II reactionary cultist from subtle cues without having to be told straight out.

Excerpts from "From 'Nominal Catholic’ to Clarion of Faith" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Laurie Goodstein, my bold:

[....] home schooling their younger children and sending the older boys to a private academy affiliated with Opus Dei, an influential Catholic movement that emphasizes spiritual holiness.

As members of St. Catherine of Siena, a parish here in the wealthy Northern Virginia suburb of Great Falls, the Santorums are immersed in a community where large families are not uncommon and many mothers leave behind careers to dedicate themselves to child-rearing, as Mrs. Santorum has. Mr. Santorum has been on the church roster as a lector, reading Scripture from the pulpit.

The parish is known for its Washington luminaries — Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court is a member — as well as its spiritual ardor. Mass is offered in Latin every Sunday at noon — most parishes have Mass only in English — and each Wednesday parishioners take turns praying nonstop for 24 hours before a consecrated communion wafer, a demanding practice known as Eucharistic adoration.

[....]

Mr. Santorum made another trip to Rome in 2002, this time to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. In a little-noticed interview there with The National Catholic Reporter, he said John F. Kennedy had caused “much harm to America” with his 1960 speech calling for strict separation of church and state.

That remark foreshadowed the candidate’s recent comment — he said the Kennedy speech “makes me throw up” — that set off a controversy and made some Catholics wince. It grew out of Mr. Santorum’s view that libertine culture has put America and American Catholics on a path toward moral decline.

In a 2002 essay, Mr. Santorum wrote that too many Catholics had been exposed to “uninspired, watered-down versions of our faith” and that it was time for more committed Catholics to reclaim religious institutions, like colleges, schools and hospitals, “for the sake of our souls.”

He also blamed liberal culture for the sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic priests. “When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected,” he wrote.

Mr. Santorum has been a supporter of Regnum Christi, the lay wing of a conservative, cultish order of priests known as the Legion of Christ. In 2003, he was the keynote speaker at a Regnum Christi event in Chicago that drew protesters because the group’s charismatic founder, who had spent years denying that he had sexually abused seminarians, was scheduled to share the podium.

The founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, did not show up, but critics faulted Mr. Santorum for agreeing to appear at the group’s forum. “He was certainly lending them legitimacy,” said Jason Berry, a documentary filmmaker and the author of a book about Father Maciel.

Many Catholics take issue with Mr. Santorum’s approach to their faith. Mr. Santorum, polls show, has lost the Catholic vote in every primary contest so far, some by wide margins.

Garry Wills, a cultural historian and professor emeritus at Northwestern University, is among many Catholics whose touchstone is the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65, which opened up Catholicism to the modern era and proclaimed that the church is its people, not just the pope and his bishops.

“Santorum is not a Catholic, but a papist,” Mr. Wills said in an e-mail.

I think many right wing evangelicals that are supporting him are gonna be quite unhappily surprised when they finally figure it all out. He's been doing the Kennedy did a bad thing speech since 2002, so it's not just pandering, and Santorum's beliefs on that front might be as harmful to them as many others.

The article also a lot of interesting background on Mrs. Santorum, how she did "a total 180” from a long-term relationship with a much older abortion doctor after starting up the relationship with Rick, and on the loss of their son Gabriel