Michael Wolraich's picture

    Why Evangelicals Love Santorum, Hated JFK

    Sen. Rick Santorum, who is campaigning to become America's second Catholic president, disagrees from the bottom of his gut with the first Catholic to hold the office.

    In October, he told a Catholic university audience that when he read the 1960 speech in which John F. Kennedy said: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," he "almost threw up." More recently, he elaborated on his dyspeptic condition in an ABC television interview, calling JFK's credo "an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent at the time of 1960."

    But the Baptist ministers who witnessed Kennedy's speech surely felt differently. In the 1960s, evangelical leaders were not concerned that Kennedy was too secular; they were concerned that he was too Catholic.

    Read the full article at CNN.com

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    We could just divide and conquer in those days.

    Even if Robertson or Hagee lets it slip that the Pope is the anti-Christ, the true animousity between the sects is glossed over!

    Fifty years ago no way would they vote for a Catholic even if he were a conservative.


    Even if Robertson or Hagee lets it slip that the Pope is the anti-Christ, the true animousity between the sects is glossed over!

    When I first read that the new pope reaffirmed just a couple of years that his was the only true church, I visited the Southern Baptist Convention's website to see the reaction.  Only thing there was a bland dismissal from their resident ethicist, Richard Land.  He just waved it away as nothing to worry about.   Then I checked in on the Anglicans and learned that one of its British sects was considering reverting back to Catholicism.  Oy.  So much for animosity.

    And, from what I see, the protestant sects that so often get progressive knickers in a bunch have much in common with popery in that they are centered around a living individual, they are cults, not churches and definitely not Protestant.

     

     

     

     


    Now that is interesting!

    And the leftish statements by the El Papa are ignored as if they never were published.

    When war or famine or alms for the poor or health care for the sick regardless of status are discussed in some Vatican paper; we rarely hear anything about it!


    That is a really intriguing point, Emma. It is like the cult-of-preacher latter day American Christians took the place of "papists,"  giving up their "Protestant American Enlightenment independent thinker" tradition. While that was going on, most American Catholics went in the other direction, proving their "independent thinking American" bonafides by disobeying the pope, first on birth control, and then moving on to other things.


    I don't think that I buy this. First of all, the cult-of-preacher thing has been going on since the days of Calvin and Luther, and it transferred quite easily to the U.S. through charismatic ministers like Cotton Mather. The Puritans were not exactly independent thinkers.

    Second, I would not describe the Catholic Church as a cult of personality. A few popular popes like John Paul may loom large, but what distinguishes the Church, to my mind, is the institution--that huge, bureaucratic machine that hands down dictates.

    What you and Emma seem to be getting at is dogmatism. But dogmatism is not a Catholic trait or an evangelical trait--or Mormon or Jewish or Islamic or whatever. All religious and sects have their dogmatists, some more, some fewer.


    Basically all faiths begin as personality cults and each has its dogmas but not all become institutionalized personality cults centered around persons with divine rights like the popes and kings --  or Tom Cruise devil.  

     


    Thanks.

    As much as I dislike the trend,  I do understand the appeal of following a leader that seems so certain as well as the attraction of your 'sensuous cathedrals'.  So much easier than the stark essence of Protestantism: soul accountability (aka liberty or competency).  

    IMO, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Solitude of Self best expresses the spirit of American Protestantism I wish I had talent to convey.  Not really the triumphant American individualism usually portrayed in pop culture, it is as hard and stark as those 'unadorned little churches with hard benches' -- or one of John Ford's early movies. 

     


    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.


    loved the article- its spot on. Looking forward to reading your book!


    Thanks! I hope that you enjoy the book.


    1960 Election Results by County >>

    Tilden76 at en.wikipedia

     

    Bible Belt  ("Evangelical" stronghold?)  >>

     

    Interesting religion map >>


    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.

    This is an interesting evolution of the relationship between these two sides.  A couple of things come to mind that have occurred since JFK's speech:

    First JFK gave his speech to a society that by and large didn't talk about the realities of life.  Just as no one's kids were out having premarital sex, good Catholics did just as the Pope and the Church asked them to do.  In the 52 years since then, people have learned that most Catholics, if they thought the Pope and the Church were off base in their decrees, they were just ignored - as in say contraception.  

    It is hard to convince people the Pope is some all-powerful overlord when there is evidence that when he decrees something and all of his subjects go "yeah, whatever" and continue to do what they were doing.

    Second was Pope John Paul II.  My impression was that he was able to humanize "The Pope" to the average non-Catholic during the 80's. The pope was no longer some shadowy figure behind the walls of the Papacy.  At the same time he was took strong stands on issues the conservatives embraced - from homosexuality to communism. 


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


    This is right on the money, Genghis.

    I'm appalled at the degree to which Santorum alternately speaks the language of old-school Catholics bigots and speaks like demonized Papist in those bigots' caricatures.


    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!" 


    CNN only allows me 800 words or so. I thought about mentioning Smith, but I was already over the limit. ;)

    I think it would be interesting to turn this into a full article and try to publish it, but it would probably only work of Santorum gets the nomination.


    Also too all those Catholic breeders were Intemperant, unable to control their attraction to alcohol, and Smith wanted to get them their workingmen's buckets of beer back!  Would have been damnation for all good Christian family values for him to be elected! (or was it "tarnation"? )


    Tarnation, damnation..... Using either word would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap.


    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


    How Romney differs becomes very clear when you contrast Romney's 2007 "Faith in America" speech:

    http://dagblog.com/politics/whats-matter-mormons-12881#comment-147952

    with Santorum's repeated public talk of the damage JKF's speech did.


    He isn’t like one of these born-again people where you get hit in the head by some televangelist and you suddenly see the light. It’s been an evolution. He’s always been a Catholic and he’s always been faithful, but he’s never been at this level of faith.”

    This from a member of a group who worship a wafer every Wednesday? 

    each Wednesday parishioners take turns praying nonstop for 24 hours before a consecrated communion wafer, a demanding practice known as Eucharistic adoration.

     LOL, "to see ourselves as others see us"  


    Your point is great, but I don't think you and the quote are addressing the same thing.

    I read that quote as saying that he was not born again overnight  (i.e, Jesus came into my heart like a bolt of lighting that night of the revival meeting) but got to what he calls "this level of faith" (and what I would call wacko cultness,) in a slow gradual process. That's interesting in itself for the effect of  echo chamber, it is related to the cult indoctrination thing. In a way, that is making a big differentiation between that those "born again" in a single conversion moment and those who slowly indoctrinated into cultish type religious sects.

    The classic "born again in a moment" story is a individual's choice, emotional though it might be. That God-to-individual thing does occur in Catholicism with the whole vocation thing, where, God speaks to the individual and tells him or her to become a priest or nun or saint or whatever.  And, me adding an ironic twist to that thought: it's a minority of those kind of people who often become new cult leaders (in some narratives called prophets or founders,) because God supposedly spoke directly to them. But they are not the cult follower types (like Santorum.)


    Callings.  Protestants have them, too.  

    I agree Santorum is more follower than leader.  Really more puppet.  And, imo, not really a true believer.  More an uncertain one.  Relying too much on tradition and authority figures.  Couple that with political ambition and voila.... the liberal media begins fearing Catholicism as much as they do Evangelicals and Mormons. 

    I have mixed feelings about that.  It has been so frustrating watching evangelicals being used and abused in the liberal media ever since Bush43 used them to get elected while any hint that there might be zealots in more media-favored faiths were ignored or flamed.  

    Very, very few churches centered on their evangelists survive their deaths or dishonor.  What political plots and plans they may have are inevitably short-lived but the Vatican, like other corporate institutions, is immortal, as is the state of Israel. 

    Witnessing the success of the John Carroll Society in stacking the judiciary and of Israel in directing so much of our middle east policy this past decade, I have sometimes wondered if the misdirection of fear, scorn and ridicule toward evangelicals was intentional --- even wearing my tinfoil hat.

    Well, there.  I finally said it out loud.

     


    I agree with the point you make at the end of the CNN article that any victors over "secular humanism" would soon regret their success.

    In a number of ways, the Establishment clause is a refinement and extension of "cuius regio, eius religio; the principle that turned open-ended religious war into conflicts based upon local power structures (Westphalia etc).  The American experiment is largely a reaction against the English Civil War where the principle that brought a certain stability between states also ripped a society apart with terror and violence faster than you can say Jack Robinson. So the Americans agreed to try something different; Instead of a prince or republic determining the kind of religion that could be practiced, the matter was thrown back upon the religionist themselves: Reproduce your special community if you can. Don't come looking for help from the government if it doesn't work out.

    It is obvious that our history has demonstrated a sharp unevenness in how well this principle has been applied. The Mennonites are hanging out pretty much where they started. The Mormons were chased out of a number of towns and found some space to establish themselves out West. The different people of the First Nation were squeezed into cultural islands and a great effort was made to "assimilate" them and eradicate their language, culture, and religion. I think it is important to compare the different ways communities survive to understand the charge that the Federal government is a social engineer hell bent on dismantling your way of life. In the case of the First Nation, their separate status permitted the BIA to exert an influence unlike any applied to any another group by the U.S. government. Their experience provides a good baseline to establish what social engineering and resistance to it looks like.

    That experience doesn't look like what the "Religious Right" complains about.

    Are they permitted to teach their children whatever they like in their own schools? Yes.

    Can they speak any language they wish amongst themselves? Yes.

    Does their belief play a significant part in whether they can participate in the exchange of goods? No, except for what their choices may have exempted themselves from being a part of.

    So the Religious Right is not really asking for the end of a persecution where their numbers are dwindling because many others wish for their destruction. They are asking for an advantage because they don't like their chances in the open marketplace of ideas.

     


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