When it comes to the separation of church and state, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says John F. Kennedy got it all wrong.
When Kennedy was running for president in 1960, some voters worried that the Vatican could soon be running America. Anti-Catholic paranoia has thankfully cooled off since, and now Santorum is facing a much different playing field. While Catholics themselves may not be flocking to support him, Santorum's traditional Catholic values – and willingness to act on them politically – inspire the evangelical Christians that the broader GOP takes for granted.
Santorum is hard-line pro-life, anti-gay rights and, if some of his most infamous public statements are any evidence, straight up anti-gay people. He also supported a state's right to ban contraception in a recent interview.
If this sounds eerily like the crack of a ruler on the back of your hand, it's because Santorum is not shy about taking his political marching orders directly from the Almighty.
In 1960, Kennedy delivered his historic speech on the separation of church and state to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Santorum could not disagree more, and the former Congressman from Pennsylvania has attacked Kennedy for failing to infuse faith and politics.
Here's an excerpt from Kennedy's speech:
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accept 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, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
Santorum has attacked this speech on more than one occasion, most notably with a speech at the same school in Houston nearly 50 years later:
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.
Santorum argued that the First Amendment protected religion and religious expression from the government, not the other way around. He said, “Kennedy's error also unleashed a new form of censorship that would make vows to the Almighty a constitutional offense” and listed Christian writers and leaders he often turned to for guidance when making decisions in Congress.
Santorum attacked Kennedy's speech again in March 2011 while addressing a conservative Catholic group in Boston called Catholic Citizen. Railing against Kennedy in front of Boston Catholics might sound like a gutsy move, but keep in mind that a member of Catholic Citizen recently attempted to blame feminism on the weakened state of men that has led to the outbreak of pedophilia plaguing the church and certain athletics coaches.
In his 2010 speech, Santorum said that God guides his political decisions, but he admitted that he is not always in line with Catholic leadership. He disagrees with the church leaders who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and support welfare programs that benefit the poor, whose cause Catholics are taught to champion.
Santorum's social conservatism may have rallied the fundamentalist Christian vote in Iowa, but American Catholics do not always respond the same way when the drums of culture war begin to pound. According to a recent Gallup poll, Santorum does no better among Republican Catholics than any of the other candidates. Catholic Republicans account for about 22 percent of the GOP's membership and “are remarkably close to the national average in their support for the major GOP candidates,” according to Gallup.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy