Catholics jilt San(c)torum on the altar

When John F. Kennedy ran for US President, he en­joyed wide support from Catholics but strong adversity (at first) from Protestants, particularly Evangelical groups. They feared a Catholic candidate would be the lunga manus of the Pope.

Santorum’s position may make him the darling of the religious right but it does not represent the authentic Catholic place in the public square- Fr Joe Borg

Today, another Catholic, Rick Santorum, is valiantly trying to win the Republican Party nomination. He has the backing of several hard-core fundamentalist Evangelical groups but is looked askance by many moderate Catholics. Evangelicals feel more at home with Santorum than Catholics do.

Santorum resonates well with the religious right. The ultra-conservative Catholic opposes the sale of contraceptives and wants homosexual acts to be considered once more as criminal.

Such statements, like his many references to the devil, go down a treat with Evangelicals and some Catholics. In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University he had said Satan has his sights set on America and the country was facing spiritual warfare. Satan had under his wings, or perhaps his tail as well, academia, mainstream Protestantism and politicians.

As ever, one of the most hotly contested states in Super Tuesday primaries is Ohio. White evangelicals broke for Santorum over Mitt Romney by 47 per cent to 30 per cent.

According to CNN’s exit polls, Romney took 43 per cent of Ohio Catholics, compared to 31 per cent for Santorum. Santorum won more than a third of evangelical Christians in the Deep South primaries, which are considered to be the more conservative bloc of the vote this year. In the Illinois primary held last Tuesday, which Romney won emphatically, Santorum locked up the ultra-conservative vote but Romney cleaned up the Catholic vote and the rest.

The Catholic vote today is not the same as in the 1960s. It is neither monolithic nor does it follow blindly the directions meted out by the bishops. Catholic voters care more about the economy than they do about the issues pushed by Santorum.

Santorum even went so far as to caricature Kennedy’s famous speech outlining his philosophy of the relationship between Church and state. The Kennedy doctrine made him “want to throw up”, he said.

In September 1960, Kennedy outlined the role of religion in politics in a landmark speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The former US President argued that no one should be denied public office because of his faith, that no public official should request or accept “instructions on public policy” from any “ecclesiastical source”.

Kennedy swore his support to a country that is “officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish” and “where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all”. He envisioned “an America where religious intolerance will someday end”.

Kennedy promised to act based upon what “my conscience tells me to be the national interest” and to protect “the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty”.

What Kennedy said is a far cry from Santorum’s accusation that the former President believed that “people of faith have no role in the public square”.

Santorum would do well to take a lesson or two from Benedict XVI’s speech in Westminster Hall in 2010: “The role of religion in political debate is not… to propose concrete political solutions which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.”

Santorum’s position may make him the darling of the religious right but it does not represent the authentic Catholic place in the public square.

• Regrettably the number of horror stories recently reaching us from our courts is appalling.

I will not discuss here the repeated references in court to “l-iswed” at the trial for the murder of a Sudanese immigrant. The gentleman had a name. It was Suleiman Abubakar not “l-iswed”. The use of this appellative has a whiff of racism.

Three cases made us take a collective intake of breath - two fathers and one mother were found guilty of child abuse. Two cases were of sexual abuse and one of physical abuse. The immediate and massive popular reaction was that the sentences handed down were not in keeping with the gravity of the crimes.

People, rightly so, cannot understand the disparity between a prison sentence for child sex abuse and a crime which according to widespread perception is of less gravity, like for example, growing marijuana. Such public outrage should not be ignored and it is the responsibility of someone within the judicial system to explain and clarify this disproportion in such sentences; otherwise our trust in the courts will continue to be eroded.

In one of these cases, the presiding magistrate was reported to express incredulity that the person accused of sexual abuse was not also accused of physical abuse, which was amply demonstrated by the evidence given. Who was responsible for such a mistake? Will no one be held accountable?

In the same case the abused was an adopted child. Psychologists and social workers are expected to screen the prospective adoptive parents.

I am reliably informed there are well-founded allegations that some psychologists allegedly green-lighted an adoption without ever having a face-to-face encounter with these prospective adoptive parents. It is alleged that their positive opinion was solely based on a telephone conversation or the examination of some documents. Such a practice, if it is true, is abusive, should be harshly condemned and stopped immediately.

Can anyone assure us that this is not what happened in the case of this abused child?

• “The deductive approach to moral choice is increasingly problematic as societies become more democratic, pluralist and multicultural.

“Moral standards cannot any lon­ger be authoritatively imposed upon all the members of such societies.

“Under these conditions ethics can evolve in a legitimate fashion only through the dialogue among all those concerned.” Hamelink, C. (2000) The Ethics of Cyberspace.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt