Rick Santorum At Odds With Catholic Church On Many Major Issues

By MARC MCDONALD

If you Google "Rick Santorum Devout Catholic," you'll get over 130,000 results. Indeed, the MSM routinely refers to Santorum as a "devout Catholic."

But is he?

In reality, Santorum is at odds with the Catholic Church on many major issues.

On Saturday, Santorum challenged President Obama's Christian beliefs and claimed White House policies were motivated by a "different theology."

All of this was reported by a straight-faced MSM, which has in turn given Santorum a free pass on the fact that many of his positions are in direct conflict with the Catholic Church.

The brilliant Juan Cole at Informed Comment recently rounded up the Top Ten Catholic Teachings Santorum Rejects while Obsessing about Birth Control:

1. "So for instance, Pope John Paul II was against anyone going to war against Iraq I think you'll find that Rick Santorum managed to ignore that Catholic teaching.

2. The Conference of Catholic Bishops requires that health care be provided to all Americans. I.e., Rick Santorum’s opposition to universal health care is a betrayal of the Catholic faith he is always trumpeting.

3. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty for criminals in almost all situations. (Santorum largely supports executions.)

4. The US Conference of Bishops has urged that the federal minimum wage be increased, for the working poor. Santorum in the Senate repeatedly voted against the minimum wage.

5. The bishops want welfare for all needy families, saying "We reiterate our call for a minimum national welfare benefit that will permit children and their parents to live in dignity. A decent society will not balance its budget on the backs of poor children." Santorum is a critic of welfare.

6. The US bishops say that "the basic rights of workers must be respected–the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions...". Santorum, who used to be supportive of unions in the 1990s, has now, predictably, turned against them.

7. Catholic bishops demand the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Rick Santorum denies that there are any Palestinians, so I guess he doesn't agree with the bishops on that one.

8. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops ripped into Arizona's law on treatment of immigrants, Cardinal Roger Mahony characterized Arizona's S.B. 1070 as "the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law," saying it is based on "totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources." He even suggested that the law is a harbinger of an American Nazism! Santorum attacks 'anchor babies' or the provision of any services to children of illegal immigrants born and brought up in the US.

9. The Bishops have urged that illegal immigrants not be treated as criminals and that their contribution to this country be recognized.

10. The US Conference of Bishops has denounced, as has the Pope, the Bush idea of 'preventive war', and has come out against an attack on Iran in the absence of a real and present threat of an Iranian assault on the US. In contrast, Santorum wants to play Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and ride the rocket down on Isfahan himself."

Go here to read Cole's full piece. As always, he nails it with a precision that is utterly absent from the misleading and dishonest MSM reporting about Santorum's "devout" Catholic faith.

John Gehring, who is Senior Writer and Catholic Outreach Coordinator at Faith in Public Life, has also written an excellent piece that sums up: The Catholic Case Against Rick Santorum.

With his bizarre fixation on homosexuality and birth control, Santorum has seemingly given the Catholic Church a bad name for many people. However, if one actually takes a look at the Catholic Church's positions on many social issues, one finds that the Catholic Church actually has more in common with progressives on many social issues than it does with Santorum's creepy, hypocritical, and twisted beliefs.