I have an inkling that most readers of Bilgrimage read widely at various news sites, so I am probably carrying coals to Newcastle when I offer you the following summary of recent links discussing Rick Santorum's Catholicity--and how little solid support he has among Catholic voters as a whole. Still, in case some of you may have missed some of these articles, here's a listing of recent links to pieces that, in my view, make valuable contributions to the discussion:
1. At Salon, in "The Illinois Ties Santorum Doesn't Promote," Joan Walsh notes that, curiously, Santorum doesn't visit his alma mater Carmel Catholic High near Chicago, which has a Facebook page called "Carmel Catholic Alumni Against Rick Santorum."
2. A few days later, also at Salon, in "Rick Santorum Goes off the Rails," Walsh critiques Santorum's claim that the media are spinning him as a right-wing Catholic zealot--spinning that is hardly necessary when he stands and claps as a "bigoted loon," Pastor Dennis Terry, shouts that the Christian nation of America belongs only to conservative Christians. No one else.
3. And to get the full effect of the preceding sentences, you'll have to watch the video clip of Terry I've embedded above. I encourage you to do so, distasteful as you may find it. It represents where a wide swathe of American voters really are, and explains why Santorum is doing extremely well among white evangelical Protestants in the American South, if not among his fellow Catholics.
4. At his Daily Dish site, in a piece called "Catholics vs. Santorum, Ctd," Andrew Sullivan neatly sums up the disconnect between Santorum (and the current pastoral leaders of the Catholic church) and the rest of us in the American Catholic church.
5. As does Frank Bruni in an engaging essay in the New York Times entitled "Many Kinds of Catholic." Bruni suggests that Santorum's poor performance among fellow Catholics should give the (Santorum-supporting) hierarchy a clue that it needs to reassess its own performance when it comes to pastoral leadership.
6. For analysis of precisely where Santorum (and the current hierarchy) derive the peculiar flavor of Catholicism they're trying to peddle now as the only acceptable and thinkable flavor around, see Stephanie McCrummen and Jerry Markon in the Washington Post on Santorum's ties to the right-wing Catholic group Opus Dei (which, in the view of some of us, now virtually runs the Catholic church as a whole).
7. For more valuable discussion of precisely what the Opus Dei connection means concretely for Santorum's Catholicism and political worldview, see Sarah Posner's "Santorum and the New Catholic-Evangelical Alliance" at Religion Dispatches.
8. Among Catholic bloggers who have been onto the Opus Dei connections for a long time now, Betty Clermont and Frank Cocozzelli stand out for their brilliant and well-informed commentary. Both have pieces about these themes recently at Open Tabernacle: see Betty's "Santorum--The Catholic Theocrat" and Frank's "Rick Santorum's Opus Dei Vision for America."
9. And, finally, if you want to understand why what's essentially a minority position in American Catholicism (and in global Catholicism, as well) has such a powerful grip on American Catholicism, read Charles Pierce's "The Crusaders" in the Boston Globe. An excerpt:
During the almost two years since the clergy sexual abuse scandal broke in Boston, most of the attention has been drawn to groups like Boston-based Voice of the Faithful that sprang up in response to the grim stories that seemed to be breaking almost daily. Outraged laity took to the streets and rose up in the pews, withholding contributions, demanding meetings with bishops whose authority seemed to be evaporating by the hour.
Obscured by all of this was the presence of an influential, deeply connected, and well-financed faction -- a counterreformation, to borrow a useful term from Roman Catholic history -- that was determined not only to prevent the scandal from being used as a Trojan horse for all manner of church reform but also to use its efforts within the church to affect the politics and culture outside of it.
The conservative opposition is tied in to the elites of Washington, D.C. -- McCloskey's high-profile catechumens are hardly the only example -- and its magazines and think tanks are funded by the same foundations that have been the fountainhead of movement conservatism over the past three decades. And just as the clergy sexual abuse scandal energized the reformers, it energized the traditionalists.
"That's where the leadership and the power of the church are right now, no question," says the Rev. Richard McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame. "These people have direct access to the papacy."
Note what Pierce is saying here: powerful, wealthy, politically influential right-wing groups within the American Catholic church have been determined, from the moment news of the abuse crisis broke within the Catholic church in the U.S., to block any attempt to use that crisis as an occasion for the church reform promoted by progressive Catholics in line with the vision of Vatican II. They have framed the narrative about the abuse crisis in the media in a way that obscures the need for institutional reform, except in narrow, moralizing terms. And they have successfully marginalized the views of a majority of American Catholics who continue to support the views of Vatican II.
How have they done so? Through their wealth and power in beltway circles. Via their access to the media. And, it cannot be overlooked, through their influence on the conversation of the American Catholic center, which is deeply rooted in the same beltway culture in which this powerful, wealthy minority of right-wing Catholics holds such sway.
If you want to know why leading "liberal" American Catholic centrists have hopped onto the U.S. Catholic bishops' right-wing "religious freedom" bandwagon with such alacrity, you need look no further than here. And to the $$$$$$ that lie behind the powerful right-wing minority to whom the "liberal" centrists listen so obediently, while assisting that minority in marginalizing American Catholic progressives.
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