Holier-Than-Thou Rick's Got to Go
By Margery Eagan
Yesterday morning, while Rick "Faith, Family, and Freedom" Santorum was preparing for another I'm-holier-than-you-are day in New Hampshire, I was sitting in a Cambridge Street Holiday Inn conference room. It was packed with survivors and advocates celebrating the 10th anniversary of the uncovering of Boston's horrific Catholic Church sex abuse crisis. Two times in a half hour the name Rick Santorum, the self-proclaimed uber Catholic, was mentioned. Two times he was politely and genteelly booed. I loved it. This was a mostly Catholic gathering. There were nuns, ex-nuns, ex-altar boys, and middle-aged and elderly people. And many in the crowd couldn't stomach Santorum for one big reason. Just as the depths of this sex abuse deprivation were revealed, Rick Santorum, in 2002, went on the record to blame the rape of children in and around Boston on "cultural liberalism." He's never said he was wrong. Think about that obnoxiousness before you vote, New Hampshire. Let me add. The website BishopAccountability.org lists bishops and priests credibly accused of abuse, which means priests with multiple accusers or with cases settled by the church. More than 60 such priests were accused by hundreds and hundreds in New Hampshire. Perhaps Rick Santorum blames New Hampshire's "cultural liberalism" for those assaults, too, though liberal is hardly a word I'd use to describe the Granite State. It is not clear what he blames for priestly attacks on teenagers and children in Ireland, throughout Europe, parts of Africa, South America and most recently Haiti. Perhaps in his loathsome world view, it's cultural liberalism gone wild 'round the world! Unfortunately for Santorum, however, the corrupt church hierarchy that knew of and then covered up these many crimes was not made up of cultural liberals but cultural conservatives. Like Santorum, the pope, most bishops, Bernard Cardinal Law and John B. McCormack (Law's accessory and until September the bishop of Manchester, N.H.) oppose premarital sex, sex between married couples using birth control, any kind of gay sex, of course, and abortion. Here's the Santorum twist. You know the term cafeteria Catholic, used most often to describe those Catholics who disagree, in good conscience, with the church's endless anti-sex stands. It turns out that Santorum, despite his uber Catholic posturing, is a cafeteria Catholic in reverse. Or maybe I should call him an "all about sex" Catholic because he only agrees with the church's doctrines on matters sexual. Look at his record. He's for the death penalty and a foreign policy macho hawk (both against Catholic teaching). He's opposed to illegal immigration and social justice for the poor (both big time against Catholic teaching from the Vatican and the American church). I'm not sure how he can reconcile his stand against birth control (because of his church's teaching) while proclaiming readiness to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age (despite his church's teaching). But that's what he does — and still does his holier-than-thou shtick. Yet what really got me this weekend, hearing retold the brutal stories of small Catholic children molested, is how Rick Santorum both belittled and politicized their suffering. I wished they booed him louder at the Holiday Inn yesterday. I hope New Hampshire sends this creepy guy packing.
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