The sinless Santorum

An immaculate deception

As one might expect, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has a lot to say about sin. Paragraph 1849 offers a definition:

Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.”

I like the part about sin being “an offense against reason,” especially given the recent argument from the Catholic bishops of the United States, who consider it religious oppression if they are not allowed to truncate the health insurance coverage of their employees—at least the female ones. Reason has never been their trump card.

The Catechism explains that sin comes in various flavors and that no one can sin grievously without full knowledge:

1859. Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice.

Therefore sin is a conscious and deliberate act. You can't sin accidentally. This is convenient for Rick Santorum, who skirts around the fringe of grave sin by the simple expedient of not quite understanding what he's doing. And, in the unfortunate event that he does know what he's doing, he gets one more shot at pleading not guilty:

The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders.

I'm putting some money down on “pathological.”

The former senator from Pennsylvania, defrocked of his senatorial toga in a landslide repudiation in 2006, is a fervent opponent of abortion. He regards it as a sin against the Fifth Commandment (in the Catholic numbering scheme), “Thou shalt not kill.” Rick Santorum wants abortion banned—without exception. Or mostly without exception. When his wife's life was threatened by sepsis during a pregnancy gone wrong, Santorum agreed to allow doctors to induce labor to expel the infected fetus. This step, however, was apparently not taken when Mrs. Santorum's body began a premature delivery on its own. (No doubt this was done by God to preserve Santorum from accusations of having obtained an abortion for his spouse. God works in grotesque ways.)

No mortal sin there! Just a family tragedy in which difficult decisions were made, some of which Santorum would sternly forbid others to make. (It would be hypocrisy if only he were self-aware.)

The Seventh Commandment is “Thou shalt not steal.” One can break this commandment in both venial and mortal ways, rather like the distinction between misdemeanors and felonies. Where would you put $73,000 on this scale? (Yeah, me too.) That's the amount the Santorums allegedly took from the state of Pennsylvania to pay for the education of their children via an Internet-based charter school. As reported by a CBS affiliate,

Pennsylvania law requires school districts to pay for resident students who enroll in cyberschools, and Santorum at the time of the controversy said that the Penn Hills house was his family’s legal residence and that he paid taxes on it.

The Senator and his wife apparently thought (or pretended to think) that the children were eligible because their parents owned a home in the Penn Hills School District—despite the fact that the Santorums and their children were actually living in Virginia. The Pennsylvania home was used to maintain Rick Santorum's residency and eligibility to represent the state as an elected official. While his children were manifestly not resident in the Penn Hills district, Santorum argued that his use of state tax dollars to defray their homeschooling in Virginia was legitimate under Pennsylvania law. Others were not so sure.

The matter was eventually settled when Pennsylvania's education department ponied up $55,000 to pay off the Penn Hills School District. No wrongdoing was admitted by any of the parties.

No sin here!

Again, this would be hypocrisy if Santorum were consciously transgressing his own position against public education, but he's not. In my humble opinion, Rick Santorum is the most sincere politician out there. He is steeped in the self-righteousness of the True Believer and can do no wrong. He's on a mission from God and God's minions are allowed to cut corners occasionally because, hey, God is on their side. It's those other people (you know, liberals, queers, atheists, minorities, union members, etc.) who wrongly seek entitlements reserved only to the elect of God. The lack of self-awareness is staggering.

So I don't call Rick Santorum a hypocrite or a sinner. I call him a dangerously sincere fanatic. When he has finished his current strut across the political stage, let us hope he fades into the obscurity he so richly deserves. I'd pray for that, if I thought it would do any good. I'm sure Rick will be praying when it's all over: “But, Jesus! You promised to make me president of the world!”

Sorry about that, Rick. God lies a lot. He's exempt from the Eighth Commandment (the one about bearing false witness). Just ask Harold Camping. Old Harold falls for it over and over again.