Sunday, March 11, 2012

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.

9 comments:

Kathie said...

"Santorum is Pennsylvania's not-so-favorite son so far / State's GOP leaders haven't endorsed him":
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12071/1215941-176.stm

Not a single statewide, er, Commonwealth-wide Republican elected official has endorsed Santorum for President yet. Not a one.

Plus, despite his (supposed) incumbent's advantage, Rick not only lost his 2006 Senatorial reelection bid but did so by a whopping 18 percentage points. What do you suppose Keystone Staters know that the rest of the nation has yet to find out about him?

BTW, that Penn Hills house where the huge Santorum clan supposedly resided for cyber-schooling purposes is said to have but 2 bedrooms -- heck, the semi-impoverished Waltons lived larger than that! Further, it was also reportedly rented out at the time the Santorums were claiming it as their primary residence.

Zeno said...

Ha! So even worse than I thought. Thanks, Kathie, for the details on the cyberschool tuition scam.

Kathie said...

But wait, there's more! Santorum won his first term in the House of Representatives by attacking incumbent Doug Walgren in part on grounds that Walgren had moved his family to the DC area, so was no longer in sufficient touch with his constituency. Then after Rick was elected, guess what? He turned around and did the exact same thing.

DicePlayGod said...

"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."

Interesting ... Therefore, you can't count abortion as a sin, because the people involved do not believe it is a sin. They do not have "knowledge of the sinful character" of abortion.

Further, since the principle applies generally, you determine your own code of morality. Somehow that doesn't seem consistent with Catholic teaching ...

Zeno said...

I'm sure, DicePlayGod, that that's one reason the Church makes such a fuss over having a "well-formed conscience." That's a code word for taking the Church's word on everything, so as to close the personal conscience loophole. Yes, you're supposed to follow your conscience, but if it ever disagrees with Church teaching then it's not well-formed and you'd better fix it! Yeah, this is all tied up in knots and rather funny (in a sad way).

Kathie said...

More re the Rick-Wad:

He accepted Big Tobacco lobbyist donations to his PAC, then tried to undermine FDA anti-tobacco regs.

He arranged a sweetheart deal on a mortgage (not sure for whom, though) under exceptional circumstances not meeting the bank's own rules for holdings of financial assets -- from a Philly bank whose officials contributed to his PAC.

He accepted campaign donations from Accu-Weather® execs, then introduced a bill that would forbid the National Weather Service* from providing weather information to the general public (instead only from commercial forecasters like, of course, AccuWeather®).

*He also incorrectly claims the NWS botched the forecast on Hurricane Katrina. But don't let a few facts get in your way, Rick.

Then there was his and Karen's decision to abort their severely-disabled 2nd-trimester fetus supposedly in order to save Karen's life -- which was conveniently obviated when she went into premature labor (the hapless fetus lived just a few hours anyway). But NOW Rick denounces such terminations as "partial birth" abortions and calls claims that they protect the life of the mother "phony."

So, do you still think the word "hypocrite" is too strong?

Kathie said...

More...

1. "Rick Santorum’s Communist Clan in Italy":
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/11/rick-santorum-s-italian-family-speaks-out.html

In the tiny town of Riva del Garda in northern Italy, 83-year-old-Maria Malacarne Santorum keeps her family’s secrets—including those of her late husband’s cousin, Rick. In an exclusive interview with the Italian weekly magazine Oggi, Mrs. Santorum recalls fondly when Rick visited her in 1985 during his law internship in Florence, and when he came back again in 1986 and 1989. “He loved our culture and cuisine so much, he brought his wife-to-be, Karen, a massive cookbook of Italian recipes,” she said.

But the elder Santorum matriarch doesn’t understand why he has diverged so far from the family’s longtime political stance. “In Riva del Garda his grandfather Pietro and uncles were ‘red communists’ to the core,” writes Oggi journalist Giuseppe Fumagalli, likening the family to “Peppone” after a famous fictional Italian communist mayor who fought against an ultraconservative priest known as Don Cammillo and about which a popular television series is based. “But on the other side of the ocean, it’s like his family here doesn’t exist. Instead he draws crowds as the head of the ultraconservative faction of the Republican party, against divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration”...

2. For 6 years in her 20s, Karen Santorum (née Garver) shacked up with a Sugar Daddy who was Pittsburgh's legal-abortion pioneer, a divorced man old enough to be her grandfather:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/mrs-santorum-s-abortion-doctor-boyfriend.html

When a friend of Karen and Tom's needed an abortion, "[h]e directed her to colleagues at the Women’s Health Center; Karen... immediately offered to accompany her to the clinic. 'She told me it wasn’t that bad, that I shouldn’t be worried,' says Mary, who ultimately went on her own, and met Allen and Garver for dinner later that night. 'She was very supportive.'"

"She told me it wasn’t that bad, that I shouldn’t be worried" -- how did Karen know??? As Mrs. Santorum, Dr. Tom Allen's former Sugar Baby seems to have gone overboard "repenting" her youthful ways -- but the bad part is the hypocrisy of denying others the rights she once believed in.

The Ridger, FCD said...

On the other hand, the Washington Times loves him.

... Or is that the "other" hand?

Kathie said...

Chilling -- re Santorum's conversion from mainstream Catholicism to the religious right, including his coziness with Opus Dei (it's unclear whether he's an actual member, although he undeniably leans that way).

"Rick Santorum has embraced Spanish priest behind devout Catholic group Opus Dei":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rick-santorums-journey-to-devout-catholicism-view-of-religion-in-governance/2012/03/16/gIQAj4NzNS_story.html