Rick Santorum, Catholics and Evangelicals

That being said, clearly Rick Santorum, as a conservative Catholic, has a lot of appeal to Evangelical Protestants. Their similarities are obvious. They see eye to eye on abortion, gay rights, sex outside of marriage, the desire for an overtly Christian public sphere, and (presumably) Israel.

But they have their differences as well. I have heard it said [once again, can't find link] that a lot of today's so-called conservative Catholics are far closer to Evangelical Protestants than traditional Catholics. I don't know whether this is true or not. If so, however, Santorum does not fit in that category.

Newt Gingrich, a Southern Baptist turned Catholic, still knows how to speak the Evangelical language. He presents himself as a reformed sinner, one who led an immoral life until his religious conversion. So important is the conversion narrative to Evangelicals that they are willing to overlook the detail that Gingrich's conversion was from one of their religions to Catholicism. One commentator [won't bother finding link] went so far as to suggest that Romney's picture perfect family life will hurt him with Evangelicals because it denies him the opportunity to be a repentant sinner. Color me unconvinced. Santorum's private life is irreproachable, and doesn't seem to have hurt him any with the base.

He does, however, lack what is very important to Evangelicals -- a conversion narrative. Details may differ, of course, but to Evangelicals no one can be truly Christian who does not have such a narrative -- a precise description of when he or she took Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. Such a narrative is easier, of course, for anyone who did not grow up in an Evangelical Church. But even someone who was born and raised in such a church, and grew up attending and believing from earliest childhood still has to have a conversion narrative of how he or she went from merely faking to being a true believer. Catholics have no such requirement. Being baptized and receiving the proper sacraments is sufficient. If Santorum has any sort of story of how he took Jesus Christ as his personal savior then I, for one, have not heard about it.

Another important difference between Santorum and the Evangelicals is that Santorum is not a Bible thumper. In other words, he does not base his moral positions on finding an appropriate quote from scripture and treating that as ultimate authority. Once again, the Bible just isn't as important for Catholics as for Evangelicals. I highly recommend this hostile but highly informative account of how Santorum's manner of argument is deeply Catholic and differs from the Evangelical approach.

Evangelical Protestantism has always been a lower class rebellion against the dry and sterile intellectualism of more upscale religion and a search for a more emotional and immediate spiritual experience. As such, it has always been anti-intellectual. Catholicism, by contrast, has a formidable intellectual tradition. To call Rick Santorum one of the finest minds of the 13th Century is no insult. The 13th Century was a time of flourishing Catholic universities and the golden age of Catholic scholasiticism.

Thomas Acquinas, greatest of the scholastics, accepted the Bible as one authority, but by no means the only one. Instead, he made heavy use of the essentially secular philosophers of classical antiquity, especially Aristotle. Drawing on Aristotle, Acquinas distinguished between "divine law," that could be known only by revelation (basically, scripture) and was beyond the authority of government to enforce and "natural law" that was acessible to Christians and non-Christians alike and was binding on worldly governments. This sounds a lot like our doctrine of separation of church and state! But how do we know which is which? Presumably, Acquinas would have considered bans on abortion and homosexuality as part of the natural law.

During the 19th Century (the article continues), there was a Catholic revival of the natural law tradition. It gave the Catholic Church a secular language to make its moral and ethical arguments. It is on this tradition that Santorum draws.

There is no need to quote St. Paul to prove that homosexual sex is an
affront to the natural order and same-sex marriage a detriment to civilization:
Santorum appeals to natural law, what he calls the Catholic Church’s “operating
instructions for human beings.”

“Human beings have a purpose, or ‘end,’ a telos,” Santorum writes in his
book. According to the tradition of natural law, every part of our bodies has a
telos too. In the case of our genitalia, that natural end is heterosexual sex
for the purpose of procreation.

Such arguments have a strong appeal to Evangelical Christians -- they offer the intellectual respectability to Evangelical views that Evangelicals have secretly longed for.