“It’s actually tragic,” Rick Santorum told me on my radio show Friday, in response to my question about the criticisms of Tim Tebow’s faith. “You know,” Santorum continued, “here’s a great American story, but we have so conditioned our culture through the left just pounding away that people of faith should keep their faith private, that when anybody even publicly tries to display it, it’s now something that’s offensive and being shoved down our throat, when it is in fact freedom of expression.”
I then asked the former senator from Pennsylvania about the coming scrutiny of his very serious commitment to his Catholic faith. Just the day before, I noted, the New York Times had reported on the Opus Dei-run Catholic high school his oldest boys attend.
Would such a story have been written had he not been running for president?
“Oh, well, of course not,” he replied quickly. Opus Dei, he continued, “is a great group of religious people who are very orthodox in their belief of the Catholic Church. They’re very faithful to the church.”
“And that is somehow offensive,” he added. It would be OK, he continued, “if they were the Jesuits and they were liberals, and they didn’t really follow closely the teachings of the church. Then that would have been just all right.
“But if they are someone who actually adheres to the faith, and the principles that the church teaches, this is a threat, and this is something that should be ostracized, not celebrated as part of the diversity of our country.
“I expect [the Times’ story] was a kind of dog whistle to the left to start going after a sort of ‘Da Vinci Code’ analysis of Rick Santorum.” I asked him, “Are you ready for that?” (And those attacks have begun, as noted at Article VI Blog.)
His reply is worth quoting at length:
“Oh, my goodness. Sure. Look, Hugh, you know this. I mean, when you stand up and you articulate a worldview that is consistent with a biblical worldview, you’re going to get hammered for it in the media today.
“And I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I mean, I read my Bible. I know what they say, what Christ said about folks who stand up and speak those types of truth. There are many in the world who aren’t going to accept it.
“And I’m perfectly OK with that. I go out there and speak about my faith very publicly, and I speak also about the reason that I use, the gift of reason that we are all given, it’s available to all, to be able to make up the persuasive case about the things I believe in also. You bring both faith and reason to the table, and if your faith is true and your reason is right, you’ll end up at the same place.”
Santorum’s long record of strong fidelity to the issues that matter most to many people of faith may be the reason why social conservatives meeting in Texas this past weekend agreed to rally around Santorum in the weeks ahead.
But just as important as his beliefs is Santorum’s unembarrassed embrace of these principles, his willingness to defend them at length in the public square, arguing the case for their centrality to the culture’s survival.
There is hardly any difference at all between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum on the issues of life, marriage and religious liberty. Santorum’s been in the ring longer, though, and for many social conservatives, that counts most.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
