Rick Santorum's Catholic Problem

A certain sort of Evangelical seems to be attracted to Rick Santorum. But his views wildly at variance with Catholic Teaching on social justice and on peace manifestly play very badly, even among registered Republicans, in areas of significant Catholic population. Such as, we have just seen, Massachusetts and Ohio.

Santorum’s church, Saint Catherine of Siena in the political elite’s Virginia suburb of Great Falls, has ties to Opus Dei. So has The Heights School, to which he sends his sons. He is not a member. Nor am I. But might Santorum’s problem be that he is too Opus Dei? On the contrary, if anything his problem is that he is not Opus Dei enough.

Far from being indifferent or hostile towards the poor, Opus Dei runs ELIS in Rome, the Midtown Center in Chicago, the Moluka medical clinic in Kinshasa, the Los Pinos educational centre in Montevideo, the Braval programme of professional formation for immigrants in Barcelona, the Laguna care centre in Madrid, the Harambee 2002 project, Condoray in Cañete, the Institute for Industrial Technology in Lagos, the Guatanfur agricultural and stock raising school in Temza, the Anauco medical dispensary in Caracas, the Centenario medical clinic in Monterrey, the Informal Sector Business Institute in Nairobi, and many more besides. Google them.

Ruth Kelly was until recently the most prominent Opus Dei politician in the world; I am not sure who now is. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and former President of the Socialist International, António Guterres, has a long history in Opus Dei. Its ranks included the recently deceased Squire Lance, Saul Alinsky’s chosen successor in Chicago.

They also included the late Jorge Rossi Chavarría, sometime Vice-President of Costa Rica, and co-founder of that country’s National Liberation Party (PLN), the Costa Rican vehicle for social democracy, affiliated to the Socialist International. Rossi co-founded the PLN as an outgrowth of his work as legal advisor to the Costa Rican Confederation of Workers of Rerum Novarum, Rerum Novarum being the 1891 founding text of Catholic Social Teaching with its very strong critique of unbridled capitalism, a critique continued and expanded by every Pope since.

Opus Dei still includes Antonio Fontán, Paola Binetti, Llúis Foix, Mario Maiolo and Xavi Casajuana (if we count Catalan nationalism as part of the Left; it is certainly a very long way from Franco), among others. Again, give them a Google. By contrast, most of the Chilean Chicago Boys were not members of Opus Dei. Pinochet himself never had any affiliation with it.

Of six right-wing Opus Dei politicians listed on Wikipedia, four are dead, one since 1966. Whereas the three broad left-wingers listed, including two women, are all still alive. Insofar as it has a political orientation, Opus Dei’s would therefore seem to be towards the Left, if anything. Much like the Catholic Church Herself, in fact.

Not being like that is Rick Santorum’s Opus Dei problem, which is his Catholic problem, the problem that Catholic voters, including Catholic Republicans, demonstrably have with him.