Julie Robison of Corner with a View writes this guest post about her take on Newt and Rick Santorum. As you might imagine, Patrick, who hearts him some Santorum, disagrees.
Here’s Julie:
Friends, Catholics, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury our Catholic presidential hopefuls, not praise them.
That is, not literally bury them, but submit an argument that those who are Catholic in faith only and not action are not fit to lead America.
I am speaking, of course, specifically about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senator Rick Santorum. Both respectable men, decent men even, but not presidential material. True, they’re more Catholic than the late President Kennedy, this country’s first Catholic president, but that gives them few points in my book.
The big sticking point for many conservatives is their pro-life stance. Another is their support of marriage between a man and a woman. This is something I strongly support as well, but the way both men wish to go about it is wrong, and why I cannot endorse either for the presidency.
Thomas Peters wrote in the Washington Post,
On the question of the definition of marriage, Gingrich has distinguished himself in having zero patience for activist judges who attempt to redefine marriage unilaterally. He supports a federal marriage amendment and the Defense of Marriage Act.
Santorum also supports federal mandates for marriage, and said during the October 18th Republican debate that “the 10thamendment [is] running amok”:
In his December “money bomb” letter, he wrote:
The day we stop fighting for the unborn child, or fighting to protect the sanctity of marriage, expel God from the public square, or decide we will no longer enforce the laws of our land, is the day we surrender all our founding fathers created.
Hm, really?
James Madison wrote Federalist 46 (“The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared”) that the “federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.”
Furthermore:
The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents.
It is tempting, I think, to vote for someone who shares your faith. It’s those kinds of associations which give comfort to people, lets them think that politician is different, that politician can be trusted.
Nonetheless, the job of the president is to uphold the Constitution of the United States. On Inauguration Day, the President-Elect vows to protect and defend the Constitution. The whole Constitution: not the bits he likes, or can use to his greatest advantage. All of it. This includes the 10th amendment.
At a practical, grammarian level: the 10th amendment itself cannot run amok. The people who invoke it, however, can. The people who misinterpret it can. The people who use it can. From this perspective, it is Catholics who should respect, protect and defend the 10th amendment the most.
The 10th amendment says that any powers not delegated by the US Constitution can be handled at the state level. It is also parallel to the Church’s teachings on free will and reason. The Church, through the hierarchy, does not dictate every action we do; it gives us God’s laws and teachings, which we must follow to the best of our ability and with God’s grace. We have priests to help guide us at the individual level, while still being able to participate in the Church at large.
I mean, free will is scary. God lets us do WHATEVER WE WANT. There will be consequences, of course, but that’s why he also gives us our human reason, so we can figure out and decide the right and just path. Santorum says he supports the 10th amendment, but not if it’s not going his way, he would force compliance, if given the chance. Gingrich supports federal laws that go his way. That is very un-Catholic, and that type of forced compliance can very easily manipulated and abused. Catholic civil liberties should be a very real concern for all of us.
Healthcare professionals, Catholic charities, teachers, and government officials, for example, are all put into precarious situations with the current political environment. We do, after all, have that conscience thing.
Madison went on to say:
Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. …But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole.
If Catholic politicians wish to make federal laws outside the realm of the Constitution’s designated powers for the various branches of government, then they have more in common with Progressives than they are wiling to admit. Can we say, Hellooo health care bill-mandate-to-be-enforced-in-2014? Interstate commerce clause, what? Oh, well, in their defense: the Constitution is hard to understand because it is over 100 years old.
I suppose I’m not overly surprised at Gingrich’s stance, but Santorum disappoints me and thus loses my support. Our nation was not founded by Catholics; only one, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signed the Declaration. This nation has a very anti-Catholic history, in fact; but we are blessed. We are blessed by our religious liberties and our civil liberties. We may worship as we choose. We may still speak out and defend ourselves against injustices. The Church has yet to be outlawed, and contrary to popular culture, the young Catholics of my generation are getting stronger in their faith and evangelization.
Peters also wrote of Gingrich, “He is good at articulating why our laws should reflect our marriage tradition.”
Awesome! This is what we need: words, words, words, and then actions to back them up. It will be our witness which will touch people. The love we Christians show to each other, and the stability of our marriages and families when they are centered on Christ.
If Catholics are serious about protecting the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family, it must start by protecting it within one’s own community first, then one’s state. Just look at the stir California’s Proposition 8 caused when the people in one state took a stand!
To paraphrase St. Francis: sanctify one’s self so that one may sanctify society.
Leading by example is most desirable, as is actually following the wise laws left to us by the Founding Fathers. Leave brute force to the unpersuasive fools.
Note: Julie blogs at The Corner With A View.
December 24, 2011 at 2:23 am
I don't understand how catholics can claim that abortion is not a federal matter. First, anything is a federal matter if we pass a Constitutional amendment regarding it — because it then becomes an enumerated power Second, at the most basic level if our Constitution (or our federal government at all) talks about human rights, the people, etc., then it completely makes sense to define what a human IS at the federal leve.
December 24, 2011 at 12:38 pm
So we build a sound Catholic society, by relying upon the Constitution…
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Work with the Constitution? Yes. But RELY on God and His Church.
Unless you are one of those who think the Constitution is of divine origin.
December 25, 2011 at 2:06 am
Clearly Julie Robison is not *really^ Catholic or she would be supporting Neocons Santorum or Gingrich.
December 30, 2011 at 11:33 am
what a silly column–it shows no political, moral or theological insight.
December 30, 2011 at 3:11 pm
The gutless left coast … what would Madison have said about an activist homosexual judge overturning the votes of millions and the meek way you all took it and ignored it … get real.