Santorum at odds with church's call to safeguard the earth

CASH IS GREEN!! ............. Thanks, Joe. Please note the several relevant NCR comments, including " "Theology" and the Energy Lobby", readily accessible by clicking on at:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/sementelli-whose-phony-th...

I am horrified by Santorum.

What about Santorum's assault on higher education? OMG; keep people uneducated and you keep them controlled. They don't ask questions.

The rest of the world is so far ahead of US students - India has more honors students than the US has students! How will the US be competitive, as Republicans insist we must be to keep the economy going, in science and math? What about the English language!

If Santorum's views on education go through the gap between the rich and poor in the US will grow even wider. I mean, think of the consequences of not encouraging kids to stay in school. What fairy land does Santorum live in?

Santorum is so extreme that he will never be elected, at least I hope not.

The thought of Republicans in the White House is frightening in the extreme. Anti-abortion folks? The Republicans will pay you lip service and maybe control some funding but you have to ask what they won't be telling you. If we don't educate our kids they won't keep their babies. Education is the best hope we have for life, all of life.

If it's not snobbery to be uneducated, what is it then? COOL?

Generations of burger flippers... they will eat at McDonalds and work there in an endless cycle.

Hold on one minute! Santorum doesn't have distain for environmental issues which you imply in this piece. I've heard him describe his position and he said we shouldn't elevate the earth above man, which is not only Biblical, it is practicle.

Cap-and Trade is desimating the coal states like Pennsylvania and Virginia. Is that just?

We won't drill known oil reserves in ANWR, Gulf, but we continue to purchase oil from known terrorists and Communists. Is that just?

Obama criticized Keystone PL so Canada said fine, we'll sell the oil to China. Does that sound like a prudent energy policy?

We had five alternative energy co. bankruptcies in the last 2 years with Billions in taxpayers money lost and adding to the alread growing national debt of 16 Trillion dollars. Is that just?

We bailed out GM at the tune of Billions and GM moved part of their production to China. Is that just?

Every expert in the field has said it is stupid to think we are going to meet the energy demands of our country with alternative resources. Is that just?

Your article is rediculous when I think of the damage this administration has caused.

Andrew K.

Yeah, I'm a Traditionalist Conservative Catholic and I'm certainly not much enamoured by Santorum's anti-environmentalist stance. I think it completely foolish and irresponsible to ruin the world which the Lord has given us.

I also gather he's a tad fiscally conservative and pro-business, though he has supported foreign aid and Social Services. On bioethics, he's a gem but could do with some thorough PR training. Something of a mixed bag as far as I can see, but what with the erosion of conscience protection for religious people we see these years, and with abortion rates still running high, the US could sure do with an uabashedly religious president.

Rick Santorum's devolving comments make his Catholicism sound self-revealed and self-decreed. It's his personal religion to define and impose. He seems to ignore the 8th Commandment in his political statements about his opponents, whether they are in his party or not. His myopic anti-abortion zealotry is blinding him in his avid support of military policies that violate the 5th Commandment. His publicly professed Catholicism evokes a word that is associated with public figures whose "secrets" are exposed: scandalous.
Paz y Bien, Rolando, SFO.

Here is the testimony of Richard Lindzen to the House of Commons; curious that this is not more publicized.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_214...

While I find Rick Santorum so thoroughly dislikeable, a total shame to Catholocism and Christianity, and so stupid in so many ways, I have no fear that he could ever win either his party's nomination or the US presidentcy. There are too many Republicans who are far more thoughtful and reasonable than the far right members of that party who will fight him all the way to the convention if need be. Santorum gets lots of media attention because he gives so many outrageous sound bites, certainly not due to his intelligence, political skills, or, certainly, his own truthfulness about his own record as a former senator. And to call him a "devout Catholic" is a terrible injustice to those who really are. Santorum will do what all dishonest and bigoted people do: they will collapse from the weight of their own sins.

My comment on Santorum is that he shoots his mouth off first. them maybe ponders what he said later. He hopes that nobody will catch him on his mistakes---but he is getting caught.

In many respects, I certainly agree with "Pensive".

Rick Sanitorium is a throwback to the Catholic Church of the 1950s. This Italian mother's boy from Pittsburgh is so typical of generations of blue collar Catholics who seem to want to forget their humble roots until they're running for higher public office. They've been sticking it to their own neighbors by attacking the social mainstays the government guarantees them. In seeking the presidency, he suddenly tries to put behind him any recollection of the heady world of life in the local Kiwanis or Lion's Club luncheons, hobnobbing with similarly arriviste Republicans.

Instead of downing a brew or two with the boys in the local union hall, Sanitorium, would rather drink the Kool Aid which blots out his working class memories. He wants to drink that more powerful elixir resulting in delusional Catholicism. Taking him back to the Catholic Church of his childhood in that oil and mining town outside Pittsburgh, but to which there is no going back. That Church now exposed for all to see and descending rapidly into irrelevancy.

we do well to read once more this Lent from such a source as the present pope

Ten Commandments for the Environment: Pope Benedict XVI Speaks Out for Creation and Justice

Charity in Truth: Caritas in Veritate

but above all this Lenten season of repentance and reconciliation and reparation, even of Creation, Boff's

Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Ecology & Justice Series)

Who is Santorum's theological advisor? Find this out and we might understand a lot more.

Yes, it seems like he does his own weird take on theology (I cannot bring myself to say Catholic) and may not have a theological advisor - but you never know.

As one's idea of God so is one's idea of the human person.

If this is true, and I think it is, then Santorum has some kind of mush-up going on in his head, because he is completely inconsistent.

What is his view of the Catholic Church? That's mushed up too.

I agree; he's so weird I don't believe thinking people would really elect him. When I see him with his dumb school boy grin and pull over looking at the camera I am caught between laughing and crying.

You know, I am no Republican, but Santorum makes Romney's Mormonism seem like a breath of fresh air (and it is a cult and not a Christian faith - they do not subscribe to any of the Creeds or the Trinity).

God help us.

If I had to choose between these two candidates I'd take Romney because at least he would balance the budget, fix the hole in the safety net, donate one of his wife's Cadillacs, allow things to go back to normal for Catholic charities, and get the horrible Washington DC working again. But the tax code? Hmm. All his Nascar owner friends would be ruling the world while Santorum's uneducated sheep wash the cars.

Would that Obama could get his hopey feely thing going; how did he miss the mark so badly? I still hope. But hope only functions when despair hovers around .... So we need hope right now.

We need higher education so our people can learn how to think and our country can go on.

With Santorum as president we would die off in no time because he'd flick the switch on the bomb even before all the non-student youth could get a job at McDonalds or Starbucks.

Come to think of it, Romney sounds pro-bomb, too.

Come on, people! Contraception won't matter if we are all dead.