The Scandal According to Santorum

One of the best bumper stickers floating around this little bit o’red that I call home is one that states “The Last Time We Mixed Politics and Religion People Got Burned at the Stake,” It’s a fave of mine that I have often told Mrs. Lost I’d like to put on my car next to one that says “Pray the Rosary.” Always keep ‘em guessing.

This week, one of the more embarrassing members of my Cradle Faith, Senator Rick Santorum, weighed in on the repugnant scandal which still dogs the Church, and, depending on who you believe, still threatens to undermine it. In an online article for National Catholic online, the junior Senator for Pennsylvania opined as follows about the scandal.


Link
http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=30

"It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

So, there you have it. The Pope – who blamed it all on an overanxious media, is wrong about the scandal. That loudmouth William Donohue – who inadvertently does the best Archie Bunker impression ever seen – is only partially correct when he blames it all on “homosexuals.” No, the great Santorum has spoken, and “Liberalism” caused the scandal. Not evil men who transcended mental illness by acting out in ways they knew were criminally and morally wrong, they get a pass. Ditto the hierarchy, who played the shell game and ignored the Fulghum-esque simplicity inherent in the notion that “no bad thing gets better when you hide it. “ Nope, its those darn Liberals again, and their Mecca in Boston is positive proof.

Except that, Senator Rick is wrong. Again. The modern day element of this scandal first broke in rural Louisiana in 1985. There, a handful of complaints against one priest led to the discovery of several more perpetrators, and, you guessed it, a hierarchy that tried to sweep it away and hide it. And while the story garnered some coverage for a few crazy months in 1985 and 86, it slid back under the radar screen for another decade and a half, before it finally reared its ugly head again.

And this ugliness within the flawed men who run the Church has cropped up all over the United States, even in Pennsylvania. And the victims date back into the 1950’s , 60’s and 70’s - - times when Liberalism was hardly in a constant state of ascendancy. But that doesn’t matter to Rick. He’s just trying to motivate his base, and shore up that poll deficit that exists between him and likely challenger, Bob Casey, Jr. Lisa Simpson said it best when, after finding her brother feverishly chanting on his knees before an exam, she paraphrased Samuel Johnson: “prayer, the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Shame on you, Rick Santorum. Making excuses will only serve to harm the effort to eradicate the pedophilia and the secretive hierarchical culture which served to perpetuate it.