Rick Santoum's Spiritual Hubris and Selfishness

One of the hallmarks of the Christianists is their arrogance and insistence that only their religious beliefs are correct and that everyone else must be forced to subscribed to them. In the minds of Christianists, only they get to enjoy religious freedom. No one else's rights matter. Sometimes this arrogance and insistence on their own infallibility masks the fragile house of cards belief system to which these hubris filled individuals cling for dear life. And for those who refuse to conform and challenge the veracity of the Christianists' myths, the Christianists seek to mete out punishment. Ultimately, it's all about allowing the Christianist to feel good about themselves and superior to others. Hence the Christianists' anti-gay jihad. In this quest for self-congratulation they truly do not care who they harm in the process. And sometimes their victims include those they purport to love. A piece in Religion Dispatches looks this spiritual arrogance and hubris as personified by Rick Santorum. Here are some excerpts:

The recent news photos of Rick Santorum tenderly cradling his stricken daughter, Isabella, touched my heart. But as a fellow Catholic, the fate of such children shook me into some serious questioning about the relation among Rick Santorum’s religion, his public policies, and his personal family tragedies. And I wonder especially how Santorum’s version of Catholicism aligns with these policies.

Yes, it is one thing, once a child is born with Trisomy 18, to accept, and then care for her. . . . . But, why would one risk putting oneself in the position where a Trisomy 18 pregnancy would be statistically probable? Why would one choose, in effect, to take the risk of bringing a doomed child into the world?

[T]he political and religious positions to which he has chosen to commit himself bear responsibility, in this case, for the unnecessary suffering of an uncomprehending young person. As sure as Santorum’s commitment to care for his daughter, once born, arises out of his Catholic value system, so also is his version of Catholicism responsible for the many sufferings imposed upon young Isabella in the first place.

My quarrel, such as it is, is with the lack of responsibility shown by the Santorums and their Catholicism in contributing to the conditions which made the anguishing plight of young Isabella inevitable in the first place.

[T]he larger question for me — and the one where religion and public policy come to the fore — is why one would take the risk of such an outcome? Perhaps the Santorums never imagined that Karen, in her late 40s, like the biblical Sarah, could conceive at all?

I find all this attention to the suffering and sacrifice of Rick Santorum more than a little self-centered — a kind of spiritual egoism. I feel that this should not be about him; it should be about Isabella. . . . what have Catholic theologians to say about how Isabella’s life story might read? Is her “character” being built up by the pain she suffers? Does she see “blessings” in the diseases that wrack her body? Is she “uplifted” by some commitment to “life” one can scarcely imagine her capable of making?

So, I must ask why potential parents would put themselves in the position where they would contribute to bringing a child into the world with Trisomy 18? Why, instead of “God’s gift,” was not the conception of a child with a genetic disorder come labeled “God’s warning”? Why doesn’t this conception chastise the parents for their irresponsibility of engaging in unprotected sex, when they full well know the high odds for conceiving such a child? Was the still-birth of Gabriel in 1996 perhaps a warning that should have been heeded? Why didn’t this cause Santorum to reconsider his attempts to thwart contraception access and education? What has to happen in the real life of still-born or Trisomy 18 infants before one takes a second look at one’s principles—religious or not?

This confluence of politics and religion brings me right to Santorum’s public policy opposition to contraception. In his public (and apparently private) life, Santorum has, in effect, hewed to the Vatican line that so-called “artificial” contraception constitutes an “unnatural” frustration of the natural end of the sex act. But, like most good politicos Santorum hides his Catholic animus to contraceptive rights. Notably, he takes cover in legalisms. He opposed Griswold v. Connecticut — the judgment guaranteeing contraceptive right to married couples — because he disagreed with the Court that right of privacy exists in the Constitution. Beyond its cramped legalism, I find this maneuver devious. Santorum dare not say what truly moves him in this debate —namely his unswerving loyalty to the Vatican’s proscription of “artificial” methods of birth control and family planning as against nature.

So, while we cannot, and should not, stop our hearts from going out to the Santorums and their daughter, I think we need to remember the politics in the story. In particular, Rick Santorum’s Catholic sexual politics cannot be separated from the sorrows of his private life, and from his stricken child. Sadly, the private tragedy of Isabella’s illness cannot be separated from the kinds of misguided public policies for which Rick Santorum has always stood.