Rick Santorum’s Church and Opus Dei

Having been raised Catholic, including serving as an altar boy for a decade and proceeding up the ranks to a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus, I know all about of the cult like aspects traditional Catholicism . But even among many "traditional Catholics" Opus Dei is regarded as more than a little scary. As Andrew Sullivan (who was also raised Catholic) recently noted about Opus Dei:

I was recruited by Opus Dei at Harvard. Why not? I was a very bright young Catholic, very motivated by and interested in the church. I even went on an Opus Dei retreat. . . . But it was not for me. The sex segregation was creepy; the cult of the Founder was creepier; the practices of self-mortification - the cilice, self-whipping - I found psychologically troubling.

It is within the broad spectrum of Catholic tradition; but the all-male sexual repression seemed all too close to pathology for my part, especially given what we were discovering about sex abuse from the heirarchy on down. So I resisted. There was something dark in there; and I preferred the light.

Unlike Sullivan, Santorum chose the darkness and his home church affiliation underscores his bizarre link to Opus Dei and how he is inflicting this strain of extremist Catholicism on his children. Knowing only too well the Church's obsession with all things sexual (and that all sex is deemed dirty) and the psychological and emotional that this obsession has the potential of causing - look no farther than the multitude of predator priests - I tremble at the thought of what Santorum's children are experiencing. An article in The New Republic looks at Santorum's church in Northern Virginia and its eerie ties to Opus Dei. Here are some excerpts:

Rick Santorum’s Catholic faith is an obvious centerpiece of his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, and it is rare for him to speak without referencing his religious beliefs. It is also rare, however, to hear him speak about his particular church, St. Catherine of Siena, which he and his family have belonged to for at least a decade.

St. Catherine is a modern, low-slung brick building that sits in the affluent and hilly Washington suburb of Great Falls, Virginia. It is a notably conservative congregation—its neat grounds include a “garden for the unborn,” and the schedule offers a Latin Mass each Sunday featuring Gregorian chant sung by a professional choir.

Mostly, the church is home to families with school-aged children—“big families, seven-, eight- or nine-children families,” as one parishioner told me. (None of the half-a-dozen parishioners I interviewed would agree to be quoted by name, and the parish office declined interview requests.)

Before the GOP race began, members of the church say, Santorum attended Mass with his family nearly every day. Even with his wife, Karen, now joining him on the campaign trail, several parishioners told me that the Santorums ensure that their children attend Mass almost daily by having other congregants drive them to St. Catherine.

St. Catherine also has ties to Opus Dei, an extremely conservative organization that encourages members to knit their Catholic faith with policy-making. Many members of St. Catherine belong to Opus Dei, McAfee told the Times, and Opus Dei priests still regularly hear confession at St. Catherine. For his part, McAfee was an Opus Dei cooperator—a formal title that identifies someone who does not belong to Opus Dei but assists its mission.

Santorum has said he is not a member of Opus Dei, just an admirer, but he has numerous connections to the group. In 2002, he travelled to Rome with high-profile American members for the 100th birthday of Opus Dei’s founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. (The five-day event is where Santorum first criticized John F. Kennedy’s “separation of church and state” speech, speaking to a reporter.) He has also sent two of his sons to the Heights School, a Washington, D.C. school with ties to Opus Dei.

St. Catherine is one of only about 10 sites in Virginia that offers “evenings of recollection.” These are monthly, hour-and-a-half long talks by lay people and priests belonging to Opus Dei. They are segregated by sex—St. Catherine men who attend these do so at the Reston Study Center, one town over, while women attend them at St. Catherine.

At St. Catherine, Santorum is never mentioned from the pulpit, members told me. “Not even a, ‘How about our boy,’” one stressed. But many said they planned to vote for him. . . . . And almost all of the parishioners I spoke to were familiar with the sight of Santorum attending the daily 9 a.m. Mass, young children in tow. “Their faith,” one congregant told me about the Santorums, “is totally who they are.”

During my years in the closet I too attended daily mass - for many years in fact - as I tried to "pray away the gay" and be what I was not. Those were very tortured years even though I did my best to keep my internal turmoil hidden. The effort to "change" obviously did not work, and part of me cannot help but wonder what demons Santorum is trying to flee by his daily mass attendance and extreme religiosity. It's Santorum's extremism of devotion and antiquated sexual mores that I suspect drives away many Catholics who sense something strange as well. Not to mention, of course, their displeasure with Santorum's efforts to destroy the political acceptance of Catholics pioneered by JFK. Sadly, Santorum seems only too willing to make Catholics look bizarre and subservient to Rome. In contrast, JFK clearly stated that he would not be a tool of Rome. In more ways than one Santorum is trying to drag us backward in time by 50 years or more. We certainly do NOT need him as a serious contender for the presidency.