It's like he was waiting in the wings. The debates were all about the economy and foreign policy. Those were the big topics right? Santorum was just this anti abortion, home schooling, right wing guy who was sticking up for family values. He was a quaint hold over from a bygone age perhaps. Someone to be respected and ignored.
So the other fellows and the press start scrapping and he rises above it. He's not worth their notice. Then people seem to get tired of the scrapping and Santorum is waiting there to be noticed, and noticed he is.
Just at the same time he gets a huge boost from the social issues end of things. Komen de-funds Planned Parenthood. PP jumps on them and bullies them into retraction. The same week the Bishops rise up in an astounding surge of national leadership over the question of religious freedom. It's like the issues were tailor made for Santorum. Romney can't say much about it because his own healthcare plan provided similar cover. Gingrich can't talk much about family values with his history of philandering.
Furthermore, Santorum has been pretty smart. He's the only one who can play the 'Aw shucks, I'm just an ordinary boy from Main Street USA" card. People underestimate how powerful this is in the American imagination. Americans love the plain folks appeal. Virtually every President in modern times, apart from JFK and the first Bush, has presented his personal story in this way.
Combined with this, he is effectively uniting two formerly divided voting blocs: Evangelical Christians and blue collar Catholics. He is a unique mix--a guy with blue collar Catholic roots who knows and understands Evangelicals. If he doesn't claim the title "Evangelical Catholic" he could.
Santorum (whether he knows it or not) is riding a wave of some historic shifts in American Christianity. Evangelical Protestants have been historically distrustful of Catholics. For cultural and theological reasons Catholics and Protestants were worlds apart. However, for the last forty years the ecumenical movement has broken down some of the barriers. For the last ten years Evangelicals and Catholics have worked together, talked to each other and united on social issues. Evangelicals have come to accept Catholics as allies not enemies as they both stand against the common enemy--creeping atheistic secularism.
At the same time the Catholic Church has changed. American Catholicism used to be cultural Catholicism. For generations the Italians and Irish and Polish Catholics in the Northeastern cities were part of the establishment. They had hospitals and schools and convents and parishes and colleges. Their Bishops lived in grand residences in the suburbs and dined with the rich and powerful.
Evangelicals have always had a "persecuted minority" mentality--even when they weren't the persecuted minority. Now, for various reasons, the old cultural Catholic hierarchy is fading away. A new kind of Catholicism is emerging--what some call the JPII generation. These are not so much cultural Catholics as committed Catholics. They are fewer in number, but they are vibrant in their faith and don't care much for the old establishment. They're ready to embrace the "persecuted minority" identity with a certain astringent zeal.
As such they are suddenly perfect bedfellows with the Evangelicals. Santorum's surge can be put down to his success in appealing to both, formerly divided groups. He is capable of bringing together the old blue collar Catholics and the new Catholics and the Evangelicals. If he can pull that off--and so bring along the Catholic swing vote in the big swing states--and carry with him the Evangelical heartland of the midwest and South--he could not only win the nomination, but the White House.
I really like this assessment, Father L. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI agree!! He is sowing seeds of unity. Whether it leads to presidency, who knows. It is a strengthening of the body of Christ on earth whatever.
ReplyDeleteSmith Wigglesworth prophesied this sort of coming together amongst believers back in 1947. he said the movement would begin in the UK before spreading to the ends of the earth!!!
It also shows the huge value of Vat II which many 'traditional' Catholics deny, including certain blogging priests.
The Holy Spirit desires Unity amongst the brethren. The Trinity desires this!
And what God wants, God gets.
Here's the Proddy prophecy, from Smiffy, for your edification......
“During the next few decades there will be two distinct moves of the Holy Spirit across the church in Great Britain. The first move will affect every church that is open to receive it, and will be characterised by the restoration of the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The second move of the Holy Spirit will result in people leaving historic churches and planting new churches. In the duration of each of these moves, the people who are involved will say, ‘This is a great revival.’ But the Lord says, ‘No, neither is this the great revival but both are steps towards it.’
When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidence in the churches of something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit.
When the word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the nations, and indeed, the world have ever seen. It will mark the beginning of a revival that will eclipse anything that has been witnessed within these shores, even the Wesleyan and Welsh revivals of former years.
The outpouring of God’s Spirit will flow over from the United Kingdom to mainland Europe, and from there, will begin a missionary move to the ends of the earth.”
1) Great post - but even spammers say that.
ReplyDelete2) Sure Evangelicals are Protestants?
A Protestant is a Validly Baptised Christian Heretic, excommunicated from the Church for denying, typically Indefectibility, Apostolic Succession and Tradition, Indissolubility of Marriage as seen as essentially a Civil Contract over which the state has jurisdiction, a denial of all Sacraments except Baptism and Eucharist (with Anglicans also Confession is accepted), of Penitential practises, of Special Sainthood (one saint being greater in Heaven than another), of Mariology, of Miracles after Apostles died ... and sometimes also of free-will.
Asking what kind of Protestant/generally Christian Heretic Evangelicals are is like asking what kind of Mosaic Heretic (Samaritan, Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene, et c) Cornelius the Centurion was.
But Cornelius was a God Fearing Gentile, and he had the Holy Spirit even before Valid Baptism.
Am I totally out into the blue about this?
Some of the Pope's lesser known thoughts regarding Protestants:
ReplyDeleteThe Meaning of Christian Brotherhood pages 87 & 88
"There is no appropriate category in christian thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the east). It is obvious that the old category of heresy is no longer of any value. Heresy, for scripture and the early Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy's characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian. in the course of a now centuries-old history, protestantism has made an important contribution to the realisation of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function. The conclusion is inescapable, then; Protestantism today is something different from heresy in the traditional sense, a phenomenon who's true theological place has not yet been determined"
Regarding ecumenism:
Benedict's address to Protestants on World Youth Day Aug 19 2005
"And we now ask, what does it mean to restore the unity of all Christians? This unity does not mean what could be called 'ecumenism of the return' that is, to deny and reject one's own faith history, absolutely not. "
Regarding the Eucharist in Protestant Churches, quote taken from 'Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith' p 248, he states that Catholics and Protestants who believe in apostolic succession;
"should in no way deny the saving presence of the Lord in the Evangelical [Protestant] Lord's supper."