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<div class="timestamp">March 19, 2012</div>
<h1>Many Kinds of Catholic</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/frank_bruni/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Frank Bruni" class="meta-per">FRANK BRUNI</a></h6>
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<p>
If Catholicism is measured by obeisance to the pope, his cardinals and
the letter of Vatican law, then Rick Santorum is the best Catholic to
ever get this far in presidential politics. </p>
<p>
He doesn’t just oppose abortion as a private matter of personal
conscience. He has made that position a defining crusade. </p>
<p>
He hasn’t just been fruitful and multiplied. He has promulgated the
church’s formal prohibition against artificial birth control, yanking
this issue, too, into the public square. </p>
<p>
On homosexuality, premarital sex, <a title="CSM piece. " href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0317/Rick-Santorum-vows-to-end-pandemic-of-pornography.-Could-he-prevail">pornography</a>
and more, he doesn’t just take his cues from church dictums. He
trumpets that alignment as a testament to the steadfastness of his
devotion, the integrity of his faith. </p>
<p>
And for this he has been rewarded with a truly noteworthy level of Catholic support. </p>
<p>
Noteworthy because it’s so underwhelming. </p>
<p>
Exit polling suggests that he lost the Catholic vote to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, by 7 percentage points <a title="Times story. " href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/catholic-vote-costs-santorum-in-michigan/?scp=5&sq=romney%20catholic%20voters&st=cse">in Michigan</a> and by 13 <a title="Times page. " href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/ohio/exit-polls">in Ohio</a>.
These weren’t isolated cases. In primary after primary, more Catholics
have gravitated to Romney than to Santorum (or, for that matter, to Newt
Gingrich, a Catholic-come-lately who collaborated with his third wife
to make a worshipful <a title="Doc website. " href="http://www.ninedaysthatchangedtheworld.com/">documentary about Pope John Paul II</a>). </p>
<p>
This is a hurdle that Santorum must overcome to win the primary in
Illinois, whose population is about 30 percent Catholic. And it’s yet
more proof of most American Catholics’ estrangement from an
out-of-touch, self-consumed church hierarchy and its musty orthodoxies.
</p>
<p>
For months now the adjective Catholic has been affixed to the country’s
strange contraception debate, which began when many Catholic leaders
took offense at a federal mandate that Catholic institutions provide
insurance coverage for artificial birth control. </p>
<p>
But most American Catholics don’t share their appointed leaders’ qualms
with the pill, condoms and such. These leaders have found traction
largely among people — Catholic and otherwise — concerned about
government overreach. And the whole discussion has opened the door to
plaints about morality from evangelicals, who warm to Santorum more than
Catholics do. </p>
<p>
American Catholics have been merrily ignoring the church’s official
position on contraception for many years, often with the blessing of
lower-level clerics. When my mother dutifully mentioned her I.U.D.
during confession back in the 1970s, the parish priest told her that she
really needn’t apologize or bring it up again. Which was a good thing,
since she had no intention of doing away with it. Four kids were joy and
aggravation enough. </p>
<p>
Despite church condemnation of abortion and same-sex marriage, American
Catholics’ views on both don’t diverge that much from those of Americans
in general. These Catholics look to the church not for exacting rules,
but for a locus for their spirituality, with rituals and an iconography
that feel familiar and thus comfortable. In matters religious, as in
“The Wizard of Oz,” there’s no place like home, and Catholicism is as
much ethnicity as dogma: something in the blood, and something in the
bones. </p>
<p>
The Catholic hierarchy, meanwhile, keeps giving American Catholics fresh reasons for rebellion. As <a title="Times piece. " href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/us/catholic-church-pressures-victims-network-with-subpoenas.html?ref=lauriegoodstein">The Times’s Laurie Goodstein reported last week</a>,
lawyers for the church in Missouri have begun a campaign of
intimidation against a support group for victims of sexually abusive
priests: they’re trying to compel the group to release decades of
internal documents. </p>
<p>
This may be cunning legal strategy, but it’s lousy public relations and worse pastoral care. Which isn’t any surprise. </p>
<p>
I’ve been monitoring and occasionally writing about the church’s child
sex-abuse crisis since 1992, and most of church leaders’ apologies and
instances of constructive outreach have come about reluctantly,
belatedly or with a palpable sense from many bishops and cardinals that
they were the aggrieved, victimized ones. </p>
<p>
As they complained about excessive media attention, they frequently lost
sight of its heinous root: a great many priests molested a great many
children, who were especially vulnerable to them — and especially
damaged by them — because they called themselves men of God. And for a
great many years, church leaders actively concealed these crimes, which
continued. </p>
<p>
For the church ever to grouse that critics make too much of this, let
alone to retaliate against victims and accusers, is galling. But it
helps explain the breach between the hierarchy — invested in its own
survival, resistant to serious discussions about the celibate culture’s
role in child sexual abuse — and everyday Catholics. They’re left to
wonder where they fit into their church and how it fits into the modern
world. </p>
<p>
They don’t really constitute a voting bloc, because their political
allegiances reflect income and education as much as creed. That’s a big
part of their resistance to Santorum. </p>
<p>
But it’s also true that his particular Catholicism isn’t theirs. It’s
the hierarchy’s. And his poor performance among Catholics should cause
cardinals, bishops and the candidate himself to rethink the way they
approach their religion. </p>
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<p style="text-align:center">•</p>
<p>I invite you to visit <a title="Frank Bruni's Blog" href="http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/" target="_blank">my blog</a>, follow me on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/frankbruni">twitter.com/frankbruni</a> and join me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/frankbruninyt">Facebook</a>.</p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>