The Devil and Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum is accused by Drudge Report of saying, at Ave Maria University, that Satan is attacking America.

Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my name.

Satan is, of course, doing exactly that. Santorum was speaking at a Catholic gathering at a Catholic university in proper Catholic theological terms. Check the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Satan is real. He is pure spirit. He attacks both individuals and societies. “ his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to each man and to society” (CCC, para 395). If no presidential candidate is permitted to say this, even in a religious setting, then no Catholic is permitted to run for president.

Gaea by Feuerbach. Wikimedia.

So too with Santorum's remarks that Obama's environmental policy is based on a “theology that does not come from the Bible.” It ought to be self-evident, surely, that he was referring to the quasi-religious beliefs of radical environmentalists. Yet the Obama White House, along with many commentators, objected immediately that Santorum was impugning Obama's Christianity. Obliquely, I suppose he was, but surely in a perfectly legitimate way, in saying that his environmental policy is not in keeping with Christian ideas. It isn't. Radical environmentalists consider humanity a kind of cancer on the suffering body of the goddess Gaea. Ask David Suzuki. This is incompatible with the Christian idea that man is above nature—let alone that nature is not divine.

The problem here, I think, is just that too many people, notably including journalists, are theologically illiterate.