The Top Ten Catholic positions that Rick Santorum conveniently ignores.

I know I'm right, regardless of your silly "evidence."

As we have seen Santorum has taken what he sees as the perfect wedge issue, Obama's "forcing" of religious organization to provide contraception through insurance (An issue now diffused by the Obama administration which now allows insurance companies to handle this instead, But Santorum would never let facts get in the way of a good attack strategy.), and really run with it.

But, as it turns out, there are plenty of stances taken by his Catholic church, that Rick is completely out of step with.  Here are ten, courtesy of Juan Cole:

1. So for instance, Pope John Paul II was against anyone going to war against Iraq I think you’ll find that Rick Santorum managed to ignore that Catholic teaching. 

2.The Conference of Catholic Bishops requires that health care be provided to all Americans. I.e., Rick Santorum’s opposition to universal health care is a betrayal of the Catholic faith he is always trumpeting. 

3. The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty for criminals in almost all situations. (Santorum largely supports executions.) 

4. The US Conference of Bishops has urged that the federal minimum wage be increased, for the working poor. Santorum in the Senate repeatedly voted against the minimum wage. 

5. The bishops want welfare for all needy families, saying “We reiterate our call for a minimum national welfare benefit that will permit children and their parents to live in dignity. A decent society will not balance its budget on the backs of poor children.” Santorum is a critic of welfare. 

6. The US bishops say that “the basic rights of workers must be respected–the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions…”. Santorum, who used to be supportive of unions in the 1990s, has now, predictably, turned against them. 

7. Catholic bishops demand the withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Rick Santorum denies that there are any Palestinians, so I guess he doesn’t agree with the bishops on that one. 

8. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops ripped into Arizona’s law on treatment of immigrants, Cardinal Roger Mahony characterized Arizona’s S.B. 1070 as “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law,” saying it is based on “totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources.” He even suggested that the law is a harbinger of an American Nazism! Santorum attacks ‘anchor babies’ or the provision of any services to children of illegal immigrants born and brought up in the US. 

9. The Bishops have urged that illegal immigrants not be treated as criminals and that their contribution to this country be recognized. 

10. The US Conference of Bishops has denounced, as has the Pope, the Bush idea of ‘preventive war’, and has come out against an attack on Iran in the absence of a real and present threat of an Iranian assault on the US. In contrast, Santorum wants to play Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove and ride the rocket down on Isfahan himself.

In fact it appears to me that a good Catholic would be hard pressed to support ANY of the current GOP front runners.  With the possible exception of Ron Paul.

Yet myopically Santorum focuses on this one issue, unsurprisingly it involves sex of course, to attempt to fan the flames of religious self victimization in order to gain support for his campaign against "the other."

Personally I feel that the Catholic church itself has NO moral standing on any of these issues at this point, after decades of protecting pedophiles within their clergy, and inflicting incredible harm on their youngest parishioners.  In my opinion there is NO moral comparison between allowing women to control their own ability to reproduce and allowing predators to rape and molest children under protections form the church.

And by the way, for those who will argue that the church has already addressed this issue and put a stop to it, I would point out that you are being truly naive.