What Kennedy said, and what Santorum said he said

Like Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum does not or perhaps cannot "do nuance," an intellectual defect which might be correctable through a college course in critical thinking, but such a refinement would, I suppose, only make Rick a "snob." Hence he's forever immured in a black hole of blind pomposity.

QED, the curious ignorance (?) he displayed yesterday on ABC's "This Week." Responding to George Stephanopoulos' puzzlement about his retching over John Kennedy's historic, 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Santorum said, "You bet that makes you throw up" -- "to say that people of faith have no role in the public square?" Also:

I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.

Perfectly fine accusations, except what Santorum said Kennedy said is not what Kennedy said. At all.

For starters, Kennedy addressed the central concern of the small-minded bigots who had felt compelled to evince their palsied neuroticism: 

I am a Catholic ... [yet] it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in.

I am a Catholic. Now I ask you: Does that sound like a presidential candidate who "[said] that people of faith have no role in the public square?"

However what Santorum utterly failed to capture, through ignorance or design, was Kennedy's central concern -- that being that his faith was a matter of personal conscience:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute....

Whatever issue may come before me as President ... I will make my decision in accordance with ... what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates.

Kennedy was emphasizing an institutional separation; he never denied that his conscience was influenced by his faith. Indeed, to have done so would have been absurd, thus making Santorum's claim -- that Kennedy held the "idea that the church can have no influence" on a chief executive --  "absolutely antithetical" to what Kennedy actually said and to what Santorum grossly misrepresented.

The only pertinent question remaining, then, is whether Santorum is ignorant, or deceitful? And if the latter, would someone please ask Rick why he abjures God's Ninth Commandment?

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

My Christianity informs my political priciples, and my political experience informs my Christianity.

[Peter G]

One should always resist a manichean world view devoid of nuance. There is no reason whatsoever that Mr. Santorum cannot be both ignorant and deceitful.

[Robert Swartz]

I keep hearing surprise that Santorum dialed up the social issues rhetoric going into Michigan. I seriously doubt this is the case - he's been saying this kind of stuff all along, but no one (read MSM) was noticing...

[Steve Payne]

I wish someone would ask Santorum publicly to state his belief as to the age of the planet earth. It would expose him as another ultra-religious science denier.