I do not believe BibleBuck was stating fact, but stating an opinion.

The 2006 elections are over, so I will not venture a response on behalf of CfD. I will venture my own. On the one hand it seems both unfair and moot to beat up on a politician fallen from power. On the other hand, I do not believe we have seen the last of Rick Santorum; so a couple of your points merit addressing.

You said:

I know Rick Santorum is a Catholic, and he would never take a stand against his churches teaching or principles.

First of all, do I really need to go down the list of Catholic politicans who, in public life, took a stand against their Church's teaching or principles? Rick Santorum did just that when he, as a member of the powerful Banking and Finance Committees, helped to push legislation that gave increasing wealth and power to banks and investment conglomerates at the direct expense of the common citizen in the U.S.

Moreover, Santorum's stand against Catholic principles was, in my humble opinion, gravely more insidious than any stands taken by politicians on particular issues; because Santorum wore his Catholicism on his sleave and used his powerful public position to pervert the substance of key Catholic teaching in the public mind. As a result, too many Catholics and others of goodwill were able to disregard those key Catholic principles, resulting in grave injustice to the poor and to middle class Americans struggling to keep pace with an economy that favors the wealth of a few industries.

You said:

I cannot believe Rick Santorum was weak on economic justice.

I touched on this already. The truth is, as a member of the Banking and Finance Committees, respectively, Santorum helped push through legislation that increasingly consolidated power and wealth in the hands of a few banking and finance firms and that restrained Congressional efforts at holding those firms more accountable for banking and finance fraud. As a member of the Senate, he voted for legislation that, likewise, consolidated corporate wealth and power at large. (source: Santorum's own Senate website and Library of Congress)

Conversely, Santorum voted for legislation that made people more accountable to banking and finance firms and corporations.(source: Santorum's own Senate website and Library of Congress)

He was not voting the Catholic party line when doing this. After all, Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum, and almost every subsequent Pope, reminded us that the rich do not need the government to intervene for their good; they have their wealth to protect them. The poor and the economically weak need government intervention to defend their rights. That was most certainly not a Catholic principle Santorum supported; and he whacked away at the practice of that principle piece-by-piece-by-piece during his tenure in power. And he got to do so quietly, all the while distracting people by focusing exclusively on abortion and gay marriage in his public messaging and debates.

Now it's certainly understandable, from a cynically political point of view, that Santorum did this. After all, Banking, Finance and Insurance industries were among the top of Santorum's top campaign contributors. (Source: opensecrets.org). Santorum had to reward his campaign contributors.

Here's the deal, though. As Catholics we know there is no politician who will legislate 100% consistently with Catholic teaching and principles in all matters. And a politican wearing their Catholicism on their sleave to bully specific Catholic principles down everyone's throat is most probably a red flag that they are gravely ignoring Catholic principles in other matters.

You will certainly not hear me say that, because a candidate is Catholic, he will legislate purely as a Catholic. Instead of inquiring to what degree a politician self-identifies as a Catholic, we should try to objectively assess to what degree the politician's policy initiaves are inspired by his or her faith. And we should definitely try to make objective assessments about whether their policy initiaves are consistent with the teachings of Catholic faith; particularly as those initiatives involve the very role government is supposed to serve.

For that matter, mandates of morals or ethics are not exclusively Catholic, they are universal to the human family; and they can be apprehended by the simple use of reason infused with goodwill. Our Catholic faith does not create moral or ethical mandates, it simply lends clarity to what those mandates are. A politician, then -- especially one moved by faith -- can have a broad range of policy intitiatives consistent with what our faith teaches without even being a Catholic. A politician's policy initiatives, then, matter so much more than his or her professed faith when we, as Catholic citizens, attempt to determine his or her suitability for public office.