Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Thursday told a gathering of Catholics that former President Kennedy “chose to expel faith” from the public square when he gave his famed address in Texas on religion during the 1960 presidential campaign.
Santorum — a Catholic himself and a possible 2012 presidential candidate — traveled to Houston, the city Kennedy delivered that address 50 years ago this week to allay fears that he would take orders from the Pope if elected, to argue religious beliefs should factor into a politician’s consideration of political issues.
“Let me be clear I am not arguing here that I have, or our country should, be governed on the basis of religious revelation — that we should for example have laws against murder, stealing, abortion and polygamy only because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob decreed it so,” Santorum said in prepared remarks obtained by The Daily Caller. “I wholehearted agree with C.S. Lewis who said ‘I love God, but I detest theocracies.’”
Kennedy’s 1960 speech, he said, “advanced a philosophy of strict separation that would create a purely secular public square cleansed of all religious wisdom and the voice of religious people of all faiths.” Santorum said Kennedy, in that speech, “chose not just to dispel fear, he chose to expel faith.”
Perhaps in a pitch to social conservatives — that he could end up battling former governors Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for in 2012 — he sought to portray himself as unafraid to speak of his religion’s influence over his politics.
“I have been criticized in the media for daring to speak out on these sensitive moral issues,” he said. “So be it. I’ve tried, not always successfully, to approach these issues with the appropriate passion for the important matter at hand, with respect for the other point of view, without malice toward my opponent and with the humility that my judgment in some cases may be in error. “
In an interview with TheDC last month about his presidential ambitions, he said he’s “going through the process of what someone who is seriously considering running would do in order for when the time comes to decide, I’m in a position that I have a choice.”
His speech, titled “A Charge to Revive the Role of Faith in the Public Square,” took place at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and made references to a multitude of philosophers and theologians including
Edmund Burke, Martin Luther King, Pope Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas.