'Obamacare Is A Sin,' Says Rick Santorum

Wednesday, the former presidential candidate said that Obama is “directly assaulting” religious freedom and his administration has policies that are forcing Catholics to abandon their faith. Because Santorum isn’t a Catholic authority, his words should probably be discounted. In fact, a Catholic publication deemed Obama more pro-life than Romney!

“We have a president who, for the first time in American history, is directly assaulting the First Amendment and freedom of religion,” claimed Santorum. “He is going to tell you what to do in the practice of your faith. He is forcing business people right now to do things that are against their conscience, that they will have to – if you’re a Catholic – you’ll have to go to confession … to confess that you are complying with a government program that is a sin in the Catholic Church.”

A political blog on NBC noted that, “The former Pennsylvania senator did not say what government programs he was referring to, but during his presidential run he frequently noted a controversial government mandate requiring religious institutions to include contraception in their health care coverage.”

Santorum has been publicly supporting Romney’s campaign, and loves Paul Ryan as the VP pick. In fact, he was quoted as saying, “What Paul Ryan stands for in conservative circles and in the media and in this country, for those who know him, is someone who is willing to challenge the status quo and have bold ideas to confront the problems of this country in a truthful fashion.”

It is interesting that Rick Santorum is saying that the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) is a Catholic sin while not saying the same about Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care, because Romney’s plan supported forcing Catholic hospitals to dispense emergency contraception to rape victims. The Catholic church considers emergency contraceptives to be a form of abortion.

The Huffington Post had the following to say on the subject,

Churches are exempt from Obama’s contraception rule entirely and faith-based organizations that morally oppose it are offered an accommodation in which the third-party insurance company, not the organization itself, absorbs the cost of the contraceptive coverage.

By Santorum’s logic, it seems that supporting vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s budget would also be a sin in the Catholic church. His budget slashes assistance programs for the poor in order to financially offset tax cuts for the wealthy. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lambasted Ryan’s budget earlier this year. This summer, a network of nuns organized a bus tour to protest the budget, saying that it “doesn’t pass the moral test.”

“Catholic teaching is based on solidarity,” Sister Simone Campbell, leader of the bus tour, told the Daily Beast. “Ryan doesn’t understand that all decisions need to be made with the common good in mind.”

Another interesting point is that Catholic women have used contraceptives at nearly the same percentage as non-Catholics, as illustrated in the two tables found here:

The right has, once again, proved its ineptitude. It should also be noted that even if Obamacare were a Catholic sin, the establishment clause of the first amendment of the United States Constitution ensures a separation of church and state. Politicians should not even discuss religion, and politicians such as Santorum that frequently plea to their religion (his is Catholicism) have no place in our government.