In a very old episode of The Simpsons, Bart is talking to his teacher about creating a half man, half monkey creature. The teacher replies: "I'm sorry; that would be playing God." Bart quickly snaps back: "God schmod, I want my monkey man." It's the first think I thought of when reading an old gaffe and a new gaffe by erstwhile senator and current confused Catholic Rick Santorum. HuffPost dug up an old interview with Senator Santorum from 2008, wherein the former senator and current confused Catholic made the unbelievable claim that he didn't believe in "liberal Christianity" and that Obama's former church had "abandoned Christendom" and used a non-literal interpretation of the Bible.
Before we get to the current "fake theology" quote, I feel compelled to ask how many Catholics out there are Biblical literalists. That would have to be the second smallest demographic in the Christian family, second only to UCC Biblical literalists. You're more likely to find a literalist in the Jesus Seminar than you are in all of the RCC. Apparently, Mr. Santorum is confused about what his church actually believes about the Bible. He's clearly unaware that the Bible is not the sole locus of authority in Catholicism. It's joined to the Magisterium and Papal decrees ex cathedra (an incredibly rare thing these days) to form a sort of three-legged stool of ecclesial authority. Ideally, all three work together, and the literal text of the Bible has never been a beginning point for Catholic hermeneutics. For the RCC, theological assumptions about authority and apostolic succession, as well as the person and work of Mary, clearly take precedence over a literal text. Also, I'm pretty sure no one is better with The Revelation in terms of sorting out the seven sets of images and symbols telling the same story than the Oxford Annotated Bible.
That Mr. Santorum doesn't know he's part of a tradition that has always eschewed literal interpretation in favor of more complex ecclesial authority, a tradition in which the earliest theologians and pastors made allegorical and euhemeristic hermeneutics the de facto method of mythological interpretation, only shows one of two things: he's absolutely ignorant of his tradition, or he's absolutely ignorant of his tradition AND fundamentalism has even encroached on mainstream Catholics. (This is at least partly true where eschatology is concerned, but I wasn't aware it was an issue in hermeneutics.)
Pick your favorite branch of theology before reading farther: angelology, christology, cosmology, anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, pneumatology, eschatology, ecclesiology...did I miss any? To the non-theologian, half that list is foreign, maybe three fourths. I suspect that Mr. Santorum couldn't define half the words, yet he feels comfortable accusing the president of holding to a "phony theology" by which he again means liberal Christianity. I don't know what a comprehensive systematic theology that isn't at least partly "phony" would look like. Every systematic theology I've read is flawed in major ways, thereby rendering them at least partly phony.
One only need ask a Pennsylvania Protestant what they think of their former senator's Mariolatry to cut a neat incision between Santorum's Catholic theology (dogma, really on this point) and mainstream Protestantism, yet Santorum would allow that neither he nor conservative evangelicals have a phony theology. Santorum here clearly means to bring conservative Christians to his team, but he's doing it with yet another empty signifier; what exactly does "phony theology" mean except "I don't like certain aspects of your politics or worldview or theology; therefore, I'm labeling the whole thing phony." Certainly if the president believes Jesus is the redeemer of all humankind, Santorum wouldn't call that phony, nor would he disagree much if Obama insisted that the cross was the locus of Jesus' redemptive work. What he means to do is go after the president for supporting social and moral issues with which the erstwhile senator and current confused Catholic disagrees. He seems to believe that Obama is guilty of not reading the Bible literally about certain things, but the issues with which he disagrees, he's almost completely wrong on.
The Bible says nothing literally about abortion. The Biblical view of marriage is an hysterical invention of the evangelicaldom, as the view is actually all over the place. It says nothing of capitalism. It says nothing of health care (unless you count the 600 plus passages about justice, care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan). It says nothing of illegal immigration. Where it does speak literally, we might discover that Mr. Santorum is far from silly, hippie Jesus: love your enemy, do not resist evil, give to him who asks expecting nothing in return, turn the other cheek...an entire breviary of ethical behavior almost completely ignored by the good erstwhile senator and his religious tradition. Conveniently, it's also ignored by those he most wants to reach, making his claims about the president's "phony theology" so much more delightfully ironic.
Bart wanted what he wanted, and no inconvenient truths were going stop him from getting his monkey man. Santorum wants the support of conservative evangelicals, Catholics, and fundamentalists, and he's not about to let silly, hippie Jesus get in the way. In Grand Inquisitor fashion, Santorum stands as the cardinal who won't tolerate a non-conservative Jesus, and with equal dexterity, he plays the role of Alyosha, who with wide-eyed wonderment can't understand what Ivan is on about. Who is this one who stands silently and won't return the strident arguments of the Grand Inquisitor? Yeah, same guy you always ignore or kill.
