How Opus Dei Influenced Rick Santorum - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
Rick Santorum sent two of his sons to a Washington, D.C. all-boys school affiliated with Opus Dei, the Catholic group whose members were portrayed as sinisterly weird in the sensationalistic Da Vinci Code but in reality only engage in some mild self-mutilation, “nothing traumatic,” as the group’s website says. Santorum says he’s not a member of Opus Dei, though he did go to Rome in 2002 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding, and he belongs to the St. Catherine of Siena Parish, “a favorite of Opus Dei,” the Washington Post says. Opus Dei has about 90,000 members, a third of which are “numeraries” who are celibate for life and wear a cilice — a garter belt with spikes turned toward the skin — every day. (The group is often criticized as elitist, but you can find a “three link, 1mm gauge, full-leg metal cilice with metal fastener” on sale for an affordable $69.) It might seem unfair to criticize Santorum for his religious affiliations, but Santorum wouldn’t think so. He convincingly argued it was okay in December 2007, after Mitt Romney delivered a speech on his Mormon faith. “[Romney’s] supporters say it is akin to rejecting a Barack Obama because he is black,” Santorum wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “But Obama was born black; Romney is a Mormon because he accepts the beliefs of the Mormon faith. This permits us, therefore, to make inferences about his judgment and character, good or bad.”