The Maltese Candidate

Remember the creepy bad guys in The Da Vinci Code, the ones who flagellated themselves and wore spiked chains called cilice to inflict pain on themselves? Well, those guys aren't some mad conspiratorial raving of Dan Brown—they're a real organization called Opus Dei, which is Latin for the work of god.

In 2002, while a US senator, Rick Santorum went to Rome to celebrate the centenary of Opus Dei's founder, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. At the meeting he held an interview with the National Catholic Reporter:

[Santorum] told NCR that a distinction between private religious conviction and public responsibility, enshrined in John Kennedy’s famous speech in 1960 saying he would not take orders from the Catholic church if elected president, has caused “much harm in America.” 

“All of us have heard people say, ‘I privately am against abortion, homosexual marriage, stem cell research, cloning. But who am I to decide that it’s not right for somebody else?’ It sounds good,” Santourm said. “But it is the corruption of freedom of conscience.”

Santorum told NCR that he regards George W. Bush as “the first Catholic president of the United States.”

Brown's fictional depiction of Opus Dei contains exaggerations, according to an ABC story from 2006. But the reality isn't much better:

There have also been claims of excessive control. Tammy DiNicola was a freshman at Boston College when she went on her first Opus Dei retreat. She says what began as as opportunity to deepen her faith quickly accelerated into involvement in an all-controlling group.

"Everything becomes gradually controlled," DiNicola said. "Your mail is read. Your salary's handed over. Your reading matter and your movies, all of this is controlled." 

Opus Dei acknowledges that many members hand over portions of their salaries, but says that there is no truth behind allegations of excessive control and that its only intention is to teach and coach.

It sounds very much like a cult. And the cilice? They're a form of hair shirt, and members of Opus Dei really do wear them, though usually only two hours a day.

According to the NCR article, Santorum isn't a member of Opus Dei, just an admirer of its founder. But Santorum is a member of the Knights of Malta, an organization that goes back to the Crusades.

In 2004 Rick Santorum and his wife Karen were invested in the Knights of Malta as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace. The full name of the organization is "Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta^SM". At the time Santorum was still a US senator representing Pennsylvania.

The Knights of Malta, or Knights Hospitallers, originally provided medical care for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem. In the First Crusade they became a full-fledged military order. After they were ejected from the Holy Land, they governed the island of Rhodes as a sovereign state, and then the island of Malta. After Napolean kicked them out, they went to Rome.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) claims to be a sovereign state in the same way that the Vatican does, though it has no actual land other than its offices:

SMOM has formal diplomatic relations with 104 states and has official relations with another six countries and the European Union. Additionally it has relations with the International Committee of the Red Cross and a number of international organizations, including observer status at the UN and some of the specialized agencies. Its international nature is useful in enabling it to pursue its humanitarian activities without being seen as an operative of any particular nation. Its claimed sovereignty is also expressed in the issuance of passports, licence plates, stamps, and coins.

SMOM issues passports, currency and license plates! It has diplomatic relations with Italy, Spain, all of South America, almost all of Eastern Europe, including Russia, and half of Africa and Central America.

This means that Rick Santorum accepted a title of nobility from a self-proclaimed sovereign state, whose sovereignty is recognized around the world. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution states:

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Now, since the United States does not recognize the SMOM's sovereignty claim, so Santorum may not technically be in violation of the Constitution. (And Congress may have consented to it and I simply can't find it on the net.)

But SMOM is a foreign organization that purports to be a sovereign state. And it has the express intent of influencing political outcomes in the United States. If you look at look at the PDF file announcing Santorum's knighthood, you will find it filled with condemnations of gay marriage, dictates over end-of-life care, and overt political statements such as the following:

MAY CATHOLICS VOTE FOR A PRO-ABORTION CANDIDATE? There are several
non-negotiable tenets of the Catholic faith which hold, unequivocally, that these actions,
which involve the destruction of innocent human life, are intrinsically evil and, therefore,
are prohibited:
• abortion at any stage of life
• embryonic stem cell research (from fetal tissue)
• euthanasia/assisted suicide
• human cloning

Curiously absent from this "pro-life" list is any mention of the death penalty, "preventive" war like Iraq, shooting guys who ring your doorbell, and similar acts which the Catholic Church is supposed to oppose. It's fine to vote for politicians who condone killing living, breathing human beings, but blastocysts are sacred! The pro-life proclamations are really just a very narrow agenda to restrict individuals'—and especially women's—health care choices.

A lot of Americans are uneasy about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. But Santorum's connections to Opus Dei and SMOM put him ever further out on the fringe.

Does Santorum think of himself as a latter-day crusader? Would he literally be taking marching orders from the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome? Would he have an Opus Dei consigliere at his right hand and a papal nuncio on his left? Would he be incapable of separating his fealty to the Catholic Church from his loyalty to the Constitution of the United States of America? Is Rick Santorum a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta?

Many will complain that asking questions like this about Rick Santorum is a blatant attempt at character assassination and guilt by association. But Perry's now-defunct campaign did the same thing to Romney with his Mormon faith, and Newt Gingrich and the Republicans have been doing this to Obama incessantly for years, trying to link the president to Saul Alinsky (who died when Obama was 10), Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's dead Kenyan father's Muslim roots.

The difference is that Obama has consistently disavowed or disparaged the very ideas that Republicans try to link him to. Obama has time and again shown that he will work out a reasonable compromise to try to accommodate other Americans' views, though his efforts are constantly thrown back in his face by Republicans who feel that eternal political conflict is beneficial to their cause.

Santorum, on the other hand, has parroted the standard Catholic line, and worked tirelessly to force his beliefs on the rest of the country, especially in the area of women's health care.

When John F. Kennedy answered the question about his fealty to Rome and his loyalty to the United States, he answered forcefully and forthrightly: he was an American first. By repudiating Kennedy, Santorum has answered the question equally clearly.