It seems so long ago that in the 1960 presidential election a Catholic candidate was fighting for his political life.  John F. Kennedy won by a whisker, fending off religious bigots.  Probably 75 percent of the country has been born since then and Catholicism no longer matters, for the most part, to a vast majority of voters.  It means more to people today that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, yet it says as much that a Catholic, Rick Santorum, might be the choice of evangelical Christians when the conservative wing of the Republican Party makes its stand in the South against Romney – whose forebears were the ones who feared Kennedy the most.

The fact that the South might block Romney’s push for the nomination says more about the Catholic Church than it does about the Republican presidential circus.  That a Catholic candidate like Santorum (whose name in Latin means “of the saints”) is so right-wing in his philosophy tells us how the Church has changed – and how it intends to grow its role in national political affairs. Santorum represents a new kind of Catholic Church, one that is more apt to inject its adherents with an aggressive theological philosophy that translates into political activism.  And you cannot be more of a Catholic political activist than Rick of the Saints.  He is a part of the new breed of Catholics who will project their sentiments as easily as other evangelicals.  Does anyone really believe that Newt Gingrich did not understand the growing communion that exists between Catholic and Protestant evangelicals before he converted to the Catholic Church?  About 20 percent of Catholic voters cast their ballots for Richard M. Nixon in 1960 against Kennedy.  By 2004, with a far more activist Church in evidence, George W. Bush attained a majority of the Catholic vote against Catholic John Kerry.

The symmetry that might meet in South Carolina in two weeks that undoes the history of the past is also possibly making the history of the future, especially as more HispanicLatinos become a larger part of the electorate.  For the moment, though, HispanicLatino Republican Catholics in Florida, who are only a fraction of the total HispanicLatino vote nationwide, can influence the results greatly.

Given the results in Iowa, it is not too early to think about a Romney-Santorum ticket, especially if Romney needs someone to buck up his standing with that wing of the party.  If Santorum ends up as the vice presidential nominee, he would stand in stark contrast to the more mainstream Catholic, the incumbent Joe Biden – a far different cry from 1960 when it is thought that more than 95 percent of HispanicLatino voters on their own voted for the Democrat who was also viewed as the Catholic candidate.

Santorum would bring a far different kind of Catholic to national prominence from a far different Church and inject another dynamic to how HispanicLatinos act politically and electorally this coming November.

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