Baer apparently was also offended by the photograph in the New York Times Magazine, in which he said Santorum "appears transfixed in prayer" and was "practicing for his holy card".

Additionally Baer was riled by an article written by Santorum three years ago. Santorum had described dissent in Catholic education and liberalism in culture as contributing factors to the difficulties in the Roman Catholic Church.

Baer summarizes the article thusly: "In other words, Harvard, the Kennedys, Kerry and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts are to blame for priests preying on altar boys."

Sen. Ted Kennedy, smelling some blood in the water, moved quickly. Kennedy accused Santorum of blaming "the people of Boston" for the scandal as well as showing "a deep and callous insensitivity to the victims."

Anyone who takes the trouble to read the article will find that Santorum did none of the above. You will find it at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php? ID=30

The Democratic Party has every gun in their arsenal aimed at Santorum who is being challenged by Bob Casey, Jr., in the 2006 election. Their task will be to make Sen. Santorum look like a religious fanatic, a Catholic extremist of the religious right.

Santorum's point is neither extreme nor fanatical: culture affects values and influences action. His mention of Boston, almost in passing, could have been replaced by any number of cities, and perhaps American culture as a whole. In fact, in his just published book, It Takes a Family, Santorum makes that exact point, without any mention of Boston. (More on the book later.)

The real target of Sen. Santorum's criticism is the media and the academy, not Boston.

Senator Kennedy, however, seized the opportunity to hijack the comments and after demanding an apology from Santorum, went on to deliver an unnecessary encomium to Boston's cultural greatness.

No one needs to defend the greatness of Boston's place in history or its cultural institutions.

At the same time, no one can really dispute Santorum's point that Boston is ONE of the leading bastions of liberal thought in the country. This is especially true of the Catholic culture in Boston, as many recent events illustrate.

If Senator Kennedy is trying to say that Boston's liberal environment does not influence culture and values, he's ignoring the evidence of the many Catholic members of the Massachusetts legislature who spoke publicly in support of gay marriage and legalized the creation of human clones for scientific experimentation.

Perhaps that's because Kennedy agrees with the Massachusetts Legislature and disagrees with the Catholic Church?

Both initiatives were opposed by the Massachusetts Catholic Conference but were undermined by dissenting Catholic "experts" who campaigned and testified against them.

For example, Fr. Stephen Schloesser, S.J., an associate professor of History at Boston College, wrote to Senator Marian Walsh -- who voted for gay marriage, cloning and emergency contraception -- to provide her with a history of family values and traditions. Among other things in his letter, he argued that polygamy, not man-woman marriage, is the dominant tradition in Scripture.

He persuaded Walsh with opinions such as the following:

"It seems helpful to me to recall what traditional marriage is: It's a community's legal arrangement in order to pass on property. In it, a male acquires (in the sense of owning and having sovereignty over) a female for the sake of reproducing other males who will then inherit the property."

"[E]arly Christianity was really not into marriage and it takes a quick leap of the imagination to spin biblical Christianity as somehow being part of family values."

"Catholic Canon Law is complicated and fuzzy about these distinctions and Catholic politicians who know almost nothing about Catholicism (Like Rick Santorum and Bill Frist) do not help matters by pretending they do understand it."

(Senator Frist, by the way, is not a Catholic.)

Such sentiments are not confined to Boston College.

Fr. Walter Cuenin is pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians in the Archdiocese of Boston and one of the most visible priests in the archdiocese. At a public hearing for the Defense of Marriage Amendment, he testified that the amendment seemed to violate the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Why? Because homosexual marriage was a human rights issue, Fr. Cuenin argued.

Fr. Cuenin quoted the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, testifying that all forms of social or cultural discrimination of personal rights must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God's design.

In anticipation of the Feast of the Holy Family, in his church bulletin of December 27, 2003, Fr. Cuenin stated that Jesus Mary and Joseph were "not meant to be an actual historical reproduction of the Holy Family."

"The reason why I mention this is that sometimes today, we hear religious and political people speak of family values in reference to one type of family."

"In reality, family life has changed and developed over the centuries. Today we also see new types of families that were unimaginable years ago -- There are gay people who live as a couple and raise children -- We should never think that there is a single Biblical model of family life. What we need today is a way to be open to these many new ways of family life."

Is Senator Kennedy asking us to believe that what's being taught in Boston has not permeated the culture?

The problem of Catholic leadership in Boston was news again last week when the new Director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference -- Ed Saunders -- was announced.

Saunders comes to the Conference as long-time lobbyist to the Massachusetts legislature. Catholic pro-life and grassroots leaders are having a hard time accepting the new appointment. They quickly discovered that Saunders had made personal financial contributions to several gay marriage and cloning advocates in the legislature who ran against pro-life candidates in the 2004 election.

Saunders defended his actions by saying he was wearing "a different hat," as a lobbyist for a credit union. But, when grassroots leaders pointed out that the contributions were personal, not donations from his PAC (political action committee), Saunders had a different explanation -- he had made 'friends' along the way as a lobbyist.

During all the upheaval in the archdiocese in the past decade, Saunders was invisible. He didn't make any "friends" in the pro-life community because he played no known role in the defense of life and family initiatives.

Marie Sturgis, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Life said her group is investigating Saunder's background. "I realize lobbyists do what they have to do, but we are talking about principles here and strong beliefs in some fundamental human rights" she said. "There's a side of me that wonders if there are personal contributions given to lawmakers and political candidates who are not in synch with what the Church teaches, then doesn't that call into question the motives of this individual?" (Boston Globe, July 13, 2005)

A spokesman for the Conference, Terrence C. Donilon, defended the hiring, "Ed Saunders is personally and professionally committed to advocate the full range of Catholic social and moral teachings. On that basis and his many qualifications, he was a strong candidate for the position for which he was hired."

The statement just didn't make sense to grassroots leaders who say that several well-qualified pro-life people who have dedicated histories for lobbying for the culture of life applied for the position, including Maria Parker, acting Interim Director and Associate Director for Public Policy for many years.

As for the dispute between Santorum and Kennedy, it is just one of the opening salvos in the Santorum - Casey race. And Santorum is becoming accustomed to the controversy. In his book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good (ISI Books, 2005), Santorum recounts a recent commencement address at a Catholic college where "three-fourths of the faculty walked out as I stood up to deliver my address."

He knows first-hand the cost of challenging, as he called them in the book, "The moralists of the village [who] teach us there is no truth."

With the title of his book, Santorum has directly challenged a mantra - "it takes a village" - closely associated with Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton, very likely a presidential nominee in 2008.

Santorum has certainly made his intentions clear. Deriding the ideology of the Boston elites is nothing compared to calling out the first women in U.S. history with a genuine chance to become President.

In a conference call with the Catholic media after Kennedy's criticism, Santorum sounded tough enough to handle the heat: "I don't think Ted Kennedy lecturing me on the teachings of the church and how the church should handle these problems is something I'm going to take particularly seriously."

Anyone who takes a look at It Takes a Family will see that Senator Santorum is telling the truth. Among Catholic members of Congress, there is no one who has taken a more public stance in defense of the Church.

(For Santorum's book click the following link: http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.a spx?id=8fc8674d-a075-4832-863e- 267f2b5bb34e)

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