Leftist blogs are dismayed by remarks Rick Santorum has made about suffering. They are completely DISTORTING Catholic teaching on the redemptive value of suffering through the work of Jesus Christ. Really. Here’s an example:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic, apparently subscribes to his religion’s belief in redemptive suffering (which is explained HERE.)

At a town hall meeting in Iowa yesterday, Santorum decried government efforts to protect children from economic suffering. He said: “If you’re a Christian, suffering is part of life, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s an essential thing.”

The claim is that Rick Santorum should not actually believe and speak about what his faith teaches about suffering because he is a person of means. You see, Rick Santorum is a problem for the Left because Catholics generally vote for the Democrat, and his authentic belief throws a wrench into their plans to continue to convince Catholics to vote Democrat.

But, that is the crux of the situation, folks. These people distort Catholicism to make government bigger, because bigger and bigger government is the goal…not real social justice. This attack on Rick Santorum, which is being made on many leftist blogs, demonstrates clearly that Catholics who align themselves with the ostensibly “anti-poverty” Left are actually in bed with the idea that people of means who believe in what Catholicism ACTUALLY TEACHES are automatically hypocrites. Catholics have to abandon what our Catholic Faith really teaches about suffering in order to accept the Democratic Party which is no longer the party of Jack Kennedy but the party of the Radical Left. The existence of the openly disgusting “Occupy” movement does not make the polite, well-dressed, well-groomed and seemingly good-natured radicals in the White House any less radical.

From Pope Benedict’s Message today on the World Day of the Sick:

“Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (Lk 17:19)

[...] He who in suffering and illness prays to the Lord is certain that God’s love will never abandon him, and also that the love of the Church, the extension in time of the Lord’s saving work, will never fail. 

It is not government that saves us. It is our Faith in Jesus that saves us. The love of the Church through her adoption agencies and her hospitals and her universities, etc., (not the programs of a secular, freedom-crushing government) is the “extension in time of the Lord’s saving work” that will “never fail.”

And now, we have a president who would crush the Church’s ability to provide these services, not just through HHS, but also through regulations from the Department of Labor and the Treasury Department. Not only this,but also we see the crushing of religious freedom through the promotion of “gay marriage” that is forcing us to either close adoption agencies or abandon our Catholic identity.

Mitt Romney is no better. He helped to pave the way for this in Massachusetts just the same as he paved the way for Obamacare (the “reasoning” for these mandates) with Romneycare.

From Catholic Action League of Massachuesetts:

“The initial injury to Catholic religious freedom came not from the Obama administration but from the Romney administration,’’ said C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. “President Obama’s plan certainly constitutes an assault on the constitutional rights of Catholics, but I’m not sure Governor Romney is in a position to assert that, given his own very mixed record on this.’’

In Rick Santorum we have a candidate who had left public life for good. A faithful Catholic husband and a father of seven with a disabled child, he could not remain silent when his bishops betrayed him by getting into bed with the socialists on the Left to promote legislation that threatens the life of his child and others like her through rationing. Rick and Karen Santorum are using their means to care for their daughter at home, a daughter that they were told should be “allowed to die” because her life would never really have “value.” There is no better person to stand against Obamacare, and he is now being attacked by the Left because he actually believes his Catholic Faith, is not afraid to say that he loves and depends completely on Jesus Christ, and defends the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our country was founded in order to protect us from tyranny such as we see in Obamacare and in powerful bishops who enabled its passage.

Many on the Right , as well, are afraid of this man who is openly in love with Jesus Christ, deeply in love with the only wife he has ever had, and a true protector of his family and the values that make strong families. They are pitting against him a candidate who, we are told, is going to “pulverize” him because this Christian man “can’t win”. He “can’t win” so he has to be “pulverized” so that we can put an “electable” candidate — who also  happened to lay the foundation for Obamacare and has a record of crushing the Church’s freedom — against the president in November.

I am a poor, single mom of four, a Catholic in love with Jesus Christ, who has BIPOLAR DISORDER and I am here to tell you that if Catholics and Republicans do not rally behind Rick Santorum right now and defend him from these attacks then YOU are the INSANE ONES.

Bishops, your rejection of moral reasoning and sound judgment makes people like me SICKER. Heal me with LOVE. Stop crushing the poor by encouraging us to be resentful of the wealthy. Stop organizing the poor and the sick to attack people like Rick Santorum. HEAL ME by talking about Jesus and redemptive suffering instead of about government programs. Follow Rick Santorum’s example.

I’m talking to you, Fox News pundits and Catholic community organizers and Ayn Rand fans. I’m talking to you. If you attack Rick Santorum…..it’s personal with me. My son needs a job so that he can help his poor mother. Vote for Rick Santorum so that my son can get a job and help his mother.

DON’T BLOW THIS, Republicans! DON’T BLOW THIS, Catholics!

What will I do if you blow it? I will do what I always do in suffering. I will rejoice in the Love Beyond All Telling while I continue to love you and pray for you and for my country as it crumbles around me.

Again, from Pope Benedict’s message today for the World Day of the Sick:

The principal task of the Church is certainly proclaiming the Kingdom of God, “But this very proclamation must be a process of healing: ‘bind up the broken-hearted’ (Is 61:1)” (ibid.), according to the charge entrusted by Jesus to his disciples (cf. Lk 9:1-2; Mt 10:1,5-14; Mk 6:7-13). The tandem of physical health and renewal after lacerations of the soul thus helps us to understand better the “sacraments of healing”.

My greatest suffering is that the love of Jesus is glossed over by bishops and spat upon by the people they align themselves with.

God bless Archbishop Dolan, whom I love so very much and who is making a strong stand, but it is not enough. The USCCB should be filled with staff who are like Rick and Karen Santorum, who love Jesus, real charity, and freedom, for an America that will truly uplift the downtrodden.