White evangelical / Born agains for Santorum

I’ve been watching the Illinois exit poll results on the CNN crawl. It breaks down by gender, salary, and a category called “White evangelical/Born again.” 48% Santorum, 39% Romney.

CNNs website says “Romney types are in the north around Chicago and its suburbs, where typically three-quarters of Republicans vote. Advantage Romney, except evangelical and Christian conservative voters have been turning out in big numbers for Santorum.”

This amazes me. I can only imagine they think Santorum is a Baptist: you know, just like the President is a Muslim. There is no way the Southern Baptists I knew would vote for a Catholic. I was born a Catholic, and I kept my ears open for anti-Catholic slights while I was a Baptist. Here is a short list of comments I heard:… no, let my title this …

LIES I HEARD FROM EVANGELICALS / BORN AGAINS ABOUT CATHOLICS
(just so there is no confusion)

1. The Whore of Babylon in Revelations is the Catholic church, because she sits on the city with the seven hills (Rome). That is why they moved the Vatican to its own separate city: to mislead us. (And they named it Vatican City, not Whoreyville, to further mislead us.)

2. Catholics believe that it is better to have one abortion instead of taking contraception because it is one sin instead of many.

3. Blah blah blah Illuminati blah Proctor and Gamble blah blah False Prophet Pope.

4. Catholics are going to Hell because they have not been born again. (Or, they grew up principled and didn’t need a rebirth, as I never said aloud.)

5. Catholics believe the Pope is God. (I feel it is time for another disclaimer: these are bigoted lies.)

6. Catholics believe Mary was a Virgin when Jesus was born and even still after she had other sons.

Granted, this was all in the ’70s and ’80s. Since then things have possibly calmed down. In the ’60s Aunt Carleen had to walk out of a sermon when she was told from the pulpit not to vote for The Catholic Kennedy. I recall being told in 1979 that it would be nice to have a Baptist deacon like Jimmy Carter in charge of the country, since he could pray directly to God and all.

Gary laughed when I told him those things. “Those Baptists! They probably do believe those things!”

“Probably? Trust me. I heard all these things. They call Catholics ‘CandleBurners’ too.”

“HAH! They probably DO call us CandleBurners! Ha!”

I gave up.

Well, today Gary came back with a link from the Washington Post about how Santorum is tied to Opus Dei. All I read is that RS goes to church with Opus Dei believers, and sent his kids to a school run by OD types. By that token both my sister-in-law and Friend #2 have ties to OD for the same reasons.

Gary was all excited about this news, because it seems mainstream Catholics can make fun of Opus Dei Catholics for being TOO Catholic. Gary crowed, “He probably has fishhooks inside those sweater vests!” He commenced lashing himself with his car keys.

All Romney has to do is remind the Evangelicals / Born Agains (so awkward, CNN, just call them Jesus Freaks) is that Mormons think Baptists are going to Lesser Heaven while Opus Dei types would throw them right in Hell. BOOM. Welcome to hell. Or, as they would say, “BOOM! Grata ad infernum! On the other hand, feel free to enjoy the wine, you were wrong about that one.”