Santorum's C-SPAN ‘Miracle’

NATIONAL REVIEW, June 3 — Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online (she is also a Register correspondent) recounted a story in the magazine told by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

It seems that in 1998, as he fought a losing battle to outlaw partial-birth abortion, Santorum was moved to give a final, seemingly futile speech to the empty Senate gallery — and to the C-SPAN cameras. The speech lasted more than 90 minutes and didn't change a single vote.

But, the senator recalled, “five days later, I got an e-mail from a young man at Michigan State University … [that said], ‘Senator, on Thursday night I was watching television with my girlfriend. We were flipping through the channels and we saw you. … After a while I looked down at my girlfriend, and she had tears running down her face. And I asked her what was wrong, and she looked up at me and said, “I'm pregnant, and tomorrow I was going to have an abortion, and I wasn't going to tell you, but I'm not going to have an abortion now.”’”

Santorum said the next April, a little girl was born and given up for adoption. She is now 4 years old.

Princeton Hosts Anti-Catholic Art

CATHOLICLEAGUE.ORG, May 30 — The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University is hosting an art exhibit called “Ricanstructions” by Juan Sanchez, which contains sacrilegious artworks — including scapulars and images of the Virgin Mary arranged in a circle, naked female torsos arranged in the shape of a cross and a display of “torn-up images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights reported that several students of various faiths complained to the administration about the works, which the Princeton dean defended by noting that they had previously been exhibited at a Catholic school, St. Bonaventure University in New York.

Recent Convert Part of Business Scandal

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, June 4 — In a Catholic twist to the recent business scandals roiling Wall Street, the chief counsel for troubled Tyco International, Mark Belnick, is accused of earning a $12 million bonus from his boss, former chief executive officer Dennis Kozlowski, for helping cover up Kozlowski's extravagant misuse of company funds.

At the same time, Belnick was converting from Judaism to Catholicism, under the guidance of an Opus Dei priest in Washington, D.C. He appears to have given most of the money he actually collected — some $2 million — as gifts to Catholic causes. These included the Culture of Life Foundation in Washington, D.C.; Thomas Aquinas College in California; Opus Dei; and the Eternal Word Television Network in Alabama.

The paper reported that Belnick, former president of his local synagogue, was received into the Church shortly before the scandal broke.

A key player in that conversion, according to the Journal, was occasional Register Columnist Opus Dei Father C. John McCloskey, who runs the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.

“Mr. Belnick joined an elite fraternity of Father McCloskey's converts,” the paper stated, which includes economist Lawrence Kudlow, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, conservative political columnist Robert Novak and ex-abortionist Bernard Nathanson.

The news story printed private e-mail conversations about the faith between Belnick and Father McCloskey, raising concerns.