The whole theme the right pushes is that he is against the religious and not really Christian, but a closeted Muslim.

However, his laundry list of social policies reflect how he would apply "faith" to governance. I do think that there is a very strong effort on the part of the Catholic church to reassert its power within nations.

You had a week ago a speech by Romney where he cranks out the word conservative 10+ times. Never does he define the word. After a while you realize when Republicans say they are conservative it isn't to define any policy bundle, it's now become just a buzz word to them that republican voters respond to. Convince them you are "conservative" and let the voter fill in the actual policies. Same goes for other conservative empty words like faith, faithbased, pro-family, environmentalism, radical feminist, American, right to work... they use buzz words that have no defined meaning and will not be defined within the context of their broader speech. They allow the listener to fill in the definition. It's pure marketing. It works to get you the buy laundry detergent, it works on so many people to buy really bad Republican policies. Santorum uses the empty word church so listeners will assume he is inclusive of their church. Santorums' policies certainly don't represent the catholic church accept on a very narrow band of issues. Theologically his views seem to differ from the broader church as well. He isn't trying to ram religion down peoples throats, he's trying to ram the image that because he openly speaks about religion in politics he is morally superior to Obama or Romney. This is because a lot of people assume christian's are naturally moral and those that speak in a religious way are somehow by default moral people. Even when what they say is often nothing but hatred of women and gays. It's amazing how often it works.

means the Catholic Church, including Roman, Russian, and Eastern Catholic Rites. It covers about 75% of the world's Christians. The only other religion I have heard that uses "The Church" is the Morman religion, but the tern is generally attributed to Catholics.

the U.S. percentage is considerably lower. The Census doesn't ask about religious affiliation, so it's left to non-governmental outfits like Pew to come up with some numbers. I've found their research to be accurate in other areas so have no reason to doubt that this study isn't up to the same standard.




http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations

Although I am not sure I would put all "evangelical protestant churches" under one category. Most of those are vastly different among beliefs, but I guess you have to put them somewhere. The Catholic Church is still the largest organized religious institution in American and the world, which is why references to "The Church" generally means the Catholic Church.

what they believe, so they are not universal.

They say this at every Catholic mass “WE Believe There is “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic” Christian Church”
Growing up Catholic I was also taught that it was a sin to go to any church other than a Catholic church...


Here's a music video made for people like him...
Start the Love - a Girl's Awesome Appeal to All Christians "We all need to focus more on love than judgment and disdain."

http://www.godvine.com/Start-the-Love-a-Girl-s-Awesome-Appeal-to-All-Christians-1152.html

given what he's said about Protestantism...

I'll bring some beer. It's going to be one hell of a party.

In the meantime, this poor guy is going to wear his wings out trying to stay out of the reach of the clergy:

maybe he converted, maybe he's with Americans for Prosperity now.

They think nobody's got the truth but them.

But then, so do the Baptists ...

Bake

Catholics. Trying to get them to remember their teaching. Unfortunately I think he will miss the boat on this one. All other religions will be insulted.

When a Catholic refers to "the church" he means the Roman Catholic Church. "The church" was never used as an all inclusive phrase. Other Christian denominations were always referred to by their proper names such as Lutheran or Baptist or classifications such as Protestant, Orthodox or whatever.