President Bush As The First Catholic President?

At least former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum thinks so!

"I don't think there's any question about it," said Sen. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and a devout Catholic. "That's why I called him the first Catholic president; he's certainly much more Catholic than Kennedy."

Here's another snippet from the article entitled, Is George Bush Leading America's first truly Catholic Presidency?

WASHINGTON — Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI's election three years ago, President Bush huddled with a small circle of advisers and speechwriters in the Oval Office. As talk briefly turned to religion, the president mentioned reading one of the new pontiff's books about faith and culture in Western Europe.

Save one other soul, Bush was the only non-Catholic in the room, and it did not go unnoticed. Even the president laughed at the thought.

"I used to say that there are more Catholics on President Bush's speechwriting team than any Notre Dame starting lineup in the past half-century," said former Bush scribe William McGurn, a Catholic who was part of the meeting.

The 2005 West Wing meeting was just one indicator of how a Methodist president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics — and thus Catholic social teaching — have for the past eight years been shaping Bush's speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history.

In fact, with all due respect to John F. Kennedy, the nation's first and only Catholic president, some have begun to call the Bush White House the first truly Catholic presidency.

Interesting article. But if Bush's policies have been heavily shaped by Catholic Social Teaching - I'm not sure if that says anything positive about the Catholic Church....

Between the war and torture, I'm just not seeing how much in common Bush's policies have with CST....