South Carolina Priest Calls On Catholic Obama Supporters To Refrain From Holy Communion

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 18 Nov 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has released a letter to parishioners advising those who voted for President-elect Barack Obama to refrain from receiving communion, the AP/Yahoo! News reports. The letter by the Rev. Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, S.C., states that supporting a "pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law." Newman added that Catholics in "this condition" should not receive communion until "they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

According to the AP/Yahoo! News, some bishops spoke more forcefully this election cycle than in 2004 to urge Catholics to make abortion the forefront issue in selecting a candidate, and a few went as far as to say Catholics "risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights." At the annual U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops General Assembly last week, bishops took several actions aimed at confronting the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights. However, the AP/Yahoo! News reports that bishops are more divided on the issue of whether Catholics who diverge from the church's antiabortion positions should receive communion, with each bishop setting the policy in his own diocese.

According to Newman, his letter was not intended to "make a partisan point." He added, "In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same." Mary Ann Walsh, spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she was not aware of any other priests taking similar actions. Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats, said Newman "is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did." He added, "Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for [Obama]. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words" (AP/Yahoo! News, 11/14).

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