This is a remarkably impressive story of a priest taking it upon himself to follow Church teaching and Canon Law, even when the Bishops won’t do it.  In a letter to his parishioners Father Jay Scott Newman said,

“Voting for 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. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

Wrapped up in this paragraph is the greatest truth of the Catholic Church (other than that she is the Church Jesus founded on earth): That no matter what you have done, you can be reconciled and returned to Communion with the Church, the Body of Christ.  The sacrament of penance is available (at usually inconvenient times) at every parish, and all one must do is go, confess, and receive absolution from the priest (in persona Christi, of course.)

But of course, the idea of coming back into the Church’s good graces is not nearly sensational enough…so the AP, in their infinite wisdom, used this headline:

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters

Of particular interest is Sister Mary Anne Walsh (spokesnun of the USCCB)’s response:

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama’s win.

What an idiotic statement…Catholics who voted for Obama would’ve been automatically absolved had Obama lost the election, but since he won, they have to go to Confession for participating in intrinsic evil? At least this isn’t a direct quote…maybe it’s the writer who decided to use the “in reaction to Obama’s win” phrase.

Catholic Democrats, a group that support allegedly Catholic democrats, had this to say:

“He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. … Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words.”

Ok, let me get this straight.  A priest state that a person has removed themselves from Communion with the Church based on their assent to intrinsic evil via an Obama vote, and his WORDS are what will cost them spiritually?  Hello, is this thing on?  What they did will cost them spiritually, and he is doing what any loving shepherd does, he’s grabbing the shepherd’s crook and trying to pull the sheep that have gone astray back into the fold.  He’s trying to show them that there is a spiritual cost to their actions that they cannot possibly pay on their own.  A key tenet on Catholic teaching regarding sin is that you won’t be held spiritually accountable for what someone does to you – so for this guy to say that the priest’s words will result in a spiritual cost to Obama-voters shows how ignorant he truly is.  Father is simply telling his parishioners that indeed there is a spiritual cost associated with what they did and that through sacramental confession they can ask that the cost be covered through Christ’s sacrifice of Himself.

Come down to it, though…Obama-voters who claim to be Catholic simply either don’t think abortion is intrinsically evil, or they (thanks to millstone-worthy “theologians”) were convinced that Obama’s proportionally better on this issue than McCain is; therefore they don’t think they need to go to Confession.  You get into trouble when people start individually defining what a sin is.

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