Priest Calls Vote for Obama a Mortal Sin
By David Waters, The Washington Post, Friday Nov. 14, 2008

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has decided that the democratic act of casting a vote is, in some cases, a mortal sin. Therefore, he has decided that parishioners who voted for Barack Obama are not entitled to the grace of Jesus Christ through communion until they've done penance.

"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," Rev. Jay Scott Newman wrote in a letter to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville.

"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."

Perhaps I'm not the best person to question any clergy person's right to deny the body and blood and grace of Christ to any Christian. I'm a Methodist and we'll serve communion to just about anyone with a pulse.

But really?

Newman is denying communion not to those who have conducted or received an abortion, and not to those who enact laws that allow for abortion, but to those who cast a vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights. In effect, he's saying that thinking is now mortal sin. He's saying that having an opinion is a mortal sin. He's saying that freedom of speech and thought is a mortal sin.

I wonder what would happen if parishioners could elect their own priests.

(Meanwhile, a Vatican official said Friday that a Kentucky priest faces excommunication for attending the priestly ordination of a nun.)