As someone who lives and works in the deeply red state of South Carolina, I was not surprised to hear these comments from a Greenville Roman Catholic priest:
A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.
“Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president,” Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.
So, those who supported Obama should not take communion because they are cooperating with evil by helping to elect a pro-abortion candidate. What, then, should those who voted for McCain do? McCain had supported continuing the Iraq war for the next 100 years, if need be. The war is opposed by Pope Benedict who said in his Easter message last year that “nothing positive comes from Iraq.” Benedict’s predecessor Pope John Paul II strongly opposed the Iraq war even before it began.
Wouldn’t those who cast their vote for McCain be just as guilty of supporting evil in the world?
The message here is that no one’s hands are clean and the purpose of communion is not to come to the table already clean—but experience the cleansing presence of the Christ.
Let he who is without sin throw the first communion wafer.
