Fox News is reporting this confusing story about
Father Jay Scott Newman, a Catholic priest in Greenville, S.C., has come under fire for telling parishioners that people who voted for Barack Obama should not seek Communion. (St. Mary’s Catholic Church)
"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," Newman wrote. [I thought that's what Faithful Citizenship and common sense dictated....]
Exit polls suggested that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama in last week's election.
Newman said he would not deny anyone communion because of their political choices, but he told his flock of 2,700 families that they should first seek penitence if they voted for Obama, who supports abortion rights. The Catholic Church considers abortion an act of murder.
"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," Newman wrote.
That view was rejected Friday by the Newman's own diocese.
"Father Newman's statements do not adequately reflect the Catholic Church's teachings. Any comments or statements to the contrary are repudiated," said Msgr. Martin Laughlin, administrator of the Charleston Diocese, which is currently without a bishop.
Catholic dioceses in the U.S. have issued various rulings on whether Catholics who support abortion can receive communion.
"The Church hasn't said as a body what this individual priest has said, namely that anybody who has voted for Barack Obama shouldn't go to communion," said Father Jonathan Morris, a Catholic priest and FOX News contributor. [That doesn't exactly mean that the Church is saying they CAN go to communion if they voted for Obama... well, can they?]
"If anybody voted for Barack Obama because he is pro-abortion, that would certainly be an objective moral wrong," he said. "There are a lot of discretionary areas in politics on which two good Catholics could differ, but the respect for life is not one of these."[How about if someone voted for Obama if there was a viable pro-life candidate, Father Morris?]
Newman and his church have received a thunderous response -- and more than 4,000 e-mails -- both praising and deriding the priest for his comments.
At home in his parish, however, church members said the response has been mostly positive.
Chris Stansberry, the youth director at the church, said that the community had been "very supportive" of Newman's stance. "At St. Mary's we follow the teachings of the Church, which are very pro-life," he said. "I think everybody here in the parish is [behind him]," he told FOXNews.com.
Newman declined public comment Friday, but he wrote in a letter to his church that he had been misunderstood on matters of doctrine and was disappointed in the reception his words had gotten in the press.
"I knew that this might turn into a very ugly brawl designed to make me look like a raving lunatic seeking to coerce voters through spiritual blackmail rather than a shepherd warning his flock about the spiritual danger of supporting abortion, whether directly or indirectly," he wrote. "And my suspicion proved well-founded."
Let us pray for Father Newman:
St. Michael the Archangel, illustrious leader of the heavenly army, defend us (and especially Father Newman) in the battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of darkness and the spirit of wickedness in high places. Come to the rescue of mankind, whom God has made in His own image and likeness, and purchased from Satan's tyranny at so great a price. Holy Church venerates you as her patron and guardian. The Lord has entrusted to you the task of leading the souls of the redeemed to heavenly blessedness. Entreat the Lord of peace to cast Satan down under our feet, so as to keep him from further holding man captive and doing harm to the Church. Carry our prayers up to God's throne, that the mercy of the Lord may quickly come and lay hold of the beast, the serpent of old, Satan and his demons, casting him in chains into the abyss, so that he can no longer seduce the nations.
