Father Jay Scott Newman told his South Carolina congregation that they should not take communion if they voted for president elect Barack Obama, because he is pro-choice. But he did not tell them that when the pro-choice candidates were white.
Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits 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.
Before saying this, he renamed the president elect, to include his middle name, Hussein. Perhaps to highlight his attitude of dislike and disrespect.
In addition to Newman's singular stand against Barack Obama, the nation's Catholic bishops, in the person of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), challenged president elect Barack Obama, with an impossible unity, if "aggressive pro-abortion policies, legislation and executive orders...permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans." He promises that aggressive pro-choice action "would be seen by many as an attack on the free exercise of their religion."
Since when has any religion been inhibited because the society allows others to do, what that religion and its members choose not to do? As a matter of fact, rather than reflecting concern about the "rights" of Catholics, the Bishops' statement sounds more like a threat against Barack Obama's right, to govern as he sees fit.
These harsh and insulting comments, are the American Catholic Church's first political remarks following Barack Obama’s historic achievement. In it, they presume to define why Barack Obama was elected, and what he does not have a referendum to do. Eventually they extend the statement's only compliment, to people other than Barack Obama, namely, "those in politics who work with good will to protect the lives of the most vulnerable among us."
From the 37th president through the 43rd, all but the two Bushes, advanced abortion rights in some respect, where was this collective priestly voice then?
When, far beyond cooperating "with intrinsic evil," pedophile priests, used the cloak of God's authority, to appropriate the minds and bodies of little boys, for real and actual evil; distorting their minds in ways that inferred that God Himself, is a rapist. Where was this collective priestly voice then?
While Cardinal George calls a fetus "the most vulnerable among us," Jesus Christ did not call a fetus anything at all. As a matter of fact, He said that there are things that we can do in this life, that have consequences that are so severe, that we would be better off, under those circumstances, if we had not been born. Mark 14:21
While Jesus did not talk about fetuses, he did talk about "the least of these," Matthew 25:35-40, namely, people who he described as without clothes, without homes, without food, without drink, without friends, or imprisoned. He said, how we treat them, defines our relationship to Him.
President elect Obama is not the one who is interfering with the freedoms of Catholic Americans, the priest are doing that, through misinformation, intimidation, and just plain bad attitudes.
When the congregates line up to confess their vote for Barack Obama to Father Newman, they will be deprived of their right to cast a secret ballot, and they will be intimidated against voting for Barack Obama in the future. The combined response, of the American Catholic Church, to the election of Barack Obama, is an egregious violation of separation of church and state, and it is just plain rude.
1
1
