S.C. priest: No communion if you voted Obama

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil," the priest said in a letter to parishioners.

Published November 14, 2008 6:20PM (EST)

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman, a Roman Catholic priest in South Carolina, doesn't want his parishioners taking communion if they voted for Barack Obama, at least not until after they do penance for it.

The Associated Press reports on a letter Newman distributed Sunday in which he wrote:

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...

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.

In an interview with the AP, Newman said, "It was not an attempt to make a partisan point. In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same."


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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