Catholic Church Repudiates Priest for Upholding Catholic Values

I was pretty sure this would happen when I first reported on this story a couple of days ago:

A Roman Catholic diocese in South Carolina officially repudiated a priest Friday after he told his parishioners that people who voted for Barack Obama had supported the "intrinsic evil" of abortion and should not seek Communion.

Father Jay Scott Newman, writing in the weekly bulletin of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, S.C., called Obama "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," Newman wrote.

Exit polls suggested that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama in last week's election.

Click here to read the church bulletin.

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.

What part of the church's teachings does his statement not adequately reflect? The part about the sanctity of life, or the part about the spiritual condition of those who take communion? It seems to me that Father Newman has more than adequately reflected the teachings of the church, he just hasn't reflected the teachings of the politically correct elements of church leadership.

To his credit, Newman isn't backing down:

"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."

Over the years we've seen radical Catholic priests promote all kinds of things that don't seem to fit with Catholic teaching (Father Pfleger in Chicago comes to mind), but those priests are rarely disciplined or denounced by the church. This guy actually seems to be saying that church teachings are not to be trifled with, and for that he has to be slapped down.