South Carolina Roman Catholic Priest Says No Communion For Obama Voters
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A priest in my home state of South Carolina has told his members that Obama voters shouldn't present themselves for communion.
"Exit polls showed that Obama won 54 percent of the Catholic vote," according to The Washington Post.
A number of prominent pro-life Roman Catholics supported the Obama campaign (see here and here).
So if they start excluding Obama voters from the table a lot of people are going to go missing (this reminds of a story four years ago from North Carolina).
What else is going on in South Carolina today? A new report was released that should be of interest to people of faith:
There are 132,000 uninsured children in South Carolina-more than one out of nine children in the state (12.2 percent)-according to a new report released today by Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers.
The report, based on new Census Bureau data, shows that the number of uninsured children continues to grow in the state. The most recent data are for the three-year period 2005-2007 and therefore do not reflect the worsening economic situation in 2008.
You'll remember that the outgoing president vetoed legislation to extend health care benefits to children. President-elect Obama has promised to sign such legislation.
And what's going on across the world?
In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from preventable and treatable causes. Sixty percent of these deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.
In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.
16 million kids die each year from hunger. 16 million actual living kids. Bread for the World has more.
Communion shouldn't be used as a political weapon. It's God's table. All are welcome.
If The Rev. Jay Scott Newman, preist at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, doesn't understand that there is a new church start in nearby Greenville - Peace Congregational United Church of Christ - that will.