This is a charming little story.
Priest dumps all over his parishioners.
Now, I was never a Catholic, but I once considered marrying a Catholic girl and went through some of the obligatory classes at her church. We got to the part about promising to raise the children Catholic and I said no, that wouldn’t happen, and he (the priest) said then we couldn’t be married in the church and I said fine, then we’d continue living in sin and there wouldn’t be any children.
Kind of brought the whole relationship to a screeching halt, if you take my meaning. Probably the best thing for everyone concerned.
I tell you this to give you some idea how I feel about priests (of any religious persuasion) threatening their audience.
Odd that voting for McCain somehow escaped the Catholic church's condemnation, given his support for waging war in places where it isn't necessary. Oh, wait a sec…the priest in the above-mentioned article didn't say Obama supporters could never have communion, just that they couldn't have it unless they did penance, which is, conveniently, controlled by the Catholic hierarchy. This isn't about moral indignation, it's just another excuse for a Catholic priest to try to increase his earthly power.
Doesn't that priest risk losing his tax-free status by exposing his political agenda?
Sometimes I wonder why the many thoughtful Catholics out there don't just start their own churches and leave Rome in the dust. They can chose to believe things that are important to THEM, including the possibility to the world is a nuanced place where admirable people struggle to do the right thing. They can decide to not condemn others or to pretend that they themselves are the font of wisdom and that anyone who disagrees is evil.
There's lots of empty church buildings available, so they could just take the whole congregation on over to a new building of their own. Many of those empty churches were sold off when the Catholic Church had to raise money to pay legal judgments because thousands of their priests were raping children. If only the Church ranted 10% as much about the behavior of its own priests as it did about women (and men) struggling over abortion.
My wife is sort of a generic Christian.We were married at a Church of Christ. Our oldest son was baptized in a Greek Orthodox church and our younger son was baptized in a Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) church. She switched to the Greek Orthodox church because the Church or Christ did not baptize infants. She switched to the Coptic church after the Greek Orthodox priest insisted that our marriage was a false one because we were married in the Church of Christ. And she gave up on the Coptic Church because our oldest son is autistic and reacted adversely to the sounds or the numerous bells and chimes used in the service. I found the variety of dogma and rituals between the various churches to be interesting.