{"id":291,"date":"2008-11-18T10:47:21","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T10:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/update-church-says-priest-was.html"},"modified":"2008-11-18T10:47:21","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T10:47:21","slug":"update-church-says-priest-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/update-church-says-priest-was.html","title":{"rendered":"Update: Church says priest was wrong in Obama\/Communion flap"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

This is an update from the post a couple days ago that generated so much response<\/a>.<\/span><\/h1>\n

(RNS) by Daniel Burke: A South Carolina Catholic priest was wrong to warn parishioners who voted for President-elect Barack Obama to confess their sin before receiving Communion, according to the head of the priest’s diocese.<\/span><\/h1>\n

Monsignor Martin T. Laughlin, administrator of the Diocese of Charleston, said in a statement late Friday (Nov. 14) that “if a person has formed his or her conscience well, he or she should not be denied Communion, nor be told to go to confession before receiving Communion.”<\/p>\n

Last week, the Rev. Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville, said that by receiving Communion, Obama supporters “drink and eat their own condemnation,” because the president-elect supports abortion rights. Newman later said he would not deny the sacrament to anyone “based on political opinions or choices.”<\/p>\n

Newman’s statements “do not adequately reflect the Catholic Church’s teachings. Any comments or statements to the contrary are repudiated,” Laughlin said. He added that Newman pulled the church’s moral teachings “into the partisan political arena” and “diverted the focus from the church’s clear position against abortion.”<\/p>\n

Laughlin cites the Catholic Church’s catechism, which states that “man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions.”<\/p>\n

“Christ gives us the freedom to explore our own consciences and to make our decisions while adhering to the law of God and the teachings of the faith,” Laughlin said. “We should all come together to support the president-elect and all elected officials with a view to influencing policy in favor of the protection of the unborn child.”<\/p>\n

Laughlin was appointed the interim administrator of the statewide Charleston diocese when Bishop Robert J. Baker was transferred to Birmingham, Ala., last year.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an update from the post a couple days ago that generated so much response. (RNS) by Daniel Burke: A South Carolina Catholic priest was wrong to warn parishioners who voted for President-elect Barack Obama to confess their sin before receiving Communion, according to the head of the priest’s diocese. Monsignor Martin T. Laughlin,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholics","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\nUpdate: Church says priest was wrong in Obama\/Communion flap - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/update-church-says-priest-was.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Update: Church says priest was wrong in Obama\/Communion flap - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is an update from the post a couple days ago that generated so much response. 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}