chedstone.com

After the the win of pro-choice candidate President-Elect Barack Obama, Father Joseph Illo of Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Modesto, CA  sent a letter (PDF) to all his parishioners stating that if they voted for a pro-choice presidential candidate, they could not receive the Eucharist until they went to Confession lest they fall out of grace by recieving it “sacriligeuosly”:

“If you are one of the 54% of Catholics who voted for a pro-abortion candidate, you were clear on his position, and you knew the gravity of the question, I urge you to go to confession before receiving communion. Don’t risk losing your state of grace by receiving sacrilegiously. I appeal to your conscience, grounded in Church teaching. To some degree we all have the blood of these children on our hands. I myself have confessed sacramentally, and I confess to you now, that I have not done enough to defend these children. Their blood is on my hands too. We will see them in the next life, and they will ask us why we let them die.”

He was clearly not happy about Obama winning.

Catholics believe communion, or the Eucharist, is the physical manifestation of the body and blood of Jesus.  The body and blood is eaten by Catholics and is the cornerstone of their faith and the heart of their weekly Mass ceremony.

To my understanding, if a Catholic falls out of a state of grace (or is forced out of one in this situation) the person does not go straight to Heaven when they die.  Instead the person is either sent to purgatory to wait for acceptance into Heaven or is banished immediately to hell if there is an un-absolved grave or mortal sin on their conscience. Father Illo continued in his letter stating,

“If you voted for a pro-abortion candidate, I cannot say for certain if you should refrain from Holy Communion. I don’t know what you were thinking. But voting for a candidate who promises ‘abortion rights,’ even if he promises every other good thing, is voting for abortion. It is a grave mistake, and probably a grave sin.”

Soon after his letter was received, The Modesto Bee ran it in their newspaper and online.  This story broke nationally and caused a uproar!  People across the United States, Catholics and non-Catholics, were outraged that he could be the “judge” of people sins.  A spiritual leader in Modesto said, “Isn’t that spot (the job of judging people) reserved for God?”

Shortly after on December 1st, the Bishop of the Diocese of Stockton, the diocese to which Illo belongs, sent a press release (PDF) to the media to try and calm the waters,

“..determining the moral culpability of an individual Catholic who votes for a candidate with a pro-abortion record is a very complicated matter. Requiring all Catholics who voted for a candidate with a pro-abortion record to go to confession is not in accord with the moral guidelines set out in “Faithful Citizenship.” Nevertheless, if a Catholic votes for a candidate with a pro-abortion record with the motivation of supporting that abortion stance, then that is a grave moral matter.”

After getting “spanked” by the Bishop of the Diocese Illo belongs to, Illo sent another letter (PDF) to his “flock” that stated:

“My letter began with these words: ‘If you voted for a pro-abortion candidate on November 4, and you
knew what you were doing, you need to go to confession before receiving communion.’ Upon further
reflection, I realize that this goes beyond what the Church has actually stated. Clearly, if a Catholic
voted for such a candidate because he agrees with his or her position on ‘abortion rights,’ he could be
guilty of a grave sin. But a vote for such a candidate for other reasons may be legitimate, ‘for truly grave moral reasons.’ The Church does not state that voting for a candidate who promotes the practice of abortion is always a mortal sin.”

Of course by waiting to send this second letter out a whole month after the first letter, the damage had already been done.  Undoubtedly thousands of Catholics across the nation were counseled by their priests to be ashamed and seek forgiveness for their sin for voting Obama.  I suppose it was better for Illo that he reprimanded everyone after the voting took place and not before.  If he had been caught promoting certain candidates before the election by threatening people with eternal hell it could have caused him much more consternation and possibly his job.

Many religious people’s moral and ethical decisions are nurtured by one priest’s ideals and interpretations of who they believe God is.  Illo is a very conservative priest who romanticizes about returning to a time before Vatican II.  Illo is not a nut or even a bad person, but he is misleading and wields too much power when it comes to controlling others’ lives.