This story has hopefully drawn the attention of the IRS and the Treasury Department. A Modesto priest has called on parishioners who voted for President-elect Barack Obama to confess to a mortal sin since Obama supports a woman’s right to choose. So a vote for Obama is a vote for sin.
The Rev. Joseph Illo said his parishioners at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Modesto shouldn’t risk losing their “state of grace” by receiving communion sacrilegiously. He delivered the message in a Nov. 21 letter and during mass.
In an interview this week with the Modesto Bee, Illo said he sent the letter because Catholic teaching requires that people go to confession when they commit a mortal sin.
This parish needs to lose their tax exempt status right away.Â
Could not a similar argument be made that it would be a sin to vote for McCain since he supports the war in Iraq?
After the jump, Thomas Jefferson’s letter about the “wall of separtion of church and state.”
This is a transcript of the letter as stored online at the Library of Congress, and reflects Jefferson’s spelling and punctuation.
Mr. President
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful & zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more & more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802.
I think the church in Modesto has better things to worry about.
Throughout his public career, including two terms as President, Jefferson pursued policies incompatible with the “high and impregnable” wall the modern Supreme Court has erroneously attributed to him. For example, he endorsed the use of federal funds to build churches and to support Christian missionaries working among the Indians. The absurd conclusion that countless courts and commentators would have us reach is that Jefferson routinely pursued policies that violated his own “wall of separation.”
Jefferson”s wall, as a matter of federalism, was erected between the national and state governments on matters pertaining to religion and not, more generally, between the church and all civil government. In other words, Jefferson placed the federal government on one side of his wall and state governments and churches on the other. The wall”s primary function was to delineate the constitutional jurisdictions of the national and state governments, respectively, on religious concerns, such as setting aside days in the public calendar for prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. Evidence for this jurisdictional or structural understanding of the wall can be found in both the texts and the context of the correspondence between Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association.
And I think the Teachers Union has better things to do than spend a million dollars on Prop 8. Lets make sure their public benefits are removed to tell them to spend their time worrying about EDUCATION.
Illo is a tool. I will start taking the Catholic Church seriously about the sanctaty of human life, and in particular, children, when they come clean for allowing pedophiles to abuse church members. This priest has no pull. Besides, since when does bashing church members for their vote for or against Obama is any of the his business. Move on dude…