The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Father Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville South Carolina. He gets the award for the following-

South Carolina's Charleston-based Roman Catholic Diocese said Friday that it doesn't believe parishioners who voted for Barack Obama should have to seek penance before partaking Holy Communion, a condition a Greenville priest suggested this week because of Obama's stance on abortion.

The priest, Father Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, couldn't be reached for comment late Friday.

"As administrator of the Diocese of Charleston, let me state with clarity that Father Newman's statements do not adequately reflect the Catholic Church's teachings," Monsignor Martin T. Laughlin said Friday in a posting on the diocese's Web site. "Any comments or statements to the contrary are repudiated."

On Friday, Newman said in a message posted on St. Mary's church Web site that his original statement had been misunderstood. Newman said that he didn't intend for his comments to be seen beyond his parish and that he has received more than 3,500 emails from across the globe both in support of and condemning his comments.

In Friday's posting, Newman said that voting for Obama isn't "in itself or by itself a mortal sin" but that "a vote for a pro-abortion candidate can be a mortal sin if the intent is to support abortion, that abortion is not merely one issue among other important issues, and that no Catholic should endorse a pro-abortion politician if a plausible pro-life alternative is available."

I'm Catholic, my wife works for the local diocese, and I have problems with what Father Newman said. Mostly because the Roman Catholic church is hypocritical when it comes to life. Take for instance a mother 6 years ago who was on hospital pregnancy bedrest. She was a diocese employee, the church she worked at paid her health insurance premiums. The Diocese of Palm Beach sent a HR employee to tell the mother in the hospital that her health insurance was being stopped unless she paid for them. She can't work because of being in the hospital, so where the #%^%! is the money supposed to come from? The skin flint diocese and church pastor thought it more important to save the $80 a week in premiums than the two human lives were at stake. If life was so sacred, you know what the choice would have come down to between the money and the mother and child. Sick, sick, sick and BTW the mother lost the d but then Bishop Sean O'Malley got a consolation prize. He's a cardinal.

Memo to the catholic church- Stop the human life hypocrisy. I know what matters to you the most- the almighty dollar. In the meantime I name Father Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville South Carolina today's Knucklehead of the Day.