The answer is “yes.” According to the Rev. Joseph Illo, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Modesto, California. Catholics who voted for President-elect Barack Obama may have committed a mortal sin (the gravest kind). These individuals should probably get themselves to a confessional and ask forgiveness before receiving holy communion, the piece of bread that members of that faith consider the body of their dead savior.

In a letter to parishioners following a sermon in which he suggested confession for those who voted for Obama, Illo explained: “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.” Catholics believe that receiving communion in a state of mortal sin is another mortal sin.

The bishop of the Stockton Diocese, the Most Rev. Stephen Blaire, isn’t quite agreeing with Illo. Blaire doesn’t think Catholics should rush out and tell their priest how they voted. Blaire told the Modesto Bee that a Catholic supporting Obama wasn’t necessarily a problem, unless he or she “voted for a pro-abortion or pro-choice candidate -- if that’s the reason you voted for them.”

Illo wasn’t the only priest admonishing his flock for voting for Obama. Rev. Jay Scott Newman, a priest in Greenville, South Carolina, wrote to his parishioners before the election: “Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law.”

Let me see if I got this right. It’s not a mortal sin if a Catholic supports a politician who backs the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, the death penalty, or even torture. Yet it’s a mortal sin if a Catholic votes for a politician who supports abortion?

If the church is going to hold a pro-choice politician accountable for the fetuses aborted in this country, why not also hold him responsible for the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, if he voted for the wars or even for funding them? Aren’t the lives lost in wars just as sacred as fetuses?

Obviously not. The Pope says he opposes the War in Iraq, but neither he nor the clergy here in this country have done much to demonstrate that opposition. Where is the moral outrage from the archbishops, bishops, priests and nuns? Where is the clergy when anti-war activists take to the streets?

If the Church put as much energy into ending war as it does abortion, if it discouraged Catholics from joining the military, if it spoke out against all killing of human beings (as in “thou shalt not kill”), including via the death penalty, then I could respect its position on fetuses.

And Illo’s final statement in his letter to parishioners would make sense: “All of us Catholics, all people of sound reason and good will, can and must simply require our public officials to act reasonably and responsibly in respect to human life.”

Given the American Catholic Church’s lack of public outrage over George Bush’s wars, it’s obvious that priests such as Illo and Newman are more concerned about the church’s political agenda than protecting human life.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sailing Beyond Columbus, and editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which will be published next year by City Lights Books. His website: www.avicollimecca.com