A couple of really interesting articles today on the not-talked-about-enough issue of abortion.

The first article comes from LifeSiteNews. It tells of a Serbian physician who after having aborted 48,000 babies became one of the biggest Pro Life advocates in the Balkans.

In describing his conversion, Adasevic said he "dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. 'My name is Thomas Aquinas,' the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn't recognize the name."

"Why don't you ask me who these children are?" St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream. "They are the ones you killed with your abortions,” the Dominican saint told him. Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions, the article stated.

Here's the second article – from the AP today:

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote.

"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. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

As a reformed Protestant, I don't believe that penance is required to be reconciled to God. We believe that is what Jesus did for us when He died for our sins.

I do, however, agree with the premise that if any of us knowingly supports anything where sin is committed against the Lord, we should examine ourselves before participating in the Lord's Supper, and repent of this sin along with the others we've committed.