Does God hate abortionists or Catholics?

In an otherwise interesting piece on pro-lifers who've moved away from the Republican party for this election posted today on Slate, one sentence in particular slapped me right across the face:

"Doug Kmiec, the conservative pro-life law professor, was denied the sacrament this summer after he announced in Slate that he was for Obama."

Nor, apparently, is Mr. Kmiec an isolated incident. Catholic Republicans considering voting for Obama in the upcoming election were referred to anonymously in the piece because they didn't want to be thought of as abandoning their faith and, for some, because they had a real "fear of being barred from receiving communion."

I know nothing about Mr. Kmiec or his beliefs on abortion. Nor do I need to. Because the church - Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise - has no business inserting itself into the politics of its members. Nor does it have any business denying its members a holy sacrament based on their stated political preference. If God has a problem with a pro-life Catholic voting for Obama, I'm sure he'll deal with it in his own way. Petty punishments that use people's faith against them are not only fundamentally ridiculous, they also degrade the sanctity of belief itself.

For shame.