MP banned from communion over assisted dying bill vote

AN MP says he was banned from communion and denounced in front of the congregation at his Dorking church after he voted in favour of the assisted dying bill.

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Chris Coghlan has called his treatment “outrageous” and said only time will tell if he is able to continue as a Catholic.

Four days before the assisted dying vote, the Liberal Democrat member for Dorking and Horley claims his priest at St Joseph’s Church, in Falkland Road, wrote to him say that if he voted for assisted dying he would be “an obstinate public sinner and be denied Holy Communion”, Mr Coghlan said.

The weekend after the vote in the Commons, he says Father Ian Vane publicly announced to the congregation he would be denied communion because of the way he had voted.

Mr Coghlan was not in church to hear it, but children who are friends with his children were.

“I voted for assisted dying in accordance with the overwhelming wishes of my constituents, my conscience and nothing else. I believe that that is my duty as an MP,” said Mr Coghlan, who described himself as a “sometimes-agnostic Catholic”.