Obama and Fr. Michael Pfleger

I can't count the number of priests that I've known throughout my life.

I've spent hours and hours in the pews of Catholic churches listening to priests. I've spent hours and hours in the classroom, from grade school through college, being taught by priests.

I've heard some priests get vaguely political in their homilies, but nothing like Pfleger.

Some do push thinly-veiled political agendas, particularly in the classroom, but I've never experienced anything as politically blatant and specific during a religious service as Pfleger's performance. I've certainly never seen a Catholic priest openly mock someone the way Pfleger mocked Hillary Clinton.

I've never seen a Catholic priest act like Pfleger. Absolutely never.

Was Pfleger the final straw for Barack Obama and his professed devotion to the Trinity United Church of Christ? Was it the fear of losing the Catholic vote that caused Obama to sever his ties to the church now? Perhaps it was just a bit of housekeeping to be done before securing the Democrat nomination.

Of course, now that Obama is no longer a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, Pfleger is supposed to become irrelevant.

It would be so simple for Obama if that's how things would work out.

Yes, all of us probably have something in our pasts that we would like to go away, to just disappear.

It doesn't work that way.

You can't erase twenty years.