by MITCHELL LANDSBERG
There was. There was a last straw. But it’s very important to emphasize that it was the sum total of a lot of things. There were some last straws that had to do with papal pronouncements, the pope going to Africa and declaring that condoms were not a good idea and would not help in the AIDS epidemic; the pope standing up in Portugal and saying that one of the most insidious evils faced by the world today is same-sex marriage. You know, we live in a world where genocide and human slavery are realities, and the pope chose to focus on same-sex marriage. That was a moment of, “What in the world am I doing connected to this religion?” But the real last straw, the very last straw, was the bishop of Phoenix, Ariz., Thomas Olmsted, coming out and publicly condemning a nun named Sister Margaret McBride for authorizing a life-saving abortion for a dying mother in a Phoenix hospital. What he said in essence was that she had excommunicated herself by authorizing the abortion, and I could write a book on why I think that was a ruthless and immoral decision.
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