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Speaker
Paul D. Ryan’s abrupt decision to dismiss the House chaplain triggered
an uproar on Friday over religion, pitting Republican against Republican
and offering Democrats a political opportunity in a year already moving
their way.
Mr.
Ryan moved quietly two weeks ago to remove the chaplain, the Rev.
Patrick J. Conroy — so quietly that some lawmakers assumed the Catholic
priest was retiring. But in an interview on Thursday with The New York Times,
Father Conroy said he was blindsided when Mr. Ryan asked him to resign,
and suggested politics — specifically a prayer he gave in November when
Congress was debating a tax overhaul — may have been a factor in the
speaker’s decision.
Father
Conroy prayed then for lawmakers to “guarantee that there are not
winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared
by all Americans.” Shortly after, he said, he was admonished by Mr. Ryan
of Wisconsin, who is also a Roman Catholic.
“Padre, you just got to stay out of politics,” he recalled the speaker saying.
As
reports of the dismissal circulated in the Capitol, some Republicans,
in a closed-door meeting on Friday morning, demanded an explanation from
Mr. Ryan, while Democrats commandeered the House floor in a boisterous,
if unsuccessful, attempt to force the House to investigate Mr. Ryan’s
decision.
At
the House Republican meeting, Mr. Ryan told lawmakers that complaints
about Father Conroy’s pastoral care — not politics or prayer — led to
his decision, according to several who attended. The speaker’s
spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said simply that he had “made the decision
he believes to be in the best interest of the House.”
But
the dismissal appears to be an unforced error in a political year when
Republicans cannot afford mistakes. The controversy exposed
long-simmering tensions between Roman Catholics and evangelical
Christians over who should be lawmakers’ religious counselor. And a
public clash between Southern evangelical Republicans and Northern
Catholics could play to the advantage of Democrats, who are pressing
hard to bring working-class Catholic regions in Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ohio and Wisconsin back into the Democratic fold.
The
controversy was heightened when Representative Mark Walker, Republican
of North Carolina and a Baptist minister, said Thursday in an interview with The Hill
newspaper that he hoped the next chaplain of the House might come from a
nondenominational church tradition who could relate to members with
wives and children.
Catholic
Democrats quickly called his remarks anti-Catholic, as Catholic priests
are celibate, and Mr. Walker’s spokesman later said Mr. Walker was not
excluding a particular faith group. One Republican, Representative Peter
T. King of New York, took issue with the comments.
“To
be excluding one religion up front, that has all sorts of connotations
coming from the evangelical community,” Mr. King said in an interview.
He said he had received several inquiries from priests about Mr. Ryan’s
decision, and he told the speaker, “This issue is not going to go away
that quickly.”
A
House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to
discuss private conversations, said Mr. Ryan gave the Democratic leader,
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, an additional reason for
Father Conroy’s ouster: Mr. Ryan said he was upset that the chaplain had
granted an interview to The National Journal.
In
the interview, Father Conroy expounded on matters like sexual
harassment and a possible spiritual crisis in Congress. He said he was
asked during his job interview whether he had ever molested a child. And
while he said he had never been asked to counsel a victim of sexual
harassment or assault, he had handled cases of workplace abuse during
his tenure in the House.
“Think
about it: Who are the people that run for office?” he was quoted as
saying. “Are they all highly skilled in every endeavor? No! They’re not.
Many of them, I can tell you, don’t know how to say hello in the
hallway, let alone work with office people that maybe they don’t think
they have to listen to.”
Ms.
Pelosi issued a statement arguing that Mr. Ryan did not have the
authority to dismiss the chaplain. “I have expressed my forceful
disagreement with this decision to the speaker,” she said. “It is truly
sad that he made this decision, and it is especially bewildering that he
did so only a matter of months before the end of his term.”
The
outrage broke down largely along party lines. Of 148 members of
Congress who signed a letter to Mr. Ryan demanding answers on why he
ousted Father Conroy, just one, Representative Walter B. Jones of North
Carolina, was a Republican.
“This
will have ramifications,” Mr. Jones said Friday afternoon. “This is
bigger than Father Conroy and the House of Representatives. This is
about religion in America.”
The
controversy was multifaceted, pitting evangelicals against Catholics
but also resurfacing lingering anger over this Congress’s singular
accomplishment, the 10-year, $1.5 trillion overhaul of the tax code.
To
supporters of that legislation, especially to one of its chief
architects, Mr. Ryan, the prayer issued by Father Conroy would have
stung: “May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures
of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some
to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle,” the priest
said in the midst of the debate. “May their efforts these days
guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but
benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”
Father
Conroy, who was named to the post in 2011 by another Catholic
Republican speaker, John A. Boehner, said that he did not regard his
November prayer as political in nature.
“If
you are a hospital chaplain, you are going to pray about health,” he
said. “If you are a chaplain of Congress, you are going to pray about
what Congress is doing.”
He
said Mr. Ryan’s remarks to him afterward marked the only time anyone
from the speaker’s office had chastised him for veering into the
political realm.
“I’ve never been talked to about being political in seven years,” he said.
In an election that ultimately will revolve around President Trump, the controversy may well prove ephemeral.
“Whatever
Democrats try to do, if they try to politicize this or capitalize on
this, I just think it is way too obscure,” said Douglas Heye, a longtime
Republican political strategist and a Catholic. “If you are having a
larger conversation about ‘Catholic issues,’ Trump is going to dominate
that.”
Ten
years ago on Capitol Hill, the number of Catholic Democrats in the
House was more than double the number of Catholic Republicans. Now it is
nearly even.
Some
on the left see an emerging issue for Mr. Ryan and his supporters.
“Partisans will likely frame this as a Catholic versus evangelical
contest,” said Christopher J. Hale, a strategist who did Catholic
outreach for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. “They made a
political football out of a good Catholic priest.”
The
spat is particularly pointed because religious power in Washington has
shifted drastically under Mr. Trump to white evangelical leaders. Unlike
Mr. Obama, who relied regularly on a religiously diverse group of
interfaith advisers, including prominent Catholics, Mr. Trump has
elevated a select group of conservative evangelicals who routinely
defend his political agenda, and it is rare to see a Catholic bishop in
the White House.
Mr. Trump himself famously feuded
with Pope Francis during his 2016 presidential campaign over Mr.
Trump’s push to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, which
Francis called “not Christian.” Last year, some of Mr. Trump’s
evangelical advisers sought to quiet Vatican criticism of the rightward
direction of American Catholicism.
Before
Francis became pope, the Vatican seemed to favor Republican mainstay
issues, such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Francis’ rise
helped reset the role of Catholicism in American public life, and
prioritized political and economic messages on immigration and climate
change.
The
pope, like Father Conroy, is a Jesuit, an order of priests viewed by
some as more liberal. Father Conroy’s resignation is all the more
contentious in Catholic circles because Mr. Ryan is a Catholic
conservative.
“We
are a long way from Pope Francis at the White House and in the
Capitol,” said John Carr, the director of the Initiative on Catholic
Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. “The divisions
are greater, they are more stark and they are more angry.”
On
Friday, the Catholic Association, a more conservative group, came to
Mr. Ryan’s defense.
Maureen Ferguson, a senior policy adviser with the
organization, called criticism surrounding his decision to ask Father
Conroy to step down “downright absurd.”
“Anyone who knows Speaker Ryan knows he is a devoted Catholic,” she said. “Much ado is being made about nothing.”
For
others, it far more serious. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and
an editor at large of America magazine, said he has heard from
Catholics who are “dismayed” that a chaplain would be fired for
apparently defending the poor, and he worries about the anti-Catholic
dog-whistling.
“The
implication that, as one legislator said, a ‘family man’ would be more
suitable smacks of anti-Catholicism,” Father Martin said. “By that
yardstick, Jesus wouldn’t qualify either.”
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