In the mid-19th century, “help wanted” ads routinely specified, “no Irish need apply.” Now the House of Representatives is saying, “no Catholics need apply.”
Source/Credit: Chicago Sun - Times
By Cokie Roberts/Steven V. Roberts | May 3, 2018
The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. once said that anti-Catholicism was “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.”
We were reminded of his comment when Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, fired the Rev. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest who’s been serving as House chaplain since 2011.
As an interfaith couple — Cokie is Catholic; Steve, Jewish — we have always been reluctant to see religious bias as a motive for political actions. Ryan himself is a practicing Catholic and we don’t know all the reasons behind his decision. But we do know this: Terminating Father Conroy unveiled an ugly strain of anti-Catholicism infecting some House Republicans.
“The controversy,” reported the New York Times, “exposed long-simmering tensions between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians over who should be the lawmakers’ religious counselor.”
If there’s any doubt on this point, listen to Rep. Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican and Southern Baptist minister who was heading the search for a new chaplain until he withdrew under fire.
“I’m looking for somebody who has a little age, that has adult children,” he told The Hill newspaper, thus ruling out any celibate pastors.
In the mid-19th century, “help wanted” ads routinely specified, “no Irish need apply.” Now the House of Representatives is saying, “no Catholics need apply.”
“We, on its face, would consider such a remark to be anti-Catholic — on its face,” fumed Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat. “So you’re eliminating anyone who’s a Catholic priest — a Catholic nun — from being the chaplain of the House. … Now I don’t know if Walker knows that’s what he really said. But to any Catholic ears, that’s what we heard.”
They heard right. By Walker’s yardstick, “Jesus wouldn’t qualify, either” for the House post, cracked the Rev. James Martin, editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America.
But Conroy’s sin went beyond his lack of a family. He also believes in Christian teachings about helping the poor, and offered a prayer last fall that infuriated conservatives because he urged Congress to pass a tax bill that provided “benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”
Conservatives are delighted with Catholic precepts that oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, but are appalled at the church’s calls for wider immigration and social justice. (Liberals are equally inconsistent, embracing Catholic concerns for the needy but denouncing their pro-life and anti-gay positions.)
There’s a much larger issue here than one man’s job. “This is about religion in America,” says Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, and he is correct. [more ...]
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Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. Steven V. Roberts is a politicial analyst for ABC Radio and a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. They are married, and together they write a weekly syndicated column.
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