{"id":99896,"date":"2018-05-07T17:03:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T23:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/paul-ryan-tries-and-fails-at-a-house-exorcism\/"},"modified":"2018-05-07T17:03:42","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T23:03:42","slug":"paul-ryan-tries-and-fails-at-a-house-exorcism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/paul-ryan-tries-and-fails-at-a-house-exorcism\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Ryan tries \u2013 and fails \u2013 at a House exorcism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kathleen
Kathleen Parker<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But these days, the Hill is buzzing as people absorb the odd goings-on between House Speaker Paul Ryan, who pushed the chaplain to resign, and the Rev. Patrick Conroy, who later withdrew his resignation, and Ryan\u2019s acceptance of what appears to be pastoral bullying.<\/p>\n

Stranger things will happen before sundown \u2013 and incredulity is no stranger to this town. But author Dan Brown might want to check into the Four Seasons for a bit. Something is going on, or is it? Maybe, as seems to be the case, Republican House members just didn\u2019t care for Conroy, and Ryan responded accordingly. As befits the scene, things got political before you could say \u201cAmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The facts: Conroy, a Jesuit priest and the chamber\u2019s chaplain since 2011, was, indeed, pressured to resign to avoid the drama of a firing. Conroy, who upon his resignation took to the pages of The New York Times to make his case, claimed that he may have been \u201casked to resign\u201d because of a prayer he had offered a few months earlier in which he urged Republicans to remember \u201call Americans\u201d as Congress debated tax reform.<\/p>\n

This is hardly a radical plea by a chaplain, whatever his vestments. Urging people to take care of the poor is a pretty easy pitch \u2013 even to Republicans \u2013 but especially to Ryan, who may be the last Jack Kemp Republican in what has become the Party of Trump.<\/p>\n

No sooner had the ink dried on Conroy\u2019s resignation letter than he announced that he had changed his mind. Ryan, who by then had likely regretted wading into that particular swamp, said, fine, you can stay.<\/p>\n

What?!<\/p>\n

On Capitol Hill, where head-scratching has become a greeting gesture among those who\u2019ve not yet been body-snatched, heads exploded.<\/p>\n

At this point, however, one might have a better sense of why Ryan wanted Conroy to leave in the first place. As a Catholic whisperer said to me, \u201cWait a minute, buddy, redemption is on the other side, not in this world.\u201d In other words, among the more-charitable remarks surrounding Conroy, many see an ego problem that has interfered with his pastoral role.<\/p>\n

While Ryan and Conroy dueled, Democrats wasted no time in trying to turn this hot mess into a cool opportunity. In a move that raised the bar on hypocrisy, the party of abortion \u2013 but not religious \u2013 rights galloped to the Catholic priest\u2019s defense. Yet, back in March, Democrats blocked the Conscience Protection Act from being included in the 2018 omnibus appropriations bill. That legislation would have ensured the rights of anti-abortion medical practitioners to not be forced to perform abortions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republicans, who have sacrificed their mantra of faith, freedom and family values on the altar of Donald Trump, suddenly began murmuring about a \u201cfamily man\u201d as chaplain. It wasn\u2019t helpful to clarity that, according to Conroy, Ryan\u2019s own chief of staff suggested that \u201cmaybe it\u2019s time that we had a chaplain that wasn\u2019t a Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irony, a glutton for attention, didn\u2019t stop there. When Ryan\u2019s predecessor John Boehner left his job as speaker, it was on the sensible heels and prayers of Pope Francis, who had addressed Congress at Boehner\u2019s behest. Ryan, alas, will be leaving his job under the cloud of having temporarily evicted a Jesuit priest from the House.<\/p>\n

The end result of this unforced fiasco is that soon there likely will be no chaplain at all. Once politicians start playing religious favorites, it\u2019s a given that the position will be viewed skeptically. Indeed, a debate has already begun about whether to eliminate the position.<\/p>\n

Many would applaud such a development in the spirit of separating religion and government. The problem with abolishing the office wouldn\u2019t be primarily religious but all too human. When politicians and presidents pray, they\u2019re essentially performing a rite of humility and submission to a higher order \u2013 if not to God then at least to something greater than themselves.<\/p>\n

Prayer also conveys an absence of ego, which, if only during a fleeting moment of meditation, is rather more reassuring than the prospect of a political body or individual convinced of its or his own superior infallibility.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture for The Washington Post. \u00a9 2018 The Washington Post Writers Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathleen Parker But these days, the Hill is buzzing as people absorb the odd goings-on between House Speaker Paul Ryan, who pushed the chaplain to resign, and the Rev. Patrick Conroy, who later withdrew his resignation, and Ryan\u2019s acceptance of what appears to be pastoral bullying. Stranger things will happen before sundown \u2013 and incredulity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6321],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-kathleen-parker","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99896"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}