Speaker Paul Ryan, who has tended his recalcitrant flock in the House with a generally deft hand, stumbled last week on a trivial matter: the status of the House chaplain, a fractious Jesuit named Rev. Patrick Conroy. Six months short of his own withdrawal from Congress, Speaker Ryan suggested to Father Conroy that he quit his seven-year tenure as chaplain before he was shoved aside, and Conroy duly announced his resignation.
It is not entirely clear what prompted Ryan to act. Conroy seems to have raised eyebrows in certain quarters of the House with opening prayers that strayed from bipartisanship, and there are stories of complaints about his pastoral inattention to some members. Still, Conroy’s behavior during resignation week suggests that rumors of ill-temper and high self-regard are not misplaced. Having submitted his resignation to Ryan, he promptly withdrew it—and Ryan, no doubt seeking to minimize damage, agreed.
Too late. There were press reports that an aide to Ryan had remarked to Conroy that it might be time for a non-Catholic chaplain to rotate in—the two pastors for the past 18 years have both been Roman Catholic—and Conroy’s lawyer complained publicly about religious bias. This opened the floodgates to what amounted to an all-Catholic assault on Ryan: A progressive Franciscan asserted in the pages of the Hill that Conroy is a “true Catholic” whereas Ryan is not, and the always-reliable Catholic League for Religious Liberty and Civil Rights detected widespread anti-Catholic prejudice in the House.
Before too long, House Democrats, led by minority leader Nancy Pelosi, were calling for justice for their embattled chaplain and, of course, public hearings. Whether such hearings will ever take place is doubtful, as is Conroy’s survival as chaplain beyond next January. Still, what had begun as a gesture of institutional reform—and, presumably, conciliation and renewal—soon deteriorated into partisan rancor and sectarian strife. Which is too bad, if all too predictable.
Speaking as a mildly detached Protestant who is also a graduate of a Roman Catholic university, I am constrained to say that Paul Ryan has always struck me as a legislator whose Christian beliefs inform his public and personal practices. And the fact that Democrats quickly formed a defensive phalanx around Father Conroy suggests that the dogma in play is ideological, not theological.
There may also be a lesson here about unintended consequences. For one inevitable outcome of the dispute has been a revival of discussion, out loud and sometimes fervent, about whether either house of Congress requires a chaplain at all.
We are, of course, a republic with no established church and a constitutional mandate for separation of church and state. As is well known, the phrase is not explicitly stated in our national charter; but as the courts have largely ruled, it is surely implied. And no less than James Madison, father of the Constitution, believed that neither the House nor Senate should have chaplains and that sessions of Congress need not—indeed should not—be opened with prayer.
Yet Madison also knew that we’re a pious democracy and kept his views prudently to himself. Just as presidential inaugurations and professional athletic contests alike begin with prayer, we’ve adjusted in political life to a casual mixture of civic practice and faith.
This has led, in such matters as Father Conroy’s post, to a pleasant via media in public life to which I subscribe. People who take their religion seriously, or believe that God pays close attention to the United States of America, are welcome to bow their heads when the chaplain prays; everyone else is free to check his watch. In the long run, everybody—except serial malcontents and the holier-than-thou—is largely satisfied, or at least not dangerously aggrieved. And in a society of our size and scope, that’s no minor feat.
For my sins, I tend to apply this principle to the divisive subject of public monuments and civic observance. I also happen to believe that congressional chaplains are a useful adornment to the American political tradition and opening prayers emphasize the serious nature of congressional labor. Tradition, moreover, gives weight to the national project. By modern standards, George Washington was more faithful statesman than statesman of faith, but his public pronouncements invariably included a ritual invocation to Divine Providence, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt prayed on the radio for the success of the D-Day invasion.
In my youth, the Senate chaplain (1949-69) was a Methodist divine named Frederick Brown Harris, whose grave but strictly nonpartisan appeals to heaven perfectly reflected the civic piety of the Eisenhower era. But the Senate has always taken its chaplaincy a little more seriously than the House, and as the nation has evolved over time, so has Harris’s old job. The current Senate chaplain, for instance, is a much-admired African-American Seventh-day Adventist.
Whether Paul Ryan’s chief of staff actually suggested that it was time for a non-Catholic chaplain in the House (he denies it), the point is not without merit—and no reflection on Rev. Patrick Conroy’s faith or political views. Democrats and Republicans take note: The enterprise for which chaplains pray in Congress is of greater importance than any particular faction or individual cleric.
