Sating the Anti-Catholic Feelings Among Evangelicals

It appeared the Evangelists struck again as they consolidate their power in Congress. This time it was a somewhat petty maneuver but one has to admit that with their gaining the ascendancy in the United States they are entitled to the spoils that go along with gaining significant control of Congress and the White House.

It had been years that they were subject to the humiliation of the prayer that was offered at the beginning of each day. It was not being offered by one of their own but by one of a suspect faith. Father Patrick Conroy a Jesuit of the Catholic religion was the chaplain of the House of Representative. He had been chaplain since 2011 when he was appointed by John Boehner (a Catholic) along with the concurrence of Nancy Pelosi (a Catholic). His predecessor appointed in 2000 was Father Daniel Coughlin. That had the Catholics in charge of offering the opening prayer for 18 straight years.

When Father Coughlin was appointed it was after a slight controversy. A search committee had been formed to nominate the next chaplain. They took a secret ballot after conducting interviews and voted for a Catholic priest.  The Speaker, the estimable pervert Dennis Hastert, ignored the committee and picked a Presbyterian minister. Complaints alleging anti-Catholic bias resulted in the minister withdrawing and Coughlin (a different priest than the one who received the votes) being appointed.

It was hard to believe there was an anti-Catholic bias. There had been 58 House chaplains before Coughlin, None were Catholic. None were other than Protestant. None were women.

Father Conroy was in the middle of his term when he was approached on Friday the 13th of April by the someone from the office of Speaker Paul Ryan (a Catholic). Conroy was told that “maybe it was time that we had a chaplain that wasn’t a Catholic” and he was asked to resign. He would have been the first chaplain ever prevented from completing his term in office.

Conroy resigned and then unresigned. In his unresigning letter he wrote:

“you publicly indicated that my “pastoral services” to some members were lacking and that I did not offer adequate “spiritual counseling”  to others. . . . no such criticism has ever been leveled against me during my tenure as House Chaplain . . . .”

There were two indications that the real reason for the change was the grumblings of the Evangelists that a Catholic held the position. First, after a meeting with Ryan Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., said Ryan told members “that there were concerns expressed to him, the speaker, from a large number of members that their pastoral needs were not being met by Father Conroy;”  the other was the search committee for a new chaplain set up by Ryan consisted of three Republican Baptists and one Methodist. One of the Republicans leading the committee, Mark Walker of North Carolina, said he wants the next chaplain to have a family which rules out any Catholic priest. One member labeled Walker’s statement as “anti-Catholic on its face.”    

Ryan facing a lot of heat from the members of Congress backed off. He said he would let Conroy serve out the rest of his term which is over when this Congress ends this year. One can expect that it will be his last no matter who controls the House in the next session.

The Big Question is why did Ryan do what he did at this time. He did not do it in a vacuum nor was it for some speech Conroy made last year. Why was he pushed out so suddenly? I have to believe the jettisoning of a Catholic priest and the bringing on of an Evangelical pastor was being done for purely political reasons. It was in part a way to sate the anti-Catholic Evangelical dismay of having a priest in that position. The Evangelical candidates for election to the House this year could take credit for the expulsion of the papist and placing one of their own in his position – making America great again.

Nothing else seems to fit. It was clearly using religious bigotry to get votes. What’s surprising is Catholic Ryan was so willing to go along with it.

 

41 Comments

  1. Wa-llahi! If you want to see what real sectarianism looks like, take a trip to Derry. Religious bigotry is alive and well in the Six Counties.

  2. John King McDonald

    I remember Johnny ” Got a quarter? ” back in the day, in Southie.

    Johnny was a little touched in the head as they say on Prince Edward Island . Yet, he was a robust and congenial barrel full of monkeys of a sturdy little man and he was always neat in appearance. His father owned several buildings including the rooming house where Johnny lived, gratis of course , up on East Broadway.

    Johnny’s Shtick was to ask every single soul he met for a Quarter.

    I always obliged . I would also let him hang down the end of the Store 24 counter and busily fuss about , wiping the counter if a customer spilled coffee , beaming in the officialdom which I happily invested in him .

    In Therapeutic Hypnosis you adapt yourself to the person’s ” Reality Orientation ” in order to communicate with them effectively. There is always … Work … to do .

    Jesus

  3. John King McDonald

    Bill’s paean to Ecumenicism having landed in the thread , curiously, where it has , following the citing of a man’s death, we add the following :

    There is a smugnesss to Religion.

    It says ….Pray with me … often as a way of asserting moral authority that rarely passes the most cursory muster … when really you would find it much more honest and spiritually true of them to say … Hey … Fuck you man !
    I am in the mix and this is my Shtick.

    This is how the Vatican gets to manipulate as cynically as any secular host and still keep their cloaks and daggers clean . So to speak .

    Mantled in virtue . As Emerson said … ” The more he spoke of his virtue the faster we counted the spoons.”

    Somewhat akin to when the ebullient barristas at Starbucks , long schooled in the servility of nosing the seats of those they consider their superiors, engage you in unwarranted snarkiness and then gaily sing out …. You have a nice day, Sir . That these never tip them and regard them with contempt is of no matter.

    Jesus

  4. John King McDonald

    Passive Aggressives to the left .

    Hypocrites get NO SOUP !!!!!!!!

    NEXXXXXXXTTTTT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

  5. Here’s a short story about INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

    From my 30s-50s, every year I’d fly somewhere, on my own . . .I took about ten 2 week vacations out West, New Mexico to British Columbia, LA to Vegas to Missoula to St. Paul . . .then another 10 or more weekend-three day trips to Louisville, Kentucky or the DC-area, or all over Florida, (Hemingway’s house in Key West; Faulkner’s house in Oxford, Mississippi; met a cousin/nephew of Celtic player at a small 7-11 type roadside store outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama et al . . .also took a few hikes to Europe, too, with brothers . .

    Well, on on this one particular trip to Blacksburg, VA to see BC play Virginia Tech in football, I stopped in Roanoake (40 miles from Blacksburg and 270 miles from DC) and stood at dawn on Mill Mountain overlooking the valley. There was only one black pickup truck in the parking lot . .about 200 feet away . . .I couldn’t tell if one or two men were in it, but it looked occupied and idle . . .someone napping, I figured

    Within 15 minutes, I heard several other vehicles pull into the parking lot behind me and then saw seven or eight men approach me . .a tough looking crew of Southerners, country-folk, Blue Ridge, Tennessee-Kentucky-hollow type-mountain men, hardened men, they appeared . . .aged about late twenties, mid thirties, maybe forty, maybe one was in his early fifties . . . I was late forty, say, early fifties . . .they stood nearby, glancing over at me, while I glanced back at them . . .strangers

    One big man, casually dressed, khaki slacks, plaid shirt, aged late-forties, looked at me standing there with my binoculars, sensed my apprehension, I guess, and came right up to me: “Good morning, friend. Would you like to join us in a prayer service?”

    This rugged crew was there to pray.

    I said, “Sure, but I’m a Catholic.” He said, “Well, that’s all right. We got some Catholics down here. In fact two of the guys in our daily morning prayer group are Catholics . . there’s usually ten or twenty of us . . . ”

    And so we prayed . . .together . . .

    Now, there was ECUMENISM at work on MILL MOUNTAIN, ROANOKE, VIRGINIA

    We prayed to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

  6. John King McDonald

    Brian Halloran was in an equally *precarious existential state with the FBI .

  7. John King McDonald

    In the midst , or perhaps more appropriately the ” mist,” of surveillance that Stephen DiSarra’s wife says he said he was the subject of he comes up missing . Stephen DiSarra by that time presumably had been ” reached out to”, as those HBO gangster specials say, by the FBI and had had initial contact . Considering the stakes and the Federal penchant for State of Art surveillance 24/7 as regards what would be an extremely high profile case, his movements were monitored. He also felt State and Boston were watching him at the same time. The extent to which info was co-ordinated among the three is undetermined.

    Brian Halloran was in an equally unlikely existential state with the FBI when he was executed. Whether he had made a deal with the Devil and the Devil reneged we know not .

    The Devil is always in the details .

  8. John King McDonald

    A guy is being wooed by the Feds to testify against Boston mobsters and they let him be driven off from his home in a Red SUV to that meeting , never to be seen alive again ???

    How much is John Morris’s pension ???

    He is earning every Benjamin .

  9. John King McDonald

    Flemmi was owed 60K by Stephen DiSarra . This was revealed today. If you owe the Beast 60K you have to go to the meeting . You are dead if you don’t .

    And, unfortunately with the Beast , if you do .

    Flemmi for the Prosecution your Honor !!!

  10. John King McDonald

    God Pilots and Pontius Pilates .

    Generally, I prefer the honesty of the latter.

  11. John King McDonald

    EGAD !!! … God help the poor suffering bastard . Take Barabbas then ……

    Substitute ” Barboza” and you have a regular old crucifixion.

    And …. PETER ….. hears the cockle doodle do ….in the Garden …

    And we now understand the silence.

    Not the Boston Garden, btw.

  12. Liberation Theology, the humanistic side of Catholicism, isn’t really acceptable to those of the Calvinist persuasion who believe one’s monetary wealth is the truest sign of God’s favor. Right-wing conservative Catholicism shares that idea, and, its’ attendant tendency toward greed. General Rios Montt’s brother was the archbishop of Guatemala City. The Montt brothers went after the young Jesuits from Ireland and Spain who’d come to catechize the Maya campesinos in the alto-plano. Working in tandem with G-2 the high church helped the security forces arrest the young priests. They were interrogated, tortured, then, killed, and, their bodies disappeared.

    • The Death and Cruel LIfe of Effrain Rios Montt: https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21740043-despots-bloody-biography-suggests-there-hope-guatemala-death-and-cruel-life

      This is a quick read . . .takes five minutes . . .of course CIA is involved in installing dictators, as its been involved since before Vietnam . . .read Graham Greene . . .American Imperialists and British Imperialists in action in fiction and in real life . . . hundreds of thousands . . . .millions die . . . revolutions are suppressed . . .dictators installed, Shahs here, Generalissimos there . . .when will We the People gut the Deep State . . .

      • Bill: I’m an eye-witness to the crimes of Rios Montt’s regime.

        • Khalid, I’d be very interested in your eyewitness accounts.

          I once met/courted/dated/befriended, briefly, the daughter of one of the five generals of the Nicaraguan Army . . .he was not one of the bad guys . .
          . . .years later I was afraid her father and even she would become victims of the revolutionaries . . .the Sadinistas . . . .but my research did not establish that . . .whew . . .pray for peace

          Anyway, she was lovely; I met her in Nassau on Spring Break . . .she was a student at U.Miami . . .she accompanied three of us as we drove a “return” car from Miami to Brooklyn . . .as I recall (I get facts mixed a bit) one of the guys was at Providence, in R.I., and was the son of a judgeand lived in North Bergen, N.J. . . .one was from Holy Cross and I was in grad school in DC at Georgetown . . .She was a 21 year old undergrad at Miami. ..we were just friends . . .nothing intimate . . .but we had a lot of fun

          I don’t think it would be breaking a confidence or breaking anything like a patient/doctor or lawyer/client confidence to mention her name

          Alicia Montiel (Sp?) and she was very bright, very personal, adventuresome, courageous and VERY BEAUTIFUL . . .Van Morrison’s songs “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Gloria” remind me of her, as does “The Girl from Ipanema”

          • “Khalid, I’d be very interested in your eyewitness accounts.”

            I am also interested in those accounts. I have walked the hills of Northern Guatemala and bivouacked with some of the rebels and their families. Many of them had been through Hell several times in their long, painful lives.

            I have also interviewed many here in the DC area that lived through the Contras reign of evil and many from the terror in El Salvador that Joe Moakley worked tirelessly to expose and contain. It amazes me that many of these folks have the strength to pull it together and continue living.

  13. Ecumenical Catholics? I am reminded of the service performed at a nephew’s wedding at an Anglican church. Just before communion was to be given out, the priest commented-” I know that there a lot of our Catholic brethren here today and are wondering “Can we or can’t we (receive)? The answer is, you can but we can’t.”

    • True, Hutch . . .the priests have to play it close to the rest . . .remember the greatness of reading the Catholic Catechism . . .after it states all that is good and evil, right and wrong, proper and improper . . .all the teachings in depth . . .for instance, talking negatively about someone behind his back even if its true is still a sin: it’s the sin of DETRACTION
      So, after the Catechism ( a thick tome) instructs us about a lot of teachings, it emphasizes: THE PRIMACY OF INDIVIDUAL INFORMED CONSCIENCE . . .in other words, if you’ve thought it over and disagree with a teaching of the Church, let’s say on mandatory Sunday Mass or having lust in your heart . . .then what rules is YOUR CONSCIENCE . . .so says the teachers of the Catholic Faith . . .

      THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIENCE, the Church says: “To thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day, that thou then canst be false to any man . . .something like that the Bard said . .”

      With lust, I think people confuse the appreciation of beauty which is good, with the intent to plot, deceive and seduce for self-gratification which is bad . . .

      • close to the vest . . .that’s why they call them vestments

      • Bill, I remember one night at a meeting of the Savin Hill Theological Society we discussed the true definition of mortal sin. (You were probably frittering away your time at Georgetown). I think it was Teddy R. who took the prize-“It is a deliberate moral affront to God” said T.R.

        Well, this was great news-we all decided that we never did anything like that so all our sins were venial. A few years in purgatory and we’ll hangin’ with St. Pete.

  14. Maybe it was Father Conroy’s Liberation Theology prayer on the day of the tax bill. Paul Ryan is certainly not anti-Catholic, nor at this stage in his career is he susceptible to pressure. Why do we get charged nearly a half million dollars a year for the Officeof the House Chaplain and a similar amount for one in the Senate anyway? We pay for their haircuts and a gym. Can’t they at least see (and pay for) their own clergy?

    • Judge, I agree. It all goes to a lack of concern about the taxpayer and bloated big government. Why can’t liberals and conservatives agree on trimming the size of government, reducing the tax code to ten pages and filings to postcard, and requiring all lobbyists submit their ideas in writing on sheet of paper per issue, thereby preserving the Constitutional right to petition government for a redress of grievances. Lobbyists get one-page . . .other citizens (not hired guns) can write at length to government . . .those are some simple proposals
      PLUS . .get a volunteer Chaplain to visit and pray daily FOR FREE!

  15. Paul Ryan is a right-wing Catholic of the Father Coughlin model. Tom Monaghan is, also, a good example of the type. Google “Integrism”

  16. John King McDonald

    ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

  17. John King McDonald

    Who cares ??? …. The malformed Methuselah , Flemmi , who put him in to something that Connolly may not ever have really realized he was in , will perjure himself again in the Salemme trial .

    Meanwhile, the Someday Soldiers stand bright guard at the cemetery gate .

  18. John King McDonald

    How old is John Connolly ?

    • John is now 77, born in Sept 1940 as I recall . . .

      • John King McDonald

        That’s quite a quip under the circumstances. It was a rhetorical question. It is just that type of rugged Boston Irish humor I am sure John most misses…… YIKES !!!

  19. I’m glad Father Conroy got to keep his job, and I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that the Jesuit prelate had triumphed over Speaker Ryan. (Pelosi claimed that she was in Conroy’s corner, but I believe Ryan’s assertion that she was indifferent to his fate. )

    Obviously, there are serious cultural and doctrinal divisions between Catholics and evangelicals.

    As to the Salemme trial, I hear that nobody under the age of 65 will be admitted to the courtroom. Shouldn’t Fred Wyshak be doing battle with the current crop of Boston mobsters??

  20. John King McDonald

    Goats are more into filibuster than bluster as a matter of nature and habit , but you get the cloven hoof, Right ???

  21. John King McDonald

    Why are you not posted rather than posting ???

    It is a beautiful May day . The venue and opportunity for Protest are here .
    Sure, it is not like skylarking around Harvard Yard with sandwich board proclamations of FED BULLY BOY PROSECUTORS , but more to the point , this is a chance to show all that talk is not cheap.

    Juror #12 at least had the courage of , if not a ” Conviction,” at least her … Convictions.

    All else seems like bluster . Amateur . Not Pro . Nothing confirmed . Only blustered on about .

  22. 1. Savin HIll Billy’s book will be out in paperback June 28, 2018, my new publisher Bookbaby tells me. I write because I like to write. I share my ideas freely and lose money on all I write . . .have lost money on books since ’96 when Walkowski and I published our first . .our hope is to LIGHT A CANDLE (there’s the caps) not curse the darkness

    2. My girlfriends have been Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Atheistic and of every race and ethnic group in America.

    My beautiful wife was Methodist . .she was Irish, English, German, Cherokee Indian

    My best friend, Bob Mancini, half Italian, half Polish, a Roman Catholic, who married a beautiful Episcopalian girl, Laura; they raised their three beautiful daughters as Congregationalists

    Bob played guitar and I played keyboards (since ’66 in our little band and before: our favorite song was “Wild Thing” by the Trogs; Hutch played guitar with us) . . . .
    Anyway Bob asked me to play piano (electric/digital keyboard) in their Church’s Christian Rock Praise group Sunday Services for a few years

    You know, I listened to those Congregationalist/Presbyterian Sunday Sermons for two years and I could not tell whether I was listening to Jesuit priest, an Anglican priest, a Methodist minister, or what . . .the message was the same Christian message . . .they read the same passages from the same Bible (liturgists debate a word or two without materiality.)

    The point is . . .it is the 21st Century . . .I am now related by blood and marriage to every race, religion and ethnic group in America

    Stop the hate-baiting . . . .Good folks are everywhere . . .Evangelicals are as good as Catholics are as good as Lutherans are as good as Jews are as good as Muslims and Baptists . . . .There’s good and bad in all of us: As one Minister quoted: “There’s so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly befits any of us, to talk about the rest of us.”

    I asked a priest:”Father, when they give out bread and wine (grape juice) at these Congregational/Presbyterian Services, I always receive. Is that O.K.?” “Sure it is, he said, but remember the Roman Catholic Church and it’s service is the one true church and service.” Now, excuse me, but all the Christian denominations believe their services and traditions are the one true ones, and they don’t hate their fellow Christians . . .they all preach, EACH AND EVERY SUNDAY OF THE YEAR AT EACH AND EVERY SUNDAY SERVICE THE WORDS OF JESUS: Love your neighbor as yourself: Even if he is a Hindi. It is the ECUMENICAL AGE! “Come together” like the Beatles sang. “Morning has broken” like the great Muslim Rock & Roller Cat Stevens poetically sang…

    So, I see the FAITH in all denominations, and the love and goodness in all the ministers and preachers . . .a few saints, most sinners like me, just another SAVIN HILL BILLY . . .LET’S ROCK & ROLL . . .and while we fight the good fight, remember: HAVE FUN

  23. John King McDonald

    Connolly is in Hell. His principal accuser is doing a good turn for the forces of Fair Play To Ya’ Ye Say ? down on Northern Ave.

    I expect Savin Hill Billy is gone gruff on the Moakley Courthouse, and is thus , here, unavailable for comment .

    If a butterfly riffling its wings in Shanghai can precipitate a hurricane on the other side of the World then may Bill’s Sandwich Board Wings , memorialized often here, create the heavy weather he has promised for John Connolly’s persecutors !

    IF NOT NOW , WHEN ???

  24. Its time that the Catholics smarten up. They have elected every Republican president since Regan, where has it taken us. Think about it.

  25. Did you ever think of the possibility that some of the dissatisfaction with Fr. Conroy could have been justified, specifically a prayer offered that was viewed as an attack on the recent tax bill? There is a psychological concept called projection that often clouds visage. Perhaps the hatred is in your heart.

  26. John King McDonald

    BUST SOME CAPS, BILLY !!!

  27. John King McDonald

    Unless , basically … You are out of it .

  28. John King McDonald

    Forget about dealing with …. ” It was in part a way to sate the anti-Catholic Evangelical dismay at having a priest in that position .”

    I am half-convinced you wrote the entire post just for the internal rhythm and musicality of that sentence !

    Good Job ! You get a silver Star !

    Forget getting to work ” Sate ” into a sentence that has … ‘Evangelicals’ … in it . You did that .

    SATAN is the Guv”mint’s ★ witness on Northern Ave .

    Get some work done . Put your back into it !!!

  29. John King McDonald

    For its own oddly convoluted and involuted reasons the Federal authorities are trying a guy they have countenanced as a murderer before, when it suited them , as a … Gangland murderer.

    Their star witness is Steven ” The Dentist From Hell ” Flemmi .

    This trial is an object lesson in …. WHAT ???

    Oh, screw it . Let’s fret about the fat and happy House Chaplain who got caught up in the sectarian bickering that all the God Pilots are so prone to !

    Morally craven to avert your eyes .

  30. John King McDonald

    Salemme trial begins today and this is what you’ve got ?

    Deplorable .