Paul Ryan and the Unintentional Prophet

By DON ROLLINS

Prophets are a threatening lot. Present in the earliest indigenous spiritualities, every stripe of religion since has felt the sting of contrarians bent on telling inconvenient truths to inflexible power.

Another thing about prophets (a term meant to include persons of all genders) is their knack for speaking their hearts and minds at exactly the wrong time and place.

Take last month when on the floor of the US House of Representatives that chamber’s veteran chaplain dared recognize wealth disparity in an opening prayer — a relatively innocuous meditation that was all the subtext Speaker Paul Ryan needed to show his fellow Catholic the door.

The unintentional prophet-in-residence is Fr. Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit priest in his seventh year of ministry to House members and staff. Known for his sensitivity to diversity and steady pastoral presence, the low key, 67-year-old Conroy has been anything but a political lightning rod.

The offending prayer was hardly a departure from that reputation. Offered before a session that included debate over taxation, it’s a measured petition on behalf of the poor only a career trickle-downer such as Ryan would find so objectionable:

“... As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, 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. 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.”

Insult to injury, a few days prior to his firing, Ryan admonished Conroy within earshot of others: “Padre, you just got to stay out of politics.”

Given time to brood, Ryan decided to become the first Speaker in American history to pink slip a sitting chaplain.

The initial media spin indicated Conroy had elected to retire from his post; but Conroy corrected that narrative by revealing he had been sacked effective May 24.

Ryan’s next pivot was as hollow as it was callous. When pressed for a reason for the firing, he responded Conroy was no longer meeting the pastoral duties of his position, leading many to suspect Ryan used the incident to clear the way for a replacement more suitable to the Republicans’ vocal and influential evangelical House members.

Whatever the soon-to-retire Ryan’s true motivation, Fr. Conroy’s dismissal reeks of the deceit and opportunism for which the Speaker and his party have become famous.

Either way, a good pastor was losing his ministry, all because of a subtle reminder to a categorically insular and elitist governing body there are broken people not a half mile from their whitewashed sepulchre.

Epilogue: May 3, after two and a half weeks of uproar, Ryan accepted Conroy’s decision to rescind his resignation.

“I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as Chaplain of the House,” Ryan said in a statement. “It is my job as speaker to do what is best for this body, and I know that this body is not well served by a protracted fight over such an important post.”

Conroy wrote a two-page letter to Ryan earlier on May 3, accusing the speaker of ousting him from his role without cause April 15, the Washington Post reported.

“I have never been disciplined, nor reprimanded, nor have I ever heard a complaint about my ministry during my time as House chaplain,” Conroy wrote.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister and substance abuse counselor living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2018

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