Although he has spent most of his time in Congress trying to starve and kill the poor, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) likes to cite his Catholic faith when he feigns concern for the poor.
But we all know Paul Ryan is a fake poverty warrior and he may have a fake Catholic, too.
Speaker Ryan has reportedly fired Father Patrick Conroy, only the second Catholic priest to ever hold the position of House Chaplain and the first chaplain to ever be fired, because he prayed for equal opportunity for all Americans.
According to Conroy's resignation letter, Ryan scolded him for saying this:
“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.”
That's a generously vague and noncontroversial thing to say, but Paul Ryan apparently took it as an affront to his tax cuts for the rich.
Now, this is ugly enough, but it could get uglier.
Evangelicals in the House are now all but saying the next House Chaplain should not be Catholic.
"I'm looking for somebody who has a little age, that has adult children, that kind of can connect with the bulk of the body here, Republicans and Democrats who are going through, back home the wife, the family ... that has some counseling experience ... because what's needed in the body here is people who can sit down with different members, male, female, Democrat, Republican, and just talk about what it is kind of to be up here," Walker, a Southern Baptist minister and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told reporters Thursday.
A lot of people are going to be dismissive of this because who cares about the House Chaplain, right? But I think this is bigger than that.
You can't go five minutes without a Republican lecturing someone about free speech and religious liberty, but they've fired a Catholic priest and might replace him with someone more radical for purely political reasons.
The only religion Republicans are interested in defending is radical conservative Christianity. Everything else is bullshit.