Firing of House Chaplain Causes Uproar on Capitol Hill
The New York Times’s Elizabeth Dias and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report, “Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s abrupt decision to dismiss the House chaplain triggered an uproar on Friday over religion, pitting Republican against Republican and offering Democrats a political opportunity in a year already moving their way.” The Rev. Patrick J. Conroy suggested in a Thursday interview that Ryan asked him to resign because of a prayer he gave in November, where Conroy prayed for lawmakers to “guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.” Dias and Stolberg write, “The controversy exposed long-simmering tensions between Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians over who should be lawmakers’ religious counselor.”