Cafeteria Catholics milking House chaplain issue

If you grew up, as I did, as a Roman Catholic in the 1940s and '50s, you were trained by the pre-Vatican 11 church to sniff out any sign of anti-Catholicism. So believe me when I tell you that if I thought for one moment that the issue over the chaplaincy in the House of Representatives really involved prejudice against a Roman Catholic candidate, I would be the first one to say so.

I have talked to members of the House leadership and their staffs about this issue. After three and a half decades on Capitol Hill, including 11 years working for two members of the Senate leadership, I know when I am being lied to.

Anyone who has followed what I have said over the years should certainly stipulate that I am no blind partisan. At one point or another I have had virtually every member of the Republican leadership in both houses of Congress white with rage because I call the shots as I see them.

Therefore, let me be very clear: I am absolutely convinced that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (RAI.) is telling the truth about what happened regarding the selection of the new House chaplain. I am also convinced that the self-righteous, self-appointed spokesmen for Catholics have manufactured this issue and are milking it for political purposes.

House Speaker's Real Problem

For the most part these are Cateteria Catholics. They are Catholic when it is convenient. But when the pro-life cause is at stake, something which Pope John Paul II has spoken about more than any other single issue, the Catholics who are whining the loudest about this issue are to be found not on the side of Catholic doctrine, but in the pocket of the National Organization for Women and other pro-abortion groups.

Speaker Hastert's real problem with the selection ot the House Chaplain is that once again, he tried to be a nice guy. Instead ofjust appointing a new chaplain as previous Speakers have done (including two Democratic Catholic speakers who each appointed Protestants to the chaplaincy) he selected a bipartisan committee to do a search for a new chaplain.

That committee had some 38 applicants. In due course it boiled down that number to three. Those three names were presented to the Speaker unranked.

The three candidates were then interviewed by the speaker, by Majority Leader Dick Armey (R.-Tex.) and by Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.). None of the three candidates was known by the three interviewers.

After interviewing the three, none of those three leaders chose the Rev. Timothy O'Brien of Marquette University, the Catholic candidate. Only after Hastert had chosen another candidate did Minority Leader Gephardt come back to the speaker to say that "his people" wanted O'Brien.

Pastoral Experience Key for Chaplain

I have seen firsthand how the chaplain in Congress works. Members seek turn out for spiritual guidance of all sorts. Being in Congress may seem like a glamorous job, and in many ways it is, but is also a position that presents more moral and ethical dilemmas than virtually any other post in the nation.

Members of Congress of good conscience often want guidance on the performance of their duties. Congress is also a place where families get into trouble, The number of marriages that break up among congressmen is alarming. The chaplain needs to be equipped to try to keep families together.

After the interviews and looking at the background of the three candidates, did speaker and the majority leader were persuaded (a) that the Rev. Charles Wright, a Presbyterian minister, had the pastoral experience to be of greatest assistance, given the duties of the chaplain in this era. They were also persuaded that (b) Fr. O'Brien did not have these qualities.

As I say, having seen several chaplains function over the years, and looking at the experience of Wright vs. O'Brien, I would have come to the same conclusion as Hastert and Armey. With all due respect, Fr. O'Brien is basically a political animal. He did not impress any of the three interviewers enough to have selected him.

I don't know any of the candidates, but in carefully questioning of the leadership and their staffs, I believe there is absolutely no question that they had pastoral experience in mind in making their selection. The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, normally a sensible group, immediately jumped on the Catholic bias bandwagon and gave cover to the liberal Democrats who wanted to complain about this decision.

Catholic League Way Off Base

Normally, this group is quite correct to raise questions of anti-Catholic bias, which still exists in our society. In this case, that group is simply way off base.

The question here is which of the candidates could best serve members, given what the leadership knows their problems to be. That Fr. O'Brien was even on the list of finalists is amazing, considering his lack of qualifications in that respect.

As Deal Hudson, the editor of Crisis magazine (a Catholic publication) has pointed out, Catholics may well determine the outcome in as many as 10 of the very closely fought House seats this November Who wins those seats will determine if we will still call Hastert speaker or if that distinction will go to Gephardt. That is what this fuss is all about.