As a former catholic priest, chaplain and protestant minister, I find it somewhat interesting to contemplate the firing of Father Conroy as the chaplain for the House of Representatives in Washington.
According to some reports, he was fired because of a prayer he offered in the House during the proceedings on the federal tax reform. Following his Christian humanist belief, Father asked God to guide the Representatives to come up with a reform that secured equal economic justice for both the privileged and the lesser privileged, that is, the rich and the poor!
This prayer apparently did not suit the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s political beliefs. As time eventually would tell, God did not answer Father Conroy’s prayer. Instead, God answered Paul Ryan’s prayer, His God made sure that the tax reform made sure that the rich would get richer and the poor get poorer.
This was obviously contrary to the Chaplain’s God’s ideas on what it is to be truly human and therefore proved to the Speaker, that the Chaplain’s God is not the real God! So, Paul Ryan thought, “What good is a chaplain whose God does not listen to my prayer? Let’s instead find a chaplain whose God is made in the image of my own self-serving political image of what it is to be human!”
This, in my view, is contrary to any Christian humanist view!
And, as the Founders of our country believed, it is better to leave God, any God, out of politics.
Jake Hjorth
Grand Marais
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