The House’s unholy uproar

Not all the dysfunction in Washington can be laid at the feet of President Trump. House Republicans do a pretty good job of embarrassing themselves. To wit: Last week, with no explanation, Speaker Paul Ryan asked House Chaplain Father Patrick Conroy, a Jesuit who had been serving in the post for more than seven years, to resign. No chaplain had ever been canned, and certainly not mid-year.

So out of the blue was the decision that Ryan had to reassure shocked members that there was no scandal leading to the move. But Ryan’s silence on his reasoning is a scandal in its own right.

Perhaps Conroy got cashiered because in November, with the House debating tax cuts, he had delivered a prayer on the House floor asking members to “guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

Perhaps he hadn’t ministered well enough to members.

Perhaps it was, as North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker — a Southern Baptist minister heading up a search committee for a replacement — that House members just wanted someone with a wife and kids who could relate to them a bit better.

It sure can’t be about Ryan’s comfort with Conroy; he’s on his way out the door at year’s end.

Until the speaker steps up and offers even the beginnings of an explanation, Americans will have good reason to believe the worst: That a man of God has been fired because he dared suggest that God cares about fairness, and bristles at economic policy that gives poor people the shaft.