After all the uproar about who should replace retiring James Ford as chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican leaders have at last reached a decision: The chaplain will continue to be James Ford, who is delaying his retirement and returning for a 22nd year. This, at least, is the latest word circulating in New York and Washington.
The story begins back in June, when nine Democrats and nine Republicans met to choose nominees for Ford's post. With apparently little disagreement, they selected two Protestants and one Catholic: Rev. Charles Wright, Rev. Robert Dvorak, and Fr. Tim O'Brien. In December, speaker Dennis Hastert, majority leader Richard Armey, and minority leader Richard Gephardt met to make the final decision, with Hastert and Armey outvoting Gephardt to give the nod to Wright, a Presbyterian minister.
It should have ended there, but Bill Donohue -- head of the Catholic League, a New York-based 350,000-member organization that fights anti-Catholicism -- stepped in, charging in a firestorm of faxes that the rejection of O'Brien meant Protestants Hastert and Armey were anti-Catholic. Democrats such as Henry Waxman, Earl Pomeroy, and Anna Eshoo, not otherwise renowned for their support of Catholic positions, gleefully repeated the charge. In response, Hastert's and Armey's staffs waged a brief but astonishingly incompetent campaign against O'Brien, accusing the Wisconsin priest of being a raging liberal, pastorally inexperienced, and soft on abortion -- charges so easily dismissed that they seemed to prove Republican bigotry.
Of course, what actually led to the choice of Wright wasn't bigotry, but good, old-fashioned glad-handing. Wright is a political insider and power operator who leads Washington's annual National Prayer Breakfast. No wonder Hastert and Armey insist they found him more "empathetic." But that didn't stop the Catholic League, and among Republicans there's some suspicion that Donohue started the controversy to ensure that his League (which denounces liberals far more often than conservatives) keeps its reputation as nonpartisan. More likely, however, is that Donohue is a man of sudden enthusiasms and quick reactions, and after the first few faxes, felt he couldn't turn back. Two months later, the only face-saving solution for the Republicans and the Catholic League is the return of Ford. He may have to stay forever.