The House Chaplain
by Kitty Felde
In State of the Union, Fina encounters a man in a dog collar.
The priest looked familiar. I tried to imagine him in his priest uniform. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I know who you are. You’re the House Chaplain.”“Guilty as charged. No arrows, please.”“You say the prayer before the lawmakers start arguing about stuff,” I said.“You must watch a lot of C-SPAN,” he said.“Only when I have to. They have it on the office TV all the time. My father is Congressman Arturo Mendoza. From California.”“Of course,” he said.“So what do you do after you say your prayer on the House floor?”“Play a little golf, have a picnic at the Franciscan Monastery, grab a beer at Tortilla Coast.”“Really?”“I wish,” he said. “No, the House Chaplain is a full-time job. There are lots of tough issues for lawmakers. I’m there to listen. And to advise.”The House of Representatives has had a chaplain since 1789. The tradition actually began earlier than that when Jacob Duché, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, was invited to say an opening prayer at the First Continental Congress. If you tune into C-SPAN early enough, you can hear it.
(photo courtesy of Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives)The House Chaplain
The House of Representatives has had a chaplain since 1789. The tradition began earlier than that when Jacob Duché, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, was invited to say an opening prayer at the First Continental Congress.
Rev. William Henry Milburn was a favorite among lawmakers. He served three separate terms: 1845-47, 1853-55, and 1885-93.
(photo courtesy of the Office of the Chaplain)Meet the House Chaplain
The current House chaplain is a woman, Margaret Grun Kibben. She’s Presbyterian, the most common denomination among House chaplains.
Besides offering a morning prayer from the House Floor, the chaplain is available for counseling for lawmakers and staffers who work on the House side of the Capitol. The chaplain also arranges memorial services, and in the old days, performed marriages for members of Congress.
The House chose its first Catholic priest in 2000, but he was asked to resign in 2018 by fellow Catholic, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan. The reason? Politics. Like Papa, Speaker Ryan felt that he was being preached at politically by Fr. Patrick Conroy over tax policy. The Jesuit priest offered a particular prayer for lawmakers, “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”
(photo courtesy of the Office of the Senate Chaplain)The Senate has one, too
he Senate has its own chaplain, currently the Reverend Barry C. Black, a retired Navy Rear Admiral and former Chief of Navy Chaplains. He’s the first African-American chaplain in Congress.
You may wonder how there can be prayer on the House Floor at all when there’s supposed to be a strict separation of church and state. That question was settled back in 1983 by the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought by a member of the Nebraska State Legislature. The court decided that an opening prayer in Congress was a historical custom, rather than a religious ceremony.