Chaplain appointment a surprise

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

By his own account, Father Daniel Coughlin’s appointment as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 23 took even Cardinal George by surprise.

“He called me this morning and said he was on his way to Washington,” Cardinal George said at an impromptu press conference that afternoon. “I asked, ‘Why?’”

But Cardinal George had more warning than the rest of the country that House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Yorkville, Ill., was considering a Catholic priest for the post.

Hastert had called the cardinal a couple of weeks earlier and asked for a short list of “good parish priests” to consider for the post. Coughlin was one of six priests Cardinal George suggested.

For Hastert, appointing a Catholic could help defuse accusations of an anti-Catholic bias in the national Republican leadership. For Cardinal George and Catholics across the country, it shows a new recognition of Catholics’ contributions to the United States.

Coughlin, 65, is the first Catholic priest to serve as the chaplain of the House of Representatives in the institution’s 211 years.

“What’s important is that the House be well served by its chaplain, and that chaplain for the next several years is to be a Catholic priest,” Cardinal George said, deflecting questions about the politics that led to the appointment.

“Daniel Coughlin is a Catholic,” Hastert said. “That does not make him more nor less qualified for the job. But I am proud of his historic appointment. … and I hope it will bring a sense of pride to the millions of Catholic men and women around this country who have had legitimate feelings of past discrimination which some in this House have sought to manipulate.”

The controversy started last year, when the House leadership voted 2-1 to nominate a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Charles Wright, for the position over Father Timothy O’Brien, a political science professor at Marquette University. It expanded when Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. George W. Bush visited Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

Hastert said he was looking for a chaplain with pastoral experience.
Coughlin’s most recent assignment in his 40 years of priesthood was a five-year term as the archdiocese’s vicar for priests. Coughlin also served as an associate pastor at St. Raymond de Penafort Parish in Mount Prospect, Holy Name Cathedral and St. Francis Xavier Parish in LaGrange, and as pastor at St. Francis Xavier.

He was the first director of the archdiocese’s Office for Divine Worship in the wake of Vatican II and director of the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House in Mundelein.

He used a one-year sabbatical to learn about Eastern and Western religious traditions, to teach at North American College in Rome and to work with the Brothers of Charity in Calcutta.

Coughlin grew up in St. Andrew Parish on the North Side and attended the Archdiocese of Chicago seminaries before his ordination. His mother, Lucille, still works as an usher at Wrigley Field.

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