Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, retired archbishop of New York, on March 24 joined Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, in defending the work of the Religious Liberty Commission, of which they are members, in response to claims made by former commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller.
Prejean Boller was removed from the commission last month after a Feb. 9 hearing, which aimed to examine a rise in antisemitism where Prejean Boller, a Catholic, initiated some tense exchanges with Jewish American witnesses.
In response to claims Prejean Boller made on social media that she was removed from the commission due to her Catholic beliefs, Bishop Barron said in a March 20 post on X that some of the views she expressed at the commission were not in step with Catholic teaching.
“Over the past several weeks, Carrie Prejean Boller has complained that she was removed from the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty because of her Catholic beliefs, and she has called out myself and other Catholic members of the commission for not defending her. This is absurd,” Bishop Barron wrote.
Pointing to the Feb. 9 hearing, Bishop Barron continued, “Mrs. Prejean Boller was not dismissed for her religious convictions but rather for her behavior at a gathering of the Commission last month: browbeating witnesses, aggressively asserting her point of view, hijacking the meeting for her own political purposes.”
In a March 24 post on X, Cardinal Dolan said Bishop Barron’s comments “are characteristically clear, and I agree wholeheartedly.”
At the hearing, Prejean Boller questioned witnesses on whether “speaking out about what many Americans view as a genocide in Gaza should be treated as antisemitic?” She also stated, “Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know. So are all Catholics antisemites?” She did not define what she meant by “Zionism,” a term that has a spectrum of definitions.
Bishop Barron continued to counter a number of Prejean Boller’s assertions in his X post.
“The Catholic position on matters of ‘Zionism,’ to which I fully subscribe, is as follows: all forms of antisemitism are to be unequivocally condemned; the state of Israel has a right to exist; but the modern nation of Israel does not represent the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and hence does not stand beyond criticism,” he said.
“If Mrs. Prejean Boller were dismissed for holding these beliefs, it is difficult to understand why I am still a member of the Commission,” he said. “To paint herself as a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice or to claim that her religious liberty has been denied is simply preposterous.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, chair of the Religious Liberty Commission, said Feb. 11 it was his decision to remove Prejean Boller from the Commission.
“No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” Patrick said at the time.
In one of several posts on X directed to Bishop Barron, Prejean Boller said, “Asking me to deny Catholic teaching in order to satisfy a political ideology is itself a violation of my religious freedom.”
The Religious Liberty Commission’s capstone hearing is scheduled for April 13.
