Hijacking Trump's Religious Liberty Council - WSJ Editorial

A hearing of the White House Religious Liberty Commission is usually a staid affair. But enter Commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, who came Monday spoiling for a religious fight. Her fellow commissioners arrived to discuss antisemitism. Ms. Prejean Boller came wearing a Palestinian flag pin, with an ally who was recording her remarks against Israel and in defense of podcaster Candace Owens. Ms. Prejean Boller demanded to know whether she could be called antisemitic because her Catholic faith supposedly precludes her from supporting Zionism and tells her the Jews killed Jesus.

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The subject turned to the ravings of Ms. Owens, which run from Holocaust denial and medieval blood libel to claims that Israel assassinated John F. Kennedy. “I listen to her daily,” Ms. Prejean Boller said. “She’s not an antisemite. She just doesn’t support Zionism.”. That’s the left-wing dodge, but Ms. Prejean Boller is coming from the right. She briefly rose to prominence in 2009 by opposing gay marriage. “Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know,” she said Monday. “So are all Catholics antisemites?” And so on with the death of Christ.

Ms. Prejean Boller converted to Catholicism in April but lectured witnesses, including a priest, as well as fellow Catholic commissioners on their faith. One commissioner, Ryan Anderson, read her excerpts from the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in rebuttal. But what do they know?

Zionism, it bears repeating, entails no theological commitment, only an acceptance of the Jewish state, an established fact. To try to undo that now is dorm-room theorizing that would deliver half the world’s Jews into the hands of the death squads of Oct. 7, 2023. One popular definition of modern antisemitism includes the use, in discussions of Israel, of Christ-killer and blood-libel imagery. This is no conspiracy to silence Christians; the Catholic Church itself condemns both.

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Ms. Prejean Boller has since taken to social media to denounce “Zionist supremacy in America.” The controversy has already gained her online followers, which may have been the point. The question is why the Trump Administration chooses such dingbats.

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