Carrie Prejean Boller had been removed from the commission after critics said she ‘hijacked’ a hearing while criticizing ‘Zionism.’
Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, on March 20 criticized what he described as “absurd” claims from Carrie Prejean Boller that she was booted from the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty because of her Catholic beliefs.
Boller, an outspoken Catholic and a former Miss California USA contestant, was removed from the commission in February after repeatedly criticizing “Zionism” at a commission hearing on Feb. 9.
The hearing focused on combatting antisemitism in the U.S., though Boller during the hearing regularly brought up the subject of Zionism, the movement supporting Jewish self‑determination in a homeland in Israel.
“I’m a Catholic, and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know,” Boller said at one point. Elsewhere she asked witnesses if they were willing to “condemn what Israel has done in Gaza.”
In announcing Boller’s removal, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — the chairman of the commission — argued that “no member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.”
“This is clearly, without question, what happened … in our
