Colbert On Paul Ryan: Forget Vice President, Let’s Make Him ‘Vice Pope’

On Tuesday night’s edition of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert mock-defended Rep. Paul Ryan‘s (R-WI) budget proposal from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who criticized Ryan’s plan as unjust, and from President Obama, who called the budget plan “thinly-veiled social darwinism.”

Colbert joked, “How dare you, sir? These are Republicans. It is thinly-veiled social creationism. And no one legislates in a more Christian way than Congressman Paul Ryan,” and played a clip of Rep. Ryan dismissing the bishop’s criticism:

“I suppose there are some Catholics who for a long time have thought they had a monopoly of sorts. Not exactly on heaven, but on the social teachings of our church.”

“Catholicism is full of these people who think they have a monopoly on interpreting its social teachings. They’re called bishops. But these guys don’t count, because the Catholic church isn’t known for its centralized authority,” Colbert deadpanned. “Catholicism is more of a dialogue, everybody just tosses in their two cents and decides what the Bible means for themselves.”

Colbert noted that technically a Catholic can’t dismiss what the bishops say, except for the “Holy Father,” and so Colbert suggests the Catholic church appoint Paul Ryan to a new position:

“So forget all of this talk about Paul Ryan being Vice President. I say we make him Vice Pope.”

Check out the segment below via Comedy Central:

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