Connecticut looking to regulate the Catholic Church?
The separation of church and state is one of the biggest myths out there. There is no Separation of Church and State clause in our Constitution, although people do have a right to freedom of religion. The separation of church and state argument comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson, and was noted by Jefferson as a reassurance that the state would not interfere with any church. That’s basically what the First Amendment and the Establishment Clause say: that the government cannot meddle with anyone’s religious freedoms or with the structure of a religious organization.
Well, I guess in Connecticut, that constitutional right no longer matters, because the (Democrat-controlled) Judiciary Committee has introduced a bill giving the state the right to organize Catholic parishes and diocese according to state requirements:
The Lawlor-and-McDonald-controlled Judiciary Committee has introduced Raised Bill 1098, a bill aimed specifically at the Catholic Church, which would remove the authority of the bishop and pastor over individual parishes and put a board of laymen in their place. You can read Rep. Lawlor’s defense of this bill, Bridgeport Bishop William Lori’s response and more here.
We need as big a turnout as possible for the public hearing on Wednesday, especially from non-Catholics. As Ben Franklin told the Founders while they were signing the Declaration of Independence, “either we hang together or we will all hang separately.” Legislators need to understand that this bill is an attack on everyone’s religious liberty.
If the legislature can replace a bishop with a board of laymen in the Catholic Church, they can just as easily replace the governing lay structure of Congregationalist or Baptist churches with someone set up as a bishop. In fact, it was resistance to such government interference in the internal life of the church that gave birth to several of our most historic denominations. Thanks to this awful bill, our generation must now rise up to defend those hard-fought victories for religious liberty that were won for us by our ancestors.
This should send a chill down your spine, Catholic or not. What this will do is basically take away the existing organization of the Catholic Church, and replace it with a governing board selected by the state. The pastors, bishops, and archbishops in Connecticut would see all of their authority in the church taken away. The archbishop or bishop would have a seat on the board, but would have no right to vote. This bill is directed only at the Catholic Church.
American Papist has the defense of this despicable bill from Mike Lawlor himself:
… the current state statutes governing Roman Catholic corporations … were enacted in 1955. SB 1098 is a proposal to make changes in that law, which was suggested by parishioners who were the victims of theft of their funds in several parishes, and these parishioners feel that the state’s existing Roman Catholic Corporate laws prevented them from dealing with the misuse and theft of funds.
I agree with you that the whole notion of having a statute governing the church seems like an intrusion on the separation of church and state, but the current law does that already. Perhaps we should repeal the whole thing, but if we are going to have a corporate law of this type, it probably should make sure there cannot be deception of parishioners.
Here’s the problem with that reasoning. Theft and fraud are already against the law. If a parishioner believes that theft and/or fraud has taken place, then they can take legal action. If they feel they’ve been deceived, then obviously there’s no legal action they can take — there’s no law against lying or deception, even if it’s not very nice to lie to or deceive someone. A parishioner can, though, stop donating money to that particular parish. They can attend another parish. Or they could cease attendance of Catholic churches altogether. No one is required to donate money to their church, nor are they required to attend a particular church. The government, however, does require people to donate their money, and what recourse does an unhappy citizen have when they feel their money is being mishandled?
The Bridgeport Diocese has responded to these accusations and to this bill. They also, interestingly enough, noted that the state of Connecticut has racked up a $1.5 billion deficit, and therefore probably has no right to try to manage the finances of an organization whose finances are already quite sound.
This past Thursday, March 5, the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut State Legislature, which is chaired by Sen. Andrew McDonald of Stamford and Rep. Michael Lawlor of East Haven, introduced a bill that directly attacks the Roman Catholic Church and our Faith.
This bill violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It forces a radical reorganization of the legal, financial, and administrative structure of our parishes. This is contrary to the Apostolic nature of the Catholic Church because it disconnects parishes from their Pastors and their Bishop. Parishes would be run by boards from which Pastors and the Bishop would be effectively excluded.
This bill, moreover, is a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Catholic Church on the important issues of the day, such as same-sex marriage.
The State has no right to interfere in the internal affairs and structure of the Catholic Church. This bill is directed only at the Catholic Church but could someday be forced on other denominations. The State has no business controlling religion.
The Pastors of our Diocese are doing an exemplary job of sound stewardship and financial accountability, in full cooperation with their parishioners.
For the State Legislature — which has not reversed a $1 billion deficit in this fiscal year — to try to manage the Catholic Church makes no sense. The Catholic Church not only lives within her means but stretches her resources to provide more social, charitable, and educational services than any other private institution in the State. This bill threatens those services at a time when the State is cutting services. The Catholic Church is needed now more than ever.
We reject this irrational, unlawful, and bigoted bill that jeopardizes the religious liberty of our Church.
Catholic or not, all Americans should be outraged over this. This bill is a gross overreach of power, not to mention a disgusting infringement on Connecticut citizens’ constitutional religious liberties. The government has no right whatsoever to regulate the structure of any religious organization.
Please call Senator McDonald and Representative Lawlor, and let them know that what they are doing is unacceptable. Again, whether or not you are a Catholic or a citizen of Connecticut is irrelevant. All Americans have the right to freedom of religion, and an infringement on that right anywhere can affect all of us. This is an ugly step towards fascism, and we cannot stand for it.
Senator Andrew McDonald:
(800) 842-1420; (203) 348-7439
E-mail: McDonald@senatedems.ct.gov
Representative Michael Lawlor:
(800) 842-8267; (203) 469-9725
E-mail: MLawlor99@juno.com
Hat Tip: Hot Air
Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more commentary or follow her on Twitter!
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Posted by Cassy Fiano on March 9, 2009 3:55 pm
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Anti-Americanism, Bigotry, Church And State, Constitution, Fascism, Hypocrisy/Situational Ethics, News, U.S. Constitution, religion
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19 Responses to “Connecticut looking to regulate the Catholic Church?”
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Syndicate Me
I’ve taken one of the quotes from your post and linked to your article from Government Politically Correct Morality
This is an outrage. Would they do this to Jewish temples? To Moslem mosques? Scientology? I cannot even understand how they are doing this to begin with – it is illegal. If they dare to do it, the Catholic Church should immediately close all its churches, schools, hospitals and charities. Sell off the assets and move to another state. Then fight Connecticut with all it has. We are fighting for liberties overseas and ours are being diminished at home. Enough.
I already was alerted to this by the FIC ( Family Institute of Connecticut ).
I would highly recommend checking out Family Institute of Connecticut to any fellow CT residents out there, they provide you with some great ways to get involved, calling lists, they set up and arrange for protests, meets, etc. Go google their name… NOW.
I’m a CT resident, and recently there’s been quite a lot of foul goings-on here in my home state. I’m a Christian (non-denominational, NOT Catholic), and I don’t agree with or understand alot of what the Catholic Church does, but this is simply an outrageous attack on them. What right does the state or any outside agency have to do anything like this?
Gotta love Democrats; Freedom… As long as we check it out first, and make sure it’s okay, and then if anything we don’t like or anything that opposes our point of view happens, we can shut you down.
There is even more to it than simply imposing the will of the state on any religious organization they chose, the Catholic Church being in their target today. This same imposed state meddling could as easily be used to target corporations, small businesses or even families if you think about it.
If the state doesn’t like the way a particular board of trustees has been organized for a corporate giant then theoretically, under this same brazen usurpation of power, the state could alter that board to one more in line with what ever agenda is being pushed forward, regardless of the desires of stockholders, profitability or internal operations.
Take that same usurpation of power and apply it to the family unit and the state takes the place of parents in making decisions such as going to school, church attendance and social rules of engagement to include sexual relations which may or may not meet with the standards of the family.
This legislation must be quashed and then buried so far as to make sure the stink of it never reaches out for a second chance of life. Perhaps a public hanging of the bills sponsors would serve as a reminder, “Don’t tread on me”!
This has been foretold. It happens in every generation. First it will be the Catholics, and then the Jews. It has happened in every European country at some point over the last 400 years where the Catholic and Jewish faiths were declared unlawful.
They hate the faithful and will stop at nothing. Hell bent on the destruction of the 5000 years of Judeo-Christian Tradition.
We did this to ourselves. It has been foretold. We accepted abortion and contraception, pleasure, power, and recognition. We are to be exiled once more to Babylon.
Evil thoughts and manipulations never end……do they?
It should be quashed, yes, but not buried. It should be impaled and displayed on a pike in the manner of Vlad the Impaler for all to see – lest we forget.
To the over 50% of the Catholics who voted for the bama let me say*
*I have nothing to say to you.
It Is prophesied in Isaiah 65:13,14 that Gods people will prosper but false worshipers will have no spiritual food and a shear break down of spirit. Who do you see out there today who are bringing Kingdom Good news to every door? You are my witnesses says Isaiah 43:10.
I am not a resident of the state. I do not know the players invovled, so there may be less than honorable motives. However, corp. law in a state is designed to make it possible for an organization to operate by creating contracts, bank and ivestment accounts, and protecting the assests of the members from legal or financial claims.
If an organization (secular or religious) wants those services and protections from the state, they must be willing to meet the state’s requirements.
This particular bill doesn’t appear to pass the equal protection issues. If they created the board with the pastor as president (voting only in ties), it would be the same structure that governs 90% of Protestant congregations.
But, churches and religious organizations cannot have it both ways… either they want to operate as a state approved corperation with its protections, or they do not. They can operate as an unincorperated organization and leave the structures, officers, and members without the state’s protection.
The world empire of false religion, embracing all religions whose teachings and practices do not conform to the true worship of Jehovah, the only true God. Following the Flood of Noah’s day, false religion had its beginning at Babel (later known as Babylon). (Gen. 10:8-10; 11:4-9) In time, Babylonish religious beliefs and practices spread to many lands. So Babylon the Great became a fitting name for false religion as a whole.
Rev. 18:4: “Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.”
Very soon the nations of the world are going to unit to turn on all false religion.
]Rev. 18:21: “A strong angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying: ‘Thus with a swift pitch will Babylon the great city be hurled down, and she will never be found again.’”
also, Modern-Day ‘Harlotry’
6 Through her meddling in politics, the great harlot has brought untold sorrow to mankind. Consider, for example, the facts behind Hitler’s rise to power in Germany—ugly facts that some would like to expunge from the history books. In May 1924 the Nazi Party held 32 seats in the German Reichstag. By May 1928 these had dwindled to 12 seats. However, the Great Depression engulfed the world in 1930; riding in its wake, the Nazis made a remarkable recovery, gaining 230 out of 608 seats in the German elections of July 1932. Soon after, former chancellor Franz von Papen, a Papal Knight, came to the Nazis’ aid. According to historians, von Papen envisioned a new Holy Roman Empire. His own short tenure as chancellor had been a failure, so now he hoped to gain power through the Nazis. By January 1933, he had mustered support for Hitler from the industrial barons, and through wily intrigues he ensured that Hitler became Germany’s chancellor on January 30, 1933. He himself was made vice-chancellor and was used by Hitler to win the support of Catholic sections of Germany. Within two months of gaining power, Hitler dissolved parliament, dispatched thousands of opposition leaders to concentration camps, and began an open campaign of oppressing the Jews.
7 On July 20, 1933, the Vatican’s interest in the rising power of Nazism was displayed when Cardinal Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) signed a concordat in Rome between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Von Papen signed the document as Hitler’s representative, and Pacelli there conferred on von Papen the high papal decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius. In his book Satan in Top Hat, Tibor Koeves writes of this, stating: “The Concordat was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source.” The concordat required the Vatican to withdraw its support from Germany’s Catholic Center Party, thus sanctioning Hitler’s one-party “total state.” Further, its article 14 stated: “The appointments for archbishops, bishops, and the like will be issued only after the governor, installed by the Reich, has duly ascertained that no doubts exist with respect to general political considerations.” By the end of 1933 (proclaimed a “Holy Year” by Pope Pius XI), Vatican support had become a major factor in Hitler’s push for world domination.
8 Though a handful of priests and nuns protested Hitler’s atrocities—and suffered for it—the Vatican as well as the Catholic Church and its army of clergy gave either active or tacit support to the Nazi tyranny, which they regarded as a bulwark against the advance of world Communism. Sitting pretty in the Vatican, Pope Pius XII let the Holocaust on the Jews and the cruel persecutions of Jehovah’s Witnesses and others proceed uncriticized. It is ironical that Pope John Paul II, on visiting Germany in May 1987, should glorify the anti-Nazi stand of one sincere priest. What were the other thousands of the German clergy doing during Hitler’s reign of terror? A pastoral letter issued by the German Catholic bishops in September 1939 at the outbreak of World War II provides enlightenment on this point. It reads in part: “In this decisive hour we admonish our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Fuehrer and to be ready to sacrifice their whole individuality. We appeal to the Faithful to join in ardent prayers that Divine Providence may lead this war to blessed success.”
9 Such Catholic diplomacy illustrates the kind of harlotry that religion has engaged in over the past 4,000 years in wooing the political State in order to gain power and advantage. Such religio-political relationships have fostered warfare, persecutions, and human misery on a vast scale. How happy mankind can be that Jehovah’s judgment upon the great harlot is at hand. May it soon be executed!
The Cathiloc Church isn’t going anywhere.
The california Court question being asked by the Military ARE WE STILL A CONSTUTIONAL REPUBLIC? pulls Obama’s pants down, while the Pope shakes down his shoulders and NUNs whack his hands for nearing the collection plate.The new Religious experince for Soros and Obama is learing the Cardinal Rule….never touch the puse strings of the Pope and anger the Vatican.
Card
The Catholic Church isn’t going anywhere.
The California Court question being asked by the Military ARE WE STILL A CONSTUTIONAL REPUBLIC? pulls Obama’s pants down, while the Pope shakes down his shoulders and NUNs whack his hands for nearing the collection plate.The new “Religious experince” for Soros and Obama is learning the Cardinal Rule….never touch the purse strings of the Pope and anger the Vatican.
Welcome President Biden to undo the penstrokes of Obamanomics bad check writing, and return Confidence to America.
This Conneticut move, only means the Pope will put Capitalism back in the USA.
Do not forget Obama lawyers tried to keep ACLU from getting to the Bush papers, because if they did, it forces his own sealed records open. ACLU won that case…too funny…it was the dog chasing it’s own tail.
I agree with the premise that this is WRONG it is an absolute abomination…the Connecticut legislators that are championing this proposal would do well to recall why the pilgrims initially fled England for this country. Back the @#&&!! OFF!! This is what revolutions are made of.
I see that the bill has been withdrawn. Lots of outraged citizens flooded phones and e-mail.
This is all part of what is foretold in the bible. Jehovah’s great day is fast approaching.
The ACLU is going against the constitution. It, if it were out to defend the constitutional rights of all citizens (which it most likely claims to do, I think), it should support the church, not fight to run it.
this is gooooood!!!!!
the state would not be seeking to ruffle the feathers of the Church if the Church did not seek to impose it’s will on other americans who seek happiness in America…but Don’t worry, if you are a Christian you should know that all power in heaven and in the earth is given unto Jesus; he is the head of all principality and power, and might and dominion…serve him only and no government in the earth shall rule over you,without his approval…
The atrocities by the RCC, rape of small children and the cover-ups from the vatican down –> we need to shut down the RCC.