Folks, I briefly break my Lenten blogging moratorium to comment on this development from Connecticut, where the state legislature has taken up a bill that would strip the local Catholic Church of its power to manage her financial affairs by having the state impose upon the Church a de facto Protestant congregational polity where the individual congregations control their financial affairs independently from the diocesan bishop. Click on the link below to watch the video broadcasted this morning in NBC’s Today Show:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29612053#29612053
Even in this day and age when government is extending its tentacles into all areas of our economic and social life, even into our private lives, while very few care to notice, this blatant attempt at state intervention into the internal matters of the Catholic Church is outrageous, misguided, and unconstitutional.
The supposedly Catholic parishioners who concocted this bill have no idea how much damage they have inflicted upon the Church, and not only upon the Church, but also upon the free exercise of religion in their state and beyond. The state legislators who agreed to raise this cockamamie idea for legislative consideration are also equally misguided and are probably following a hidden anti-Catholic agenda of their own, for which this bill was hell-sent.
The main guilty party in these series of scandal is the former pastor of a church who is now in jail for having stolen over $1 million in parish assets to bankroll a lavish, openly homosexual lifestyle. This poor man is now in jail paying his dues, while his parishioners invoke the power of the state to change the inner constitution of the Catholic Church to soothe their anger. Believe me, I understand their anger, but their “solution” will not save the Church, it will destroy her.
I want to extend my support to His Excellency William E. Lori, Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and my fellow Catholics in his diocese, on their efforts to derail this misguided bill. I also want to encourage believers of other faith communities to join Bishop Lori in his efforts to defeat this bill, because if this outrage is allowed to happen to the Catholic Church today, tomorrow it may happen to a synagogue, mosque, temple, or house of prayer of any religion whatsoever.
UPDATE AS OF TODAY @ 1700 EDT
The Connecticut Anti-Catholic bill has been pulled. This from the Catholic League:
The bill that would allow the state legislature in Connecticut to reconfigure the governing structure of the Catholic Church has been pulled. Introduced by Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, the bill was withdrawn at the behest of the person who proposed it, Tom Gallagher; he is a contributor to the National Catholic Reporter, a left-wing Catholic newspaper. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will now review the constitutionality of the bill.Praised be Jesus!
Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:“Every pre-law undergraduate knows that what Lawlor and McDonald tried to pull off—in stealth fashion—was flagrantly unconstitutional. For their fascist stunt, they should at least be censured by their colleagues. Ideally, they should resign or be forced out of office.
“The big losers are the Catholic left-wing activists who pushed for this measure. To be specific, Voice of the Faithful, a dissident Catholic group comprised mainly of senior citizens, has been promoting a lay Catholic takeover of the Catholic Church for many years. Also, their ideological kinfolk at the National Catholic Reporter republished an article by Gallagher calling for an aggressive civil law approach to parish governance.
“Lawlor, McDonald, Gallagher, Voice of the Faithful, and the National Catholic Reporter totally underestimated the reaction of rank-and-file Catholics. Chalk up a big victory for Catholics who are loyal to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and to the religious liberty provisions of the First Amendment.”
Now, back to my Lenten silence.
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