A few days ago, reader Derek pointed out the complete lack of mainstream media coverage of a rather shocking bill that was introduced in the Connecticut State Legislature.
Wow, you haven’t blogged on the “non-news story” but I think it should get *some* attention from the MSM, don’t you?
Catholic Bishop to be stripped of his governing Authority of his Diocese by the CT State Legislature- kind of hits you between the eyes.
It sounded almost too crazy to be true. But there were various links on Catholic sites and general blogs.
I have found it rather confusing to read through or follow but basically the Judiciary Committee introduced Raised Bill 1098. If passed, it would replace the Roman Catholic Church’s governing structure in Connecticut with a congregational system. The bishop and the pastor would lose their authority and a board of laymen would govern each parish. Imagine if the state told congregationalists that they had to submit to a bishop or metropolitan.
American Papist has a partial justification from one of the bill’s sponsors. He says it’s about a couple of parishes that had bad priests who stole funds. The NC Register has an article discussing whether the bill is payback for the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Here’s some more information from a state senator who opposes the bill.
But where in the heck is the mainstream media coverage?
I watched for coverage all weekend and on Monday. Later in the day, there was finally some local coverage. The Hartford Courant (which, I learned from a recent Jeopardy, is the oldest continuously operating newspaper in the U.S.) explained the bill and the claims of its Democratic sponsors in a blog post. The Connecticut Post had a lengthy analysis of the bill and fallout. And the Courant had a solid story with lots of context and quotes:
Experts on religion and the First Amendment say such a proposal is unlikely to pass constitutional muster.
“You cannot tell a church how it can govern itself,” said Marc D. Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress in New York. “The church is entitled to govern itself any which way it wants.”
Similar efforts by states to control the Catholic Church were commonplace in the 19th Century, said Andrew Walsh, associate director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College.
I have been surprised at many political events this year, but I have to say I am shocked that this bill could be introduced by a committee, much less discussed at a hearing on Wednesday.
This is certainly worthy of more than the local news coverage it has received.
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Comments (35) |
March 10, 2009, at 9:05 am
This is an important story; bishops don’t often write open letters of mobilization to their diocesan faithful. Catholic News Agency is covering this closely:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/
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March 10, 2009, at 9:34 am
What an interesting bill. Seems mostly about money and access to finances. There’s been several ugly embezzlement cases—in one case, a priest stole a $1 million, and when a church accountant reported to the bishop, she was fired, as was another priest who also reported the theft.
In Nashville, we had a major lawsuit split a megachurch, where members of the church sued to have access to financial records. Since the church is also a 501 (c) 3 — those records are supposed to be available.
Seems like this bill addresses the church in its role as a charity, not as a religious body. Whether that distinction is constitutional is an interesting question. Since a church gets the same breaks as all other 501 (c) 3s, should it have to follow the same governance rules?
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March 10, 2009, at 9:34 am
For what it’s worth, I saw the story on NBC this morning. It was a small segment, but did say that the bill was in response to parishioners requesting the government get involved and do this because of a corrupt church official. So one of the supporters of the bill, in the interview, suggested they merely were doing what they were asked to do.
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March 10, 2009, at 9:59 am
bob smietana,
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “same governance rules.” 501 ( c ) (3) organizations, religious or nonreligious, are free to govern themselves by any sorts of different means: membership vote, control by a small or large board, control centered in just one or two people. There are very few rules by which a nonprofit “must” govern itself. Most nonprofit regulations are tied to funding or to specific operational practices (such as using charitable gaming for funding or running a school or daycare).
Also, not all financial records of 501( c)(3) organizations are automatically available to the public. Their 990 (the information form submitted to the IRS each year) is required to be made available, but in most cases, they are free to make their other financial records available to as many or as few people as they wish. Most churches don’t file 990s, so the public disclosure laws covering the 990 don’t apply to them. Some states have tighter regulations, but churches are usually exempted. The logic, as I understand it, is that freedom of religion trumps the state’s right to regulate charities.
The lawsuit to which you refer sounds like a civil lawsuit. Members of any nonprofit can sue each other for all sorts of things. That’s not relevant here, where a government is trying to dictate how a religion conducts itself.
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March 10, 2009, at 10:48 am
I suspect the cultural background is that Connecticut goes back to the days when the “Congress shall make no law” part of the First Amendment meant only Congress, and states were allowed to have established churches.
Whatever the reasons, this is as big a church-state story as crosses in public parks and Ten Commandments monuments in the courthouse foyer. It merits more coverage.
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March 10, 2009, at 10:51 am
The above posting concerns an amendment to Section 33-279, one of the provisions specifically governing the Catholic Church. In general, Sections 33-265 through 33-281a of the General Statutes of Connecticut make for an interesting read as they set forth differing laws regulating specific religious denominations by name, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA (now known simply as The Episcopal Church), the Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church (separately), the Lutheran Church in America, and even the Augustana Evangelican Lutheran Church. I wonder if this entire statutory scheme including Section 33-279 is prima facie unconstitutional as a violation of the Establishment Clause. Generally, you find state regulations of church bodies to be drafted generically. Here in Virginia, that is the case.
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March 10, 2009, at 11:30 am
This whole topic is interesting, because church-state law has traditionally been interpreted as saying that the state can have some role in church affairs when there are allegations of profit, fraud or clear threat to life and health. You can’t tell the church how to govern itself, but there can be legal actions about fraud. See Bakker, Jim.
So why is this law needed? Who THOUGHT it was needed? That’s the story.
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March 10, 2009, at 11:34 am
The bill appears to address a problem of breach of fiduciary responsibility. I fail to see why this is a freedom of religion issue. If a church is continuously subject to fraud, and the leadership refuses to make structural changes to prevent future fraud, then members might have an option of going to civil authorities. Apostolic Succession is no guarantee of good fiduciary operation. This does look to deal with a perpetual problem that leadership has refused to confront.
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March 10, 2009, at 12:19 pm
[…] story the Mainstream Media isn’t covering: the Connecticut state legislature is trying to take over the Catholic Church. Really. This […]
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March 10, 2009, at 12:28 pm
[…] news coverage external to Catholic sources has been somewhat lacking — stuff that happens to Catholics usually gets a “no, never mind,” from the […]
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March 10, 2009, at 1:08 pm
Shocking story, on every count. And yet I have to wonder about something which, amid all the big constitutional issues, must seem trivial: Is there any hard evidence that congregational governance does a better job than other systems, such as an episcopal one, at assuring good financial management? I’m not aware of any, and I am aware of numerous cases in which money has been stolen by church officials working in more congregational systems.
I recently learned that local Roman Catholic diocese has a diocesan financial board which must approve the budgets and reports generated by the parish’s own board. This seems to me to add an extra level of oversight which could be very useful, and which I wish my own Lutheran synod had the resources to create.
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March 10, 2009, at 1:17 pm
Rev. Church:
Precisely. A totally congregational, free-church system has even more holes in it. Ask women trying to sue Southern Baptist ministers for sexual abuse.
Hmmm… Can the state legislature pass a law negating The Fall?
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March 10, 2009, at 4:06 pm
Mike
The lawsuit here was to ask the state to enforce its rules about access to financial records at non profits. The rules here say that any member of a nonprofit can see those records. And the court did require the church to turn over records—but refused to rule on how the church spends money.
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March 10, 2009, at 4:10 pm
dalea, I’ve done some digging on this because the story is igniting very heated responses in Catholic blogs.
Interesting little factoids are popping up all over, with accusations and counter-accusations of bad faith.
For instance - to address your point about IF “the leadership refuses to make structural changes to prevent future fraud”.
Two big cases of fraud in the Diocese of Bridgeport; in 2006 the infamous Fr. Fay and then in 2007 Fr. Moyniha:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11866705?source=most_emailed
The Darien case concerned the Rev. Michael Jude Fay, who was convicted of stealing up to $1.4 million in parishioner donations to lead a life of luxury with another man. Fay spent money from Darien’s St. John Church on limousines, stays at top hotels, jewelry, Italian clothing and a Florida condominium shared with the other man, auditors hired by the diocese found. About half the money he spent was kept in a secret bank account. Fay is serving a three-year prison term.
Fay shopped at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, drove a Jaguar, attended a sports club, bought jewelry from Cartier, spent $130,000 for limo rides for himself and his mother, and stayed at hotels such as the Ritz Carlton, Hotel De Paris and the Four Seasons, according to an investigative report released last year by the Bridgeport Diocese. He spent tens of thousands of dollars on home furnishings and meals and more than $20,000 to mark the 25th anniversary of his ordination.
In Greenwich, the Rev. Michael Moynihan resigned in January 2007 from St. Michael the Archangel Church after a preliminary audit uncovered $500,000 in spending the church couldn’t account for amid what Lori said at the least represented “badly tangled” financial records.”
In response, the bishop set up an investigation and there is a Code of Practice in operation. Plenty of links on the diocesan website, including PDFs of the 2008 accounts:
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/sept_07.shtml#D
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/story_6Key.shtml
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/Stewardship.shtml
Here’s where things get interesting. The proposers, or sponsors, or writers or whatever they are of the Bill are Sen. Andrew J. McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven. Rep. Lawlor has said he is reacting to the wishes of certain parishioners, and his office has supposedly released a list of Catholics supporting this initiative, which I can’t locate, but someone in Connecticut probably can?
One Catholic name freely mentioned in news reports, though, is a Mr. Tom Gallagher (an attorney from Greenwich) who has some previous on this matter:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11866705?source=most_emailed
“But Paul Lakeland, the Rev. Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., professor of Catholic Studies and chair of the Catholic Studies Department at Fairfield University, disagreed.
“This legislation is not an interference with the free exercise of religion,” he said, noting bishops would still retain their say over doctrinal matters.
In fact, he added, in some jurisdictions, such as Philadelphia and New York, the laity had a strong tradition of parish oversight that changed with time. “No one who supports the present situation in the church can say it’s always been that way,” Lakeland said.
Tom Gallagher, a Greenwich resident whose Catholic activism extends to membership in the Knights of Columbus, Order of Malta and Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, and three years as pro-bono administrator of the Mother Theresa Center in New York, said he has long believed the diocesan parishes should operate differently than the current model adopted in the late 1960s. He argued under that system, the bishop and vicar general serve on 87 individual boards, something that isn’t practical. “We can organize ourselves in a much better fashion,” he said.
And Dan Sullivan, like Lacovara a lawyer who attends St. Aloysius, said changing the structure could be a boon to pastors. Sullivan said, like Gallagher, he would like some adjustments to the bill — such as allowing the bishops and pastors to vote on the boards — but he noted pastors are drawn to their roles not to run financial affairs.
“They would be able to devote more time to the jobs that they trained for,” Sullivan said.”
This isn’t his first attempt to get this legislation, or something like it, off the ground:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11875141
But last year, former state Rep. Claudia “Dolly” Powers, a Republican from Greenwich, pursued similar legislation. Powers said she submitted a proposal on behalf of constituent Tom Gallagher, a driving force behind the bill now pending before the Judiciary Committee.
“If a constituent has an issue and they bring it to any legislator, that’s part of your job,” Powers said.
She said she filled out a request form for the proposal to be raised in committee during the 2008 session. But it never went anywhere.
“It just died,” Powers said.
McDonald said Gallagher first shopped the legislation in 2007, but it was too late in the session for the Judiciary Committee to act. In 2008, “we were swamped” with a debate over a law to increase penalties on violent offenders, McDonald said. He said he discussed the proposal last year with members of the Connecticut Catholic Conference after Powers submitted the legislation.”
Now, those names in the Tom Gallagher quote above? Philip Lakeland and Dan Sullivan? Turns out they’re members of Voice of the Faithful, and Tom has some tenuous links with VOTF as well. The plot thickens!
“Dan Sullivan of New Canaan, a member of Voice of the Faithful, said he learned about the bill Saturday, when Lori issued a statement on his Web site.
“I was sort of generally aware that Tom Gallagher was having some conversations, and frankly was pessimistic he would find a sponsor,” Sullivan said.”
Plus, there are accusations of bad faith on the part of the two politicians:
“Lori said the proposal could be the result of animosity from McDonald and Lawlor about the fight over same-sex marriage laws. McDonald and Lawlor are gay.
McDonald said the state Supreme Court already ruled that same-sex marriage is legal.
“That fight’s over,” McDonald said.
Lori’s remarks about gay marriage are intended to deflect from the issue of whether parishioners should have more of a say in how their churches operate, McDonald said.
“The parishioners who are most devout are the ones advancing it, and I suspect it would be difficult for (Lori) to criticize his main contributors with some of the highest positions in the Catholic church,” McDonald said.
As criticism intensified Monday, McDonald’s office circulated names of Catholics who support the concept of the bill.”
So there’s a lot more going on in Connecticut than just a proposed tightening up of laws to do with church corporations, oh yes indeedy. This one is going to be very interesting to watch how it works out.
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March 10, 2009, at 4:15 pm
Some background on a couple of those supporting this Bill:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=15325
“Explaining his connection to the bill Dr. Lakeland said, “I’m connected to [the bill] to this degree: I’ve been working pretty closely with Tom Gallagher, who’s a Greenwich businessman, who has been behind the push to get the state government to do something about this. Even though, I don’t think, even he was involved in putting the legislation together.”
Upon further investigation, Tom Gallagher seems to be more than just a Greenwich businessman, and to have more than just a passive role in lobbying legislators for the change. In a Voice of the Faithful article titled, “The Money Trail: Financial Management and Mismanagement in the Diocese of Bridgeport,” Joseph O’Callaghan quotes ‘Attorney’ Tom Gallagher multiple times. The article spells out the following principles for reform:
“[…] The same principles should be applied to diocesan property. The diocesan corporation should include elected representatives from each of the eighty-seven parishes, who in turn would elect two directors from each of the five vicariates.
The bishop, one of the three vicars general, and the chancellor should be ex officio members, but elected representatives of the laity should comprise the majority of the diocesan corporation, its directors, and its officers.
Implementation of this proposal will necessitate changes in both canon and civil law.”
“Attorney Tom Gallagher has already initiated discussion with state legislators about changing the law regulating parish and diocesan corporations. Members of VOTF should lend their support to this effort.”
O’Callaghan’s VOTF article offers a blueprint that is nearly identical to the bill now being considered by the Connecticut Senate, and could explain why Sen. McDonald told the Hartford Courant that the idea came from parishioners in Darien and Greenwich, where Gallagher is a church member.
Dr. Lakeland also acknowledged his own membership with Voice of the Faithful, by saying “It’s funny, I work with them, but being a member is a very vague thing. I suppose most people would consider me a member, I don’t pay any dues…I think most people would consider me a member, yes.”
Membership in Voice of the Faithful grew rapidly, immediately after sexual abuse allegations in the Northeast, but after new child protection policies were implemented around the country, membership began to plateau.
When asked about the anti-hierarchal nature of Voice of the Faithful, Dr. Lakeland explained, “There’s a spectrum of opinions. You will certainly find people in the VOTF that are deeply anti-clerical and ‘the sooner that we have women bishops the better’ and you find many people that are far more moderate than that…To find out who speaks for Voice of the Faithful, you’ll have to go the website to answer that question.”
Voice of the Faithfull’s website admits in an online video, “In the past, we’ve had trouble defining who we were; we’ve had a branding issue which has hurt our fundraising ability” In response, their leadership has clearly spelled out a new strategic approach, which broadens its previous focus on protecting children, to embrace an agenda aimed at reducing the power of the hierarchy, eliminating a celibate priesthood and introducing female priests.
…Dr. Lakeland believes, in this specific case, that it’s appropriate to use local and state legislation to “put the subject out there for discussion,” and further explained that the Voice of the Faithful developed out of “frustration with the Institutional Church.”
Claiming that he was not responsible for drafting the bill, Dr. Lakeland echoed comments made by Sen. Andrew McDonald, who introduced the bill. “This bill doesn’t have anything to do with Catholic faith. It’s got to do with organization of the parish community…I would certainly be deeply opposed to any efforts of the legislature to throw off legislation on the Catholic faith.”
…When questioned about how the bill would sever a bishop’s ties to each parish and strip him of his voting rights, Dr. Lakeland conceded, “The legislation as it stands is a little extreme. I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets here, I don’t think most people, even those in favor of it imagine it becoming law in its present form.”
Asked if there would be implications for the entire U.S. Catholic Church, he confidently responded, “Oh, I think it would, and I think if passed in Connecticut, the pressure to pass it in many of the other states in the union would be enormous.”
…Concluding his support for the bill he said, “I see absolutely no chance whatsoever of the Institutional Church making a change in this direction without pressure from somewhere outside the Church. There’s not even the most remote likelihood that the Church would adjust in this direction itself. I think this is a way of putting pressure on them to make changes and bringing the issue into a more prominent setting.”
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March 10, 2009, at 4:24 pm
I’ve been doing some Googling since this proposed legislation is igniting such passions, and the results are very interesting.
The Diocese of Bridgeport website has many links to financial details, including a timeline of the 2006 Fr. Fay embezzlement case, the investigation the bishop instigated, and a link to the press release by the civil prosecution on the conviction of the man.
There is a code of practice and a policy in place to deal with parochial and diocesan finances, and links to the 2008 accounts on the website.
There are also interesting news stories out there, including accusations by the bishop that the two politicians sponsoring or introducing the Bill (McDonald and Lawlor) are acting out of “animosity from McDonald and Lawlor about the fight over same-sex marriage laws. McDonald and Lawlor are gay.”
And three of the pro-legislation Catholics quoted in news reports (Tom Gallagher, Paul and Dan Sullivan) turn out to be members of, or linked to, Voice of the Faithful.
So there’s more going on here than just a proposal to tighten up laws about church finances.
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March 10, 2009, at 4:32 pm
Linky goodness!
Website of “Greenwich Time”, online version of the newspaper:
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11866705?source=most_emailed
http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_11875141
Diocese of Bridgeport financial reports and policy stuff:
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/sept_07.shtml#D
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/story_6Key.shtml
http://www.bridgeportdiocese.com/Stewardship.shtml
United States Attorney’s Office District of Connecticut
Press Release:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ct/Press2007/20070912-1.html
Previous attempt by Tom Gallagher to get this kind of legislation off the ground:
“But last year, former state Rep. Claudia “Dolly” Powers, a Republican from Greenwich, pursued similar legislation. Powers said she submitted a proposal on behalf of constituent Tom Gallagher, a driving force behind the bill now pending before the Judiciary Committee.
“If a constituent has an issue and they bring it to any legislator, that’s part of your job,” Powers said.
She said she filled out a request form for the proposal to be raised in committee during the 2008 session. But it never went anywhere.
“It just died,” Powers said.
McDonald said Gallagher first shopped the legislation in 2007, but it was too late in the session for the Judiciary Committee to act. In 2008, “we were swamped” with a debate over a law to increase penalties on violent offenders, McDonald said. He said he discussed the proposal last year with members of the Connecticut Catholic Conference after Powers submitted the legislation.”
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March 10, 2009, at 5:59 pm
“A totally congregational, free-church system has even more holes in it.”
You’re exactly right, tmatt. Ask anyone - male or female - who is trying to obtain any measure of accountability for sexual abuse inflicted by Southern Baptist ministers.
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March 10, 2009, at 6:04 pm
I’m glad ya’ll picked this up. I wanted to send it in, but didn’t find any MSM coverage at that point. It’s a pretty amazing story, until you look at the players (thank you, Martha.
It’s been a while since I looked at it, but Voice of the Faithful had a lot of interaction with other groups, including Call to Action, FutureChurch, and so on, all of them committed to lay control of the Church. Fraud and embezzelment can be prosecuted under existing law, if that is the intent of this new law. Moreover, the Church is a voluntary association; if tax money were involved, then the state might have a valid interest, of course. This is a power play by a faction of the Church, and nothing else.
The ideological foundations of VOTF were shown early on when they complained bitterly about lay people being excluded from the reform management of the Archdiocese of Boston. However, it turned out that lay people were heavily involved, just the “wrong sort” of lay people. Which is to say, lay people who were interested in solving the problem at hand rather than promoting other issues - married priests, women priests, gay inclusion, contraception, abortion,and so on.
That the state of Connecticutt finds reasons to support a religious faction certainly raises an interesting set of questions.
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March 10, 2009, at 6:20 pm
Rev. Church writes: “I recently learned that local Roman Catholic diocese has a diocesan financial board which must approve the budgets and reports generated by the parish’s own board. This seems to me to add an extra level of oversight which could be very useful, and which I wish my own Lutheran synod had the resources to create.”
Indeed, every Catholic *parish* is required by canon law to have a finance council with oversight duties. See http://www.catholicnh.org/parish-life/parish-finance-council-1/
So if unchecked financial corruption happens in Catholic parishes, it can result from parishioners ignorant or neglectful of their duties under existing rules.
The existence of this reasonable canon law provision makes the CT law appear even more unjustified and threatening.
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March 10, 2009, at 6:56 pm
Martha quoted:
Er, I’m just a little ole Baptist, but… can you separate the Catholic faith from the organization of the parish community? Or is Dr. Lakeland confusing Roman Catholicism with the “private” religion of liberal political theory?
No one is willing to acknowledge drafting the bill. If Dr. Lakeland and the sponsors are to be believed, we are witnessing the miracle of spontaneous legislation generation.
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March 10, 2009, at 7:52 pm
As the property is tax exempt, tax money is involved. All citizens pay a higher tax than they would were church property taxed. Looking at the amounts the two priests who stole, how much money does a RC Church handle? The bill is now being discussed on CNN, where the pro side says it just makes church finance more transparent, which seems like a good idea.
If the RC in CT has been plagued by financial scandal, this law might be justified.
What is VOTF and why is it controversial?
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March 10, 2009, at 11:48 pm
dalea, the tax argument is a sword that cuts both ways. When the government gets into this level of control, your causes are no more safe than mine. Fraud and embezzlement are punishable by current law. Certainly it’s true that taxing non-profit assets would raise tax revenues, but, ultimately, $1.5 million stolen over several years isn’t a great deal of money. In my budget, it’s a retirement fund, in a parish, it’s not chopped liver, but over time, it’s not huge; if memory serves, the treasurer of the Episcopal stole 2.2 million from that organization a decade or so ago.
Apparently, Connecticut has bowed to public pressure and common sense and dropped this dog at the pound.
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March 10, 2009, at 11:53 pm
Not so, this can result from problems assoicated with handling cash. The collection comes in as cash. I used to bank at the same place as a local RC Church. Every Monday morning someone from the church would come in with shopping bags filled with cash. They were arranged in envelopes with dollar amounts written on the outside. The dollar amounts never matched the actual cash, as everyone in line behind them found out. Every time I got trapped in that line, there would be a drama that ended with adjusting the deposit. Had forgotten all about that until this article. I had assumed the church volunteers were just not very good at counting money. Now I see another possibility.
Operations that handle cash can be very difficult to audit. Cash leakage is a major method of fraud.
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March 11, 2009, at 1:29 am
dalea writes:
“As the property is tax exempt, tax money is involved. All citizens pay a higher tax than they would were church property taxed.”
This sounds like a stretch. The involvement of tax money is indirect.
And in the case of a church active in charity work in its community, the citizens arguably might pay even more in taxes were a church’s mission burdened by taxes.
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March 11, 2009, at 2:40 am
Gallagher might be “Knights of Malta” and “knights of Colombus” but isn’t it funny that the “Voice of the people” is promoting the bill?
http://www.votfbpt.org/VOTF-CT_Bill_1098-PR.pdf
And the Courant article said a “group” was backing Gallagher’s quest…what group? One doubts it is tne KofC…
GROUP? what group?
This is essentially an amchurch fight to take over. In plain sight.
It has nothing to do with money…after all, the bill is not against two parishes, or even merely against the one diocese where the problem occurred. It is a takeover, as Bishop Chaput notes the possible motive of the legislators who offered the bill.
After all, no one got too upset when ACORN’s head left his brother go scot free after embezzling a million dollars.
expect the same tactic to quickly get started in other diocese.
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March 11, 2009, at 2:49 am
Kevin, money is fungible. The citizens pay far more, way far more, for ‘religious’ provision of charity than they ever would for a secular scheme. As a Gay man, I know that for every dollar of taxes I pay to offset the exemption of so called ‘religions’, I am far worse off than I would be in a secular scheme. You are asking me to pay for the whipping I received under Prop8. I do not think that making me pay for my second class citizenship is ‘Religious Freedom’. We are forced to subsidize the hate mongers who run the ‘Starvation Army’, an organization which turns gay and lesbians people out into the Chicago winter. Hate groups like the SA should be excluded.
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March 11, 2009, at 2:47 pm
If you don’t like the basic freedoms by which “America” is defined, then use those freedoms to rally others to your cause and amend the Constitution of the United States of America to rescind the First Amendment. Until that happens, the whole “churches get unfair tax breaks” argument is ridiculous dead-end bigotry.
Commanding any religious entity to redefine itself under threat of law is an absolute violation of the First Amendment.
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March 11, 2009, at 3:05 pm
Brian:
Actually, the tax-exempt status of churches is not found in the Constitution. It’s statute law and could be reversed legislatively. The reason for it, afaik, is that religion is too important to be forced to literally compete in the marketplace with commercial entities, so churches get breaks (along with other entities deemed worthy).
I agree with you that the entire Connecticut legal framework regulating church structures violates the First Amendment as currently (ie, post-Fourteenth Amendment) interpreted, and I agree with Mollie that this story ought to be covered much more intensely.
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March 11, 2009, at 3:19 pm
The power to tax is the power to control. Statute law is often explicit that it is not trying to control churches (which would violate the First Amendment). The explicit control exemptions may be revoked, but the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom - involving the fundamental inability of the state to tax churches - would stand.
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March 11, 2009, at 3:29 pm
The Supreme Court has largely — and even more largely in recent years — held that freedom of religion includes the freedom to organize however you want.
This bill would fall into the category of the state telling the church how to organize. I think that’s why you’re not seeing any civil libertarians defending it.
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March 11, 2009, at 4:43 pm
This is a major story; it involves prominent legislators in the state of Connecticut attempting to force the Catholic Church to accept Protestant theology in regards to Church governance. That’s a pretty breathtaking assault on religious liberty and I expected *some* coverage.
Why wasn’t it covered? My suspicion is that it is very hard to spin the Church as the “bad” guys here, and that the people who normally wear the white hats in press accounts- the state senator involved, Voice of the Faithful- come out badly in any objective account.
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March 21, 2009, at 12:41 am
Where is the ACLU now? If it was the church doing something they thought invaded state issues they would be all over it. But since it is a hinderence to the church they are no where to be seen.
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March 21, 2009, at 9:52 am
Curtis, the ACLU enters a case when its assistance is asked for (and not always then). The ACLU has a solid track record of taking the cases of left and right wing defendants.
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April 2, 2009, at 12:25 am
In the bible it speaks of a time period when the governments of this world will turn on religion ( in Revelation “Christianity” is spoken of as a Harlot) because of her excesses and prostituting herself to the “businesses” of the world, not teaching the truth about God and his son Jesus Christ. This proposal of law is just the beginning. France slapped a tax on a world renowned religion of 50% a few years back and they (the religion) are still fighting in the courts over that. “Down she goes”! What next? The governments will turn and try to eliminate anyone who does not go along with their decision to eradicate all religions off the face of the earth. It’s understandable why government would want to eliminate any further worship in any organized manner. Just look at what they have done over the years. How many people have been “Killed in the name of Religion”! How much money has been stolen from parishoners paying for a “healing” that never really happens, how many children have been robbed of their childhood by sick grown men professing to be “fathers” of the church? How many abortions have secretly taken place because Nuns can’t keep their legs closed? Christianity as a whole is a harlot, and the governments will take her down, thinking it will bring about world peace because it is the main divisive factor in this world! This is the beginning of the end for religions. Down she goes!!!
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