I heard a couple interesting things during the AirMaria coverage, via live stream, of the committee meeting of the Connecticut Legislature on Wednesday.
First, I straightened up when one of the representatives, perhaps the chair of the committee, said that Pres. Obama had made phone calls to them and was following the issue.
I also heard during the coverage of the committee meeting that the Governor sent a note to the meeting that he applauds the withdraw of the anti-Catholic legislation, which was unconstitutional.
We commented on these things in the Z-Chat room I had open while I cohosted the AirMaria live stream.
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The governor of Connecticut is a woman, M. Jodi Rell.
She is a Republican, naturally. If they had a Democrat governor of the “Catholic” kind, she would have demanded passage. Tom
I’m glad that the bill was quashed. It was silly, unconstitutional and anti-Catholic. I don’t understand how a predominately Catholic state could even consider this bill.
I highly support Bill 1098.
In New York State, the Religious Corporation Law allows Catholic bishops to have 100% financial control of the parish, school, rectory, convent, the contents of the buildings and all of the money collected from the collection basket. They are able to run each parish community as a personal dictatorship.
In the past 29 years, Bishop Matthew Clark closed 50 Catholic schools and over 25 parishes, because he has total financial control. These negative actions have driven away parishioners. Now only 23% of Catholics attend Sunday Mass in the Diocese of Rochester.
It is time for change.
State laws which actually protect the bishops instead of the parishioners, have to be changed.
Dan Riley: I understand your point, but I don’t agree with you. The Church is not a democracy; it needs a firm leader in control of the recourses. While abuse may happen once in a while, I’m still comfortable with the Ordinary having legal title to all church assets to stem schism.
The Diocese of Rochester is in quite a state. No arguments there, but this is an awful reason to attempt to dismantle the Church structure with secular state power. First, it wouldn’t happen because as the lawyer testified, the Church would have to relocate to a home in general incorporation. Meaning, problem not solved. Plus, when one is blessed with a faithful bishop full of progressive yahoo layman pulling his strings, again problem not solved.