Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

No doubt about it, the antics of the co-chairmen of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, are enough to drive a saint to drink or, at the very least, to intemperate language. Radio host and blogger Hal Turner clearly went over the edge when he said about the two, "It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die." Exclamation point! "Or die?" a Hartford paper remarks in an editorial. "Turner defends his passionate beliefs not with a copy of the Constitution, but with the promise of ‘bullets.’” “That would be wrong at any time, but especially now, when hate speech, mostly from the far right, and incitements to violence are so prevalent.” To these reasonable objections, one can only reply "Here, here" -- and then proceed to quibble with some minor reservations. T...

Here’s a question no one seems willing to discuss: How often do legislative committees – the Ethics Committee, no less – start “investigations” on groups that are exercising their constitutional rights on the Capitol lawn? Once, that I can think of -- here: The state’s Ethics Committee is now “investigating” the Catholic Church with a view to determining whether the Diocese of Bridgeport, which paid for some buses to transport people to a rally on the Capitol lawn, is in violation of lobbying ordinances. The Catholic Church is suing the state to secure its constitutional rights. There is some danger here that watchful citizens may lose sight of the trees because they are too close to the forest. The Catholic Church has been under successful attack for some time by its natural enemies in the legislature, but one recent sally by the church’s opponents in the legislature has been beaten back by the church. Some people are keeping score, obviously. The Judiciary Committee, hea...

The thousands of Catholics who descended upon the state’s Capitol to protest Raised Bill No. 1098 will be gratified to learn that the whole sorry business was the result, according to a news report in the Journal Inquirer , of a misunderstanding concerning the meaning of the expression “ex-officio.” Those Latin formulations; they get you every time. Sen. Andrew McDonald, who along with Rep. Michael Lawlor in the House is one of the two co-chairmen of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, received in 2007 a communication from an understandably upset parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich, Mr. Thomas Gallagher. Three years ago, a Stamford detective hired by parishioners of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church to investigate strange goings-on in the rectory of the church had documented that its pastor, the Reverend Michael Jude Fay, had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of church money to finance a lavish lifestyle with another man. The Reverend Fay...

Sen. Andrew McDonald, the co-chair along with Rep. Michael Lawlor of the state judiciary committee, has issued an apology of sorts. In an e-mail, Mr. McDonald writes: "It was never my intent to offend anyone of faith, nor to cast negative attention on the many trustworthy and responsible parish corporations. My only goal was to try my best to represent the concerns of my constituents, some of whom were the victims of fraud. I regret that in my pursuit of their interests, I failed to appreciate and invite into the discussion early on the views of other, equally concerned Catholics." Let’s go through the apology step by step. Mr. McDonald says that he received from parishioners at St. John’s church in Darien a proposal that later morphed, pretty much all by itself, into Raised Bill No. 1098 . “In reality,” McDonald wrote in an earlier statement published in the Journal Inquirer, “this bill was proposed and written by a group of faithful Catholic parishioners from Fairfield Coun...

The co-chairs of the state's judiciary committee, Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor, have killed the hearing during which Raised Bill No. 1098 was to be discussed, leaving behind in their wake a series of questions not yet answered. There are jarring conflicting reports concerning the writing of Raised Bill No. 1098, which strips bishops and archbishops of their rights under canon law to direct the financial affairs of their parishes. The Journal Inquirer quoted from a statement written by Lawlor, co-chair of the judiciary committee: “’In reality, this bill was proposed and written by a group of faithful Catholic parishioners from Fairfield County who asked the Judiciary Committee to consider giving the subject a public hearing,’ the statement continued. ‘Especially considering the fact that one of the large-scale embezzlements which gave rise to this proposal originated from a parish corporation in Darien, a town that Senator McDonald represents, we decided to give these parishio...

The reaction to Raised Bill No. 1098 has been intense in some quarters, though many commentators in the state, ordinarily quickened by blatant attacks on First Amendment rights, appear to have fallen asleep at their keyboards. Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization based in New Haven, compares the proponents of Raised Bill No. 1098, a piece of legislation that radically undermines the way the Catholic Church is financed, to the No-Nothings of Abraham Lincoln’s day. The Know-Nothings and Nativists of the time were fiercely anti-Catholic and anti-Negro. The favored means of attacking the Catholic Church in the days of the No-Nothings and Nativists was through “trusteeships,” a plan very much like that now being shepherded through the state’s judiciary committee by co-chairs Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor. Not for nothing does historian Arthur Schlesinger remind us that anti-Catholic prejudice is one of the most virulent forms of big...

Serious questions have been raised concerning the language of Raised Bill 1098. This is a bill that essentially compels a re-formation of Catholic Church authority, which now resides in its bishops, archbishops and the pope, considered to be the head of the Catholic Church. The bill establishes a church board that would direct the finances of the church and at the same time makes bishops and arch bishops powerless witnesses to the actions of the board. According to the bill, “The corporation, shall have a board of directors consisting of not less than seven nor more than thirteen lay members. The archbishop or bishop of the diocese or his designee shall serve as an ex-officio member of the board of directors without the right to vote .” The stated purpose of the bill is “To revise the corporate governance provisions applicable to the Roman Catholic Church and provide for the investigation of the misappropriation of funds by religious corporations.” The powers of the board, enumerated i...