The "Constitution State" goes after the Catholic Church. Again.

From the blog of Bishop William E. Lori, Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut:

As you will recall, following the surprise introduction of Bill 1098, which singled out Catholic parishes and would have forced them to reorganize contrary to Church law and the First Amendment, our Diocese responded in the most natural, spontaneous, and, frankly, American, of ways:

• We alerted our membership – in person and through our website;
• We encouraged them to exercise their free speech by contacting their elected representatives; and 
• We organized a rally at the State Capitol in Hartford.

As a result, we helped highlight the unconstitutional nature of this proposal such that the bill was withdrawn even before its first scheduled public hearing. It was an outstanding demonstration of democracy-in-action and a great civics lesson for our children. Our Founding Fathers would have been proud.

Examiner’s Conclusion

Last week, however, we were informed that, in the view of an examiner at the Connecticut Office of State Ethics, this was not a textbook case of citizen democracy and free speech – it actually constituted “lobbying”!

Accordingly, the examiner alleges that we failed to register as a lobbyist, a process that would subject the Diocese to intrusive oversight and regulation by the State. As such, the Diocese supposedly violated State law and is potentially subject to civil penalties.

Read the entire post. Further background information is available in this May 23, 2009, post.

• The State of Connecticut attacks the Catholic Church (March 9, 2009)

Comments

[Jack]

You have a core of extremely anti-Catholic legislators in the CT General Assembly who are now smarting at being humiliated in the wake of the bill 1098 fiasco. Time to take them to task again.

[Margaret]

Is there something in the drinking water in Connecticut? This is just bizarre.

Optimistically I'd like to hope that some misguided bureaucrat in the OSE has suddenly started pursuing claims like this against all kinds of non-lobbyist bodies. But I have a sneaky notion this is reserved strictly for the Catholics...

[LJ]

In any other context this would constitute harassment.