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by Elizabeth Ela

The hearing may be cancelled, but Connecticut’s Catholics aren’t backing down quietly.

The day before its public hearing, the Connecticut General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee tabled a bill that threatened to take away priests’ and bishops’ authority to govern their flocks and instead exclude clergy from all business decisions.

Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying the bill’s proponents asked them to cancel the hearing and table discussion for the rest of the legislative session.

Hundreds if not more Catholics and others concerned for religious freedom in the Constitution State were expected to show up and wait to testify to the committee tomorrow. In the absence of a hearing, they’ll rally instead at the Hartford state capitol, intent on making known their opposition to a bill that specifically targets the governing structure of the Roman Catholic Church.

“The public hearing for Proposed Bill 1098 may have been postponed, but the bill is still alive,” the Diocese of Bridgeport’s website warned.

Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport has been outspoken against the legislation over the past five days, and the diocese is still busing members to Hartford tomorrow morning to participate in the rally.

Headline Bistro will be reporting from the rally via Twitter.

Lawlor and McDonald said they decided to pull the bill because of potential constitutional issues over Connecticut’s current regulations on religious corporations.

“It would serve no useful purpose to have a conversation about changing the laws that govern existing Roman Catholic corporations until we know if any of these existing laws are constitutional,” the statement said.

Those existing laws are under Section 33-264 of the state’s general statutes, which define the Roman Catholic Church, among other religious groups, as a religious corporation able to conduct business transactions within the state.

Bill 1098, however, would revise regulations only applying to the Catholic Church, with provisions that would take authority away from bishops and pastors and place business matters in the hands of boards of directors – from which clergy would be denied a vote.

In the meanwhile, Lawlor and McDonald said that they will pursue talks with representatives from all religious denominations in the state and other legal scholars, outside of the legislative session.

 

Headline Bistro's Twitter feed can be found here.