Posted on 05/30/2009 9:45:17 PM PDT by jobim
May 30, 2009
Dear Friends in Christ:
It is with a great degree of shock and dismay that I must share with you a recent action that the State of Connecticut has initiated with respect to our Diocese.
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.
As a result, we helped highlight the unconstitutional nature of this proposal such that the bill was withdrawn even before its first scheduled public hearing.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-inaction and a great civics lesson for our children. Our Founding Fathers would have been proud.
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.
Once again, we should be outraged. “Lobbying”? Exhortations from the pulpit, information posted to the world wide web, a rally in the middle of the day on the State’s most public piece of property? This cannot possibly be what our Legislature had in mind when it enacted lobbying laws to bring more transparency and oversight to a legislative process that has been corrupted by special interests and backroom deals.
Let’s be clear: we violated no law. We acted in response to an outrageous proposal that was imminently pending review and threatened to impose dramatic and blatantly unconstitutional requirements on our Church. Unfortunately, this new action cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to muzzle the Church and subject our right of free speech to government review and regulation. This government action tramples on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and should shock the conscience of all citizens of the Constitution State.
We have now been left with no choice but to file a civil rights lawsuit in Federal Court against State of Connecticut officials seeking relief from this shocking government action. A copy of the lawsuit and more information is posted now on www.bridgeportdiocese.com. As your Bishop, I will take every measure possible to defend our faith and our Church from attempts to silence us – and our individual parishes could be targeted next.
I invite you, if you wish to do so, to contact your State Legislator before the session ends this coming Wednesday to discuss why state lobbying laws, which are designed to protect the integrity of the legislative process and monitor and control backroom manipulation of that process, are now being used to stifle our freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly.
Faithfully,
Most Reverend William E. Lori
Bishop of Bridgeport
I hate the liberalism in the Catholic Church, too, but I stayed. Sometimes, those who left because of the liberalism are a greater suffering to me than the liberals themselves.
... yes ... they deserve what they got; however, this is a marvelous teaching moment. For once the left got caught red handed for everyone to see who they really are, basically Jack Booted Anti-Religion Obamist Communist Thugs. And this one is hard for propogandists like Mathews and Olberman to spin. Ultimately stuff like this has got to feed a conservative backlash! So get ready to ride the wave!
If that's a hint that I should get my butt back to Church, then you're right, I should...but if I hear one hint that Genesis is just a story, and that Adam and Eve weren't real people, or that they were apes....then I'm outa there for good....
One can only hope...
I just don't like what's happening to my country.
This is also no better time than I can think of for ALL churches to not sign on to government faith based programs. The ones signed on to such should get out NOW! That will be the next tool used for control.
“If it comes to pass....”
It should be the signal for massive demonstrations,protests,to defend FREEDOM and its cultural roots....
There should come a time to WAKE UP and stop going silently forward and downward
I’m very impressed that the bishop is taking firm steps to fight back. The interesting thing is that dictators will often back off if challenged, particularly if it happens fairly early in their reign. I think Bp Lori may at least buy us some time.
I was disappointed by all the anti-Catholic comments on this thread and I can’t imagine what provoked them, since there’s certainly nothing to criticize in Bp Lori’s actions.
More of the beginnings of Persecution.
The arrogance of the government is unbelievable. They are basically stating that “hey, you defended yourself”
“I was disappointed by all the anti-Catholic comments”
I don’t think it wa Lori’s actions that were being criticized. I believe it was the CINO’s that are being criticized and their “hold” on the church in the US for the most part. The liberal in them along with hispanic Cinos who put obama and his ilk in office are now whining about the consequences. Not unlike the Jews whom God had to keep slapping upside the head in the Old Testament for blatently disregarding him.
Yes, but instead of worrying about CINOs (who weren’t the point of this article anyway), maybe we should get behind a bishop who’s really doing something.
All churches have bad members; the Catholic Church may have more, technically, because Protestants who don’t go to church will simply stop referring to themselves as Methodists, Baptists, or whatever, while Catholics who don’t go to church continue to refer to themselves as Catholics. So it looks even worse than it is.
But the point is that the doctrine and the Faith are still there, regardless of the weakness of the members, and the Catholic Church is still the only institution that is at least trying to fight back against Obama’s policies.
It annoys me when instead of supporting attempts to stand up and fight back, non-Catholics (who aren’t doing anything themselves) come pouring out of the woodwork to scream about real or imagined past failings by Catholics, CINO or not.
Here is “The coming fascism in the Age of Obama” ping!
Pinging to my General Interest AND Texas lists here!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
and yet how many of those Catholics vote for Democrats without hesitation?
how many democrats in Conn. voted for Dodd?
how many decomcrat congressmen?
Sotomayer will find the priests guildy due their lack of laaaateeeno womanliness.
“This isn’t a Catholic issue-it’s a Constitutional issue.” The Catholic church is just the first they are going after because they represent the biggest religious threat to their power. Just like they went after GM and Chrysler, Bank of America and on and on. Evangelical Christians will be next. Tax issues, free speech, use of funds and more. Thanks MSM for bringing us this assault on the Constitution. Oh by the way, MSM, if the mugabe wannabe gets his way, you guys are toast as well.
“Catholics who don’t go to church continue to refer to themselves as Catholics”
I think you have it wrong. Case in point is my mother and she is NOT alone, goes to church every Sunday, but continues in a liberal mindset that votes in every proabortion, gay promoting, liberal democrat who is up for election. The Catholic church is only starting to fight back now and Lori has, at least for now, seen what havoc those kind of Catholics have wrought now that he has to fight back against the government being interjected into running the church.
Bishop Lori is young and energetic enough to see this to a favorable conclusion for American Catholics along with all the faithful in Christ.
The fact that he is a powerful and capable religious leader (never mind that he is Catholic) should be a clear shining political danger warning to all religious Americans, including Catholic bashers and anyone who read their Bibles.
Remove the speck from your own eyes before judging this spiritual man of Christ. Excerpt for the Catholic bashers:
In Luke 6:37, the Bible says, "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."Nobody wants to be judged themselves, so you need to extend the same courtesy to others. As you view others with compassion instead of judgment, you are better able to help others and bring your life into better alignment with God's plans.
Let's unify in Christ + and the land of freedom that we have inherited from God.
Oh, there are definitely church-going Catholics who are CINOs, too, and there are many, many priests who are CINOs (not to mention a few bishops). There are far too many of them.
But when they analyzed the statistics, the majority of those who voted for Obama did not go to Mass regularly (if at all) but still called themselves Catholics. Far too many church-going Catholics voted for him, too, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that the official doctrine of the Church and the Faith is opposed to the things he is promoting. My point is that bad Catholics don’t change the fact that the Church’s doctrine is solid; some bishops are firm and aggressive about teaching their people, and some aren’t, and we’re seeing the effects of this now.
I think that’s why Obama is so eager to peel the Church away from the bishops (as if such a thing were possible). But even the ND stunt was aimed to imply that there was some other teaching authority in the Church, and that the bishops were irrelevant. Unfortunately, I think you’d find a lot of Catholics (just as during the times of Henry VIII) who are so poorly instructed that they’d just shrug and say they couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. And then it’s all over: the American Catholic Church gets set up with the treacherous participation of some of the negligent bishops, the bishops of the true Roman Catholic Church lose their churches and authority (and even end in jail), and Bambi has essentially installed himself as the new authority in the Church, just as Henry VIII did in England centuries ago.
A few bishops realize the stakes, fortunately, but whether there’s time enough to fight back or not, I don’t know. There was only one bishop who resisted Henry VIII (St. John Fisher, who got beheaded for it), but I hope we’ll have a better showing here!
“I hope we’ll have a better showing here.”
Well, my prayers as a former Catholic and now member of a fundamentalist and non denominational church are with you.
Thanks for the ping!
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