Many other bloggers besides ourselves noticed the absurd and unconstitutional proposal floated in Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee to order the Roman Catholic Church to turn its governance over to boards of laypeople. Prawfsblawg carries the text of a stern letter written by one leading law-and-religion scholar, Douglas Laycock, and signed by a dozen others, including Eugene Volokh and Kate Stith. Following a loud outcry which quickly went national, the lawmakers identified with the bill have agreed to table it, and it’s dead for the session.
Many traditionalist Catholic commentators, like Kathryn Lopez at National Review, have promoted the view that the bill somehow constitutes “retribution” for the Catholic Church’s Culture War stands, specifically its promotion of Proposition 8 in California. (William Lori, Bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport, has made the same claim.) “The bill is believed to be an act of political retribution for the Catholic church’s opposition to gay marriage,” Lopez writes, and then spends an entire interview eliciting vigorous assent to that proposition from her interviewee, Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage.
Reports from news organizations that have looked into the Connecticut controversy, however, tell a different story.
The Greenwich Time of Greenwich, Ct., for example, reported yesterday that the bill arose from constituent pressure following priests’ diversion of large sums of money to their personal use at Catholic churches in Darien (home base of one former priest who’s now in prison) and Greenwich, both well-to-do New York suburbs:
…former state Rep. Claudia “Dolly” Powers, a Republican from Greenwich, pursued similar legislation. Powers said she submitted a proposal on behalf of constituent Tom Gallagher, a driving force behind the bill…
“The parishioners who are most devout are the ones advancing it, and I suspect it would be difficult for (Lori) to criticize his main contributors with some of the highest positions in the Catholic church,” [Sen. Andrew] McDonald said.
Gallagher, a member of the Knights of Columbus and Order of Malta, scoffs at the Bishop’s account of his motivations in promoting the bill; much more can be found at this Stamford Advocate profile of Gallagher. Said to be another backer is “John Santa of Fairfield, vice chairman of Santa Energy and a frequent donor to the church”. Organizationally, the main constituency for the bill appears to be a group called Voice of the Faithful, whose website describes itself as “a lay organization of faithful Catholics, who organized in 2002 as a response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church” and now claims 30,000 members nationwide. That group’s op-ed in the Stamford, Ct. Advocate has a great deal to say about the ins and outs of alleged parish misgovernance, and nothing at all to say about the social issues Lopez and others claim are the real motivation for the bill. And this account of a Voice of the Faithful panel discussion from last April lays out in some detail the thinking of some of the supporters of the idea; headlining the panel were theology professors Paul Lakeland of Fairfield U., who is among other things director of the Center for Catholic Studies at that Jesuit institution, and Holy Cross emeritus professor of church history David O’Brien. The Catholic News Agency is out with a well-reported, if partisan, article on VotF’s and Prof. Lakeland’s roles in the controversy.
Let’s stipulate again that as a matter of constitutional law and sound governance, the Diocese of Bridgeport and National Review are entirely, totally right to denounce S.B. 1098. Perhaps Kathryn Lopez and Brian Brown preferred not to give Voice of the Faithful (or Profs. Lakeland and O’Brien) any publicity by explaining their role in the bill’s origins. But in jamming the controversy into a familiar Culture War matrix the better to stir up a national conservative audience, I suspect they’ve disserved the cause of good reporting.
P.S. In a press release, Voice of the Faithful has distanced itself from the Hartford bill, which it says was drafted and submitted without its participation; more in comments.
It seems to me the takeaway is, if you’re a Catholic and you want some say in how your pastor spends the church funds, then you should find some other church. The idea of top-down governance through a self-perpetuating hierarchy really is a basic part of Catholic doctrine, as far as I can tell. Other Christian churches (e.g., Congregationalists and Presbyterians) have a different view on the matter.
And while I have no knowledge of Mr. Brown’s method of operation, it surprises me not at all that Ms Lopez wants to jam this into the Culture War box. For her, it really is about The Gays, all of the time.
“… it surprises me not at all that Ms Lopez wants to jam this into the Culture War box. For her, it really is about The Gays, all of the time.”
I think this is a wee bit unfair. It’s about the gays alot, with her, but not all the time. She does write about abortion and Mitt Romney from time to time.
KLo is one of the main reasons I quit reading the Corner routinely, though I do remain a subscriber to NR and donate annually online to NRO.
I’ll repeat what I said yesterday: Why don’t these people just start their own church? As Don K points out, the RC church has top-down governance. If you don’t like it, join a denomination that enables you to pick your own clergy and oversee its own financial affairs. Asking the Connecticut legislature to run interference here would seem to open the door to the very thing religious people claim NOT to want: the state determining how religious bodies conduct their business.
“Why don’t these people just start their own church?”
They don’t want a new church. They certainly don’t want a non-authoritarian one. They simply want to be the authorities, themselves. So they’re trying to force out the leaders and substitute their own judgment for that of their nominal leaders.\
“open the door to the very thing religious people claim NOT to want”
Reality check: people only want the state to say out of things when the state disagrees with the way they want to do things. When the state agrees with them, they’re all for the idea of it running everything, because then they’re in charge, if only by proxy.
I am not sure that we are being fair to the people who have brought this upon the church body in Connecticut. It seems to me that they do know a lot more than the ordinary Catholic and I cannot question their loyalty. I will certainly not judge them. When a people is unable to search the truth and want the truth then we have problems. Of course there is a separation of church and state in America but most of the churches in America are not states. The RC church is also a state and the biggest contributor to keeping that political state alive is America. So, let us be honest and ask ourselves where is most of our money really going. And no, we have no say regardless of what we advise. Just look at the way the bishop last year misappropriated the funds. Vatican said nothing. I think that we should be listening to Jesus who said that we should be giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s etc. The minute that our RC church stops being Caesar is the minute that we shall all relax. Again, let us be honest instead of hurling arrows at each other. These men are good decent Catholics who do not deserve your petty criticisms. They have done quite a bit of the church. I congratulate them for wanting to make it better. I am sorry that they did not succeed.
Wow, Caledonian hit it out of the park.
In my experience in a bunch of places, most RC parishes are pretty transparent about how the money gets spent. A good parish council keeps interested parishoners informed. If i was in a parish where that wasn’t the case, I’d ask a bunch of questions. If pastors are the ultimate arbiter (after the bishop) of how funds get spent, most that I’ve known are very happy to off-load the day-to-days of that task to lay folks. Of course, I’ve never had a hopelessly corrupt pastor, but I’m sure they are out there. The real issue is not so much what particular rules are in place, but the Church’s fundamental right to determine what those are going to be, and by their own process. There is no doctrinal reason for pastors to control church funds, and again, most couldn’t be bothered doing so. But it is up to bishops and duly constituted and responsible authorities within the Church to establish the rules, not some ridiculous pack of state legislators or self-appointed coalitions of the faithful, however well-intentioned.
Sigh. If only there were a religion that considered bearing false witness to be a sin…
As someone in the Reformed tradition we believe that each local church should be independent and should be governed by a plurality of elders which are voted in my the congregation and may continue to ”rule” (I use that term for historical reformed reasons) unless they disqualify them selves by an act of public immorality. I think its a fine compromise between the Catholic and congregational extremes.
Yes, jgrig2, but if you deny the authority of the RC hierarchy, then you’re no longer RC, are you? They can effect all the fine compromises they want, but in essence it means they’ve created their own church. Which is fine by me–they can be Wiccans, Druids, Anabaptists, or followers of Madame Blavatsky if that makes them happy–but they’ve certainly split from the RC church in this regard. This is an odd thing I’ve noticed about Roman Catholics: they deny the fundmental teachings of their religion, but still insist that they’re Roman Catholics. What is the point of this? Do they think they won’t go to hell if they hang onto the label of Roman Catholic, despite defying all the basic church teachings?
Speaking of which–and forgive me for going slightly OT–but recently I encountered a new locution: “cultural Catholic.” I’m familiar with the term “cultural Jew” and understand it to mean a non-religious or atheistic/agnostic Jew who nevertheless identifies ethnically with Judaism. I’m a little stumped as to what a “cultural Catholic” is, although I assume it means someone who was raised RC but no longer believes. What else is entailed? Is it some kind of tribal identification?
A minor point: It wasn’t the State Senate Judiciary Committee, but the joint Judiciary Committee. The Connecticut legislature is nominally bicameral, like all the other state legislatures except Nebraska, but has joint House/Senate committees. The net effect is that there is a lot less opportunity to influence legislation in committee. I think of our legislature as having one-and-one-half houses, not two.
Thanks for that correction. Fixed it above by removing the word “Senate”.
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“I’ll repeat what I said yesterday: Why don’t these people just start their own church?”
They don’t even have to start their own church – there’s the Union of Utrecht (aka the Old Catholic Church) already out there. They seceded from the Catholic Church in the 19th century over the then-new doctrine of papal infallibility and remain defiantly separate to this day, yet still claiming the same apostolic succession as the Roman Church. The Old Catholics are way less hierarchical than the Catholics.
It’s a little confusing in the US, because there’s also the Polish National Catholic Church, which split from the Old Catholics when the latter started ordaining women and blessing same-sex unions, but that just means that disgruntled Catholics have *two* options, depending on how socially conservative they are.
Even if some kind of law were passed turning control over to the laity;
how many news stories appear every day about some secretary embezzling
the orphanage’s funds? This is just another example of how stupid
politicians really are. Statistically priests are probably ten times
more honest than laypersons; rotten apples aside.
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The funny thing is that the folks behind this bill claim that it will cut down on the theft of church funds. That’s simply not true. There have been yearly lawsuits in my home state against the boards/elders/trustees/etc of Protestant churches that handle leadership and funds on this same “grassroots” theory. Its a sad truth, but the people who want to get their hands on the purse strings the most are the people we should least want to have them. Reminds me of secular politics. . .
I realize that comment mostly bleeds into yours Kevin; just wanted to say it a little differently.
Personally, I wouldn’t object to a less ambitious bill, perhaps something along the lines of mandating publishing budgets and distributing copies to parishioners.
But to demand that clergy are essentially stripped of decisions regarding church affairs is intolerable, to my mind.
In addition, while there have been cases of higher-ups covering up wrongdoing (e.g. the sexual abuse cases in dioceses such as Boston and LA), this didn’t happened in regards to this case. The diocese fully cooperated in investigating the charges, according to a DOJ press release. So why, when the problem was caught and dealt with adequately by existing law, does a new law need to be proposed?
@Caledonian
And I’ll add another thing, Caledonian… that they do not want to start another church precisely because it is the CATHOLIC Church they hate, all that it stands for, and this they want to destroy, in one way or another, so that it is no longer that which it is.
Unfortunately for them, they forget that the claims of the Church as to her own Being, are actually true — they may win battles, but never the war.
Why is it that Roman Catholics who want to destroy the Roman Catholic church still identify themselves as Roman Catholics? What is it about their own religion that makes them hate it that much, but still cling to the forms? I truly don’t understand this, any more than I understand the obsessive need of some self-labeled “Recovering Catholics” to buttonhole people at dinner parties and rave on endlessly about the evils done to them by their religion. (I should add that this might be a phenomenon peculiar to the Boston/New York/Washington corridor, which is where I’ve experieenced it.) Why not just join some other denomination and shut up about it? Are they still secretly terrified of going to hell should they, gasp, join a Protestant church?
Susan said:
“Why not just join some other denomination and shut up about it? Are they still secretly terrified of going to hell should they, gasp, join a Protestant church?”
Perhaps, yes. The Catholic Church does not consider itself to be just one Christian denomination among others which people are free to pick and choose from if they want to get to heaven. The view is that, while God may save some people who are really ignorant as to where the true Church resides, those who leave the Roman Church are in no such position. See Aquinas on the sin of schism.
As for your question about former/nominal Catholics bashing the Church, it is an interesting phenomena. I think it’s usually the result of a troubled conscience lashing out.
See this snippet from Fr. Neuhaus:
“A kind reader forwarded some items from a blogsite run by Andrew Sullivan. It seems Mr. Sullivan is tying himself into knots over his relationship with the Church, excommunicating himself because he feels excommunicated by the Church’s unwillingness to join in his celebration of buggery.* And then there is his argument that the Church contradicts herself by saying that a pro-abortion politician may be excluding himself from communion while it is all right for a judge to read the Constitution in a way that upholds the abortion license. This is to ignore the crucial difference between the legislative and judicial branches… It seems odd that Mr. Sullivan has so much difficulty understanding that.
Or maybe it is not so odd. As most priests know from long experience, when someone attacks the Church, it often takes only a little probing to discover that, in more cases than not, their anger is the result of a morally disordered life. In Mr. Sullivan’s case, it takes no probing at all, since he is so very, so incessantly, public about it.”
Or this story about the Marquis de Sade:
“The nattily-dressed young nobleman escorted the comely French prostitute to a rented room on the second floor of a nondescript maison on the outskirts of Paris. The Marquis de Sade had been frequenting such houses during his trip to the capital, a trip he had ostensibly taken for business reasons. The true nature of his business, however, was the pursuit of pleasure, the kind that the nobility of France had enjoyed for generations without repercussion or recrimination. The newly wed Marquis had been staging garden-variety orgies at several maisons he had rented in and around Paris during October of 1763. However, he had a more singular encounter in mind for himself and the young prostitute, Mlle. Jeanne Testard.
Upon entering the room, the Marquis bolted the door behind them and immediately demanded to know if Mlle. Testard had religious convictions, if she was a faithful adherent to the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic faith. When she responded affirmatively, the Marquis proceeded to harangue her with the most vile and degrading insults. To Testard’s horror he also began to engage in the most provocative and blasphemous acts, including masturbating into a chalice, referring to the Lord as “motherfucker” and inserting two communion hosts into the terrified young woman before entering her himself, all the while screaming, “If thou art God, avenge thyself!”
Mlle. Testard, who had already gotten much more than she had bargained for with the Marquis, was mortified by his next request, which was for her to heat a cat-o-nine-tails in the fire until it glowed red, and then to beat him with it. She was then to select the whip of her choosing for him to do the same to her. When she refused to let him beat her, he proceeded to masturbate with a pair of crucifixes, after which he held her at sword-point while forcing her to repeat vulgar, blasphemous impieties.”
(And no, I’m not saying that even a tiny fraction of Catholic apostates are the moral equivalent of Sade – he’s obviously an extreme example.)
Susan, I imagine that ‘cultural Catholicism’ and the reluctance of people to leave the church that they disagree with are basically the same thing. It’s not just, as Danny points out, that still-religious disagreeing Catholics are afraid for their souls. It’s mostly that churches are more than social clubs. Religious identification is central to identity, often in much the same way that gender, sexual orientation, and race can be. People are often conscious of being Catholic before they even know what it means to be Catholic (something similar goes on with religion in general – children are taught that they believe in God before they’re taught what God is).
In such circumstances, people take ownership of these labels. They don’t understand themselves as being Catholic by virtue of their belief in a set of propositions. Rather, they understand themselves as Catholic on a basic level, and they feel that, whatever anyone else says and whatever they happen to believe, they’ll always be Catholic. It becomes important simply to be a member of the group, even if virtually everything about the group as it’s usually understood is objectionable.
Such is my experience as a cultural Jew. There’s an ethnic component to Jewishness, but cultural Judaism is a bit different. It’s a basic identification with a group of people on the basis of feelings of shared experience and heritage. The ethnic aspect of Jewishness makes it easier to be an entirely irreligious Jew – I imagine that Catholics have a harder time understanding themselves as both not-Catholic religiously but as still essentially Catholic in some way, and so they may tend to insist that they’re still Catholics in a religious sense even as they disagree with the church on many issues. The obvious way out of the cognitive difficulty they find themselves in is to bring the church into agreement with their personal beliefs.
Protestants, on the other hand, tend not to be as invested in a single denomination. It’s easier for them to slide between denominations, and there are so many of those with such a wide variety of views that no one really feels the need to try to significantly change one from the inside.
How pleasant-minded of Danny, and of course how typical of Neuhaus, to presume that when a former co-thinker now disagrees with him sharply enough, “it’s usually the result of a troubled conscience lashing out” and “the result of a morally disordered life”. That’ll show those former Catholics what they’re missing by not sticking around to be Neuhaus acolytes! Charming language about Sullivan too.
Speaking of which, let me thank Andrew Sullivan for his kind link to this post, which has brought it many thousands of readers, and also Damon Linker for the cites and discussion in his interesting post at the New Republic.
I think that Gotchaye is correct. I was raised Catholic but am now an agnostic, and it is definitely more than just agreeing with the dogma of the Church. I find both humor and a hint of truth at the description (from the ol’ joke) that I’m a “Catholic atheist.” The idea of religious identification being part of personal identification is a very strong one, I find, among Catholics and many ex-Catholics. (I know a few people who refer to themselves as “nonpracticing Catholics” when they are really atheists and agnostics.)
Leaving the Church for a Protestant denomination isn’t really an option, because no matter how much they disagree with the doctrines of the Church, their connection to the Church is not doctrinal, but something more. (And, truth be told, there is more than a few Catholics who simply don’t see Protestant churches as “real” churches: “How can they be real churches when they don’t follow the Pope, cut out a bunch of books from the Bible, don’t have catechism and don’t think that Jesus is actually present in the Eucharist. (And don’t get started on the grape-juice-in-place-of-wine travesty…)”)
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“because it is the CATHOLIC Church they hate, all that it stands for, and this they want to destroy, in one way or another, so that it is no longer that which it is.”
That’s funny, because I also want to destroy the Catholic Church, and the best way I can think of to do so is to ensure that it remains what it is. That ends with it suffocating in its own irrelevance. It’s the stances of the Church that have resulted in people identifying only with its brand and not with its content. Why would I want to change that?
Preventing the efforts of reformers is vital to making sure that the Church continues in its path – right over the cliff.
I also want to destroy the Catholic Church, and the best way I can think of to do so is to ensure that it remains what it is.
Right, I said it before, Christianity is self-defeating but what are you going to do for the other nutbars?
(and some non-catholic Christian wackos so typical of the US)
Two more relevant updates: First, I should note that a press release from Voice of the Faithful flatly denies that that group either drafted or sponsored the bill in Hartford. That is not inconsistent with what I wrote about the group being the most prominent organizational constituency for the idea, as reflected in its holding of seminars promoting trusteeship concepts with presenters like Prof. Lakeland (who, with the bill’s main backer, Greenwich businessman/lawyer Tom Gallagher, appeared at a news conference in Hartford this week to explain the rationale for the bill).
Second, when I posted briefly on the controversy at my main site, Overlawyered, a couple of commenters asserted that VotF was itself driven by opposition to the Catholic church’s Culture War stands, a notion I have also seen floated on some conservative Catholic sites. I replied:
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Let me see if I understand this…
According to a newspaper [an unbiased, objective, non-partisan and accurate source], some parishioners object to embezzlement, malappropriation, and malfeasance by officials of the local diocese. Their solution to this is to have politicians [incorruptible, honest, and true] oversee the disbursement of funds. This “solution” doesn’t pass the laugh test. The presentation of the “true” reason in a newspaper doesn’t rise to the level of rumor.
tehag
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