If They're Running You Out of Town, Act Like it's a Parade

The good news from Connecticut is that, in the face of a vast protest unprecedented in state history, the two lawmakers who were trying to push legislation to steal parishes away from the Catholic church have given up the atttempt.

For now.

Their rationale, however, is insane.

The Democratic co-chairs of the legislature's judiciary committee, Rep. Michael P. Lawlor of East Haven and Sen. Andrew McDonald of Stamford, just released the following statement:

"For reasons that are unclear, Connecticut has had generations-old laws on the books singling out particular religions and treating them differently from other religions in our statutes. That doesn't seem right. In fact, many of our existing corporate laws dealing with particular religious groups appear to us to be unconstitutional under the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If that is correct, any changes to that law would likely also be unconstitutional.

"With that in mind, 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."

Lawlor and McDonald are going to ask the state attorney general for an opinion on the constitutionality of the various laws in question, and then convene a religious forum to try to build a consensus for their new regulations. In the meantime they will try to persuade the Connecticut bishops to unilaterally surrender to the dissident Voice of the Faithful.

"... we think it would be most beneficial if the proponents who requested these changes and church officials meet together privately to see if they can come to a resolution on their own. Open and honest communication between these two groups could only help. For our part, we intend to reach out to representatives of the Catholic Conference and continue the discussion that began in 2008 on this issue. We hope they will agree to meet with us."

I would encourage the bishops to tell them to go to hell, although I suspect the bishops will be a bit more diplomatic about it. Mostly, I would not trust Lawlor, McDonald or any of the VOTF people as far as I could throw them. I suspect they will attempt to exploit any existing inequities to promote division among Christian groups, rather than actually work to create laws more in keeping with the First Amendment.

The good guys won this battle, but the war is far from over.