FIC Blog

Yesterday’s eighth annual Catholic Concerns Day was perhaps the most highly-charged, confrontational one yet. But despite the presence of the Courant’s religion reporter at the event, our local paper of record limited its coverage to one photo with a vague caption noting the Archbishop’s concern about “ominous threats” to the Church “in the form of some proposed state legislation.” 

What occasioned the Archbishop’s concern was the effort at extortion–the Archbishop’s word–by anti-Catholic legislators who want to withhold millions of dollars of emergency energy funding from Catholic hospitals unless those hospitals provide chemical abortions. The Republican-American has the story that the Courant missed or chose not to print:

HARTFORD — The state’s Catholic bishops worry there is an anti-Catholic bias at work in the legislature, Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of the Archdiocese of Hartford said Wednesday.

“You hear from increasing number of people, both Catholic and otherwise, that we have had enough Catholic bashing, and it seems to be on the increase,” Mansell said.

The attempts to legislate that Catholic hospitals offer emergency contraceptives to rape victims against church tenets have inflamed Catholic suspicions of bias. No other issue has caused so much uproar this session…

There was also a sense among Catholics that the legislation on emergency contraception reflected hostility in the legislature toward the church.

The Associated Press also had good coverage:

Connecticut’s three Roman Catholic bishops said Wednesday that they believe their church is under fire in the state legislature, where there have been efforts to require Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception for rape victims.

Hartford Archbishop Henry J. Mansell, speaking to more than 500 followers who attended Catholic Day at the Capitol, did not accuse specific legislators of being anti-Catholic. But the archbishop said he does believe “Catholic bashing” is on the increase and there is an abortion rights agenda behind the emergency contraception bill.

House Speaker James Amann (D-Milford), who is in a position to know, confirmed in the Rep-Am piece that some of his colleagues are motivated by anti-Catholicism:

While Mansell would not say so, Amann said there are House members who are anti-Catholic. He did not name any names.

“There are certain people in this chamber that have those feelings. There is no doubt about it. … If anybody in this chamber who thinks there aren’t people in this room that are anti-Catholic, that is not being honest,” Amann said.

And there was this in the AP piece:

State Victim Advocate James Papillo, an ordained deacon who drew criticism for testifying against the legislation, said he is not surprised that advocates are still trying to find ways to get the bill passed this year.

“Some people are coming at it with a vengeance. They want to see the Catholic Church harmed in some way,” he said.

The AP noted the Archbishop’s “extortion” remark and the Connecticut Post captured aspects of the event that were not reported elsewhere, such as Bishop Lori’s strong remarks and the cheering that the bishops’ speeches received from the hundreds who had marched through a snowstorm to be there at the state capitol.

But I think you had to be there–and to have been at previous Catholic Concerns Days–to appreciate how unusual yesterday’s event was. No report noted the anger in the Archbishop’s eyes when discussing the “extortion” and how the $5 million at issue is “a fraction of a fraction” of the 100 million or so dollars that the Catholic hospitals save the state every year. The Archbishop noted that St. Mary’s Hospital is the state’s second largest recipient of patients with Medicaid–which only covers 65% of the costs–and that the Church covers the difference. He spoke about the low dropout rate among the nearly 40,000 Catholic school children in our state and drew attention to the cities and neighborhoods where the drop-out problem has contributed to societal ills. There was no mistaking his implication that the State gains far more from the Church than it gives back. And there was no mistaking the disappointment in Bishop Lori’s voice–bordering on disgust–as he noted how a member of the Appropriations Committee filibustered an amendment to protect the religious freedom of Catholic hospitals by reading the story of the Good Samaritan and then claiming that, by refusing to provide chemical abortions, the Church is not being a Good Samaritan.

FIC has been proud to count Connecticut’s Catholic Bishops among our strongest pro-family allies. And in all the years that we have been working with them and encountering them at public events, I have never seen them as angry as they were yesterday.

It was an anger mixed with hurt by bishops who could not understand why their Church was under constant attack by legislators of a State for whom that Church has performed so many good works.

The bishops have drawn a line in the sand in defense of religious liberty in Connecticut. It now falls to us, the faithful of many different denominations, to stand beside them.