In the recent New York Times article "Judiciary Committee Finds Itself Under Heat," (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/nyregion/connecticut/29polct.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/R/Religion%20and%20Belief) Mark Pazniokas traces the proposal of and response to legislation in Connectict that would require treating Catholic churches more like corporations. Pazniokas explains,"The proposed changes would have effectively shifted control of parish finances from the bishop and pastors to the congregations, heresy to the Roman Catholic hierarchy." While the state senators argued that the changes would increase transparency and prevent further concerns over questionable usage, the reaction of Connecticut Catholics was swift and decisive in opposing the bill. Thousands of Catholics protested at the state Capitol, and due in large part to this backlash and the vocal opposition of Catholic leaders, the bill was unanimously killed in committee.
What makes this case intriguing is not just the issues at stake, but more so the language with which the dispute over the bill has been framed. Pazniokas calls the struggle "a religious war" and uses military rhetoric throughout, and it seems justified by the attitudes of the state senators and the Catholic bishops. The bill is considered by Connecticut Bishop William E. Lori to be just another in a series of state attacks on Catholicism in an ongoing war, with the government winning on issues of same-sex marriage and abortion and the Catholic lobbying arm having victories on state-assisted suicide. Several state senators, including the advocates of the bill, share this "us versus them" vantage in the way they talk about the Church's opposition.
It seems to me that the polarization that occurred in Connecticut over the same-sex marriage bill is responsible for this warlike framing of the church-state relationship. The religiously charged nature of that dispute, combined with Connecticut's solid blue-state status, did not allow the fervor of each side to be easily mapped on the liberal-conservative spectrum. Thus, unlike many other issues of religious import, for example abortion law, the same-sex marriage issue in Connecticut throughout the past five or six years has not allowed itself to fall on strictly political lines and thus the controversy has been primarily seen as between religious opposition to same-sex marriage and political support for it. Hence, while it may be impossible to confirm or reject Bishop Lori's claim that the recent financial bill was "a direct assault," the warlike church-state mentality is understandable in the wake of the same-sex marriage debate.
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As a resident of CT I think it might benefit everyone who's not from around here, to understand that there is a backstory to all of this which is, generally, not known outside of CT. We Yankees may be a staid, reticent, and simple folk ... but we have our subtleties, too!
First, it's worth noting that while CT is a "blue state," it nonetheless has a Puritanical streak. We still have blue laws, for instance; you can't buy liquor after 9pm or on Sundays. The Indian casinos want to serve alcohol 24 hours a day, and you would not believe what a furor erupted over that!
Second, CT does not have what would be called in other states "the Religious Right" (as in a cadre of militantly-political evangelical Protestants). It is much more Catholic than anything else. What Protestant presence we have, is mostly of the Methodist, Congregational or Presbyterian sort, not Baptist or Pentecostal.
Third, the Catholic church here took a massive hit (in terms of PR and in donations) with the priestly-pedophilia scandal, which they never recovered from, and which persisted after it had died down elsewhere (e.g. Boston), partly because of subsequent cases, such as that of Fr Stephen Foley.
Fourth, opposition to gay marriage has mostly been orchestrated by the state's Catholic bishops, either in their own right (they spent millions campaigning in favor of Ballot Question 1, which would have called a constitutional convention which might in turn have abolished gay marriage), or using their various agents (the Knights of Columbus, headquartered here in New Haven, or the local think-tank the Family Institute, run by Catholics).
Put all of these together ... shake it a little ... and you have what I think is the likely scenario: The bishops are engaging engaging in a little "pushback" over scandal reporting as well as a little political opportunism. They're doing it by championing a cause, i.e. the fight against gay marriage, which is otherwise not being opposed in CT because it doesn't have any other Religious Right presence. Moreover, they know that there's enough latent Puritanical thinking in CT for their fight against gay marriage to appeal to more people than only Catholics. If they can succeed in this fight, they will have rehabilitated themselves in the eyes of the public, and moreover, will then be able to exercise the kind of political power that the Protestant evangelicals have in other states.
The warlike stance of the state's bishops has nothing to do with the idea that the people's sentiments were not addressed over the years. Instead, it's a calculated decision on the bishops' part, to exploit an issue they think they can exploit, to achieve power in the midst of what appears to them to be a vacuum, in order to discourage people from remembering that the archdiocese of Hartford was almost held in contempt of court for having shunted Fr Foley out of state in order to evade a civil deposition.
For their part, the gay marriage supporters viewed the state's bishops' political power-grab as a threat to themselves, and reacted accordingly, and disproportionately.
The conflict, thus, was entirely manufactured and not dynamic at all.
At the moment neither side is very likely to back down. So long as the bishops think they can amass political power over the state government, they have every incentive to keep trying to gather more. And so long as gay marriage proponents have the law on their side, they aren't likely to concede anything to them.
Again, this is all backstory that no one outside of CT is aware of, so I can't blame anyone for thinking differently, but that's how it is.
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