Perhaps the legislators who proposed the Connecticut law that removes control of the Catholic Church from Catholic clergy should consider another option: hanging the priests from the gallows, the way legislators did to other religious heathens only two hours away in Salem, MA.
Granted, the Salem witch trials happened around 300 years ago. But I fail to see the difference between that and the situation yesterday, where Democrats in the Connecticut House of Representatives aimed to strip priests’ authority from their parishes because of entirely unfounded accusations of financial fraud. The law was enacted after a priest in Darien, Conn. took $1.4 million from his church; since parishoners didn’t have a seat on the church’s board, they weren’t able to monitor their church’s finances.
Everyone knows that if there’s one crooked priest in Connecticut, they’ve all got to be crooked. If women with unexplained illnesses can be given a pointy hat and broomstick, religious leaders with financial management responsibilities in their religious communities should be given striped pajamas and ankle cuffs.
Apparently, 4,000 Catholics disagreed with me, given their presence on the lawn of the state Capitol this afternoon, where they stood in the cold and yelled for justice. Funny - their Christian neighbors did something similar 300 years ago.