by Megan O'Brian

Created on: March 18, 2009   Last Updated: March 22, 2009

The audacity of the state of Connecticut to even suggest taking over control of parish finances from the Catholic diocese. What in God's name were they thinking ? NOT thinking is a better way to put it.

It is unconstitutional for any state to attempt to to take control of anything having to do with the church. The separation of Church and State is written in our Constitution and has been for hundreds of years. Did the state of Connecticut forget this or are they so full of themselves that they feel they can ignore the law or just take the law into their own hands to do whatever they want ?

It's well known that Connecticut is one of the highest taxed states, yet Governor Rell has always bemoaned the fact that the state budget does not have enough funds to pay for needed repair to roads, schools, bridges, etc. Connecticut is known for cutting funding for services offered to the elderly, the handicapped and any other service that gives help to the most needy of people. This has consistently been done in order to "spread the money out" to more important things. One would think that the money taken from the poor would be put toward road and bridge repain but it isn't. The money is diverted into Governor Rells "rainy day fund" to be used only in emergencies.

Having the state gain control of parish finances is something the Governor may very well have hoped to achieve but thankfully this bill was stopped before it went any further.

The church lost money due to a church member's unscupulous behavior but the church can certainly take charge and make the necessary changes made in order to keep something like that ever happening again. If the state could get their fingers on parish funds there is a good chance that the church would lose even more money with the state contending that they acted legally.

Having a state government attempt to take over control of a church's finances was unheard of until recently. Unfortunately, when the Federal government decided to erase God's name wherever they could, forbidding His name to be seen or heard in public places, forbidding prayer in schools and having statues that had God's name on them removed from sight, they started down a road to perdition and it shows.

Lately many people elected to power within the state and Federal governments have been exposed as being involved in corruption. The state government has been rocked with many scandals of their own but it could have gotten worse had the state gotten the control of church finances.

Thank God ( yes, I said God and I will say it when and where I please ) that the state's plan did not come to fruition- It could have been the end of churches as we've known them and that would be unacceptable.

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