The 'Sleeping Giant' Awakes: Connecticut Church Rallies Against 1098

Thursday, March 12, 2009
by Elizabeth Ela

The Connecticut legislation that proposed to strip administrative authority from Catholic priests and bishops has clearly woken a “sleeping giant” – the state’s Catholic population.
That was the opinion of more than one person – and at least one speaker – at a rally at the State Capitol in opposition to the bill.

On what would have been the day of Bill 1098’s public hearing in the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, bishops from the state’s three dioceses, along with other speakers, including Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus, addressed a crowd of more than 5,000 Catholics and others concerned for religious freedom.

The overall theme of the rally: that Bill 1098 should never have been raised, that it smacked of anti-Catholicism and that the Catholic Church in Connecticut strongly supported the bishops and priests threatened by the legislation. the rest