A Reprieve in Massachusetts

I blogged a few weeks ago about a legislative proposal in Massachusetts, sponsored by Sen. Marian Walsh, that would (according to the Boston Globe) "requir[e] religious organizations to disclose their finances."  In fact, the proposal purports to authorize intrusive and entangling review by state officials not simply of "finances", but of a wide range of religious and pastoral decisions about ministry and resource-allocation.  Boston College's John Garvey has explained, succinctly, why the bill is an affront to religious liberty and unconstitutional.  In a nutshell, some Catholics -- frustrated (reasonably) with the Church -- have enlisted legislators to employ the state in order to promote what these Catholics regard as much-needed reform and openness in the Church.  But, as Garvey points out:

[I]t is not the government's business to take sides in internal church disputes. You can imagine a legal system where it does. British courts supervise the way churches use their members' money. But the Church of England is controlled by the government. Our First Amendment forbids any such arrangement. When we talk about separation of church and state, this is what we mean -- that it is none of the state's business to say how churches are run. . .

. . . The Constitution favors an arrangement that leaves churches financially independent: The government does not support them; it should not inhibit their efforts to support themselves, and it should not get involved in reviewing how they spend their money. That is a matter for churches and their members to resolve among themselves.

Apparently -- thanks to some help from the Massachusetts Council of Churches -- a dispositive vote on the church-disclosure bill has been put off.  That the Senate approved the bill 33-4, though, is deeply troubling.  Stay tuned . . .