Earlier this year, the Most Rev. Henry J. Mansell, Archbishop of Hartford, decided that WJMJ would become a network affiliate of EWTN Radio, and replace its Sunday ecumenical programming with shows from EWTN. WJMJ is licensed to the Archdiocese, which for many years provided low-cost airtime to Protestant and Orthodox Christians. An evaluation of WJMJ programming determined that 80% of the religious programming was dedicated to the re-broadcast of Protestant and Orthodox services, and only 20% of the religious programming was dedicated to Catholic content. This concerned the Archbishop, who believed that the Catholic population was inadequately served, especially given the radical changes that have occurred in the world since the 1970s, which was when the program line-up was originally developed. The affiliation with EWTN provided an opportunity to obtain a significant amount of ready-made programming at minimal cost. However, this affiliation required the cancellation of much of the Sunday ecumenical programming. On weekdays, the station continues to air one-minute “think-spots, featuring ecumenical voices.

Unfortunately, this decision provoked the anger of churches that had their programs cancelled. Public ire has been amplified by one-sided Hartford Courant coverage.

Now, politicians have seized on the matter and are using it as an excuse to engage in anti-Catholic demagoguery. Foremost among these are the members of the Burlington Planning and Zoning Commission and first Selectman Kathleen Zabel.

According to the Hartford Courant, the Burlington Planning and Zoning Commission has issued a cease-and-desist order, to stop WJMJ from broadcasting from its transmitter on Johnnycake Mountain. These cupcake commissioners are citing a 20-year-old legal settlement allowing the station to enlarge and light its tower. The settlement provided that the station would continue to operate as a non-profit offering ecumenical programming. Although the P&Z is attempting to justify their actions, citing contract law, they have absolutely no ground to stand on. Ultimately, courts will find the provision in question to be unenforceable. It is not within the jurisdiction of a Planning and Zoning commission to determine whether programmatic content is ecumenical. To complicate matters further, the one-minute “think-spots” may satisfy the requirement for ecumenical programming.

Ultimately, there are some very fundamental rights at stake here. First amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press prohibit the kind of regulation attempted by the P&Z. If the P&Z attempts to do so in the name of contract law, its actions will be struck down as unconstitutional. The second right at stake is the right to property. The WJMJ broadcast license and transmitter site in Burlington are the property of the Archdiocese. This gross over-reaching impinges on the property rights of the Archdiocese of Hartford. All across Connecticut, cupcake land-use-boards impinge on the rights of land-owners. These issues have been rather visible even here in Enfield, where eleven years after it happened, the planning and zoning commission attempted to cite the Felician Sisters for ‘creating’ a parking lot by dumping gravel on a dirt parking lot. 

It is very clear that underlying these actions is a hidden form of anti-Catholicism. If this were a classical music station switching to rock format, no one would blink. However, because this is WJMJ, they attempt to engage in regulation that wouldn’t even attempt with Clear Channel or Bonneville. It is therefore disappointing to see the extent to which anti-Catholicism continues to be tolerated and accepted.

It doesn’t surprise me that this is happening in Burlington, which has a reputation for ignoring the law and trampling constitutional rights. It is home to the Avery Doninger case, in which officials at Lewis Mills High School removed Doninger as class secretary and suppressed election results, following Doninger’s use of an expletive to describe them in a call-to-arms posted on her personal blog.

Hopefully, the residents of Burlington will recognize that their town is in the hands of arrogant tyrants, and will have the courage to eject them from office in the next election.

UPDATE: Burlington’s cease and desist order may also violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 — RLUIPA. 

Below is the Hartford Courant account of the most recent developments:

Burlington May Stop Archdiocese Radio’s Use Of Tower

By ELIZABETH HAMILTON

Courant Staff Writer

July 2, 2008

The town of Burlington is trying to prevent the Archdiocese of Hartford from using its radio tower on Johnnycake Mountain because of its recent decision to pull ecumenical programming from the airwaves.

The town believes the transformation of WJMJ-FM from an ecumenical station to an all-Catholic station violates a 1987 agreement between the town and the archdiocese over the use of the tower, First Selectwoman Kathleen Zabel said.

“It’s a black and white matter,” Zabel said. “[The archdiocese] is in violation of the stipulated agreement.”

The planning and zoning commission requested that a cease-and-desist order be issued to the archdiocese, according to the minutes of its June 25 meeting, following a complaint from neighboring property owner Dwight Harris.

Zabel said the order has not yet gone out, but will soon. She referred questions about the cease-and-desist order to the town attorney, Charles Bauer. Bauer did not return repeated calls for comment over the past seven days.

The agreement ended years of litigation over the tower between the town’s zoning board of appeals and the archdiocese. It gave the church permission to operate the tower on the condition the station be nonprofit and its programming multidenominational.

The issue was revisited in the 1990s, when the archdiocese wanted permission to increase the height of the tower to 123 feet from 75 feet and light it because an airport is nearby, said Harris, a local developer who owns Johnnycake Mountain Farm.

The radio tower sits on a small parcel on top of the mountain, and Harris owns all the surrounding property.

Harris said he supported the church’s plan to increase the tower’s height, even though he believed it might hurt his property’s marketability, because he liked the ecumenical aspect of WJMJ.

“I even spoke on behalf of their application to increase the tower because of the public good it was doing,” Harris said Monday. “So I really am personally offended because I relied upon the stipulation that it would be ecumenical.”

The archdiocese ended the long-running ecumenical Sunday programming, called “Festival of Faith,” on June 1 and replaced it with programming from the EWTN Global Catholic Network. After a story about the changes at WJMJ appeared in The Courant, the Rev. John Gatzak met with Protestant and Orthodox producers from “Festival of Faith” and agreed to establish a committee to come up with alternative ecumenical shows, such as roundtable discussions.

Gatzak is a spokesman for the archdiocese and director of its office of radio and television.

Gatzak said he did not consider the shows broadcast during “Festival of Faith” to be either “truly ecumenical” or of high enough quality for radio. Many of those shows had been broadcast on WJMJ for 30 years.

He said the archdiocese had a responsibility to use its radio station for Catholic evangelization, rather than giving away 14 hours of prime airtime to other faiths.

Harris said he called to speak with Gatzak in May, after he learned the church was planning to discontinue “Festival of Faith” on WJMJ.

“I spent a long time on the phone with Gatzak expressing my concerns about what I felt were the ethical problems with what they were doing,” Harris said. “I feel like he totally ignored what I said. He cannot say he did not have any warning.”

Gatzak did not return calls for comment Monday or Tuesday.

Contact Elizabeth Hamilton at ehamilton@courant.com.