Officials also are investigating whether the church acted as a lobbying organization on its Web site when it urged parishioners to contact lawmakers about the bill, which eventually was withdrawn amid public outcry, and about a another bill to legalize same-sex marriage, which was signed into law in April.

Now the ethics office is "evaluating" whether the diocese failed to register as a lobbyist — an investigation that Bishop William Lori says violates the diocese's First Amendment right to free speech and assembly.

"I don't know what the motive of the Office of State Ethics was or is, but I do know that their actions stem directly from our attempts to defend ourselves in the face of two pieces of legislation that were unfriendly to the day-to-day mission of the church," Lori told FOXNews.com on Thursday.

"We were simply seeking to fulfill our mission, to continue to be ourselves."

Diocese spokesman Joseph McAleer, meanwhile, said "a lot" of churchgoers in the state feel the church has been singled out. The diocese contains 87 parishes and more than 410,000 parishioners.

"People can only assume that people are out to get us," McAleer told FOXNews.com. "It feels like retaliation, that's the feeling amongst the Catholics of Fairfield County. Where is freedom of speech? Where is freedom of assembly? It's mind-boggling."

But [Carol] Carson says the ethics office is just doing its job.

"We're content neutral," the Office of Ethics official told FOXNews.com. "It does not matter to us whether someone is for or against any issue. We're an independent watchdog agency and it's not the case that anyone in state government came to us and said, 'You need to look at this.'

Registering to lobby is no small matter of filling out a form and paying a fee. Registered lobbyists must, thrice a year plus once a month while the legislature is in session, file detailed reports on all their activities and expenditures related to lobbying. They are also required, whenever lobbying, to wear a badge identifying themselves as lobbyists.

I asked the Office of State Ethics about the ramifications of dubbing the diocese a lobbying organization. Would priests need to fasten "LOBBYIST" badges to their vestments whenever speaking from the pulpit about the death penalty, abortion or future state attempts to micromanage parishes? Who would enforce this? Would the state deploy ethics officers to regulate Masses so that no unauthorized lobbying occurred?

Would the diocese Web nerd need to clock in as a lobbyist for the time it takes him to write, "Tell the Governor to Repeal the Death Penalty" and upload that message to the site? A spokeswoman said, "We really don't have opinions that specifically address those matters."