A Renewed Call for Bishop McCormack to Resign

By Raquel Maria Dillon on Monday, March 31, 2003.

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NH Catholics for Moral Leadership (http://www.nhcatholics.org) is calling for the leaders of the Manchester Diocese to step down because of their handling of clergy sexual abuse cases. As NHPR’s Raquel Maria Dillon reports, this new effort is highly focused on getting Bishop John McCormack and Bishop Francis Christian to resign.

The latest group to organize in opposition to the local Catholic hierarchy is calling itself New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership. Unlike other groups that arose in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse cases, this organization has only one goal –
FARRELL :17 we call on McCormack and Christian to resign immediately for the good of the church. In the name of Christ our savior, we call on the priests of this diocese to step into the light and defend with courage his holy church.

James Farrell, a parishioner at St. Mary’s Church in Dover, has spent the last year writing to the Bishop and other Church leaders demanding McCormack step down. He says McCormack is too concerned about keeping his position to listen to victims of sexual abuse.
FARRELL :13 Y’know, we need bishops who listen to the gospel, not to their lawyers, not to their PR consultants. We need bishops we can trust, not hypocrites we’re ashamed of.

Farrell wrote the group’s manifesto. The 15 founding members signed it, and they’re be visiting parishes and schools around the state to gather more signatures over the coming weeks. There’s also a petition on the group’s website. Catholics for Moral Leadership isn’t the first group to call for the resignation of McCormack. But the other groups were based in Massachusetts. New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful has not yet voted on whether to call for the Bishop’s resignation in their platform.
So far, no New Hampshire priests have demanded that McCormack step down. After months of letter-writing and protesting in Boston –Cardinal Bernard Law resigned only after a strong statement from the clergy.
But the founders of this new group are counting on one thing that activists in Boston didn’t have: the Attorney General’s recent report on how the Diocese handled clergy sexual abuse over the course of several decades. Maggie Fogarty attends St. Thomas More church, in Durham.
FOGARTY:19 when we saw what was released with the AG’s report and the 9000 docs. We realized we had to speak loud and clear. These docs confirm horrors of what happened in Mass happed here as well. And we needed to take action.

Manchester Diocese Chancellor Father Ed Arsenault has spoken with several of the founders of Catholics for Moral Leadership. He says he can’t work with them, because they’re not interested in collaboration.
ARSENAULT :21 Clearly this is a group of people who are disgruntled and angry and don’t want to work with the leadership of the church. Quick solutions don’t last. Ideas like the leaders should go and everything will be all right are not of the church or for the church.

Arsenault and McCormack’s other staunch supporters say changing leadership is not the way the Catholic Church deals with problems.
For NHPR News I’m RMD.