BishopAccountability.org
	Bishop Fails to Learn Lesson from Students Portsmouth Herald [New Hampshire] June 11, 2005 Every good Catholic learns that to earn forgiveness you must confess your sins, do penance and amend your life. Nowhere in catechism do Catholics learn to evade responsibility for their actions, deny their role in grave wrongdoing and cling to a shameful status quo as if nothing's amiss. John McCormack, now in his seventh year as bishop of New Hampshire, has refused repeated calls to resign in the wake of the clergy sexual-abuse scandal that has caused unending pain to generations of victims. It's been enough to drive countless people away from the church. Yet there's a ray of light that pierces through the darkness brought on by McCormack and his disgraced ex-boss, former Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. Nearly half of the 112 seniors at Trinity High School, a private Catholic school in Manchester, signed a petition last week calling upon McCormack not to deliver the baccalaureate Mass. In typical devil-may-care style, McCormack refused to honor their wishes. Instead, he preached that they should "set aside distractions" and forgive, forgive, forgive. What McCormack deems "distractions" are acts of bravery in which outraged individuals reject the bishop's history of stonewalling and obfuscation and seek to hold him accountable. We congratulate the students for their courage in standing up for a principle that McCormack clearly doesn't understand: justice. For these students, celebrating baccalaureate Mass in the presence of a man who only grudgingly apologized for protecting abusive priests until he wilted under the hot glare of a criminal investigation, is outrageous. In a May 2003 letter to McCormack, New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful - an organization that seeks to restore trust between the Catholic laity and hierarchy - accused the bishop of engaging "in a pervasive pattern of behavior to conceal and cover up evil actions." This is hardly the kind of leader who will promote healing and guide a besieged church out of the muck. It's true that McCormack has never been proven guilty of a crime in a court of law. But through his actions (actually, evasions), he continues to tar the church he claims to love. McCormack didn't listen to the 50 students who wanted him to stay away from their baccalaureate Mass. But the students listened to him respectfully rather than boycott the event or lead a protest. Unlike McCormack, they set an example that can make us all proud.
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