NEW HAMPSHIRE
National Catholic Reporter
Sep. 19, 2012
By Michael Sean Winters
PLYMOUTH, N.H. — Plymouth is a small college town of just under 5,000 souls. It is located near the geographic center of the state, where the New England Uplands give way to the White Mountains. Main Street hosts some of the old buildings of Plymouth State University, a white clapboard church, and a variety of storefronts. On the August morning when I drove into town, it was anything but sleepy, filled with people buying coffee and reading their papers, 20-somethings loading a beer keg into the back of a pickup truck, hikers emerging from a sporting goods store with last-minute additions to their gear.
Fran Taylor was decidedly unhurried as she made her way into Cafe Monte Alto. A retired school teacher, Taylor is now the chair of the Democratic Town Committee in the neighboring town of Holderness. She greeted a woman who was sitting outside. “She’s a Democrat too!” Taylor told me. The woman excitedly told Taylor that when making phone calls on behalf of the Obama campaign, almost everyone she spoke with wanted tickets to an upcoming event with the president. …
Catholics make up about one-quarter of the state’s population, but the church is not a dominant force in politics. “It is the least churched state and even that is dwindling,” Taylor told me. She said that the religious liberty issue is “not really on the radar screen” as far as she can tell from conversations with neighbors. Last year, Bishop John McCormack of Manchester, the diocese that covers the entire state, attended a rally to protest budget cuts. “What he said was entirely legitimate,” Taylor said, but his intervention was not well-received because of his reputation as a one-time aide to Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. Indeed, the House Republican leader, D.J. Bettencourt, who led the fight to cut the budget, got nasty in denouncing McCormack. “Would the bishop like to discuss his history of protecting the ‘vulnerable’?” Bettencourt wrote on his Facebook page. “This man is a pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a raincoat over his head in disgrace. He has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone.” Bettencourt later apologized for his comments. He has since resigned, after it was revealed he had falsified documents regarding a required legal internship as part of his obtaining a law degree.
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