MONTPELIER (VT)
VTDigger
January 3, 2019
By Kevin O’Connor
Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne, facing a rise in priest misconduct headlines and a fall in parishioner attendance, is set to hold a series of open meetings this month seeking public comment about the state’s largest religious denomination.
“Anybody’s welcome, not just Catholics,” Coyne said in announcing what he calls “part of a continuing effort to promote full transparency about Catholic matters in the state.”
Vermont’s Roman Catholic Diocese, the target of more than 40 clergy misconduct lawsuits in the past quarter-century, has a decades-long history of defying court orders and outside review.
That’s why Coyne, leader of the state’s 72 Catholic parishes since 2015, has made headlines by agreeing to work with law enforcement, releasing past child abuse victims from nondisclosure agreements and forming a lay committee to review clergy misconduct files and publicly release the names of abusers.
“I have no idea how the meetings are going to go, but I felt it was important to establish better two-way communication with people in the pews,” he said.
The bishop is basing the sessions on traditional Vermont town meetings.
“These meetings are ‘democracy in action’ because any citizen of the town may speak to the matters within the meeting or even propose matters for discussion,” he said in a separate statement to the state’s 118,000 Catholics. “The idea is that everyone present gets to hear what others have to say in order to come to some consensus about what the community as a whole should do.”
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