NEW HAMPSHIRE
Portsmouth Herald
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.