Diocese adopts strict sexual misconduct policy

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Concord Monitor

By ANNMARIE TIMMINS
Monitor staff

Bishop John McCormack released a revised policy against sexual misconduct in the Catholic church yesterday that bars guilty priests from ministry, requires background checks on staff and lets the laity police the church’s response to allegations.

McCormack also issued a new code of conduct for priests and others in the church that instructs priests to live celibate lives and refrain from being alone in private places with children.

“Sharing in the ministry of Christ not only is a great privilege for us but also a profound responsibility,” McCormack wrote yesterday. “We are to conduct ourselves in a spirit and manner that allows Christ to act and speak through our work.”

The new policies are almost entirely the work of a 12-person task force of Catholics and Protestants who McCormack asked last year to help evaluate the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse. McCormack called together the task force in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandal, and many Catholics doubted that McCormack would embrace the group’s findings once the media spotlight had died down.

Donna Sytek of Salem, chairwoman of the task force, saw the new policy last week and said yesterday that each of the group’s recommendations has been adopted. “We are pleased and satisfied that we were listened to,” she said. Those changes must be enforced to be effective, she said, but Sytek said she believes they will be.