The New Hampshire Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments sometime between July and September in the case of four nuns fired by the diocese of Manchester.
The four are appealing a lower court’s ruling that the court had the power to interpret their teaching contract, but that Bishop Odore J. Grendon was not out of line when he fired the nuns without stating cause. (See Education Week, March 31 and May 5, 1982.)
Fighting spilled over the border into nearby Lawrence, Mass., when the skirmish took to the airwaves last week. An anonymous caller to a local radio talk show charged that the nuns had been troublemakers “for many a year with the parish and the school board. This thing came to a head, I believe, four years ago. This is nothing new.”
After some coaxing by the program’s host, the caller identified himself as the Rev. Gerard Boucher, pastor of the parish from which the nuns were fired. He then declined to discuss the case further.
In another recent development, members of the Sacred Heart School board in Hampton, which fired the four, hired a plainclothes police officer to attend evening meetings after two members said they had received telephone threats. The officer carried a .38-caliber service revolver at a recent meeting, but he didn’t have to use it.
