On August 1, the Long Island chapter of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) issued a statement charging Rockville Centre Bishop William F. Murphy with delinquent behavior when he served in Boston. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, spoke to this issue today:
“The Catholic League has rebutted every charge made by Voice of the Faithful against Bishop Murphy. Indeed, it is our view that any reasonable person who reads VOTF’s charges that appear on its website (votf.org), and then reads our response (catholicleague.org), will conclude that Bishop Murphy is innocent. If anything, the verdict of guilty applies to his accusers—they are guilty of character defamation.
“Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly issued a report on the Archdiocese of Boston that detailed wrongdoing on the part of some bishops who served under Cardinal Law. Though he tried to link Bishop Murphy to the scandal, his effort was in vain. This explains why the section of the 91-page report that is given over to Bishop Murphy is less than two pages long and amounts to nothing. Yet this isn’t enough to satisfy YOTF. That is why it issued an enfeebled statement trying one more time to indict Bishop Murphy. Now Catholic League policy analyst Joseph De Feo has written our report on VOTF and its bogus claims.
“The Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for its work on exposing miscreant behavior in the Boston Archdiocese. It justly earned the award. In its book on the scandal, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, it rightly took some bishops to task for their irresponsible decisions. Not among them was Bishop Murphy. There are precisely five pages in the 266- page volume on Monsignor William F. Murphy: the first three pages where he is mentioned the reference is to Bishop Murphy of Rockville Centre; the last two pages are in reference to another priest of the same name. Regarding the entries on Bishop Murphy, not only is there nothing incriminating, he is credited with removing the infamous John Geoghan!
“It is time for VOTF to call off its witch hunt against Bishop Murphy. Not to do so risks a serious attenuation of its credibility.”
