Victim-Support Group Banned from Churches

By Daniel J. Wakin
New York Times
August 10, 2002

Members of Voice of the Faithful, a lay group of Roman Catholics that organized in response to the sexual abuse scandal in the church, have been meeting in church basements across the Northeast. But they will no longer be doing so on Long Island.

Bishop William F. Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which encompasses Nassau and Suffolk Counties, said yesterday he had ordered priests in the diocese not to allow such meetings on church grounds.

Voice of the Faithful, which says it has 68 chapters and 25,000 members, mainly in New England, says it often encounters resistance from priests -- whether under private pressure from their bishop or out of their own convictions -- when permission is sought to use church grounds. But a spokesman for the national organization, Michael Emerton, said Bishop Murphy's order was the first formal one he knew of. He suggested that some bishops considered any embrace of the group to be a challenge to their "absolute power."

In a telephone interview, Bishop Murphy said that he had told his vicar general, the main administrator of the diocese, to pass the ban on to pastors. He declined to say why.

"I don't want to give a quick explanation," Bishop Murphy said. "I want to think how I want to explain more fully. A partial explanation wouldn't be helpful at this point."

However, a priest who was ordered to keep the group from meeting at his parish's church said the explanation given him was that church members should make their voices heard through traditional, church-sanctioned avenues, like parish councils. But the priest, the Rev. William F. Brisotti, said that many parishioners felt ignored in those roles, and he suggested that turning away the group would only stir more interest in it.

Father Brisotti is pastor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, where the third meeting of the Long Island chapter of the group was to take place on Monday. He said the meeting had his "full blessing" when it was suggested. Bishop Murphy's action forbidding it was reported in Newsday yesterday.

The refusal itself "just shows that there is a real need for a dialogue within the church," Father Brisotti said. "Rather than barring the group, he could have come and listened."

Voice of the Faithful was founded in the Boston area. It states its goal as supporting the victims of abuse and upstanding priests, and bringing more lay involvement and more transparency into the church. Members, many of them older, devout Catholics, often stress that they do not want to alienate the church's hierarchy. But Bishop Murphy's order has upset some in Long island.

"We've done nothing except say we want to talk," said Sheila Peiffer of Southampton, an organizer of the Long Island chapter who said the last meeting drew about 100 people to St. Sylvester's in Medford on Aug. 1. She said she was particularly angered by a comment by the diocesan spokeswoman that in 2000, the previous bishop of the diocese, Bishop James T. McHugh, banned politicians who supported abortion rights from speaking at churches.

"To make that analogy to me was a deliberate attempt to make Voice of the Faithful look like a radical left-wing group, which it is not," she said.