Footnote to Nicholas Coppola Story: Bishop Murphy Responds to Petition to Reinstate Coppola with Upraised Middle Finger

A footnote to the story of Nicholas Coppola, the gay man who was removed (and see also here) from all ministries in his Catholic parish in Oceanside, New York, recently after someone sent an anonymous letter to Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre complaining that Coppola is a homosexual who refuses to be silent or to hide, and who had married his partner:

As Jamie Manson has just reported for National Catholic Reporter, Bishop Murphy, who has refused to meet with Coppola, has responded to a petition with over 18,500 signatures that Coppola delivered to the diocese calling for his reinstatement to ministry with the following letter:

FROM YOUR FAITHFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP.

That's it. That's all the letter says to the thousands of folks who asked Bishop Murphy to reconsider his decision. That's all he says to a fellow Catholic who has been shut out of all ministry and who has asked simply to meet him face to face as a Christian pastor.

FROM YOUR FAITHFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP.

That's his answer to the request from the faithful that he exhibit pastoral behavior.

As Jamie Manson notes, the GLAAD website has further information about the one-sentence letter Murphy sent in response to the petition. She also notes that Murphy sent the one-sentence response neither to Coppola, to GLAAD or Faithful America, which sponsored the petition drive, but to some other organization.

READERS: WHAT DO YOU THINK?

(My thought: those "thousands" of happy out gay employees of Catholic institutions that Rita Ferrone sees attending church suppers in Catholic parishes with their publicly acknowledged partners must not include the 18,500+ people to whom Murphy has just lifted a big old upraised middle finger. By my reckoning, Coppola and Ferrone live about 28 miles apart--and so I keep wondering where on earth Ferrone's "thousands" of happy out gay employees of Catholic institutions who bring their publicly acknowledged partners to church events live. They certainly don't seem to live in the Rockville Centre diocese, do they?)