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Expect Jesuits Will ‘clarify’ Murphy Speech

August 30, 1934
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
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A statement “clarifying” statements involving the Jews made Tuesday by the Rev. J. F. X. Murphy, was expected to be made today by the Rev. Wilfred Parsons, editor of the Jesuit weekly, “America,” it was learned by the Jewish Daily Bulletin.

Father Parsons, who attended the South Norwalk, Conn., convention of the Jesuits, was expected to return to his offices in New York this morning. It was expected that his statement would make an attempt to soften the “unfortunate impression” created by Father Murphy’s remarks and to dissipate the confusion created by them.

Father Murphy’s sensational speech was delivered Tuesday at the eleventh annual convention of the Jesuit Philosophical Association of the Eastern States, which ended yesterday at Manress Island, just off the coast of South Norwalk.

In his address Tuesday, Father Murphy mixed high praise for the Jews with a bitter attack against them for “their fierce clannishness,” which he said would, unless suppressed, involve them in as serious difficulties in this country as it has in Europe.

Ascribing much of the current hostility towards Jews to envy of “superior tenacity, perseverance and determination,” Father Murphy assailed them for “unbridled lust for gain.”

This lust, he asserted, “was inducing them to prostitute agencies in themselves capable of a vast amount of good in mankind into instruments for debasing the taste, if not the morals of the multitude.”

“NEW SPECULATION”

Father Murphy, who is head of the department of history at Boston College, accused the Jews of sponsoring “every new speculation” that might threaten Christianity. He further charged that

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