To the editor: The irony of your story on the latest too-little-too-late settlement with victims of religious abuse and hierarchical cover-up, at the same time as coverage of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation’s final dinner is palpable.
Every year, under the guise of supporting Catholic charities, politicians seeking votes and money, businessmen seeking clients, and media executives and journalists seeking access to the big and small powerful, gather in evening dress to kiss the ring of the Archbishop of New York.
With the exception of Donald Trump, who only spews venom, the presidential candidates gently insult each other with gags written for them as they claim to rise above their lust for power and money with false good-nature.
I argue that any person of conscience invited to this event should have attended an outside protest, especially journalists, whose colleagues were instrumental in uncovering the depravity that has been brewing in the church for so long .
Elliott Rothman, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Cardinal Roger Mahony is not without reproach, but as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011, he was only the local leader of the Church of Rome, which he was sworn to represent and serve . When he learned of cases of sexual abuse by members of the clergy – without knowing the extent of it, the extent of which no one knew about until victims had the courage to speak out – he sought to stamp it out.
From the stories I’ve read, including in the Timesit is known that the cardinal reported priests who had committed sexual abuse to his superiors in Rome and requested that some of them be excluded from the clergy. It was prevented by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for evaluating disciplinary measures against clergy.
The cardinal followed orders and became the face and point man of the clergy sex abuse scandal, exiled to a small parish in the San Fernando Valley after retiring as archbishop.
And the head of the office that stopped Mahony, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, became Pope Benedict XVI.
It’s not my idea of divine justice, but the Times could at least give Mahony a small measure of editorial justice by telling the whole story.
John Redmond, Santa Monica
