To the editor: The irony of your story on the most recent too little, too late settlement with victims of clerical abuse and hierarchical cover-up operating concurrently protection of the most recent Alfred E. Smith Memorial Basis Dinner is palpable.
Annually, beneath the guise of supporting Catholic Charities, politicians searching for votes and cash, enterprise folks searching for clients, and media executives and journalists searching for entry to the good and highly effective, collect in formal apparel to kiss the ring of the archbishop of New York.
Except for Donald Trump, who simply spews venom, presidential candidates gently insult one another with gags written for them as they faux to rise above their lust for energy and cash with a show of false bonhomie.
I submit that anybody of conscience invited to this occasion ought to have attended a protest outdoors, significantly the journalists, whose colleagues have been instrumental in uncovering the depravity festering within the church for thus lengthy.
Elliott Rothman, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Cardinal Roger Mahony isn’t with out blame, however as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985-2011, he was solely the native chief of the Church of Rome, which he had sworn to characterize and serve. When he discovered of cases of clergy intercourse abuse — not the extent of it, which nobody knew till victims had the braveness to talk out — he sought to root it out.
Based mostly on tales I’ve learn, including in The Times, we all know that the cardinal instructed his superiors in Rome of clergymen who had dedicated intercourse abuse and requested that a few of them be faraway from the clergy. He was impeded by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Religion, the Vatican workplace accountable for evaluating disciplinary motion towards clergy.
The cardinal adopted orders and have become the face and the autumn man for the clergy intercourse abuse scandal, exiled to a small parish within the San Fernando Valley after he retired as archbishop.
And, the top of the workplace that impeded Mahony, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, went on to turn into Pope Benedict XVI.
This isn’t my concept of divine justice, however The Instances may at the very least give Mahony a small measure of editorial justice by telling the entire story.
John Redmond, Santa Monica
