Dismissed Priests: Lift the Veil of Secrecy

Re “Mahony Won’t Say if Police Got Priests’ Names,” March 5: As a Catholic who has seen several priests at local parishes mysteriously disappear with no explanation other than the reading of some nebulous letter from the local bishop at a subsequent Mass, I strongly feel that Cardinal Roger Mahony has a responsibility as the shepherd of the Catholics in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to tell us Catholics, and the proper authorities, who these priests are who have been dismissed.

I want to know if any of them have served at the parishes that I have attended. I want to know if any of them taught at the Catholic schools I attended. I want to know when such sad and, I might add, criminal event(s) occurred. I want to know when the church knew of the events. I want to know why, in certain instances, the church may have failed to act on this knowledge and notify the authorities and, ultimately, inform the laity.

We Catholics place a tremendous trust in the church, but that is not a blind trust. We need this information for both our physical and spiritual well being and, more important, for the protection of our youth. Cardinal Mahony, I remain a loyal Catholic, but I must tell you that with or without this information, we Catholics will make decisions--by our feet and by our pocketbooks--on the parishes we attend and the dioceses we support.

Donald A. Bentley

La Puente

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Once again--and perhaps never more glaringly--does the hypocrisy of organized religion confound and mystify (“Priest Leaves Sad, Angry Congregants,” March 4). The outrage expressed by some members of the congregation over Father Michael Pecharich’s forced departure because he “transgressed the personal boundaries of an adolescent” and their contention that it should have been handled privately only perpetuate the Roman Catholic veil of secrecy on matters of sexual abuse by priests.

I wonder, though, if an admitted pedophile were to move next door, would these same parishioners insist on such reticence? Maybe it isn’t always just the wolf in shepherd’s clothing that ravages the flock.

Craig Morrow

Costa Mesa