Letters: Mahony and the Vatican
Re “Stymied by Vatican,” Feb. 16
Pointing the finger at the Vatican for responding too slowly to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s reports on priest misconduct in the 1990s and early 2000s diverts attention from the former archbishop’s failure to report pedophile priests to civil authorities for prosecution.
The issue is Mahony’s handling of pedophile priests in the 1980s — when he covered up for them, failed to report them to law enforcement and allowed them to continue ministering to the congregation — not the slow Vatican response or how effective the cardinal’s priest abuse reforms were in the 2000s.
As a Catholic, I suggest that Mahony keep quiet and hope that, in time, the good things he has done will overshadow the bad. He should pray that Mark Anthony was wrong when he soliloquized, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Rogelio Peña
Montebello
As one of the 20% of Americans with no religious affiliation, I can’t help but think that Mahony might have had at the back of his mind the thought that the Vatican, with its unconscionable dithering about defrocking a monster priest, may not have been guided by God, or that perhaps God is a man-made chimera.
Jane Roberts
Redlands
Last August, federal Judge Michael Mosman ruled that the Vatican was not the employer of abusive priests, possibly shielding the Holy See from monetary damages. Yet poor Mahony couldn’t do anything about a known pedophile because the Vatican wouldn’t allow him.
Methinks we’re being played for fools.
Chris Griffiths
Pasadena
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