Catholic Church Must First Seek Justice to Find Peace

Re “Archdiocese for Years Kept Claims of Abuse From Police,” Aug. 18: After reading your Sunday Report, I am beyond outrage and disgust. The Catholic Church is without a doubt a criminal entity, deliberately uncooperative with police in prosecuting priests who molested children. Indictments and convictions must necessarily follow. Church officials have aided, abetted, obstructed justice and broken every civil and criminal law in the books and yet they continue to be empowered by our criminal-coddling society.

Enough is enough! How many more young lives does this church have to destroy in the name of protecting its precious name and reputation? It is time to bring the hierarchy in Rome to its knees to beg forgiveness from the rest of the world for its crimes against humanity.

Edna M. Tobias

Hermosa Beach

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If I had done what Cardinal Roger Mahony has done in aiding a fugitive, I would be in jail. Why isn’t he?

R.G. Bateman

Whittier

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While it is a small percentage of Catholic priests who have sexually molested children in their care, it is the entire leadership of the Catholic Church that is hypocritical and immoral. Instead of protecting the most vulnerable, these leaders have inexplicably made the calculated decision to protect the abusers rather than the abused.

Pedophile priests should be in jail just as any other citizen would be for engaging in this criminal behavior. Mahony should help the police put them there. May heaven help the children, because the current Catholic leaders have not and will not.

Ruth Green

Santa Barbara

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As I observe the current turmoil of the Catholic Church regarding the scandal of priestly abuse and hierarchical cover-up shattering the peace within the church, I am reminded of the words of Pope Paul VI: “If you want peace, work for justice.”

Here in Los Angeles, I continue to sense that the hierarchy of my church is desperately seeking to reestablish that peace with what appear to be quick solutions, and not necessarily working for justice, coupled with long-term institutional change. Sadly, I wonder if this is not driven more by the opening of the new cathedral within just weeks, rather than doing what is right.

Before peace can be restored within the Catholic Church, the hierarchy must fully accept the fact that until all the victims of abuse have found justice, and all the perpetrators of these crimes, along with their complicit superiors (priests, bishops and cardinals), have been brought to justice, there can be no real and true peace within the Catholic Church--at least not the kind that Jesus spoke about.

Donald A. Bentley

La Puente