Letters to the Editor: Sex abuse settlement, Trump at the Al Smith dinner — a bad look for the Catholic Church

To the editor: The irony of your story on the latest too little, too late settlement with victims of clerical abuse and hierarchical cover-up running at the same time as coverage of the latest Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is palpable.
Each year, under the guise of supporting Catholic Charities, politicians seeking votes and money, business people seeking customers, and media executives and journalists seeking access to the great and powerful, gather in formal attire to kiss the ring of the archbishop of New York.
With the exception of Donald Trump, who just spews venom, presidential candidates gently insult each other with gags written for them as they pretend to rise above their lust for power and money with a display of false bonhomie.
I submit that anyone of conscience invited to this event should have attended a protest outside, particularly the journalists, whose colleagues have been instrumental in uncovering the depravity festering in the church for so long.
Elliott Rothman, Santa Monica
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To the editor: Cardinal Roger Mahony is not without blame, but as archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985-2011, he was only the local leader of the Church of Rome, which he had sworn to represent and serve. When he learned of instances of clergy sex abuse — not the extent of it, which no one knew until victims had the courage to speak out — he sought to root it out.
Based on stories I have read, including in The Times, we know that the cardinal told his superiors in Rome of priests who had committed sex abuse and asked that some of them be removed from the clergy. He was impeded by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for evaluating disciplinary action against clergy.
The cardinal followed orders and became the face and the fall guy for the clergy sex abuse scandal, exiled to a small parish in the San Fernando Valley after he retired as archbishop.
And, the head of the office that impeded Mahony, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, went on to become Pope Benedict XVI.
This is 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