Opinion: In Friday’s Letters to the editor

When reading about the four or five memorials to the Catholic Church’s ongoing clergy sex-abuse crisis, I was reminded of the old adage: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ Here in L.A., victims weren’t consulted when Cardinal Roger Mahony was contemplating a chapel in tribute to abuse victims. Victims weren’t notified or invited when the chapel was opened. And we weren’t asked or notified when the chapel was rededicated to another purpose. It reminds me of another Mahony action pattern: when victims, parents and Catholics aren’t notified when dangerous men are purposely put in their neighborhoods, schools or parishes. Mahony loves to talk about healing. But his talk rings hollow when his unilateral, self-serving actions exacerbate wounds instead of relieving them.

Monuments are being built ‘to provide solace’ to victims of abuse by clergy of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, the author of a 2004 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education has reportedly stated that ‘the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.’ If she is proved correct, will the L.A. Unified School District put up a monument at the Belmont Learning Center for its victims of abuse by teachers? Or does our media and culture only care about abuse by Catholic priests? Do we really care about sexual abuse at all, or just the vocation of the abuser?

When it comes to women’s reproductive health issues, everybody has a conscience and moral rules: President Bush, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, Catholic bishops, the Pope, the Taliban and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. But when it comes to a prescription for Viagra or Cialis, anything goes. I would just love to find one pharmacist in the U.S. who would refuse to fill a prescription for Viagra or Cialis for a single guy.