Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1399957
3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 8 AUGUST 2021 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Clerical sex abuse FORMER Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who is being charged that he molested a 16-year-old boy during a 1974 wedding reception, is the latest case which convinces me all the more that these scandals by some clerics are a conglomerate of fake reports, concerted fabrications and a real blitz on the Church's reputation and influence. Consider the time that has passed since the alleged incident and Cardinal Pell's trial by jury. As far as I know, similar lewd acts are pre-planned and performed where and when there are no people around, but certainly not during a wedding reception or in front of a Sunday Cathedral congregation for High Mass. Though the list of reports of these condemnable acts seems to be too long and hauntingly difficult to defend, the people's wrong-headed perception of this sordid affair is all held so strongly and for so long must be exposed and combatted. Ang.W.P. Jenkins argued that me- dia coverage of the abuse story had become a gross efflorescence of an- ti-Catholic rhetoric. Someone else wrote that religious scholars, politicians and sociologists should note that it is time for histori- ans to look again and come refreshed to their own verdicts whether this was all an inflated concerted effort to de- mean the Church. Am I the lonely puissant with sufficient backbone to believe inde- pendently of universal assent and agree with the above statements? I am ready to suffer eternal disgruntlement and uncomfortable contrariety by this gratuitous statement but I have my own views to support such a stance which I am ready to expose, editor permitting. John Azzopardi Zabbar Matic report (2) ON one thing, and one thing alone, I must agree with John Azzopardi (After Matic, August 1): not following WHO recommendations on vaccination against COVID-19 is absurd. Exactly why he and his ilk fail to see that this also applies to the WHO's statement that "abortion care is health care" is beyond me. As Azzopardi rightly states, "you will always find people who defend an absurdity." Oh, the irony! Prof. Isabel Stabile Doctors for Choice Why hotel quarantine? NOW that quarantine for vaccinated people is down to seven days from 14 (healthcare workers have it down to five), I wonder why quarantine from residences has been moved into hotels? It looks like quarantine inside homes during the lockdown worked well enough. Locking Maltese residents returning home from high-risk areas in hotels seems to be rather bizarre. And certainly enough, with episodes of people returning from psychologically draining experiences (the relative of an acquaintance of mine was returning to Malta after suffering a miscarriage), a hotel quarantine is not the place for such humanitarian cases. As usual, these one-size-fits-all solutions leave victims in their wake. Just like the Chamber of Commerce has opined, it seems to me clear that putting people into hotels simply elim- inates the need to monitor people in their residences, and instead confine them to one space. In the process, the hotels get a much needed subsidy. John Muscat Chingford, UK