An Open Letter to the Retiring Head of the Catholic Church

Subject: An Open Letter to the Retiring Head of the Catholic Church
From: Trevor Winston Webber
Date: 28 Feb 2013


Dear Joseph Ratzinger; Ex Pope Benedict XVI


When you were appointed as Pope, you were appointed to a head one of the most revered and long-lasting religions in the history of mankind. You became God’s spokesman on earth. Yet not only did you make an earth-bound decision not to carry on in the job, and so break with tradition and history going back centuries, but you also insulted the God you were appointed to serve. You “admitted” that it sometimes felt as if 'God was asleep' during the troubled days of your papacy when you gave an emotional farewell in St Peter's Square before tens of thousands of pilgrims on the eve of your shock resignation.


You looked relaxed as your white "pope mobile" bore you through the famous plaza where more than 150,000 people gathered to hear your last public declaration as Pope. You drew an analogy between your reign and a miracle recounted in the Bible when Jesus Christ calmed the waters as he was sailing on a fishing boat with his disciples including St Peter - who is believed by Catholics to be the first pope. But by resigning you are hardly calming the waters, more brewing up a storm. Popes should never resign. It’s a job for life.


Your outrageous claim that God was asleep sounds to me like the whining of non-believer, or that of a sullen child that has been disappointed not to have got a gift at Christmas. May I suggest that instead of God being asleep, you were simply not listening attentively enough? God would use you as his instrument of Catholicism; the link between the divine and the earthly. Why on earth would God not communicate with his appointed representative on earth? Surely he would have influenced the cardinals to have made you Pope, so then why would he abandon you? I don’t think he has abandoned you Mr Ratzinger, I think you have just become unworthy of the Office of Pope, and that god did indeed speak to you. He said to you one word. “Resign”.


But instead of being honest and admitting that God had found you unworthy to serve him, you have sought to shift the blame onto others and even onto God himself for being “asleep”. How insulting. I am surprised that a fire bolt did not strike you down. Indeed within hours of you announcing your resignation a thunderbolt did indeed strike the Vatican. God was giving you a sign. That you were, at the end, not even worthy to be struck dead. You have become a mere man again, and one that has lost his religion, and lost the trust of God.


I pray that you have a quiet and untroubled remaining time on this planet. Of one thing you can be certain. Whether God was asleep or whether you just didn’t listen hard enough, God will never speak to you again.


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