Pope Benedict XVI sent a message to be read at the Requiem of Cardinal Meisner.
What struck me particularly in the last conversations with the Cardinal, now gone home, was the natural cheerfulness, the inner peace and the assurance he had found. We know that it was hard for him, the passionate shepherd and pastor of souls, to leave his office, and this precisely at a time when the Church had a pressing need for shepherds who would oppose the dictatorship of the zeitgeist, fully resolved to act and think from a faith standpoint. Yet I have been all the more impressed that in this last period of his life he learned to let go, and live increasingly from the conviction that the Lord does not leave his Church, even if at times the ship is almost filled to the point of shipwreck.
Papa Joseph Ratzinger abandoned the ship. The rats on the ship will be running scared now that he has revealed his thoughts. Will his jailers let him get away with this statement, or will his, be the next, "Requiem."
There was a time in which I had great love and affection for this man. He was the grandfather I never knew, the father I missed, my favourite uncle now long gone.
It's time for the so-called, "Emeritus," to come clean with the rest of us about the reality in which we are now living.