Even apart from the image of a truly merciless God that contradicts everything we can assume from what Jesus says about the Either of the lost, can we be surprised at a time when retributive punishments without an opportunity of probation are being increasingly abandoned in education and penal justice, that the idea not only of a lifelong, but even eternal punishment of body and soul, seems to many people absolutely monstrous.

In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.

I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.