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

I'm not saying goodbye to life because I'm a misanthropist or disdain this life, but because, for other reasons, it's time to move on.

But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God's infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.

God's love does not protect us from suffering. God's love protects us in the midst of suffering.

Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.