I read the article and also am disgusted. Let me quote a few paragraphs to show you why.
Credibility problem
But he said that the Church was best served by the retirement of any pope by age 75, the age when bishops retire. These days, the media are more focused on the Pope’s health than his message, he added.
OK. So the media is more concerned with his health? And the point here? When the Pope was first elected, or at any time before age 75, was the media more interested in the Gospel, the “message” of the Pope? This is another case of those in the Church wanting the world to like the Church, because the Church conforms to the world. Sorry. That is back-asswards.
“As his age increases and his health deteriorates, his abilities are increasingly in doubt and the Pope is in some ways less credible. And we think it’s important to tell him that, so that he gives some thought to standing down,” Pfister said.
See the above as to his credibility. What exactly about age makes one less sincere? Or less of a believer? What about advancing age takes away his moral voice? Or his Apostolic lineage? Again, we are see the attempt to make the Church conform to the world.
“The other thing is that he said he would like to make the Church fit for the third millennium. We think that in the third millennium it should be considered normal by Church leaders that the Pope retires, in order to preserve the credibility of the office.”
So ageism is the norm to judge the Church by? We decide that after a certain age, a Pope is an automatic idiot, lunatic, drooling moron? There is a huge difference between a diocesan priest retiring and a Pope retiring. What exactly would the former Pope do? Go live in a monastery? Piddle around the Vatican trying to stay out of the way? If John Paul II had retired 9 years ago, we would not have the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. We would not have the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharista. We would not have the recent document on liturgical abuses. We would not have his incredible example of suffering for and with Christ. We would not have the image of JPII berating Clinton in Denver over abortion (and Clinton looking really pissed to boot!). There is no end of great things this Pope has done.
But the real question is this: Why do they want the Pope to step down? Is it really because they think he is a dottering old fool? Or is it because he has not succumbed to modernism? Is it because he holds fast to the faith as it has been handed on to him?