Dear Editor: The Church has a purpose — to produce saints for the Kingdom of God. The Unity of the Church is secondary to its primary purpose — inspiring people to give up doing their own will in order to do God’s will (“The Role of the Pope Emeritus And the Unity of the Church,” The Editor’s Space, Feb. 2).

Pope St. John Paul famously told a guest that Mother Theresa had more power than he did in this endeavor of inspiring saints.

There is a core of liberals who have their own ideas of what the Church should be about. They want to repurpose (read “new paradigm”) the Church for their various and sundry purposes. They feel threatened by Pope Benedict who gained power by stepping down from the chair of St Peter. It’s just one of those paradoxes inherent in the Pascal Mystery. But then, who would predict that a man who died a public criminal could usher in the Kingdom of God in the first place? Somebody once said that God stepped down to raise up a Kingdom.

Daniel Kovich     

Philadelphia