E-mail to Pope Benedict XVI

To: benedictxvi@vatican.va
March 18, 2009


Dear Pope Benedict XVI,

I am writing this e-mail to you in regards to your trip to Africa. I have been following the news about how you made a statement condemning the use of contraceptives to prevent AIDS as well as your most current speech about Cameroun's "happy" rites of mass, and your concern this might provoke distortion. I have been following these news in Le Figaro from France and El Pais from Spain. I know we are not a Church of democracy, I understand that truth is not necessarily a thing which makes masses happy, however, I find your recent speeches to be insensitive, retrograde, and altogether lacking Christ-like love.

We are a church of hope, of faith, of love. Your message is not one of redemption but of condemnation. While you could come to Africa to remind people that Christ too suffered and understands suffering, that both God and the world hear the cries of the African people, that there are many of us who remember the continent in our prayers, you have come to set the human laws perfectly known, instead of bringing a spirit of love.

When Jesus walked among us, He was about healing and about friendship and about love, and you are not extending those things to a country (Cameroun) who is ridden by poverty, disease, and suffering. You are not speaking hope into the lives of people, you are speaking death and condemnation. I understand that Catholicism is opposed to the use of contraceptives, but I cannot fathom a Christ who would oppose contraceptive in a continent where twenty five million people have died because of it, of a preventable cause. Have you forgotten that women have to burn their labia as a baby is delivered so that the child will not be exposed to AIDS? Have you forgotten in that continent women have to choose between spending their meager wages in life-sustaining medicine or life-sustaining food? Your prerogatives are incorrect, dear Pope. The spirit is the most important, and as such, we should take care of it first.

When you come and talk about not having sex except in the sanctity of marriage, you are ignoring very many things which are plaging the African people. When you come into Africa and tell them their rites may be a distortion, not only are you depriving the African people of their roots and their culture, but you are displaying this for the world to see. You are displaying a colonial ethnocentric action which, again, makes the Catholic Church appear retrograde, exclusionist, and unkind, most uncapable of empathy. Pope John Paul II treated this issue with a lot more open mindedness and love when he accepted a ritual cleansing in Mexico by Mexican natives. This is a way to deal with local custom and incorporate non-European cultures into the Catholic world. This sends a message of inclusion and of solidarity. This sends a message that though many the parts, we are all one body. In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus "broke" many laws in order to show empathy and solidarity with people, which I suggest you pray and study more.

This is the Catholic Church I believe in-- the one that accepts the humble and the rich, the one that accepts many different cultures, and admits all of us are children of God, no more, no less. I know as the Pope, you represent Christ here on earth, but your actions are lacking that representation. As the head of the Church, you are the sail that will guide the rest of us into action, so please, please, please, guide us into expressing the love, mercy, and compassion of our God. Show that Jesus was a Christ of mercy and of empathy, and that He walks besides all of us, whatever our race or our way of prayer. What God wants of us is a sincere heart, not a perfect, Western way of prayer. Dear Pope, I know I am not perfect and I know you are human too, but please let Christ shine through you and stop bringing petty arguments into the table, bring healing to our ailing world. That is what Christ came to do.


Sincerely,

Hannia
hcb0218@gmail.com