This just in: Pope John Paul II has announced that he will retire from the papacy effective upon the convening of a conclave to determine the policy of his successor and the election of his successor. The pope said: "My heart is broken by the condition of Holy Mother the Church in the United States and a few isolated locations elsewhere where notions of "progress" have replaced the truth of Jesus Christ. Twenty years ago, armed with the information that has recently come to light, I would have eagerly embraced the responsibility as universal pastor to remove the offenders from their positions in the Church and find worthy successors to reverse the damage they have done."
"I am, unfortunately old beyond my years and broken by the infirmity of my health. The circumstances require that I lay down the wonderful but crushing burdens of serving the servants of God while my faculties remain and I am able to do so. The Church in this hour of crisis must have a pope, not only thoroughly orthodox in belief but thoroughly vigorous in his exercise of authority to root out the evils which are choking the Church of Jesus Christ, compel the obedience of the rebellious in the ranks of clergy and hierarchy and set the Church firmly on the path of genuine renewal according to the Teaching Magisterium and wisdom of all who have gone before us."
"I trust the members of the Sacred College of Cardinals, most of whom it has been my privilege to raise to that honor, to enact a strict and effective policy to deal with disobedience as well as sexual profligacy and dereliction of hierarchical duty, and to elect as our successor one who has the capability, determination, and doctrinal spine to confront for the foreseeable future this latest coordinated effort within and without by those who would exercise their enmity toward the Mystical Body of Christ."
"Make no mistake. We will govern firmly and decisively until that conclave. We will resume our status as cardinal upon our papal resignation and we exempt ourself and any future resigned pontiff from the age restriction on participation and voting imposed by Pope Paul VI.
"We have ordered the formal excommunication of a list of individual members of the clergy and hierarchy because of their respective roles in the current crises of disobedience and disordered sexual abuse. The list will be provided later today. The lifting of these excommunications, should that ever occur, is reserved to the Holy See alone.
"We have also accepted the resignations of Roger Cardinal Mahoney, Bernard Cardinal Law, Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, Bishop Thomas Daily and 43 other diocesan ordinaries in the United States. The full preliminary list will be announced later today, together with the names of their successors. Those of them who have been cardinals will no longer serve as such and will be ineligible for conclave. Their priestly faculties are hereby suspended pending further investigation and until further notice. The successors of the resigned cardinals will themselves be simultaneously designated as cardinals before any ceremony may be held to enable them to participate in conclave.
"We hereby order the abolition of the American seminaries, their replacement by four regional seminaries to be administered from the Vatican by Dario Castrillon de Hoyos and the Sacred Congregation for Priests until a new archdiocese of American seminaries is established and its ordinary appointed. There will be no faculty or administrative tenure and, due to the abolition of the existing seminaries, none will be honored. Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos knows our mind and will carry out this reform immediately. The newly appointed archbishop for American seminaries will also be responsible for enforcing Ecclesia Dei and compelling within that nation obedience and submission by theologians and institutions of higher education claiming to be Catholic.
"We hereby reinstitute the disciplinary measures imposed in Pope St. Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis and all of the provisions of administrative discipline ordered therein to combat the modernist heresy. Any papal act since 1907 to the date hereof cancelling or suspending those measures is or are hereby removed and abolished.
"Be not afraid."
[I am sure that I am not adept at papal cadence but I have no doubt of the outcome, if that were the essence of a resignation message or that his successor would make his enemies long for the "good old days" when he served.]