Hope&Joy: A landmark moment

The launch on May 8 of the Hope&Joy Network may well become a landmark moment for the Catholic Church in Southern Africa. As a popular education programme, Hope&Joy will energise the local Church, much as the Renew programme did in the 1990s, and be a visible sign of a vibrant Church that is forward-looking.

Serendipitously, the launch coincides with the month devoted to Our Lady and with the Easter season which culminates with the feast of Pentecost. Hope&Joy is the local Church’s opportunity for a Pentecost, an animation of faith in our lives.

Pope Benedict urges the faithful to evangelise by their example. This requires what is termed popular education, a broad catechism. It’s a process that can take formal as well as informal shape.

It is significant that Hope&Joy, a grassroots movement with no formal structure or hierarchy, has been welcomed so warmly by so many bishops. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier in this edition discerns the Holy Spirit at work in this initiative.

It is a network with no hierarchy or headquarters, no specific curriculum or programme. The various Catholic bodies involved in the network will address their constituents in ways that are most effective within the contexts in which they work. This can involve prayer groups or academic lectures, short text messages or more comprehensive reflection.

In late September The Southern Cross will begin a regular series of articles which we hope will serve as points of reflection, discussion and action. As of this week, this newspaper will carry the Hope&Joy logo next to its masthead as an expression of commitment to the network’s commendable objectives.

The planning stages and the network days in Johannesburg and Durban have shown that there is great enthusiasm for Hope&joy. Many Catholic groups and individuals have already signed up, and some already have made concrete plans to put Hope&Joy into action. The entire Church, including parishes and schools, must be urged to take ownership of this initiative.

At the core of Hope&Joy’s creation is the Second Vatican Council. Next year the Church will mark the 50th anniversary of the council’s opening; it is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of its teachings.

This is a providential time to communicate that the body of the Church’s teachings is not a series of prohibitions, but is transformative and life-giving. Hope&Joy must be seen as a means of making the teachings of Vatican II, and therefore the teachings of the Church, better known—especially those that usually are not well known or understood.

Vatican II underpins Hope&Joy. The network’s name is an allusion to Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), the council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. But the initiative must not be seen as a vehicle by which to raise grievances about the supposed harm done by the council or about its perceived unfulfilled promises. While discussion on such questions is perfectly legitimate, Hope&Joy is not the appropriate forum for it.

Hope&Joy must unite us in a common purpose to become better Catholics, to understand and live our faith as individuals and as the Body of Christ. In that way, Hope&Joy is profoundly relevant to clergy, religious and laity alike.

More than that, because Hope&Joy is an initiative that is unique to the Southern African region, our local Church can now provide the rest of the Catholic body with a creative model for popular education.

The responsibility for the success of Hope&Joy resides with all of us: with the faithful, who welcome and make use of this faith-deepening opportunity; with the clergy and bishops, who support and promote it (and make use of its programmes themselves); and of course with those in the Hope&Joy network, on whom rests the obligation to present relevant material to the People of God.

Hope&Joy represents an immense opportunity for the local Church. We may not dare miss it.