We Need to Evaluate Theological Years

by Letters Editor · February 13, 2014

Fr Stephen Giles MHM, Kroonstad – I write as a missionary whose primary task is to assist the local Church in establishing and securing a thriving Christian community and moving on to fresh pastures after the model of St Paul.

Alexander VI: A Papal Bull From the Notorious Pope, Dated 1495. www.papalartifacts.com

In the run-up to the millennium, Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente invited all members of the Church to focus on Jesus in 1997, the Father in 1998 and the Holy Spirit in 1999. He invited us to entrust these years to the prayers of Mary.

The formal convocation of the Holy Year 2000 was inaugurated in 1998 by the bull Incarnationis Mysterium (Mystery of the Incarnation). In it, Pope John Paul ll indicated that he had desired to lead the Church into the Great Jubilee since the beginning of his pontificate. He explained that this jubilee would be a chance to open new horizons in preaching the Kingdom of God.

But to jump numerous programmatic theological years to the Year of Grace 2012 and the Year of Faith 2013, I wonder if the Church of Southern Africa, as it enters the Year of the Family 2014, has ever bestirred itself to evaluate the pastoral value of these programmatic years. Why have the bishops apparently not published their findings to encourage pastors and faithful who have engaged in these years?

My predecessors at Kroonstad cathedral helpfully kept SACBC Catholic directories from the dawn of creation. I refrain from publishing my laborious count of new communities established annually in the dioceses of South and Southern Africa here. But if someone would care to undertake such a count, lest it be for academic purposes, let me advise them to save their eyesight, as with apologies to St Matthew, they would strain at a gnat to catch a camel that is not there!

To this end, after the Year of the Family 2014, I propose Three Years of Nothing, that we may reflect, pray, ponder and discuss the cycle of readings prescribed by the Church for our nourishment as we are meant to do weekly.