From Our Vaults 37 Years Ago: August 28, 1983

by Tamar SC · August 28, 2020

Celebrate Mary’s 2000th birthday

At an open-air Assumption feast Mass in Lourdes attended by 180000 people, Pope John Paul II called on Catholics to celebrate Mary’s 2000th birthday during the Holy Year 1983. Mary is believed to have been 17 when she conceived Jesus.

Bigots resolve to hate Catholic Church

A World Congress of Fundamentalists, headed by US preacher Bob Jones and Northern Irish royalist Rev Ian Paisley, condemned the Catholic Church at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. A congress resolution called the Catholic Church the “mother of harlots and abominations on earth”. It also decided that Pope John Paul II’s travels around the world “are but subtle window-dressing behind which lies the unchanging hatred of that system of true biblical Christianity”.

SA bishop on dialogue body

Archbishop Peter Butelezi of Bloemfontein has been appointed to the newly refounded Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. Archbishop Butelezi is presently chairman of the SACBC’s ecumenical commission.

Editorial: How to tackle astrology

In his editorial, Mgr Donald de Beer writes that the Church should tackle the superstitious phenomenon of astrology by instilling “firm convictions about the truths of faith: about the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, the efficacy of grace, and the Gospel of Christ as the one way of salvation”.