A Year of Grace and Growth

Dear Reader, as we enter the Jubilee Year 2025, we might reflect with awe that we are joining our ancestors in faith in a special Church tradition that goes back 725 years. Since the year 1300, Catholics have benefitted from the graces and spiritual energy of these holy years.

One of the particular benefits of a Jubilee Year resides in its focus on plenary indulgences. On page 12 we aim to explain what these are and how we may obtain them.

The theme for the Jubilee Year 2025 is “Pilgrims of Hope”, as Raymond Perrier notes in his column. Our hope, of course, is in salvation and everlasting life in perfect peace —quite the opposite of this temporal world, which so often is marked by discord, division and death.

The discord especially has been sharpened by the rise of social media. In less than 20 years, social media has changed the way people relate to each other. Some of it has been useful, but a lot has been for the worse. As Catholics — as Pilgrims of Hope — our task must be to help make the world a better place. One way in which we can do so is in the way we communicate, as Cardinal Stephen Brislin explains in his reflection on page 22.

To that end, we offer some tips about how to be a good representative of Christ and his Church on social media. Sometimes we might fail in communicating well, but we must always be aware that we Catholics are called to evangelise — to proclaim and propose God — in all we do, even from behind the keyboard. That invests in us a certain responsibility.

On page 24, Sarah-Leah Pimentel offers great advice on how we can make the Jubilee Year a time of grace and growth, even if we can’t go through the Holy Doors of Rome. The aim is spiritual growth, and that will also be our big focus in next month’s issue.

The Church is celebrating special jubilees throughout this holy year, and The Southern Cross will publish material to mark these in the month in which they take place. In February, there will be three such jubilees: for deacons, for artists, and for the security cluster.

In October the multi-year Synod on Synodality completed its work. Its closing document is now part of the magisterium, and the Church will have to change in the ways it operates. There may be some resistance and a lot of indifference, but synodality will require Church leaders to consult more broadly with the laity. In the US diocese of Jefferson City this took a quick hold when the local bishop withdrew a controversial decree on hymns, saying that the issue now needs synodal discussion. On page 16 we look at various ways in which synodality may and will change the Church.

To many South Africans, much of this is not new. Synodality has been a feature of the Small Christian Communities. A pioneer of these was Bishop Fritz Lobinger, retired of Aliwal North. This month, Bishop Michael Wüstenberg tells the remarkable story of the German-born prelate known by his flock as umXhosa.

Pope Francis has often warned us about what he calls the “scandal” of clericalism, the total deference to priests in all matters and the unhealthy authoritarianism exercised by some clergy. Synodality demands a more grounded clergy, one which gets its hands dirty instead of dressing in lace.

But in the valid endeavour to rid the Church of clericalism, we must not neglect to appreciate the crucial role our priests play in the life of the Church. We must still love our priests — and our religious — and show them care. On page 26, Br Keanu Molosi offers five tips on how we can do so.

Last year, Radio Veritas celebrated its 25th birthday; in January it will be 20 years since the Catholic radio station started broadcasting 24/7, on the DStv audio bouquet. We tell the story of Radio Veritas on page 8, followed by a profile on the eminently likeable afternoon presenter Tiiso Mosoeu.

Thank you for reading The Southern Cross, and please tell your friends about your monthly Catholic magazine — maybe you could make promoting Catholic media in the parish your special Jubilee Year project, in the service of evangelisation!

God bless,
Günther Simmermacher
(Editor)