October 1999 Print

 

The Ecumenical Jubilee¹

Modernists are preparing a very ecumenical jubilee for the Year 2000, opened with the "Holy Door" of the Second Vatican Council. Imbued with the spirit of Assisi, they wish to celebrate a false peace, established on the union of all religions and on the Church's reiterated demands for forgiveness. We denounce that enterprise, beseeching our Lady, strong as an army prepared for battle, to defend the honor of her Son in His Mystical Body.

The structures placed in Rome for the organization of the Jubilee of the Year 2000 prove how ecumenical this celebration is intended to be. Indeed, of the ten preparatory committees, five have ecumenism as their object.²

Vatican II Is the "Holy Door" of the Year 2000 Jubilee

This is what Pope John Paul II explained at the first preparatory meeting held on February 16, 1996:

Every program related to the Jubilee must, primarily, look towards the richness of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, the providential event by which the Church began the immediate preparation for the jubilee of the third millennium (Tertio Millenio Adveniente, §18). Indeed, the Council represents the "Holy Door" of this new springtime of the Church, which is to be revealed by the celebration of the jubilee. The conciliar assembly concentrated its reflections upon the mystery of Christ and of His Church, with an opening to the world, in order to offer the evangelic answer to the society's contemporary evolution: Its teaching is fundamental for the preparation and the celebration of the great jubilee of the Year 2000.

 

"O Spirit of Assisi, Descend Upon Us All!"

Roger Cardinal Etchegaray (former Archbishop of Marseilles, France), president of the Jubilee's Central Committee, wishes the jubilee celebration to be held in continuity with Assisi. In Tertium Millennium (Sept.-Oct., 1996), he published an article entitled "The Spirit of Assisi," which allows one to foresee what will be the spirit of the Jubilee:

...If I mention with emotion the day of Assisi, it is because I have tenaciously led its laborious preparation....We had nothing historical behind us to refer to, nor did we have any mark ahead of us to come up to....Thus Assisi allowed some men and women to be witnesses of a genuine experience of God within their own religions....Assisi, that was ten years ago. What will it produce in the Year 2000? Pope John Paul II, in his letter Tertio Millenio Adveniente sets precise marks....He does not forget the non-Christian religions, especially the Jews and Muslims who, like the Christians, claim to be of Abraham's descent....O Spirit of Assisi, come upon us all!

 

An Ecumenical Agenda

A special agenda, interreligious and ecumenical, is to work out the main stages of that Year 2000. Below is how the weekly paper La Documentation Catholique [French translation of Italian Osservatore Romano] presents it:

Referring to the grave problem of the divisions among Christians, the Holy Father writes in Tertio Millennio Adveniente: On the ecumenical point of view, the Year 2000 will be a very important one in which to turn your attention to Christ. It should not fail to generate the interest of, and a positive reception from Christians of other confessions (§41). The Agenda of the Holy Year 2000 has integrated this wish of the Holy Father and of the whole Church. Some important meetings of ecumenical inspiration have already been planned. We could add a few more of them, like the pan-Christian gathering we are longing for....Contacts are under way for the interreligious encounter. We foresee an interreligious assembly about "the collaboration of religions on the threshold of the third millennium," organized by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, to be held October 24-28, 1999. (No. 2184, June 21, 1998)

In anticipation for the celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000, the following dates were underlined by the French magazine, Fêtes et Saisons [Feasts and Seasons] (No. 530, December 1998, pp. 31-32).

January 18: Beginning of the week of prayer for the unity of Christians.

February 25-27: Seminar about the implementation of the Second Vatican Council.

March 8: Ash Wednesday. The beseeching for forgiveness regarding Christian anti-semitism.

March 25: Celebration at Nazareth and at all main Marian sanctuaries of the world to emphasize woman's dignity.

May 7: Ecumenical commemoration of the "new martyrs."

June 11: Pentecost Sunday. Day of prayers for collaboration among all religions.

October 3: Day dedicated to Judeo-Christian dialogue.

 

The Ecumenical Jubilee's Prospectus

All authors agree in saying that the encyclical letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente of Pope John Paul II is the extensive prospectus of the Year 2000 Jubilee. At its publication in 1994, the document was presented by Roger Cardinal Etchegaray, President of the Jubilee Central Committee. Below are parts of Cardinal Etchegaray's presentation, containing many quotes from his important document, quite unknown, which summarizes the "program" and the "jubilee spirit" of the modernists (emphasis in original):

Many times before, I have had the honor to present to the Vatican's press room documents from the Holy Father. I confess that I have never been moved as I am now, having in my hands the Apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente. It gives us the key to the understanding of John Paul II's pontificate....Today we discover that the jubilee for the Year 2000 is the keystone of all his pastoral action....Already in the first lines of his first encyclical letter Redemptor Hominis (1979), he guides us towards this "great jubilee," establishing in our time a "new Advent" through his writings (and especially his encyclical letter on the Holy Ghost in 1986, §§49-51), we can see John Paul II tense, poised like an athlete towards the Year 2000....

Basing himself on the advice of cardinals and presidents of episcopal conferences, the pope opens to us a well-marked path, at one time as a continuous line, at another time as a dotted one....In this general preparation, I call attention to some more significant ideas emphasized by John Paul II:

1) Conscience's historical scope. The Holy Door of the Year 2000's jubilee shall symbolically be wider than ever before, because humanity arrived at this time will leave behind it not simply a century, but a millennium. It is good for the Church to cross it while being clearly conscious of what she lived during these last ten centuries. She cannot step over the threshold of the new millennium without urging her sons to purify themselves, in a spirit of atonement, from the errors, infidelities, incoherences and sluggishness of the past. The pope calls particularly to mind "the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of the Truth"³ (§35). On the other hand, he prompts all of us to perform a revived and precise examination of conscience pertaining to our responsibilities "for the evils of our day"⁴ and even in regard to the reception of the Council (§36).

2) An ecumenical requirement. The pope talks about it almost everywhere in his letter. Among other things he invites all of us "the promotion of fitting ecumenical initiatives, so that we can celebrate the Great Jubilee, if not completely united, at least much closer to overcoming the divisions of the second millennium." (§34). "In this way," says he, "the Jubilee will bear witness even more forcefully" (§16).

3) A social commitment. The jubilee practice, as described in the Bible, underlines its social inspiration (universal consignment of goods, restoration of equality between all children of Israel), to such an extent that John Paul II observes: "The social doctrine of the Church...is rooted in the tradition of the jubilee year" (§13). "Indeed, it has to be said that a commitment to justice and peace in a world like ours, marked by so many conflicts and intolerable social and economic inequalities, is a necessary condition for the preparation and celebration of the jubilee" (§51).

4) The remembrance of the martyrs. A Church which does not remember her martyrs of past time, or does not discover her martyrs of today, cannot claim the honor of being the Church of Christ. "In our own century the martyrs have returned," proclaims John Paul II. "As far as possible, their witness should not be lost to the Church." And he adds "This gesture cannot fail to have an ecumenical character and expression. Perhaps the most convincing form of ecumenism is the ecumenism of the saints and of the martyrs" (§37).

John Paul II initiates the idea of studying: "attention is being given to finding ways of arranging historic meetings in places of exceptional symbolic importance like Bethlehem, Jerusalsm and Mount Sinai as a means of furthering dialogue with Jews and the followers of Islam, and to arranging similar meetings elsewhere with the leaders of the great world religions" (§53). For the Year 2000 itself, the pope decides that the celebration of the great jubilee "will take place simultaneously in the Holy Land, in Rome and in local churches throughout the world." ...Finally, John Paul II thinks that "the ecumenical and universal character of the Sacred Jubilee can be fittingly reflected by a meeting of all Christians....in an attitude of fraternal cooperation with Christians of other denominations and traditions, as well as of grateful openness to those religions whose representatives might wish to acknowledge the joy shared by all the disciples of Christ."

(Translated from La Sel de la Terre, No. 29, Summer 1999.)

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1. "The vocabulary is important; we must distinguish Jubilee of the Year 2000, which can be celebrated ecumenically (and even very secularly!) and 'Holy Year' in the tradition of the Catholic Church." Quote from the June 14, 1996, declaration of the French Episcopal Committee for Union between Christians, composed of Bishops Daucourt, Boffet, Frikart, Quelen, and Moleres (see Documents episcopaux. No. 12-13, September 1996).

2.The Presidential Council includes the central committee (President, Card. Etchegaray) and ten others of which we can list: the Ecumenical Committee (President, Msgr. Paul Werner Scheele); the Committee for Interreligious Dialogue (President, Msgr. Michael Louis Fitzgerald); the Historico-theological Committee (President, Fr. Georges Cottier, O.P.); Committee for the New Martyrs (President, Msgr. Michel Hrynchyshyn, C.SS.R.); Liturgical Committee (President, Msgr. Geraldo Majella Agnelo).

3.The Inquisition (author's note).

4.The Shoah (author's note).