I have decided to announce a Year of Faith. It will
begin on 11 October 2012 ,
the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and it
will end on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King, on 24 November 2013 . The starting date
of 11 October 2012 also
marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, a text promulgated by my Predecessor, Blessed John Paul
II, with a view to illustrating for all the faithful the power and beauty of the
faith… Moreover, the theme of the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that
I have convoked for October 2012 is “The New Evangelization for the
Transmission of the Christian Faith”. This will be a good opportunity to usher
the whole Church into a time of particular reflection and rediscovery of the
faith.
It is not the first time that the Church has been called
to celebrate a Year of Faith. My venerable Predecessor the Servant of God Paul
VI announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul
on the 19th centenary of their supreme act of witness…. The great upheavals of that year made even
more evident the need for a celebration of this kind. It concluded with the Credo
of the People of God, intended to show how much the essential content that
for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed,
understood and explored ever anew, so as to bear consistent witness in
historical circumstances very different from those of the past.
Porta
Fidei 4
Reflection – Mark your
calendars! The Year of Faith is coming—what are YOU going to do about it?
These ‘years’ of the Church, of
which there have been quite a few over the last decade or so, are interesting
creatures. Remember the ‘year of St. Paul
Well, the document Porta Fidei which
I’m going through paragraph at a time will answer what the Church is doing. It
is doing what it always does, or at least tries to do. It is calling us to
conversion and to deepening of our commitment to Christ. Whether it is by
delving into the apostolic spirit of St. Paul
And so it is with this year of
faith. In timing it to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the
Second Vatican Council and the 20th anniversary of the Catechism, it seems to me that Pope Benedict is making a very basic point that
needs to be made. Namely, the essential unity and necessary connection between
a living, vibrant, apostolic, missionary faith and an adherence to the deposit
of faith which takes concrete form in the doctrines of the Church.
Too often in the past 50 years we have disconnected these two or even
opposed them. ‘Away with all the formulas, creeds, dogmas, and rules! Vatican
II called us to a living relationship with Christ!’ This is a common attitude,
especially among Catholics of a certain age (cough-Boomers-cough).
(Incidentally I am precisely one year too young to qualify as a Boomer and so
can adopt a Gen-X pose of slacker hipsterdom and ironic cool.)
Anyhow, enough inter-generational politics…
The Pope makes the point, by linking Vatican II and the Catechism, that
without content, without doctrine, without a concrete binding dogmatic core,
the living relationship with Christ becomes a mere abstraction. Christ becomes
a projection of our own egos and ids, our own devices and desires. Only when we
are bound to the Church’s teaching do we break out of this and enter into a
true living relationship with the True Christ.
The Church in its teaching office plays, then, a necessary role in
bringing us to Christ. Not the Christ of our imagining, not the Christ of our
making, but simply Christ. And She does this, not exclusively, but certainly by
her teaching office which is encapsulated in the Catechism. And because we
enter through this into a real relationship with the real Christ, we can go
forth into the world with apostolic courage and a deep concern for the needs
and cares of our time.
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