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The Great Jubilee and the Purification of Memory Kevin Lenehan

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The Great Jubilee and the Purification of Memory Kevin Lenehan Louvain Studies 25 (2000) 291-311 The Great Jubilee and the Purification of Memory Kevin Lenehan The awareness of the advent of the third millennium in the histor- ical self-understanding and ministry of Pope John Paul II cannot be underestimated. The first encyclical of his pontificate made explicit ref- erence to the impending turn of the millennium, and interpreted the last years of the twentieth century as ‘a new Advent,' preparing for the celebration of the Great Jubilee.1 In his apostolic letter on the prepara- tion for the Jubilee of the Year 2000, The Third Millennium (Tertio Mil- lennio Adveniente), he writes that “preparing for the Year 2000 has become as it were a hermeneutical key of my pontificate.”2 Convinced that “in the Church's history every jubilee is prepared for by Divine Providence,” he affirms that the Second Vatican Council was “a provi- dential event, whereby the Church began the more immediate prepara- tion for the Jubilee of the Second Millennium.” He notes the impor- tance of the Council in its historical context of “the profoundly disturbing experiences of the twentieth century, a century scarred by the First and Second World Wars, by the experience of concentration camps and by horrendous massacres.” The richness and new tone of the Coun- cil's teaching constituted a “proclamation of new times,” and leads the Pope to affirm that “the best preparation for the new millennium, there- fore, can only be expressed in a renewed commitment to apply, as faith- fully as possible, the teachings of Vatican II to the life of every individ- ual Christian and of the whole Church.”3 The Pope then outlines what concrete preparation for the Jubilee might entail. Seeing the need “to link the structure of memorial with 1. John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, Origins 8 (March 1979) 625-644, n. 1. 2. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente (hereafter TMA), Origins 24 (November 1994) 401-416, n. 23. 3. Ibid., nn. 17-20. 292 KEVIN LENEHAN that of celebration,” he calls the church to become more “fully con- scious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in his- tory when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the val- ues of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal.” This requires a thorough exami- nation of conscience by the church, which is always at the same time holy and in need of renewal, so that the light of the Gospel may be shed on its history, illuminating the concrete actions of Christian men and women. From this memoria an attitude of repentance and sorrow arises in the church, which is expressed by publicly acknowledging the sinful- ness of the past and by a recommitment to strengthening relationships with those who bear the consequences of past wrongdoing. “Acknowl- edging the weaknesses of the past is an act of honesty and courage which helps us to strengthen our faith, which alerts us to face today's temptations and challenges and prepares us to meet them.”4 In November 1998, the Pope reiterated his call for an ecclesial exam- ination of conscience in the Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, The Mystery of the Incarnation (Incarnationis Mysterium). He speaks of a purification of memory, which “calls everyone to make an act of courage and humility in recognizing the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian.” While the history of the church is a history of holiness, “it must be acknowledged that history also records events which constitute a counter-testimony to Christianity. Because of the bond which unites us to one another in the Mystical Body, all of us, though not personally responsible and without encroaching on the judge- ment of God who alone knows every heart, bear the burden of the errors and faults of those who have gone before us. Yet we too … have sinned and have … impeded the Spirit's working in the hearts of many people.” By acknowledging the faults of all the members of the Mystical Body, before God and before those offended by their actions, Christians are able to confidently await God's mercy and look to the future. For God “is now doing something new, and in the love which forgives he anticipates the new heavens and the new earth.”5 It is evident that John Paul II deeply desires the church to take seri- ously the process of the purification of memory, and is personally lead- ing the way through the requests for pardon made on the First Sunday 4. TMA, n. 33, passim. 5. John Paul II, Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, Incarna- tionis Mysterium (hereafter IM), Origins 28 (December 1998) 445-453, n. 11. THE GREAT JUBILEE AND THE PURIFICATION OF MEMORY 293 of Lent 2000.6 It is yet to be seen how local churches will respond to the papal challenge. However, the Pope's action raises many issues both for the theological reflection and pastoral praxis of the church: the way in which we read and relate to historical evidence; the authority of the magisterium and the fact of historical errors in teaching; the under- standing and formation of personal conscience in regard to the teaching authority of the church and the signs of the times; the centrality of metanoia to the witness of the church; the relation of history, and the history of the church in particular, to the unfolding of God's definitive purpose in creation.7 In this paper, I will suggest some preliminary lines of thought regarding: (1) the relation of history and memory, (2) the memory of the church and the anticipation of God's future, and (3) some possible sites of actualisation in the context of my country of origin, Australia. The Remembering of History The ‘Space' of History In response to the horror of both the First and Second World Wars, writers in various disciplines have developed critiques of the idea of history that undergird Western modernity. Perhaps arising from the mathematico-geometric revolution in rationality begun by Descartes and his preference for extension in space over the sensible properties of objects, the modern understanding of the world operated through the process of abstraction, whereby general and universally applicable laws were used to regulate and predict the realm of empirical data. While this principle is more obvious in scientific and technological development, it also comes to inform ideas about society, politics, education and history. Abstraction can clearly be seen at work in the development of modern notions of time and space. Where in the pre-modern world time was intimately connected to locality and varied from place to place, the increasingly accurate measurement of time in discrete units 6. The Pope's requests for pardon in the Jubilee Year need to be seen in the con- text of the many apologies for particular moments in the church's history that John Paul II has made during his time in office. See Luigi Accattoli, When a Pope Asks Forgiveness: The Mea Culpa's of John Paul II (New York: Alba House, 1998). 7. In relation to some of these issues, see Bruce Duncan, “The Significance of the Pope's Proposed Apologies for Errors by the Church,” The Australasian Catholic Record 76 (1999) 463-479. 294 KEVIN LENEHAN allowed time to be uniformly calculated independently of local condi- tions. The development of the mechanical clock is the most striking icon of this abstraction of time. “The invention of the mechanical clock and its diffusion to virtually all members of the population … were of key significance in the separation of time from space. The clock expressed a uniform dimension of ‘empty' time, quantified in such a way as to permit the precise designation of ‘zones' of the day.”8 This leads to a new understanding of space. No longer defined by the per- sons, physical objects, customs, and language typical of a particular locality, the standardisation of calculated time allows for an abstraction of space across regions and borders. “The ‘emptying' of time is in large part the precondition for the ‘emptying' of space.”9 In Western modernity, this ‘empty' space of time is seen as the realm of history, particularly understood as human progress. Isolated from any real past or future, the ‘space' of history is the arena of an autonomous, reasonable humanity that continuously realises itself through exercising its rationality on the material world. Thus, techno- logical advances, social planning, the division of labour and the genera- tion of capital, educational systems and the contractual state, each itself a consequence of the principle of abstraction embedded in modernity, become means by which humanity progresses in self-realisation towards the perfection of history. This ‘space' of history becomes, as it were, her- metically sealed after Hegel, for whom “the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”10 In history, society is progressively and rationally organised by human reason until a perfect harmony exists between free individual choices and the needs of society as a whole, as the fulfilment of human freedom. History and the Memory of Victims The positivist approach, in which the writing of history becomes a recording of the ‘facts' of the relentless progress of human reason ordering 8. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990) 17.
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