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Jubilee and Grace
With the new millennium comes a new hope for the Church

First, we would like to announce that starting this month there has been a change at the helm. Philip F. Lawler, our illustrious editor, has taken a leave of absence while he engages in a political campaign for the seat in the US Senate currently held by Edward M. Kennedy. Should Phil win that seat, the acting editor will collapse in trembling at the task now laid upon him, but should the unthinkable happen and Phil loses, he will return for our December issue. To find out more on Phil’s campaign, see his web site at www.lawler2000.org.

The focus of Catholic World Report’s coverage of news and events will not change, and if readers look at the current issue’s offerings, they will see we remain committed to both exposing the ongoing cultural war that Christians must see around them and the marvelous graces that are pouring down from heaven as evidence of God’s love for the human family.

With all the press coverage last January of the beginning of the new millennium (whether it began in January or really starts next December is a debate we’d rather not get into), Pope John Paul II’s message of the Jubilee may have been vastly overlooked by the secular media. In that message is a profound truth that has been echoed throughout all of his public statements so far this year; that a new era of grace and the abiding presence of Christ among us has begun.

The advent of the Third Millennium brings to a close the most brutal and violent century of human history (an awesome claim considering the vast history of violence man has perpetrated since Cain murdered Abel). Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, in announcing the release of the text of the “third secret” of Fatima in June (see the story on page 44 in this month’s issue), remarked that the Holy Father’s decision to do so “brings to an end a period of history marked by tragic human lust for power and evil, yet pervaded by the merciful love of God and the watchful care of the Mother of Jesus and of the Church.”

Cardinal Ratzinger writes in his commentary on the secret that a crucial part of the message of Fatima is the Blessed Mother’s assurance that “my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” This is a message of profound hope. The public reaction to the message itself since 1917 could be seen as a barometer of that hope. Before the decision to reveal the secret, many people spoke of it in fear, supposing it contained a message of imminent apocalypse or a mass apostasy within the Church. But now we are assured that the message was really one of the triumph of the Cross, that even as evil thought it had won—by “slaying” the “Bishop dressed in White”—its downfall had already begun.

A new hope
So as we cast our eye about the world today, we see evil apparently ascendant. There is the mass murder of Christians in Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere. Fighting among religions is rampant. Local wars are spreading in Asia and Africa. Leading nations are passing new laws—or interpreting existing ones—which undermine Christian moral principles.

But there is hope in the midst of the evil. Rwandan Bishop Augustin Misago was found innocent of genocide of the 1994 holocaust in that country, despite attempts to cast the Church as a key player in the murders. In Mexico, a new regime seen as friendly to Catholics and the Church was elected, bringing in a new government for the first time in seven decades.

We must not overlook the Holy Father’s optimism for the human family. His declaration of the Jubilee Year is not just an excuse for Catholics to celebrate nor is it a means to rally the flagging spirits of the “troops.” Instead, the Holy Year is a real source of grace.

And that grace will change the world. Would it be surprising if the effects of the Jubilee Year became visible in the near future? Pope Leo XIII reportedly had a vision at the end of the 19th century in which God granted the devil one century in which to test humanity. That century has ended, the awful tests are completed, and a new springtime has begun.

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