Holy Year(s), Holy Door(s), and some musings concerning 1933

I had no recollection of the phrase “holy year” when I came across it yesterday in the pages of a most unlikely source—J. F. Rutherford’s book, Jehovah.

During the last couple of days, I have been researching the use of the nomina sacra found in the early New Testament manuscripts, attempting to understand why early second century Christian scribes adopted their use—not only in the NT manuscripts, but also their Greek copies of the OT—whilst Jewish scribes did not employ them at all. Related to this issue was the use of the Tetragrammaton by Jewish scribes as a substitute for kurios in some copies of the Greek OT they created circa  2^nd century B.C. through the 3^rd century A.D. (Christian scribes never made use of the Tetragrammaton in any of their copies of the OT).

In this process of trying to understand the differing scribal methods utilized by Christian and Jewish scribes when copying the OT, I began reading a book that I had not read for over four decades—Rutherford’s aforementioned book, Jehovah. Note the following:

The so-called “holy year” has failed to bring the promised peace and prosperity, and that failure should of itself convince the people of good will that God did not authorize the year 1933 to be called a holy year, nor will he hear the prayers of men who try to make it a holy year. Upon earth there is now no peace, and poverty continues to stalk hideously through the land. Jehovah’s witnesses have no controversy with men. Their only purpose is to be obedient to God's commandment to tell the message of truth. (J. F. Rutherford, Jehovah, p. 23 – 1934.)

As mentioned above, I had no recollection of what this 1933 “holy year” entailed. Some online research revealed that the official Vatican website has a page titled, “WHAT IS A HOLY YEAR?” (link). From that contribution we read:

In the Roman Catholic tradition, a Holy Year, or Jubilee is a great religious event. It is a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin, it is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters. A Jubilee year is above all the year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity…

A Jubilee can be "ordinary" if it falls after the set period of years, and "extraordinary" when it is proclaimed for some outstanding event. There have been twenty-five "ordinary" Holy Years so far: the Year 2000 will be the 26th. The custom of calling "extraordinary" Jubilees began in the 16th century and they can vary in length from a few days to a year. There have been two extraordinary jubilees in this century: 1933 proclaimed by Pope Pius XI to mark the 1900th anniversary of Redemption and 1983 proclaimed by Pope John Paul II to mark 1950 years since the Redemption carried out by Christ through his Death and Resurrection in the year 33. In 1987 Pope John Paul II also proclaimed a Marian year.

The mystery of the “Holy Year” was now solved. However, in the same Vatican contribution, I came upon yet another phrase I had no recollection of—“Holy Door”. Note the following:

In 1500 Pope Alexander VI announced that the Doors in the four major basilicas would be opened contemporaneously, and that he himself would open the Holy Door of Saint Peter's.

So, what are these “Doors”; and specifically, “the Holy Door”? The following is from a Wikipedia article:

A Holy Door (Latin: Porta Sancta) is traditionally an entrance portal located within the Papal major basilicas in Rome. The doors are normally sealed by mortar and cement from the inside so that they cannot be opened. They are ceremoniously opened during Jubilee years designated by the Pope, for pilgrims who enter through those doors may piously gain the plenary indulgences attached with the Jubilee year celebrations. (link)

Armed with this new knowledge, two important events during the 1933 “Holy Year” came to mind. The first important event is quite personal, for it was the birth of my father. As for the second event, I can think of no better term to describe it than ‘insidious’, for that was the year Adolf Hitler rose to power, becoming the Chancellor of Germany. I suspect the latter event may have been one of the factors Rutherford had in mind when he penned his assessment of the 1933 “holy year”.

Back to my studies…

Grace and peace,

David

Vatican I and Vatican II – antecedents and “unfinished business”

The genesis of this post took place back on Sept. 2, 2019 when THIS COMMENT was published by Rory. Since then, explorations into the issues of apostasy, doctrinal development—corruption vs. legitimate— the validity of certain councils, and the possibility that we may be living in the generation that will experience the second coming of our Lord, have been discussed in the subsequent threads:

Development of doctrine, Dignitatis Humanae, and the Christianizing of paganism vs. the paganizing of Christianity 

John Henry Newman’s "acceptance of non-Christian religions” 

Accommodation for “the Gospel's sake”—the risk of paganizing Christianity  

The Great Apostasy - A provocative, book length contribution, from a Catholic perspective

Vatican I: a ‘rupture’ in Catholic tradition, or legitimate development of doctrine?

As my personal research into the aforementioned issues continues, I would like to bring to the attention of AF readers some germane, and valuable, contributions that I have recently read:

 First, three books that significantly informed my understanding of the conservative, Catholic viewpoint concerning the issue of infallibility—especially the Papal and Vatican I:

Anti-Janus: an historico-theological criticism of the work entitled "The Pope and the Council" 

The Vatican Council and its Definitions 

The True Story of the Vatican Council 

I would also like to recommend a 2018 dissertation that I read over the last couple days:

Eighteenth-Century Forerunners of Vatican II: Early Modern Catholic Reform and the Synod of Pistoia 

This work is so much more than title suggests, and is a must read (IMO). I hope the following selections provide enough impetus to at least take a look the contribution:

This dissertation sheds further light on the nature of church reform and the roots of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) through a study of eighteenth-century Catholic reformers who anticipated Vatican II. The most striking of these examples is the Synod of Pistoia (1786), the high-water mark of “late Jansenism.” Most of the reforms of the Synod were harshly condemned by Pope Pius VI in the Bull Auctorem fidei (1794), and late Jansenism was totally discredited in the increasingly ultramontane nineteenth-century Catholic Church. Nevertheless, many of the reforms implicit or explicit in the Pistoian agenda – such as an exaltation of the role of bishops, an emphasis on infallibility as a gift to the entire church, religious liberty, a simpler and more comprehensible liturgy that incorporates the vernacular, and the encouragement of lay Bible reading and Christocentric devotions – were officially promulgated at Vatican II. (From the Abstract, n.p.)

…reform occurred at the Council in the form of the development of doctrine. The idea that doctrine could develop was rejected by most early modern Catholic theologians. It was totally antithetical to the Gallican tradition, and the immutability of doctrine was a primary claim wielded in anti-Protestant polemic. Because of the work of Newman and others, the concept of development became the established way of explaining doctrines that were not explicit in scripture or the earliest Christian sources (the Marian dogmas of 1854 and 1950 loom large here). The notion of development itself is embedded in Dei verbum, and defined in §8.

Development, however, is a fundamentally conservative type of reform, like ressourcement and unlike aggiornamento. By its very nature, development brings to light elements implicit in an existing doctrine or idea. The most conservative council fathers at Vatican II recognized at least some form of the development of doctrine. (Pages 32, 33 – bold emphasis mine)

Just as concerns about the “unfinished business” of Vatican I survived long after that Council closed in 1870, so have the concerns described by Routhier endured past the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of Vatican II. There were important moments in this continued debate in the Catholic Church in the postconciliar period, such as the revision of Canon Law in 1983, the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985, and the promulgation of Ut unum sint (1995) and Apostolos suos (1998) by Pope John Paul II. In the papacy of Francis, however, calls for a re-examination of collegiality, often through appeals to “synodality,” are increasing. In light of the collegial deliberations of the Synod on the Family (4–25 October 2015) and the widely diverging reactions to the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia (19 May 2016), the Catholic Church may again be preparing for a major debate surrounding the exercise of the papal primacy in light of episcopal collegiality. (Page 369)

Looking forward to some in depth discourse…

Grace and peace,

David