What is Hope&Joy?

 Why we need Hope&Joy

Background:  50 years ago, Blessed John XXIII announced that he would be opening the windows of the Church to let in fresh air by calling an Ecumenical Council.  2011 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the formal summoning of the Council (Humanae Salutis on Christmas Day 1961); 2012 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the start of the Council (11^th October 1962). 

At Vatican II, the Church recognised that it carries out its Mission ‘in the Modern World’ (the sub-title of Gaudium et Spes) not by fleeing from it, but by engaging with it: 

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age – especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted – these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”

The Programme: This 50^th anniversary should not only be a celebration for the Church but also a golden opportunity to deepen our understanding of what the Church is celebrating.  Hence ‘Hope&Joy’ has come together to combine the resources of a wide range of agencies and organisations and provide accessible adult education for Catholics.  This programme will revive the Church’s long tradition of popular education and provide inspiring resources across a range of media for the 3 countries of the Southern African Bishops’ Conference (and beyond). 

Creating a Network:‘Hope & Joy’ has already created a network that will enable organisations to work together and benefit by association.  Network members will create individual elements such as booklets, leaflets, columns in newspapers, one-off lectures, videos, training courses, parish events, radio programmes, etc.  But each of these will be linked by the name and logo ‘Hope & Joy’ which will appear on every activity in the programme regardless of which organisation initiates it.  Thus, the different elements, although run by various Catholic agencies, will be seen as parts of a much bigger whole. 

Open to the Church at all Levels:The network will be open to any organisation listed in a Catholic directory so there will be space to take initiatives at different levels: the SACBC, national and diocesan Catholic organisations, parish groups, schools, sodalities or even individuals.  A website will be one of the ways in which the different elements can come together and cross-fertilise.  

Precedents:  From 2007-9, CAFOD (the UK Caritas agency), with Archbishop Vincent Nichols as patron, convened a network of over 60 Catholic organisations to promote Catholic Social Teaching under the banner ‘liveSimply’.  (Raymond Perrier, now Director of the Jesuit Institute, was convenor of this group while at CAFOD).  Secular South African parallels to such a network are the ‘LeadSA’ initiative from Primedia or the ‘Proudly South African’ campaign.  These have provided ways for different organisations to work together under a shared logo to create awareness and energy for a common vision.  Perhaps ‘Hope&Joy’ could be seen as an appropriate way of saying ‘Proudly Catholic’. 

Major Themes: Drawing on the documents of Vatican II, and subsequent Church teaching, the programme would cover themes such as the role of the laity in the Church, scripture, life issues, liturgy, justice and media.  The over-riding message of the project would sum up Gaudium et Spes in a slogan such as: 

‘The Catholic Church brings Hope and Joy to South Africa’

Participating Parties: Given the breadth of delivery mechanisms described above, this is clearly a programme that cannot be delivered by any one organisation.  For this to work requires a group of organisations willing to commit time and resources.  The Jesuit Institute is more than happy to act as project co-ordinator.  Organisations which are so far committed to supporting the programme include:

The Jesuit Institute, Redemptorist Publications, LCCL and most major men’s and women’s congregations, SA Council of Priests, CPLO, Catholic Institute of Education/ CSO, SVdP, Knights of da Gama, St Anne’s Sodality, Catholic Women’s League, Catholic Women’s Association, Catholic Bible College/ Foundation, Engaged Encounter, St Augustine’s College, St John Vianney Seminary, Radio Veritas , ‘The Southern Cross’, various diocesan papers, ‘Trefoil’, Metanoia Media, Mariannhill Press, Durban – Youth Ministry, Paulines bookshops, Maronite Mission. 

Timeline:  The Network has been building since Nov 2010 and organisations have been invited to sign up through Trefoil in Jan 2011 and through 1-to-1 meetings.  The public launch will be in early May 2011 through Southern Cross, Catholic Link and diocesan papers.  

Means of Delivery and Target Audiences: The aim is to have a wide variety of means of delivery in order to engage with the different audiences.  Ideas already in progress include:

Bishops’ support:  At their plenary meeting in January 2011, the Bishops Conference unanimously endorsed the Hope&Joy project and expressed ‘much appreciation’ for the initiative.  We are specifically working closely with certain desks of the Conference (e.g. Evangelisation, Communications, J&P and Family Life) to see how ‘Hope&Joy’ can be used to enhance their work.

JUBILEE SERMON

Preached by Albert Nolan on the occasion of his and Gregory Brooke’s 50^thanniversary of priestly ordination

March 18, 2011

Some Australian priests who are celebrating their jubilees round this time have taken to calling themselves the Gaudium et Spes generation. Gaudium et Spes, of course,was the name of the famous Vatican Council document on the Church in the Modern World. It is the Latin for joy and hope. 

The Gaudium et Spes generation of priests are those who were ordained in the 1960’s, immediately before or shortly after the II Vatican Council. Gregory and I belong to this generation of priests.

For us the Council was a source of great joy and hope. We were wildly excited by it and bubbling over with hope for the future. At last the church was changing, catching up with the modern world - beyond our wildest expectations. READ MORE

The Southern Cross, May 4, 2011

The new popular education network Hope&Joy takes its name from the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, which means joy and hope. Cardinal WILFRID NAPIER OFM reflects on these two qualities, and why we need them.

Who needs hope and joy? We all do! That’s the simple answer.

In South Africa, as we approach the 50th Anniversary of the calling of the Second Vatican Council, we are in danger of losing our hope and sometimes our joy is diminished.

If we look back at the hope and joy manifest in 1994 and compare that to the current situation as we prepare for the local government elections, we can see that the high of 1994 is not the same high as today. In fact, it is not a high at all. Service delivery protest, electioneering and trials about what constitutes hate speech could easily shatter our hopes and leave us with a bitter, joyless existence

In the gospel of John (15:11), Jesus speaks of his joy being in us so that our joy may be complete. Our joy as believers is not a fleeting joy, a joy only for a time. It is a deep-seated Christian virtue, a life attitude because of our faith.

The Hope&Joy movement is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit moving within our Church. Not only are we commemorating the calling of the Second Vatican Council by Bl Pope John XXIII, we are celebrating and focusing on how we can all manifest the Joy and Hope that is the Gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pope Benedict, in his apostolic exhortation on the Word of God, Verbum Domini, reminds us that our joy is first our encounter with the person of Jesus, the Word sent to fill us with Joy—and it is this encounter that the Church’s gift and inescapable duty to communicate... (cf Verbum Domini 2).

Our Joy in Christ is our Hope. The Holy Spirit manifest in our lives and in the Church changes our joy from a fleeting emotion to a deep seated life attitude.

Most of us struggle with this idea of Joy. And yet, as the opening words of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope—from which we get the name for the movement) counsel us: “The hope and joy, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. It is our experience of Jesus that transforms our Joy.”

Joy manifests Hope. We are joyful because we hope in the kingdom of God, in the person of Jesus and the action of the Holy Spirit.

Our ultimate hope then is not in government, political party, tenders—for these are hopeless, manifestations of the expedience, the art of the possible.

Our hope is a common good, based on a God-given dignity that relativises everything to our relationship with God and our relations with others. Our hope and joy transform our daily lives into that blessed and quiet mission of going to the whole world to communicate our love and life in Christ.

As the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero stated: “Hope is not resignation; it is a commitment to continue to struggle even when things seem to warrant surrender.” Our hope spurs us on to action.

Looking at our Church in Southern Africa, there are many reasons for joy. As a church, we are living our commitment to care for the sick and vulnerable. Many parishes have home-based care groups and support for orphaned and vulnerable children. The Church still provides support to education through our schools. St Augustine’s College trains tertiary students not only to be qualified, but to be ethical leaders in their fields.

We can still be insular. Our recent survey in preparation for the Interdiocesan Consultation pointed out that many communities tended to focus inwards—focusing on internal struggles at the expense of transformational action. We, as your bishops, hope that the Hope&Joy network helps us all to focus anew on the type of action that marked South Africa’s transformation to democracy. It is our hope that the Interdiocesan Consultation will allow us all to celebrate our faith in action.

Hope and Joy are the fruits of prayer. As we celebrate the Easter season, the reason for hope and joy can’t be far from our minds—he is Jesus and he is risen from the dead.

As we pray together, let us give thanks to God for the Church’s impact on society. Not only in the last 50 years since the calling of Vatican II, but the powerful effect of the Church’s mission throughout Southern Africa.

We have struggled for hope and joy together. Sometimes it seems that struggle has been in vain, if we look to the situation of the poor and marginalised in Southern Africa. We cannot give up. Our hope and joy in Christ motivates us to bring a new hope and a new joy into our world.

As we prepare for the local government elections on May 18, I invite you to vote to make hope and joy the marker not only of our Church communities but of our Southern African Community too.

Our hope and joy is in Christ—and that is all the hope and joy we need.

Click here for Afrikaans version

The words below could be used in parish newsletters depending on space

Short

Hope&Joy is launched this Sunday.  It is a network of dozens of Catholic organisations working together to help adults to understand their faith better and to share it with wider South African society.  You can read more in this week’s Southern Cross or at www.hopeandjoy.org.za. 

Medium

Hope&Joy is launched this Sunday.  It is a network of dozens of Catholic organisations working together to help adults to understand their faith better and to share it with wider South African society.  Inspiration will be drawn from the documents of the Second Vatican Council which challenge us to be ‘Church in the Modern World’.  To register your interest, send your name, parish and cell number by SMS to 078 590 0781 or by e-mail to info@hopeandjoy.org.za.   You can read more in this week’s Southern Cross or at www.hopeandjoy.org.za. 

Long

Hope&Joy is launched this Sunday: a network of the widest ever range of Catholic organisations who all want to bring a message of Hope and Joy to South Africa.  You will begin to see the distinctive logo of the dove and the hands in many places. 

The name Hope&Joy was inspired by the opening words of Gaudium et Spes, one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, called by Blessed Pope John XXIII.  2011 and 2012 mark the 50^th anniversary of the beginning of the Council. 

Gaudium et Spesis also called the ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’.  As people of Hope&Joy, we believe that Catholics can and should be engaged with the modern world.  We want to truly celebrate 50 years of the life of the Church since Vatican II.  We want to reinvigorate older Catholics who are already living out the mission of the Council; and we want to help younger Catholics to understand the message of the Council and be inspired by it. 

When working on their own our Catholic organisations already achieve a lot; when working together we can do even more.  If you are interested in being part of Hope&Joy then send your name, parish, cell number and e-mail address (if you have one) by SMS to 078 590 0781 or by e-mail to info@hopeandjoy.org.za. To read more see this week’s Southern Cross or go to www.hopeandjoy.org.za.