Vatican issues recommendations for celebrating Year of Faith
(January 07.01.2012) At the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI, the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, in consultation with the competent Dicasteries of the Holy
See and with the contribution of the Committee for the Preparation of the Year of
Faith, issued Saturday some recommendations for living this time of grace. Pope
Benedict XVI wants the Year of Faith, which runs from October 11 this year to November
24 2013, to help the Church focus its attention on “Jesus Christ and the beauty of
having faith in him”, it said. The year is meant to “contribute to a renewed conversion
to the Lord Jesus and to the rediscovery of faith, so that the members of the Church
will be credible and joy-filled witnesses to the risen Lord, capable of leading those
many people who are seeking it to the door of faith,” the statement said. Because
the year’s start, October 11, coincides with the anniversaries of the opening of the
Second Vatican Council in 1962 and the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church in 1992, it would be an auspicious occasion to make the work of the council
and the catechism “more widely and deeply known”, it said. The congregation said the
Pope “has worked decisively for a correct understanding of the council. The catechism
“is an integral part of that ‘renewal in continuity’” by embracing the old and traditional
while expressing it “in a new way, in order to respond to the questions of our times,”
it said.