Next Sunday is metanoia day in the Vatican. Metanoia, according to Pope John Paul II, is the Catholic Church's "discernment of her children's historical shortcomings and negligence with regard to the demands of the gospel". Put simply, next Sunday is the day the Pope will ask for forgiveness, for Catholics and for the Catholic Church.
In a eucharistic celebration in St Peter's, marking what the Vatican has called "Request for Forgiveness Day", the Pope will seek pardon for the behaviour of both the church as an institution and of individual Catholics in relation to the Inquisition, the Crusades, the treatment of Jews, of women, of native peoples and in relation to other unspecified errors.
This long-awaited Jubliee mea culpa represents the logical conclusion of the Pope's determination that the Catholic Church should enter the new millennium in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. John Paul II has always argued that the church has nothing to lose but rather much to gain from such a formalised act of mea culpa.
Those looking for a detailed inventory of church "sins", however, will be disappointed. In notes provided by the Holy See on the meaning of Sunday's service, the Vatican states:
"The reference to errors and sins in a liturgy must be frank and capable of specifying guilt; yet given the number of sins committed in the course of 20 centuries, it must necessarily be rather summary."
It continues: "This confession does not entail a judgment on those who have gone before us: judgment belongs to God alone and will be declared on the last day. Christians today . . . wish to state what have been, in the light of the Gospel and the Spirit of Christ, objective historical errors in ways of acting. Consequently, the confession clearly points to historical failings but the parties responsible are neither judged nor named."
At a Vatican news conference yesterday, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray warned against interpreting Sunday's service as either some form of "spectacular self-flagellation" or "a stage for sick curiosity".
Presenting "Memory and Reconciliation; The Church and the Errors of the Past", the document which explains the biblical foundations and theological conditions for the asking of forgiveness, he expressed the wish that by "looking humbly to the past", the church will "face the present in a better way".