Looking to Christianity's third millennium, Pope John Paul II has declared 'The Great Jubilee of the Year 2000' - and indulgences from punishment for sin are a centrepiece of the jubilee celebration.
The practice that brought Luther to his break with Rome is once again front and centre in Catholic practice as the new millennium approaches.
At the end of 1998, in Incarnationis Mysterium, a papal bull declaring the jubilee year, John Paul reopened one of the most difficult issues separating evangelicals and Roman Catholics, spawning a 'Y2K' crisis of immense theological significance.
