Catholic Christians, especially the lay people in general, have a strong inferiority complex when it comes to the Bible. They tend to avoid getting into a discussion with non-Catholic “Bible-bearing” Christians—who quote from the Scriptures complete with chapter and verse numbers—afraid perhaps that they may end up betraying their “felt ignorance” over the Sacred Book.
I call it a “felt ignorance” because many of them do not realize that they are actually familiar with quite a number of passages in Scriptures; however, they are not able to locate these in the Bible when challenged to. They often do not realize that at each Sunday Eucharist, they get to hear four Biblical texts being proclaimed to them—two Old Testament readings (1st reading and the Psalm), and two New Testament (2nd reading and the Gospel). They know the content; they can even complete the lines when you recite familiar passages to them, but they often wouldn’t be able to tell exactly which book these lines come from. This is because Catholics, in general, are “hearers of the Word”, more than “readers of the Word.” To most of them, what matters is not that they get to memorize Word of God but that they get to live it after having heard it and understood it through the priest’s homily. Only one out of ten of them would perhaps find time to check the text in their personal Bibles at home. Often, these are the ones who might be involved in some lay ministries in their parish or ecclesial communities. The rest may not even know how to locate passages in the Bibles they display on their altars at home.
It was in response to this deep sense of inadequacy of most Catholics on Scriptures, that the Holy Father convened the 12th General Ordinary Assembly (or Synod) of Bishops in Rome on October 5-26 last year, 2008, specifically on the topic, “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.” He called on all Episcopal Conferences of Bishops from all over the world to send delegates to the said gathering. Thus the CBCP elected and sent four official delegates—Bishops Arturo Bastes, Broderick Pabillo, Luis Antonio Tagle, and this writer, Pablo Virgilio David. Invited too by the Holy Father through the Apostolic Nunciature were two others—Ms. Elvira Go, as lay observer (auditrix), and Archbishop Orlando Quevedo in his capacity as Secretary General for the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference.
In preparation for the said Synod, the delegates had earlier received a copy of the Instrumentum Laboris (working paper) that had been finalized after comments on a previous draft (lineamenta), had been gathered and integrated into a final draft. It was over (specific parts of) this final draft that the Synod delegates took turns commenting on in their individual interventions at the said gathering, in the presence of the Holy Father and the rest of the delegates from all over the world.
As a first-timer, I found it extremely edifying to see how faithfully the delegates attended the sessions, and how spirited most of the interventions were. The Holy Father attended most of the plenary gatherings, sitting through the whole session quietly taking down notes, at times nodding his head in approval or flashing a warm smile in reaction to something amusing being said by an intervenor. He was just a few seats away from most of us—depending on one’s positioning in the hall, which was obviously according to ranking in the hierarchy. He sat in the middle of the presidential table, flanked by the members of the Synod’s General Secretariat. Immediately fronting the presidential table were several rows of cardinal delegates, followed by some high-ranking fraternal delegates from other Churches, such as the Protestants, the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians, the Coptics, and other ecumenical participants. Next in line were the Catholic archbishops and other bishop-delegates. At the back rows were the lay delegates and the superiors of major religious congregations—who, in my personal view, gave the most interesting interventions. This formal hierarchical ranking instantly melted away at each time we found ourselves socializing in the lobby for the snacks.
We were also grouped into what were called “circuli minori” for smaller group discussions. It was in these occasions that the synod delegates were given more opportunities to participate and to interact with one another. We Filipinos were of course assigned in any of the three English-speaking groups—often in the company of American, British, Irish, Australian, New Zealander, Indian, African, and other Anglophone delegates. I must say that despite the common language spoken in the smaller circles, it wasn’t easy struggling to make out what was being said sometimes because of the very peculiar accents that went with every possible kind of English spoken in the hall.
For the plenary assemblies, despite the fact that Latin remained as official language, the facilitators and resource persons often shifted either to Italian or English, with simultaneous translations in the other major languages. Sometimes however, the translations were too slow or too ambivalent, such that many of us chose not to rely on them anymore. Strangely, obviously through the work of the Holy Spirit, even unfamiliar languages began to sound very familiar and comprehensible after a while, with just a little effort to make out their sense.
As a result of the hard work done in the minor circles, and often in reaction to certain things said in the interventions made at the plenary assemblies, fifty-five propositions were drafted and finalized by the working committee and submitted to the Holy Father as among the raw materials for his post-synodal exhortation. (These propositions could now be easily downloaded from the internet.) Our own Bishop Chito Tagle was among the 15 members elected into the General Council that would assist the Pope in preparing his post-Synodal exhortation on the Word of God, and the Lineamenta (draft paper) for the next Synod.
I am not sure if he said it just to please us, but one of the delegate-cardinals approached me and said the interventions from the Filipino delegates were the ones he found most relevant, interesting, and even provocative. Our Bishop Chito Tagle’s own intervention on the “God who not only speaks, but also listens” became the major framework for the French Canadian Cardinal Ouellet’s brilliant synthesis. It is not far-fetched to presuppose that that speech motivated the Asian delegates to vote for his membership into the General Council. Archbishop Quevedo’s piece about the Bible and small ecclesial communities of the grassroots poor, as well as Bishop Bastes’ speech on the collaboration of Catholic and Protestant organizations in the translation and the dissemination of the Bible likewise drew a lot of attention, as was evident in the way they were cited in the free interventions. We, the two neophytes, Bishop Pabillo and myself, could not but be “star-struck” in admiration for our much-esteemed companions. But the final surprise was our lay delegate, Ms. Elvira Go, who we thought for a while was not going to be given the opportunity anymore to intervene, for lack of time. She gave a highly spirited speech that was both personal and testimonial—about her experience with the National Catholic Family Bible Quiz. After her intervention, several delegates approached her to inquire about the mechanics of the Bible Quiz and how they could also introduce it to their countries.
Among our favorite interventions from fellow delegates, the unforgettable ones for me were the delegate from Ukraine who spoke about the courageous witnessing of a priest in his diocese during the time when reading of the Bible was being suppressed by the communist regime that ruled their country, and that lady from Russia who spoke about her initiation to God’s Word through the visual arts and her work as a professor of arts and humanities in a Russian university. Two superiors general also gave speeches that made a deep impression in me during the plenary assemblies—that of the Claretian superior-general, and that of the SVDs—the only Filipino superior-general, Fr. Pernia.
Synods like these used to figure in my awareness as just another of those ecclesial events that produced magisterial documents, until I was actually given the privilege to participate in one. Suddenly I found myself in the company of flesh-and-blood pastors, teachers, ministers, and co-workers of the Church who brought with them, each his or her own specific faith-experience and perspective, which, when brought together into a neat synthesis, made up a whole spiritual kaleidoscope reminiscent of the day of Pentecost.
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