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PARAPPULLY Jose, New Delhi says,

GC Document Preparation - A Frustrating Exercise! Holding Up to the Light 20
By Jose Parappully

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New Delhi, Apr. 13. This is an intervention I made at the GC 27 on how frustrating it is to work on the Drafts prepared by the Redaction Committee.

Intervention of the Draft of Module 1 prepared by the Redaction Committee

I recognize the challenges involved in preparing an integrated report from four different documents with differing styles and content and bringing them in line with Evangeli Gaudium as suggested by the Rector Major and I express my appreciation for the hard work done by the Drafting Committee.

Faced as they were with these challenges they have done a commendable job and they have succeeded in bringing into the draft much of the contributions from the four commissions. Thank you.

At the same time I must admit I was disappointed with the draft and quite discouraged as well (which has been considerably dissipated by the consolidated Draft of the Second and Third Modules.). Thank you Drafting Commission.
Disappointment and discouragement because I felt that much of our work in the Commission (I can speak only for Commission 1) and the energy we spent in doing that had gone waste.

To give one example, the quote at the beginning of the Draft from don Ceria: Several members of our Commission, including the President who is a scholar in salesian spirituality, felt the contribution of the Commission on the current definition of who the salesian mystic in spirit is had been discarded in favour of a historical text that is 80 years old.

With due respect to the venerable place don Ceria holds in salesian tradition, we don`t think that Ceria`s text describes the mystic in spirit as well as our commission`s definition, which quite accurately reflects also the definition the Rector Major presented in the Assembly.

It is important, I believe, to capture the wisdom contained in this Assembly than rely on historical and magisterial texts.

Second, we spent considerable time in the Commission, trying to make our contributions as concise as possible. We find that the redacted text has elaborated our concise contributions unnecessarily.

The contributions of the commission get lost in a plethora of words introduced by the Drafting Committee. It is important to capture the spirit of Evangeli Gaudium, rather than quote texts from it.

Third, our understanding of the Interpretation section is that it provides reasons/root causes for the situations presented in the Ascolta/Listening section.

The drafted text does not do that. Rather it presents a whole lot of theological, magisterial and historical texts which simply hang loose with no reference to the Ascolta.

The few reasons given by the Commissions for the situations presented in the Ascolta get lost in a plethora of unnecessary lengthy quotations. Moreover these quotations allude more to the Way Forward than present reasons for situations, or they repeat what is already mentioned in the Ascolta.

We believe both the Listening and the Interpretation sections have to be made much more concise, deleting unnecessary elaborations and quotations.

In fact, the Interpretation section may require a complete re-write to make it really an Interpretation, that is, an analysis of the root causes.

It is also important that there be an introduction to the text, clearly defining Listening, especially Interpretation and the Way Forward.

The loud applause that followed the presentation of the drafted text in the Assembly shows that there are a large number of Chapter members who are very happy with the approach of the Drafting Committee and the text they have produced.

In this context, I really thank you for listening to my dissenting voice, even though it might just be a cry in the wilderness.
Grazie.

Jose Parappully,
Delegate, INN

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Article written by
PARAPPULLY Jose(New Delhi) sumedhacentre@gmail.com

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