Thursday, November 11, 2010

Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhoratation Verbum Domini due today!

Pope Benedict is expected to publish his second Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation today. His first was Sacramentum Caritatis, following the Synod on the Eucharist; this one is Verbum Domini, following the Synod on the Word of God.

Dr. Brant Pitre has the same concern I do:
Some have speculated that the delay is tied to the debate over inerrancy and interpretation that took place during the synod; I have no way of verifying or falsifying that, but it will be interesting to see whether the exhortation addresses it, since Proposition 12 from the bishops requested clarification on “the inspiration and truth” of Scripture. Will Benedict give it in this exhortation? We’ll find out.
For those of you who had not followed the Synod's proceedings, there was a garish statement made in the instrumentum laboris (the "working document") that "with regards to what might be inspired in the many parts of Sacred Scripture, inerrancy applies only to 'that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation' (DV 11)." (15c) That needs to be answered by the Pope!

Update (9:30 am) — Around noon, Vatican time, the document was released, as reported by this Vatican press release.  Apparently, it's been released as a PDF.  Normally, I would say, that's cool.  But the English text is a 208-page PDF with a large font-size.  Not cool.  The Latin PDF is 150 pages; still crazy.  I'd prefer the HTML version so I can copy the text and format it in a Word document that doesn't require 100+ sheets of paper!

Update (3:09 pm) — I've produced three versions (one plain-text, two MS Word) of Verbum Domini in place of the 208-page PDF.  You can download them here.

2 comments:

Marc Cardaronella said...

That's so interesting! I can't believe they're still having that debate over inerrancy! You'd think people would get it by now.

Yeah, very huge pdf! I'm going to do what you suggest and copy it into a Word document. That's way too much printing.

Jeffrey Pinyan said...

Marc - I've already done so, if you'd like to be saved the trouble.