Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “I find it most opportune that you faculty has chosen to reflection in the “The Bible in the Cultures of Peoples”, to demonstrate the riches of the sacred text in the encounter with the different cultures, especially only a few days since the presentation of the Lineamenta of the next Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. Your choice was well timed and in keeping with a need in the Church in the face of the epochal changes we are witnessing: to return to the sources of our faith, to the Word of God of which the Bible is such an essential and founding part”. With these words Cardinal Cardinal Ivan Dias Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Urban University, opened a Conference promoted by the University's Theology Faculty on the theme “ The Bible in the Cultures of Peoples - Hermeneutic and Communications” being held 10 and 11 May at the Pontifical Urban University.
“I am convinced - the Cardinal said emphasising the close bond between the Word of God and human history, - that during this Conference, with the help of various contributions, you will probe this interlacing of faith and culture to offer it for debate and reflection not only in this university or others but throughout the Church and all who wish to understand, although members of other religions or non believers, the value of a sacred text which no one can deny has marked under various aspects the history of such a large part of humanity.”
“No other book is to closely and amply interwoven with the different cultures as the Bible so as to inspire the most varied fields of knowledge, from philosophical knowledge to that of art and literature, and also popular culture” said Mgr Ambrogio Spreafico, rector of the Pontifical Urban University when he gave the opening address. “Naturally to probe this process under every aspect, which today we would call inculturisation, would be an impossible task - Mgr Spreafico said -. We might say that the interventions we will listen to are a taste of an immense patrimony. It suffices to thin that the Bible or other books closely connected with it such as catechisms, were for some cultural expressions among the first examples of written literature”.
The Bible has not stopped interacting with thought and culture, “although today this relation may appear more difficult and complex. Weak thought, at least in one version, would appear to question man's ability to elaborate an effective and proposable synthesis between reason and faith, Bible and culture”. Recalling that Vatican II gave “determinant impulse to the development of Biblical knowledge, diffusion and research in every area, from the school to the most popular area”, the rector said: “Today, according to statistics of the Bible Society, there are at least partial translations of the sacred text in no less than 2,426 languages. The Bible Society in Europe alone has produced 47 Bibles almost all together with the Catholic Church since Vatican II. The major ecumenical traditions of the Bible in the principal languages were produced after the Council. However there are always new attempts of this kind. Centres which specialise in various sectors have been opened, and a never ending flow of reviews and commentaries on the Old Testament and New Testament are produced. La Bible is beginning to be read and loved even by the people no longer only by a few experts although this passage is still limited. This in my opinion is the real novelty of the last century which led the Bible out of the school towards the people.”
In the last part of his address Mgr Spreafico proposed a few present day question which the Conference will try to answer: the problem of a global hermeneutic of the text; the result of a recent survey which revealed that 80% of Europe's regular Sunday Mass goers meets the Bible only in the Sunday liturgy; the Bible has not become a book of prayer and meditation; the bond between the Bible and life; the relationship between religious architecture and pictorial art. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 11/5/2007; righe 47, parole 693)
