Assembly message?

The opening plenary is now over and all the delegates are recovering from a heavy Romanian three-course lunch. We heard interesting opening speeches from church leaders and many important aspects on the assembly themes. One of the most interesting imho was Cardinal Walter Kaspers' speech in which he dealt with the issue of the recent statement of the Roman Catholic Church:
(a brief quote, see eea3-assembly page for the full version)

In a recent document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith my Church, the Catholic Church, set out differences that unfortunately exist and, in doing so, reminded us of the task that lies before us. I know that many, especially many of my evangelical brothers and sisters, felt hurt by this. I am not unaffected by it, either; I, too, had problems with it. For the hurt and pain of my friends is my hurt and pain as well. It was not our intention to hurt or belittle anyone. We wanted to bear witness to the truth, just as we expect other churches to, and just as other churches already do. The declarations other churches make are not all to our liking, and nor does what they sometimes say about us. But what are we to expect? Cosy ecumenism and fake ecumenism, which are all about being nice to each other, do not get us very far; the only way forward is dialogue in truth and clarity.

So, we are not dealing with easy issues here. But hope and unity were called for in almost every speech held.

At the end of the plenary the Assembly final message draft group was introduced. Supposedly the final message has already been sketched to some extent forehand, but this group has a great influence on it trying to extract the important matters discussed in the fora. Anyway, for the big disappointment, none of the appointed members were of the youth delegates. Though the moderator told that youth delegates should contact these people for their message to be heard, I think a far more better solution would have been to select at least one young member on board. After all, this is supposed to be an "youth assembly" and we lack 350 youth delegates of the quota of 500 that was called for from the member churches.

Now back to the rainy Sibiu and the assembly tent where the Forum on Unity is just starting.