Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Some more reflections on the Opening Plenary

I share Antti's disappointment with not having anyone of underrepresented youth delegates in the Drafting Committee. And I would add my disappointment with the process of presenting the whole Committee at the very end of the plenary when not so many delegates were there, nobody wanted to react and comment on the proposals. And judging the reaction of the delegates present, I would say that there was not anything like a consensus on the proposed candidates...
I understand that the Opening Plenary was too packed for caring about such issues, but dealing with them in such a rushy way doesn't make delegates feel respected. To the feeling that there are not so many people caring about what the delegates think contributed also the way of addressing the questions written on the papers during the speeches of the three venerable speakers: everyone could write whatever she/he wanted but there was no time and no speaker to be addressed with the question. Thus, it was quite hard not to have a feeling of not being heard...
And I would add one more thought about the content, not just the form, of the Opening Plenary. The majority of speakers mentioned current European problems and challenges we have been facing. I guess, vast majority of us can agree on them. However, when it came to proposing some ways of solving them, silence... Oh, that would be unfair: better to say - vague phrases about light of Christ shining upon all of us...
Anyway, after some criticism, I still feel optimistic about future continuation of the assembly and finding some concrete solutions for the problems and actions to take after our returns to local realities ;-)

1 comment:

TT said...

Servus Daniel,
you're fully right. The "presentation" of the drafting committee was very bad.
1. It was hard to understand Gennadios on the stage.
2. Half of the members haven't been to the plenary. We even didn't see them!
3. Great was Gennadios: "I think that we all agree that these people will write the Assembly message. Thankyou". That was all.
I didn't agree on the members. Is that the Ecumenical understanding of participation? It is. All the morning there was no input from the plenary, only speeches and greetings. I found that it was boring and only with little sense, because the positions of the 3 main speakers (Kasper, Kirill, Huber) I already knew.
I felt like decoration to the appearances of a few VIPs.