Order the Inclusive Bible

We are happy to announce that the Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation has been printed and is now available! We received our first boxes here at the Quixote Center last week, and the publisher Sheed and Ward (now an imprint of the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group) has done a beautful job on the printing and binding. This is a hardcover edition with a glossy cover and durable cover that will last many decades. Order The Inclusive Bible direct from the publisher.

The Inclusive Bible in a single volume is the last installment of a 20-year inclusive scriptural program that began here at the Quixote Center with a series of lectionaries in the late 1980s.

In 1877, Lord John Acton wrote his most famous observation, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

It is interesting, by the way, to look at the titles and roles claimed by this pope for himself under the church’s Code of Canon Law, revised in 1983. Psychoanalyst Luigi De Paoli, president of We Are Church Italy, lays them out in a paper, A Pontificate Weighed in the Balance, ADISTA, 24/5/03, http://www.adista.it/:

The last speaker on Saturday was Tissa Balasuriya, OMI, a Sri Lankan theologian and priest who helped found the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians. He is the author of Planetary Theology and Mary and Human Liberation, former rector of Aquinas University College in Columbo, Sri Lanka. Tissa was investigated and excommunicated by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF) headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, as Tissa says, a particular friend.

His book on Mary was regarded as suspicious and, as it turns out, the man who translated it into Italian misrepresented what Balasuriya wrote. And on the basis of that information, he was subjected to a great trial that very nearly lost him his place in his community of more than 60 years. The excommunication was withdrawn.

Balasuriya made three key points:

-  We have a responsibility as disciples of Jesus to take on the challenge of globalization and its negative impacts. “Since 1492, the European people have taken over most of the world,” There seems to be no desire for serious change in the church’s orientation toward the poor. “The church has been conspiring—unconsciously perhaps—to preserve the status quo.

-  For 1,000 years, we have been wrong on major theology: there is no salvation outside the church. We must make a strong critique and admit that we have been wrong. That belief served as rationalization for the subjection of whole peoples.

-  The church has been substantially wrong about women for 2,000 years.

"The pope needs to recover the notion that he is vicar of Peter, a humble man whose authority was founded on the realization of his own sinfulness and failure in denying his Lord…"

I awakened at 6 AM to the sound of rain on the roof. Tony Padovano and Paul Collins went off to
meet Paul’s wife at the airport at 6:30. I got ready for the press conference,
and at 8:45 we all piled into the car and went to the closest metro station, C.
Columbo, which is literally the end of the line at the beach.

An entire country does not have a free press. It’s a bigger story than the one that we are pursuing. If that is not corruption, I do not know what is.

Today, the Italian press again failed to show up for the IMWAC session. I talked with Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, and she told me that the Italian press showed up on Monday, when they stood outside St. Peter’s Square and decried the role of Cardinal Bernard Law in the special masses of remembrance for Pope John Paul II.

She told me: “As soon as they found out that we were talking about sexual abuse they said they could not cover it. They apologized but said that if they did a story, they would never be able to cover a story in Rome again. They were very apologetic. They have not been back.”

"The people who come here don't know the history of the church... We Romans know the church very well."

This morning the conclave team, together with Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, and Dr.
Andriana  Valerio, professor of Christian History at the University of Naples,
"Federico II," and President of the European Society of Women in Theological Research, took
the train from our beachside accommodations near the ancient ruins of Ostia into the
city.  The Metro ended at the Church of St. Paul, just outside the walls of Rome,
where St. Paul was reportedly beheaded by Roman authorities. As a Roman citizen, he could
not be subjected to the slow tortuous death of crucifixion.

The Circus Maximus ruins are nearby and during the taxi-ride across the city, Anthony
Padovano, who lived in Rome for six years while he attended the Gregorian University,
pointed out various historic sites and regaled us with tales of popes, their mistresses,
children, and ancient church politics.

The press conference began at 11 at the ornate Cavour auditorium not far from St.
Peter's.

Today, I went into Ostia Center, site of famous Roman ruins, of which I saw nothing, concentrating as I was on obtaining batteries for my camera and some means of communicating telephonically.

I took a look at an Italian tabloid which contained shots of the favorite papabile of the locals, and concluded I had read about only one.  Guess I have been a captive of the National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen, whose authoritative dispatches from Rome had convinced me that if anybody had a clue about the next pope, it would be him.

I took the metro back to the last stop on the line, and then hiked back to camp, about 1200 km from the station.

It was hot.  I was wearing a woolly jacket, long pants, socks, and dutch clogs. But when I returned and changed into a more proper Roman frock, I began to freeze in slow motion. I had to go to the reception center to borrow a heater, which I’ve aimed at my feet.  Funny how toasty toes can stimulate brain waves.

It’s a good thing I decided to come, since the press person and president of IMWAC, Christian Weisner was unable to participate on site due to work pressures. He is managing the Web site, posting any updates, etc. So, it fell to me to compose the press releases to be issued on each day summarizing each speaker’s presentation.

It’s good to feel useful, by 11 pm, I have completed one release for Adriana Valerio, an Italian church history professor and drafted a second on a talk by Sr. Joan Chittister, a feisty Benedictine nun from Erie, Pennsylvania.

We wake up at 1 AM, flying into the dawn and are somewhere between Lyons and
Grenoble, at the southern end of the Alps in France. The snow-covered peaks float
serenely with cloud pillows wrapped about them. They look as if they are floating in
the sky. The jagged peaks speak of crevices and icy passes that daunted travelers for
eons. Hannibal really did try to come through that pass? With elephants. What a
bozo!