austraLasia #2608 Priests of Christ in the Church for the World
JERUSALEM: 12th March 2010 -- While mention has been made in ANS
of the book bearing the above headline as its title, it would be a pity
to let this slip by on our part for the EAO
Region, given that two members of the region have played a direct role
in its production and/or its contents, and that the centre it emanates
from, namely the Salesian Theological Centre known as Ratisbonne, in
Jerusalem, is one of the study centres that members of our region
attend for their priestly studies.
The book, edited for the most part by Fr Gianni
Caputa, but with Fr
Robert Spataro by no means hiding in the wings, was launched last week
at Ratisbonne, in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel and
Cyprus and Apostolic Delegate to Jerusalem and Palestine, Archbishop
Franco. He also wrote the foreword to the book. The opening chapter on
priestly formation was written by the Rector of the Pontifical Lateran
University, Archbishop Fisichella.
That, and other contents aside of a biblical,
historical,
pastoral nature, it is the production process for the book that may be
of
special interest. It began more than a year ago when Frs Caputa and
Spataro
asked 'yours truly' about the possibility of contributing a chapter to
their proposed book in honour of the Year for Priests, a chapter on
formation in the digital era. It was a 'hot' topic because we had
already come to know, after meeting with Archbishop Celli in Rome as a
group of Salesian communicators, that the Pope intended to address the
topic in his WCD message - which he subsequently did, of course.
It is also the
80th celebration of the 'Studium Theologicum Salesianum' which has had
several homes in the Holy land, and only relatively recently settled at
Ratisbonne in Jerusalem itself, not more than a stone's throw, if
you were Goliath rather than David, from the Knesset. Together,
we felt felt
bold enough to go ahead with a different approach to production than
might normally be considered - a team effort over an established period
of time, with some vigorous networking amongst key participants on the
one hand, and a demonstration in practice of how a professional
production could result from completely free and perfectly simple,
everyday
software, followed up by a digital press to gain the final result, on
the other.
No need to labour the point too much except to state
that the book
was prepared in Open Office Writer - nothing more; (it could
have been
done in MS Word, but the final chapter offers a basis for suggesting
why especially students for the priesthood can
get down to preparing a book of this kind, and a thousand other tasks
if you want, without troubling their
superiors for additional funds! The professional quality is
possible
with careful and not too difficult decisions about templates, font and
then of course, proofreading and correction. Effectively it means
putting into practise a virtue of exploiting what everyone already has
in terms of software, without aiming at superabundance.
The result depends on more than technique and
technical prowess (very little of the latter involved); instead it
relies on also exploiting the capacity of people to work together - the
essential teamwork and networking between the variety
of authors (who include an archbishop, Jesuit and Salesian
biblical
scholars, a Missionary of Africa, a Salesian missionary in a prominent
Asian country, and so forth) and several of the students to help out in
a variety of ways, including the cover design. The work was
eventually
published with Lulu.com.
Only very recently an article appeared in the Herald
and Weekly
Times which 'dissected', for want of a better word, the world of
digital publishing today, comparing it with traditional publishing.
Nobody says that digital publishing is the answer to every need, but in
this instance it was a sensible approach, including its witness value
for at least one group of theological students who are the 'raw
material' of the book's contents. We were not talking of multiple
thousands of copies, so for a specialist production, this cut out the
middle man costs, and a book that would properly cost around US$ 26, if
we take the HWT article as a guide, eventually cost substantially less.
Nobody loses (or should not do so); everybody wins!
The book launch included a Skype linkup with the
Rome-based
'typesetter', and as technology will have it, the video link chose not
to work at that moment. Probably a good lesson in itself, given the
Apostle Paul's famous passage on the priestly mission in Rm 10: 11-15
which is all about 'hearing' and hardly about 'seeing' at all!
If you wanted a copy, you might write to 'Don John
of Jeruslaem', dongiannici@gmail.com to see if he has a copy spare,
still. Alternatively, now that it is published and the ordered numbers
sold, should that be the case, we could look at putting it online, if
the editor agrees. And of course, if anybody wants a copy of the
last chapter - just ask for it and it's yours by return mail! _________________ AustraLasia is an
email
service
for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions
as an
agency for ANS based in
Rome.
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