Special Hearings — Faith Community Hearings — 1997-11-17

BISHOP KEVIN DOWLING: Again, that is a very difficult question for us to answer   fully in the sense that the process of coming to decisions like that is an international   one. It is not left just to a local church community and the policy as Father   Buti has already said, has been decided upon at the moment from our structures   in Rome, because that is the way our particular structures in terms of decision   making and coming to policy directions, that is the way it is done.
We recognise, we have heard the voices you refer to. This is part of our ongoing   struggle to try and be faithful to the gospel. How, within the structures in   terms of dialogue and coming to positions, how we can actually face these issues   constructively and head-on, as we have tried to do with other issues in the   past in terms of the apartheid struggle. We recognise that for some people in   our community this is an issue of justice. We have heard that voice being spoken   to us. How we take it forward is part of the ongoing debate within the international   Catholic Church community. The present way, as I said, this will be resolved   is through that international community coming through discernment to a position   where either the Pope with the Bishops, or the Pope himself in terms of a decision   will make such a decision for the universal church. We do not, in the way we   operate, take specific major decisions which affect the whole church simply   on the basis of a local church, like in South Africa, coming to its own position.   Obviously we recognise it well that this causes pain. We recognise that, it   is part of a situation which we are grappling with and we will have to continue   grappling with this in faith and in terms of how we will resolve this in the   end. We still do not know how we can approach this in terms of our international   structure from the perspective of what we are hearing here. But the whole community   out here obviously is not yet totally involved in that question. However, it   is very important for us that we do listen to voices from the community, from   whatever quarter they come and try to see whether God is saying something to   us and what God is calling forth from us. And we will just have to proceed with   that process.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very, very much. We are enormously grateful to both   of you for your succinct presentation and we value enormously the witness that   the church has shown in this country over the years and we are glad as it were,   you are "on our side". Thank you. You may stand down. 
Those of you who want to take off your jackets, you may do so. I realise that   some have already done so without my permission! I want to suggest to the next   three groups that perhaps if we reduced their total time to thirty minutes each,   they will not feel too awful. I'm sure that you can put in a great deal into   about 20 minute presentation and then give us ten minutes or so for question   and answer session. Thank you very much for agreeing democratically to my suggestion.   So we call now on the Presbyterian Church, Douglas Bax?
We want to say thank you very much for your patience and your generosity in   allowing maybe ten or fifteen minutes of your time to be chopped off. Your face   looks like you haven't agreed, but thank you very, very much Douglas. (Laughter) 
Will you introduce your colleagues and then [inaudible]
REV.

DOUGLAS BAX: Chairperson, Commissioners, our delegation consists of myself,   Douglas Bax, Pakiso Tondi and Allistair Roger who is the General Secretary of   the church and has come along to support us. 
May I just begin by explaining that - oh we have to take the oath.
ADMINISTERS OATH.
REV.