There’s been various complaints in the blogosphere that “Verbum Domini” has been ignored. I don’t think this is true. But the post-synodal statement was a lot longer than anybody expected (a book!), and it came out in the middle of November (not September 30, as it was officially dated). The middle of November is practically the end of the church year, and after that comes Advent. For academics, it’s midterms. For priests and parish workers, it’s the brief moment of preparation before crunch time. For journalists, it came between the big trip to Barcelona and all the Vatican consistory and USCCB election stories, as well as the stories about the jihadis’ massacre at Our Lady of Deliverance, and about poor Asia Bibi in Pakistan and the other lady in Iran. For normal Catholics, it came at the time of freaking out about how they’re going to get the kids to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving and Christmas without being stripped or groped by the TSA. So I don’t think people are ignoring it. It just came at a busy time. Come Advent or January, we’ll hear more about it. Let people read and digest it first.
You no longer have to read this sucker on super-long PDF. Here’s “Verbum Domini” in HTML format and in English, on the Vatican website. For your ebook reading pleasure, you can also download unofficial conversions to .epub or .mobi/Kindle format over at Curt Jester’s.
