The bishops were discussing and voting on a number of things - all very important, yet it was the session on the liturgical translations that was most popular with viewers. More on that in a moment....
First, some are wondering who ended up as head of the USCCB's Committee on Divine Worship. The two bishops on the ballot were Archbishop Vigneron and Bishop Gregory Aymond. He edged out Archbishop Vigneron by a mere 16 votes. I was delighted to see Bishop Robert Carlson, formerly of Saginaw and now of St. Louis won by a very narrow margin to head the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, Vocations (Burbidge 114, Carlson 118). Bishop Burbidge is like the new kid on the block, but netted an awful lot of votes. He's fine bishop too from all that I have read online.
The numbers I was observing in the lower left hand corner of the video feed had the numbers up around 300-400 much of yesterday. I checked in before heading off to work this afternnoon in the late morning and there again, the numbers were around 400. But, those numbers skyrocketed in the late afternoon to around 1000 as the most anticipated part of the session took place: Voting on the Roman Missal - Third Edition to be sent to Rome.
In the meanwhile, I will draw your attention to a couple of posts that focused on actual discussions:
Fr. Z captures very well what happened around the late in the day on a motion put forth by Bishop Donald Trautman that would have resulted in yet another delay. It was intense. See: Liturgical translation drama at the USCCB. Is it finally over? In the same post, Fr. Z talks about how Telecare dropped the feed right at the moment the crucial votes were coming in. It was like watching a "Hail Mary" pass go off into the end zone and losing the signal as the ball is thrown. He learned about it as I did, through a text feed.
The feed I got was coming from Rocco Palmo who is an American correspondent for that bitter pill - the UK Tablet. Rocco was typing fast and furious with far more texts than what Fr. Z was seeing with USCCB Media on Twitter. That brings me to the next set of posts worth looking at. Rocco has saved his text in a scroll box so you can see some of the exchanges that were taking place. He has one post for the morning session and another for the afternoon session (this covers some of the discussion and voting on the letter on marriage which passed by by 5 votes 180-45, and on liturgical translations that passed 5 for 5).
Here's hoping these On Demand feeds work. If you don't get it now, try at another time when viewers are not peaking. I got in momentarily to copy an embed link for the afternoon session (I hope), but then it locked up and said there were too many viewers. I only saw 50 in the lower left hand corner so apparently they dropped the number who could view these feeds.
There's so much more to say, and simply no time to blog on it. So I leave you with these. The first is a study that was presented to the bishops:
- John Jay Researchers Offer Update On Causes And Context Study; Early Findings Confirm Steep Decline In Sexual Abuse Cases After 1985, Emphasize the Importance Of Seminary Training
- Bishops Elect Chairs-Elect of Five Committees, Members of CRS and CLINIC Boards
- USCCB's website for the 2009 Fall General Assembly
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The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!