The Concilium World Congress: Impressions and Reflections

Extract

There had been a derailment ahead of us at Dover, so I was late arriving in Brussels. More delay getting a taxi, because I couldn’t quite bring myself to use my elbows like everybody else; the hotel room booked for me, I calculated, would cost about £5 10s. a night, so unless I stopped eating or found another hotel I should have to return home well before the Congress ended. At last the Congress hall itself: the Palais de Congrés, past the illuminated fountains of the Mont des Arts and a small knot of cameramen, timidly into the Salle Albert 1 ^er—and it really hit one then: the long, high swooping hall, with what must have been a thousand people in it, the brilliant glare of the television lights reflected from the huge black and white poster at the back of the stage, bearing the words in English—

Schillebeeckx was speaking in French from the rostrum; his voice resonated effortlessly from the splendid amplification system, though soon one became aware of a counterpoint of high-pitched chirp and chatter from the badly adjusted earphones of theologians unaccustomed to the use of simultaneous-translation equipment; this was to form an accompaniment throughout the Congress. Photographers crawled and flashed unceasingly over the stage; from time to time the television cameras swivelled and turned their black snouts on the audience. I would return to England the next day, I decided; no, no, not this, not this.