The 2008 Hong Kong Book Fair is being held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre between July 23 and 29. Eleven diocesan bureaux have grouped together at the Catholic Church Booth located at Exhibition Hall Two on the 5th floor of the New Wing. It has a unique look and it is designed to look like a grand church hall. We encourage the faithful to show their support.
Every year the diocese coordinates the participation in the Hong Kong Book Fair by a number of organisations. Many are Catholic publishers, including the Catholic Truth Society, Studium Biblicum ofm, Salesian Catechetical Centre, the Chinese-language Kung Kao Po and the St. Paul Media Centre. The diocese earmarks a large amount of funding toward participation in the book fair in the hope of utilising this large-scale promotional activity to reach out to more people, whether they are average citizens or Catholics, and give them an opportunity to learn more about the Church and Catholic culture and to promote evangelisation through the written word.
Words are indispensable tools for evangelising. The Bible is a typical example. In order to help the Chinese Catholic Church develop and truly localise the Church in Hong Kong, we must promote Chinese-language religious books. We also need to cultivate the habit of reading religious books. The people of Hong Kong do not have a strong culture of reading. Under these circumstances, it is hard to attract readers with relatively boring religious books. This task is arduous and we need to double our efforts in finding ways to generate interest.
To promote reading there is a need, first and foremost, for good books, in particular, good Chinese-language religious books. Religious articles are more popular. On the other hand the publication and sales of books are far from satisfactory. Take this year’s focus, The Ten Good Books, as an example. There are very few religious books originally written in the Chinese language. The others are translations from non Chinese-languages.
It would be even better to have original works from local Church scholars. In the past few decades, the diocese has turned out quite a few from both the clergy and the laity.
In 1992, Holy Spirit Seminary College of Theology & Philosophy established the Institute of Religious Sciences. A large number of lay people have already studied theology at the institute. Each year, dozens of graduates continue to break with the old tradition in which only clergy possessed religious knowledge. It is an extremely gratifying phenomenon. Unfortunately, it is rare to see either the clergy or laypeople that have passed through the institute’s doors, publish their works, let alone have well-known works. Consequently, this has inhibited the development of Chinese–language religious books over the past few decades.
We hope that, after the fair, exhibitors will continue to promote evangelisation through what they publish. We look to the publishers of the diocese and colleagues in the industry to work hard in evangelising and further addressing the needs of the faithful for good religious books. We hope the next Hong Kong Book Fair will see a very rich collection of original, local religious books for our readers at the Catholic Church Booth.
SE