I said earlier that the challenges involved in education to the faith will have to be singled out and evaluated in the individual communities and provinces, because of the variety of works, circumstances and cultures. But there are some big challenges deriving from the signs of the times which have .already reached worldwide dimensions and which call for a new kind of evangelization, albeit with the preservation of the truth of faith. As Pope John XXIII said in the address already quoted: “The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration, with patience if necessary”.²⁸

This need for “new evangelization”, which in turn implies “new education”, is something that touches us closely and challenges our very ability to render relevant our charisma in the Church at the present day. We salesians are, or should be, experts in educational methodology among the People of God!

Unfortunately we have witnessed in the Church, since the Council, deviations in the name of ultraconservative or ultra progressive thinking which undermine the authenticity of the faith, either by resistance to Vatican II as in the sad case of Lefebvre, or through ideological pressures of a temporal or secular kind as in the interpretations of a dangerously ambiguous kind made by certain thinkers.

This fact should put us on our guard and prompt us to seek a new method of evangelization in the greatest fidelity to the revelation of Christ.

I think that the great universal challenges of innovation appear especially at two complementary levels: that of the personal dimension and that of the social dimension.

– The personal dimension has been greatly enriched in recent years by a variety of factors: the deeper analysis of the personality of the individual; a greater understanding of the values of freedom; progress in the human biological sciences and the significance and importance of sexuality; the advancement of women; the emphasis given to life and its defense; the lengthened period of adolescence and the inserting of the young person into society (the period is in fact about ten years longer than it was in Don Bosco’s time).

This is why on the one hand the deeper analysis of the “process of personalization” has thrown up problems previously unpublished and not always taken sufficiently into account in traditional methods of education to the faith, and on the other hand progress in the human sciences has given rise to numerous questions and problems, especially as regards the christian view of moral conduct, thus provoking in practice a confusion in the attitude to life of the believer. One need only recall that among the faith-related sciences the one which has experienced the greatest crisis is moral theology.

And yet education to the faith tends of its nature to be equated to conduct of life, with the appraisal and development of all human values, a clear sense of sin, and a style of existence that becomes “witness”.

And so a vast and complex field is opened up rich in innovations and new ideas and in urgent need of evangelization.

— The social dimension presents an even wider horizon of innovations. Terms like “sharing”, “solidarity”, “communion”, “democracy” joined with the great “policy of the common good”, “peace”, “justice”, “social communication”, “ecological balance”, etc. all suggest themes with multiple aspects which need much deep rethinking with a strongly renewed mentality.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently confirmed that “christians working to bring about that ‘civilization of love’ ... are today faced with an unprecedented challenge. This task calls for renewed reflection on what constitutes the relationship between the supreme commandment of love and the social order considered in all its complexity”.²⁹

Hence in education to the faith at the present day we must be able to enter into this real constellation of new social values, reserving a specific and continually updated space for the Church’s social teaching.

Well known in this field from a negative point of view are certain deviations through manipulation and exploitation, and on the positive side the keen discernment and singular style based on the transcendent but committed attitude of Don Bosco. Article 33 of the Constitutions indicates clearly what this implies and demands of us: we share “in a manner appropriate to religious”, and in a salesian manner, in the preferential option for the poor and in commitments to social and collective advancement in the overall fundamental area of culture. but “without getting involved in ideologies or party politics” in our work of education.³⁰

The new challenges of the present day certainly oblige us to clarify, update and renew our concrete activity of education to the faith.

“To live and work together”, say the Constitutions, “is for us salesians a fundamental requirement and a sure way of fulfilling our vocation”.³¹

The task of education to the faith is assumed and exercised in the first place by the provincial and local community, and shared by each of its members according to the different roles assigned to each one.³² The GC23 intends to provoke a serious reflection on this communal responsibility. It is precisely in this that will be found the secret of the renewal we hope to find in the next Chapter, not so much in the reshaping of works though that too has its own particular importance, but in the rethinking and renewal of our mission, or in other words of the pastoral quality of our activity. This is the kind of “new presence” which we must primarily aim at in every work.

This is the sense in which the salesian community is called upon to draw up and apply a renewed pastoral and educational plan!³³

The theme deliberately puts the accent on the community, in so far as it is the latter which bears the prime responsibility for the education of young people to the faith. It is important that we be wary of being distracted from this argument by the red herring of the complexity of problems concerning the community itself. The one and only angle of approach for our considerations must always be education to the faith as a commitment which is thought out, programmed, verified and revised by a salesian community linked to a particular local area, with its own specific social, cultural and ecclesial aspects, and responsible for a work which has its own educational and pastoral objectives.

Evidently in the evaluation of this fundamental task of the community, importance will be given to the pastoral role of the provincial, the rector, the animators and the individual confreres.

It will be an examination of the pastoral dimension of our work, and will center on an assessment of the community’s pastoral discernment.³⁴ We shall be asked what contribution we all make in the work of education, in animation, in the use of the means of social communication, in the stimulation of initiatives, in overcoming difficulties, in the challenges which call for a response here and now.

After the return to the sources through the work and events of the centenary, we want to put all our efforts into relaunching the attitude of “da mihi animas”, to which we shall bear witness with the pastoral and pedagogical originality of Don Bosco.

The fact of being situated in a specific locality with a particular kind of presence will steer the verification of the salesian community towards its relationship with the local Church and the surrounding human neighborhood. In fact “the salesian community works in communion with the particular Church, It is open to the world’s values and attentive to the cultural milieu in which it carries out its apostolic work”.³⁵ For this reason one must keep in mind both the ecclesial plan of pastoral work in the neighborhood concerned, and its social and cultural condition both now and how it is likely to develop in the future.

And then in all our works the salesian community. is called to be the driving force in a wider “educative community”: “The application of the plan”, say the Regulations, “requires that in all our works and settings we establish the educative and pastoral community, whose animating nucleus is the religious community”.³⁶ And this leads us to some wider considerations, which are both very relevant and demanding; the clear reference is to the lay people who work with us and to the young people themselves; we have to reflect on their pedagogical, spiritual and apostolic formation, and on our ability to animate them.

And then if we recall that, in the noble vision of Don Bosco, education to the faith is realized not only within the educative community but even beyond it through its influence in the parish, the local district or zone, the diocese and even the country, it makes us think too of the importance of animating those Cooperators and Past-Pupils who are working for the faith in the neighborhood where the salesian community is situated.

This attention given to the lay members of the faithful is of great importance in the present-day Church and is for us a constitutional call to renewal, with specific reference to the Salesian Cooperators and the Don Bosco Past Pupils.³⁷ But this aspect too must be considered in the light of the Chapter theme, It is not in fact a matter of entering into the question of the Salesian Family, but of verifying and stimulating its educational and pastoral initiatives in the neighborhood concerned, its renewal and vitality being taken for granted.

It is important to consider the influence of the whole charisma of Don Bosco on the parish, district, town or region, in accordance with the dynamic ecclesial and social vision of our Founder.

This awareness of shared responsibility and ecclesial harmony redefines and gives greater breadth to the physiognomy of our salesian activity in the places where we work: and so take courage, dear provincials and rectors!

The work of the forthcoming provincial chapter

— According to the Constitutions the provincial chapter is the “representative assembly of all the confreres and local communities”,³⁸ Its nature and powers differ from those of the general chapter: it neither possesses nor exercises “supreme authority” in the province,³⁹ it is not a source of authority in the Congregation, and its sphere of competence is well limited by the Constitutions.⁴⁰

Ordinarily it is called together by the provincial every three years.⁴¹ Hence in the normal course of events every provincial will convoke two of them in the course of his six-year period of office: one” in preparation for the general chapter” and another intermediate one.

In the period immediately following Vatican II there was a tendency towards a more frequent convocation of provincial chapters (there were proposals to hold them every two years, and even every year). But then we came to see the reasons behind the three-yearly rhythm. The noteworthy commitment of the last twenty years, reflected in the provincial chapters which were called upon to undertake a quite intensive work in rewriting our Rule of life (even through the convoking of “special” provincial chapters), could have led to the risk of a certain saturation or indigestion. We must be able to react to such dangers.

In considering the very nature of the provincial chapter, and keeping in mind the work of revision of our Rule of life now completed, we need to be very clear about the chapter’s eminently community significance, the importance of its three-yearly rhythm, and the responsibility which in consequence devolves on every confrere and every community.

The fact that the coming GC23 reverts to what we may call the category of “ordinary” general chapters must have its repercussions on the manner of celebrating provincial chapters.

It seems convenient in fact to make a certain practical distinction between the provincial chapter convoked to prepare a general chapter, and the intermediate kind, called together precisely to reflect on the good functioning of the province.

In the first one attention is centered on the general chapter and the main work to be done is carried out with the preparation of the general chapter in view, even though the province’s more urgent problems are not excluded.

In the second the work consists in examining how the province is going, and in making a deeper and more adequate analysis of its work.

This practical distinction may serve to overcome the dangerous sense of disaffection I have mentioned, ensure the serious celebration of the provincial chapters, and facilitate their work.

In any case one thing is very clear: the coming provincial chapters must concern themselves principally with the study of the theme of the education of young people to the faith. I therefore exhort all the confreres and every local community to consider the preparation and realization of the next provincial chapter as a particular event of shared responsibility at world level. The theme of the present-day education of the young to the faith must indeed become the subject of reflection, discussion, research, verification and planning for every local community and every confrere. We are touching here the very soul of the salesian mission; we are taking the measure of our fidelity to the Founder and of our pastoral creativity; we are assessing the degree of ecclesial communion which defines us; we are verifying the truth of the love which makes us live for the young; we avoid the dangers arising from ideological thinking and the leveling down due to certain pseudoscientific claims. And so I invite you, dear confreres, to give great importance to the preparation of this chapter by prayer, in study and reflection, in verification, in discerning the challenges, and in planning for the future.

I want to insist especially on the ability to perceive the positive signs of the cultural innovations in which we are living, and the values of human growth proclaimed and witnessed to by today’ s youth. The signs of the times have at their root the impulse of the Holy Spirit. They do not drag us down but rather help us to rise up! If the weight of sin has become greater, so too has the genuine sense of the Gospel and its fruitful leavening effect for the growth of humanity. We can see this in the Church’s life and in the renewal of the Congregation.

The creation by the Father, from which flows all good, is in constant growth; the redemption by the Son, which is the victory of faith, increases its beneficial effect of personal and social liberation; the sanctification by the Spirit, which is transforming power, works incessantly in hearts and communities. It is short-sighted pessimism to fail to see the love of God which surrounds men in the signs of the times, in Vatican II, in the renewal of the Church, in the reactivation of charismata (which means for us in particular the charism of Don Bosco), in pastoral creativity, and in enthusiasm for the preparation of the launching of the third millennium of christian faith.

Certainly evil too is growing, and in sophisticated ways. But the Lord has called us to fight against it and has given us the energy and example to do so, assuring us that with the light of the resurrection “whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”⁴²

In conclusion

I would like to remind you, dear confreres, of the distinction between mission and pastoral work, put forward by the Special General Chapter.

The mission is identical and unchangeable in every culture and situation; pastoral work “is a practical realization of the mission under the guidance of the pastors. This presupposes a sensitivity to the signs of the times and a sense of adaptation to the situation at a particular time and place. A necessary consequence of this is the pluralism of pastoral work, or in other words of practical concrete choices by the Church (universal and local) in the threefold service of the community: prophetic, liturgical and directional. In this way are explained the different pastoral apostolates depending on age, sex, social and cultural context, the degree of faith, and the joint pastoral action in the area”.⁴³

The renewal of our mission is intimately connected with the pluriformity of our pastoral activity, a pluriformity which is already an established fact among us; it is the starting point for the work of the coming chapters.

But the theme chosen does not refer to pluriformity of this kind; it takes it for granted and accepts it as a living reality on which we must concentrate our attention, but for the purpose of discerning another aspect — that of the pastoral quality of the particular commitments of each salesian community. In our pluriformity what is of specific concern to us is this pastoral quality.

For the moment therefore we are not addressing other aspects, even though they be important: not the question of those to whom we are sent, not the reshaping of our works, not the inculturation of our mission, not a review of the religious community, not. the relaunching of the Salesian Family. not any other of the many interesting items, but specifically and in depth the quality of our pastoral work in the education of youth to the faith.

Fidelity to Don Bosco’s mission demands that we reawaken in our minds and in every community ardent and genuine pastoral ability, under the influence of the power of the Holy Spirit.

The verification we must carry out, or the analysis of the reality of our work, must be considered from a pastoral standpoint without any ideological presuppositions which could surreptitiously exploit the conclusions to be reached. We are not therefore making an analysis of a reality on the basis of criteria alien to our mission, but a pastoral vision of the reality, which can be achieved only through a process of evaluation which is evangelical and ecclesial. It is a question of making a judgment about one of life’s riches, that of the faith, which goes beyond the limits of science and social and political systems. Faith can be scrutinized and examined in its deep reality (in its beginnings and growth) only by believers themselves who have made of it the vertex which sheds light on their own judgments.

For this reason it will be well to go back in prayer and imitation to the Virgin Mary, defined in the Gospel as “She who believed”, and who expressed in the Magnificat her evangelical way of appraising history.

We already entrusted ourselves solemnly to her at the beginning of the GC22. We are convinced that she “is present among us and continues her ‘mission as Mother of the Church and Help of Christians’. (Today, and for the GC23,) we entrust ourselves once again to her, the humble servant in whom the Lord has done great things, that we may become witnesses to the young of her Son’s boundless love”.⁴⁴

May Don Bosco obtain for us from our Blessed Lady a living sense of Christ, the apostolic zeal to pass on to others the benefits of his great mystery, and the creative intelligence and pedagogical ability to educate young people to faith in Christ as a response to the pressing challenges of our times.

Let us set to work with enthusiasm!

The theme is a strategically vital one.

With cordial greetings and all best wishes in the Lord,

Don E. Viganò