austraLasia 1459
Materials for you to check out
ROME: 22nd February 2006 -- Depending on the content of
certain announcements coming from the Vatican today, there may be
another austraLasia in the course of the day. If not, then forget I
ever said it!
THE BROTHER
In the meantime, just to let you know that the last, we presume, of
the responses to the Brothers' questionnaire from last year have now
come in, so that page is complete with the exception of some
additional biographies of Brothers to come. This latter has been a
labour of love for Brother Peter Swain from AUL with a little help from
others at various times. It makes a fine collection. There is also an
analysis of several parts of the questionnaire response sets. One
other item you may wish to check is actually not on that page but on
the 'Useful texts' page - a translation of some earlier material on the
Brother (e.g. Ricaldone, Vespignani) by Fr Zuliani. This is valuable
background material for understanding Don Bosco's original concept and
is generally not available in English, meaning you are unlikely to find
it anywhere else but on Bosconet at the moment.
BRAIDO
Chapter two of Braido's Prevention not Repression, 'Better
prevention than repression' (yes, chapter 2 is close to the original
title) is also now available. It explores the prevalence of the terms
'prevention' and 'repression' in Don Bosco's time and the various
meanings attached to the terms. You begin to see that DB certainly did
not pull his ideas out of thin air!
COMMUNICATIONS
One more set of documents that you may find useful is on the
Communications page, under the heading of 'Useful Salesian
Communications material'. You will find the Salesian SC 'Trinity'
there - and at the moment nowhere else in the wide, wide world! The
Salesian Social Communication System is the foundation document,
you might say, and well worth a read to get an overall view of things.
The reading of this document was highlighted by Fr Chávez in AGC390 as
a sine qua non, if I may slip into Latin
for a moment! Then comes the brief but very practical document on Formation
to Social Communications. This is actually in its final draft
stage, probably with no more than a minor word here or there to change,
so you may regard it as final for all practical purposes. The value of
this document is that it has been worked on by three sectors -
communications, youth ministry and formation, and was sent to all
formation and communications delegates around the world for comment.
Not all of them responded, but those who had comments to make were
listened to. And the more comments that came the shorter the document
became. You can't ask for much better than that! The final document
is the handbook, known now under the title Salesian, Communicator.
When this item first came out in 2002, it was almost unreadable in
English, and seemed only to apply to one person in the province, the
so-called SC Delegate - and many provinces didn't have one, more's the
pity. The document has been entirely re-conceived and its original
written in English, which is something of a first for the Congregation
so no problems this time with translationese.
It is intended for every confrere to read since there are practical
things in there that anyone can benefit from, hence its title. But at
the very least it should be read by provincial councillors, rectors,
local people interested in Salesian communications - and the Delegate!
The first and the last of the three docs mentioned above are in pdf
format.
Happy reading. Bosconet's search engine is very efficient and
offers a weekly summary of materials searched (not who did the
searching. We are not the CIA!). So I am well aware that an
occasional austraLasia of this kind pointing out goodies to find on
Bosconet has immediate results. I see them reflected in the search
stats. JBF.
GLOSSARY
sine qua non: an absolute necessity
translationese: a style of translation
that is affected by the language being translated from. In the case of
English from Italian, a tendency to remain with the heavier latinate
lexis and syntax
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