Learning to love Don Bosco - activity afoot in the
Anglophone regions
EAO/AS/IA: 29th August 2006 -- Most readers would
readily understand EAO and AS, the two Salesian regions covering the
Asia-Pacific geographical areas. IA refers to the Salesian Region
of Interamerica which is part anglophone, francophone and spanophone
(yes there are such creatures!). There is considerable activity afoot
to help members of the Salesian Family learn to know and love Don Bosco.
Other than the more formal occasions of meetings and
publications referred to below, a comment in Boscowiki (which you can
check out easily enough at the 'click here' also below) is of
interest. It was in reference to the First Asian Missionary
Conference which is to be held in Bangkok this coming October.
The wiki contributor puts it thus: re:1561 First Asian Mission
Congress
I wonder, if we can take advantage of the evangelizing, missionary
storytelling in our daily life. Don Bosco was a great story teller and
we can get a lot from it! [This is a good idea - and BoscoWiki can also serve as a means for
telling those stories]. The comment in parentheses is from your
austraLasia coordinator. It would be another very valuable way of
coming to know and love Don Bosco.
Fr Mike Mendl, New Rochelle, has been in touch with
a number of people around anglophone Salesian areas indicating that
three items which have been out of print for some time are now being
revised with a view to re-printing, and asks for comments, observations
from people who have read the earlier editions, which may help the
process. Joseph Aubry's The Spiritual Writings of Don Bosco, a
collection of excerpts from original (in translation) texts with brief
comment from Aubry; Francis Desramaut's Don Bosco and the Spiritual
Life - similar treatment, more focused on its topic, obviously; The
Memoirs of the Oratory - non need to give you the author! This
latter item is largely completed, that is, the revision of it, and will
be welcomed the moment it comes off the press again. May God speed the
effort!
There's more. With the commencement of an
entire course of Salesian studies set up at the Salesian University in
Rome, headed by Fr Aldo Giraudo, a more recent name in Salesian
scholarship and worthy successor to the Stella and Braido (who are
still studying and producing, incidentally), there has been a felt need
for original texts in English. Readers may be interested to know
that the three 'lives' written by Don Bosco, Savio, Magone, Besucco,
has recently been re-translated into English. In fact there was a
single available translation of these three lives in English, completed
by Fr Wallace Cornell, former provincial of the Australian province and
deceased now for some years. This collection has been long out of
print and had certain difficulties: (a) Fr Cornell did not have access
at the time to the last editions produced by Don Bosco in his own time
- one of the lives ran to five editions and Don Bosco changed details,
occasionally quite important ones by way of addition or omission, each
time! (b) he left out Don Bosco's footnotes, and in one or two
instances Don Bosco's footnotes include other 'lives' which he said he
wanted to write but in the end encapsulated in a rather long footnote!
(c) added his own comments which while appropriate for his purpose 30
or so years ago, do not belong to a faithful text for scholars and even
ordinary readers today. While decisions regarding the printing of
these three texts have yet to be made, there should be no difficulty in
providing them digitally to anybody who might want them - we are
talking about the common heritage and patrimony of all who want to know
and love Don Bosco.
Fr Giraudo will be holding a session in EAO based on
these and other texts. It will be in Bangkok early next year,
very beginning of January in fact. More details on this seminar will be
forthcoming.
And there is activity regarding investigations into
Salesian holiness with examples like Convertini (India) and Majcen
(Vietnam). More on those later.
___________________
AustraLasia
is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.
It also
functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please
contact admin@bosconet.aust.com
Try
out BoscoWiki to be interactive. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm
A separate
service entirely is called F/OSSERVATORE
to help us keep abreast of trends in the digital world.
