austraLasia #2114

Back on the 'document trail' - but it's more exciting than that!

ROME: 1st April 2008 -- Sorry there was no news item yesterday; five bus loads of Chapter members and other assorted types disgorged directly into St Peter's Square then blitzed St Peter's while Rome and Vatican constabulary looked on bemused. The cohort then came around the flank to the Clementine Hall to meet his Holiness, automatic and semi-automatic cameras flashing away. The aid-de-camps  back home meanwhile, needed to simply get down to the task of ensuring that several drafts of the last two modules (evangelical poverty and new frontiers) were ready in English and other languages for 'the troops' when they got back in mid-afternoon. You can read all about it in L'Osservatore Romano! (And ANS!)
    With these final two core topics now in their draft form, the discussion on the second (evangelisation) now complete, the next stage is to complete assembly discussion on the two presented yesterday, then begin to vote on the final drafts as they come through. So far we have not seen a final draft of any of the core topics and wont until next week - the final week. This week is now entirely taken up with study in Commissions and Assembly of the remaining core topics - vocation ministry, poverty, frontiers.  The process is quite exhaustive (if not exhausting) as the drafting committee (redaction/editorial, take your pick) works on assembly remarks and tries to produce a neat, slim but compact result for each core theme.  They are being told to focus on the guidelines, but comments keep coming back about the 'doctrinal' part too and these cannot be ignored.  The Holy Spirit got a look in during election time, so now s/he needs to 'change mindset/mentality' (another favourite phrase around here at the moment) and get a look into this drafting process.
    The Rector Major made immediate good on his promise to see that the three 'mission sectors' ('Departments of the Mission' has not been part of our official vocabulary but it looks like going into the Glossary from now on) got together - which they did on Sunday and now each evening they are meeting with entire regions, not to say anything themselves but just to listen, with basically two questions asked: how do you see us working together with you?  What are your expectations and needs and how could we respond best?  Last night's meeting was with Africa-Madagascar.  The meetings are late evening and optional, but every single 'African' turned up last night, so there's clearly an interest in this process.  Following this (I'm speaking for Social Communications since Filiberto is heading that now) the Department teams, who are present for these meetings will sit down with their boss and plan ahead to see how to respond.
    So what's exciting you say? Well, there's a new team and probably the newest team that's been around for many a long year - the youngest too, I think.  And at the end you won't be getting a long document, but you'll get a rather practical list of guidelines to pick and choose from - yes that's the idea, not a laundry list where each piece has to be hung out to dry but a list that provinces , communities and individuals will be able to work with according to circumstances. The introduction to each of these lists is a kind of analysis of the situation as the Chapter has seen it - there is a doctrinal element there but the debate that's raging on the floor at the moment is just how doctrinal it has to be. Many say that that sort of thing can be found in the 'magisterium' of Church and Congregation already so why repeat it - others are arguing for at least an adequate synthesis of that.
  _________________
 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 . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2008 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there.  Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org

Title: australasia 2114
Subject and key words: SDB General GC26
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2114