austraLasia #2636 MSMHC Acts of the General Council
GUWAHATI: 4 May 2010 -- It just so happens that I have in my
possession at the moment edition no. 1 of the ACTS of the General
Council of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians,
January-April 2010. Big deal, you say? Big deal I
say! For any number of reasons.
Here is a member group of the Salesian family
adopting a similar means to our own well-known ACTS of the General
Council.
To look at it is, at first sight, a clone of the
various coloured versions of the AGC that dot the sdb world (Red for
English, Blue for Italian, and so on). It seems that we are
witnessing here a direct copy of the same tool for another member group
of the Salesian Family - you can check out
the details of the group and its foundation by Bishop Ferrando in
1942 on sdb.org. The cover, sea-green in colour, really is a
clone in every sense: one reads, for example, 'official organ of
animation and communication for the Missionary sisters of Mary Help of
Christians'. The structure of the contents too is similar: Letter of
the Superior General, Guidelines and Policies, Documents, Activities of
the General Council (and the well-known 'chronicles' of the Superior
General, General council) and finally Statistics. The stats,
incidentally, tell us that there are 1020 Sisters in 171 communities,
with 101 novices (not a bad figure proportionally speaking) in 6
provinces (in India) plus a gathering of Houses 'under the Generalate'
which include at least Swaziland, Lesotho and Hawaii!
However, there is a small difference - the entire
ACTS amount to just 66 pages (ours tend to run to 110 or thereabouts).
In her introductory comment, the Superior General,
Sr Mary Thadavanal says: "The ACTS shall be used by the provincials and
community leaders for the animation of their respective provinces and
communities in order that the charism, spirit, spirituality and
traditions of the Congregation may be preserved in their original
vitality and freshness and that the whole Congregation may move ahead
together accomplishing the mission entrusted to it by our Founder,
Bishop Stephen Ferrando (1895-1978)". Her first ever letter, at least
through this medium, is entitled, "Let us give Mary Help of Christians
her rightful place in the Congregation".
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