religion and civilisation, not only among us but also among barbarian nations.1250
We may justifiably think of a single preventive system, but this system is implemented through variety of approaches or preventive methods.
1251
a
1. The oratory
The first institution, chronologically speaking and also in terms of importance, is the festive (weekend, feast days) and daily oratory.
The oratory is the most popular, flexible and personalised expression of the religious, social and educational activity carried out by Don Bosco. The preventive system was born, at least in its original elements, out of the oratory. And the system as implemented at the oratory contains the features which distinguish it from the one implemented in boarding schools and similar institutions. However the preventive system does retain its essential, common dimensions in any setting.1252
The oratory is the off -shoot of the immediate pressing needs naturally connected with additional
elements such as catechesis, religious practices, free time, cultural activities.
1253
Later on, there would be additional rules drawn from experience and from statutes for similar
undertakings in Lombardy and Piedmont and then applied to the o ratory. But the stamp Don Bosco
gave it is strongly evident. The oratory was fashioned after an initial and clever intuition which does
not exclude an eclectic synthesis of other many additional elements. It was only partially defined by the
first article of the Regulations: “(The Oratory) is intended to entertain the young on weekends with pleasant and respectable recreation, after having attended the sacred services in church”.1254
The oratories begun by Father Cocchi and Don Bosco were developed precisely at the
intersection of two pressing needs: pastoral (the conversion of the people brought about
within the people themselves by the presence of a priest) and popular educational (helping
young people left to their own devices, abandoned, without anyone to guide them and
therefore potentially at risk and risky and helping them in themselves and for society).1255
The pastoral, catechetical and recreational aspects of the oratory are integrated by the concern to
provide young people with a general, moral and cultu ral formation. And this was to be achieved by means of associations, Sunday schools, day and evening schools, musical activities, theatre, gymnastics
and sports and also by means of outings.
1256
1250 Conference to Cooperators in Genoa, 30 March 1882, BS 6 (1882) no. 4, April, p. 71.
1251 At least four different methodological versions can be identified already in the social and educational experiences
in the first twenty or so years in Turin: Cf. P. Braido, Il sistema preventivo di don Bosco alle origini..., RSS 14 (1995)
310-312.
1252 Don Bosco has left us fundamental writings of an historical and ideological nature on the oratory; there is also
literature of notable variety. From Don Bosco we have in particular: Cenno stroico dell'Oratorio di S. Franceszco di
Sales (1854) and Cenni storici intorno all'Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales (1862); in part La foraza della buona
educazione (1855), Severino ossia avventure di un giovane alpigiano (1868), Memorie dell'Oratorio di S. Francesco di
Sales dal 1815 al 1855, Regolamento dell'Oratorio di S. Francesco di Sales per gli esterni. Worthy of attention are
certain studies: P. Stella, Don Bosco nella storia della religiosità cattolica, vol I pp. 103-109; Idem, Don Bosco nella
storia economica e sociale..., pp. 71-90, 101-108, 159-174; G. Chiosso, L'Oratorio di don Bosco e il rinnovamento
educativo nel Piemonte carloalbertino, in P. Braido (Ed.), Don Bosco nella Chiesa..., pp. 83-116; Idem, Don Bosco e
l'oratorio (1841-1855), in M. Midali (Ed.), Don Bosco nella storia..., pp. 297-313.
1253 “This Congregation in 1841 was nothing but a Catechism class, a weekend recreation park which in 1846 [1847]
added a Hospice for poor working boys, making a private institute a numerous family” (Report to the Holy See March
1879, E III 462)
1254 Regolamento dell'Oratorio...per gli esterni, part I, [Introduzione] Scopo di quest'opera, p. 3, OE XXIX 33. 1255 G. Chiosso, Don Bosco e l'oratorio..., in M. Midali (Ed.), Don Bosco nella storia..., p. 301
1256 Cf .especially MO (1991) 158-161