conduct retreats, strengthen and direct towards piety those who, moved by the desire to change their lives, might want to go and listen to them.
7. Likewise, they will do their best to spread good books among the people using all the means which Christian charity inspires. Finally, through word and writing they will try to stem the increase in godlessness and heresy which in so many ways makes inroads among uneducated and ignorant people.1249
The reference to the Salesian institutions is essential to understand the evolution and the articulated
makeup of the preventive system, at least in its three binding elements:
1) The preventive system is gradually implemented through structures which Don Bosco does not
creat e ex novo; they are typical of the Restoration, with many of them having roots way back in the period of the Counter-reformation and the ancien régime. However each of Don Bosco's institutions is given a new look of its own by the preventive system which f urther delineates its fundamental features. 2) The 'system', as it becomes incarnate in the various institutions is in turn conditioned by them, taking on different features which help it to better articulate itself. For instance, the system as we find it in an oratory and a boarding institution or boarding school is not identical.
3) The various Salesian institutions are generally geared to young people of varying social, cultural, religious and moral levels, and aim at responding to different pressing nee ds or needs which have different social, scholastic, professional, catechetical and formation emphases. These emphases in turn, have an impact on educational methods and content. We cannot, therefore, ignore the many aspects that such a pedagogy may assume.
A partial institutional and pedagogical typology is also part of Don Bosco's thinking as evidenced by one of his most important addresses during the 1880s. In that address he drew up, at least in sketchy form, an overall picture of his social initiatives on behalf of the young.
There are festive oratories with parks or places for respectable recreation. Young people are
drawn to these places if properly approached and entertained with properly supervised
games and activities; at the proper time and place the youths are instructed in Christian
doctrine in these oratories; they are directed to and assisted in the practice of their religious
duties. There are Night schools for poor young workers who are busy the whole day in their
workplace and cannot acquired the necessary instruction otherwise. There are some day
schools also which offer free tuition. There are Sunday catechism classes and even daily
catechism classes, held either in churches or in private homes.
There are also the so-called sponsorship arrangements where we find employment for young people with upright employers and see that they run no risk at all as far as their religion and their morals are concerned. But these at times are not enough... these youngsters need a home, a roof; a shelter is needed for the ones who are derelict, hence the necessity of having hospices for the most needy youngsters. Therein these youngsters are provided with everything they need for life; some are placed in workshops and trained to pick up a skill so that one day they can earn an honest piece of bread. Some others, gifted by God with a particular talent, are directed toward studies and often some of them embrace a civil career and by being employed in this or that office help their families and society. Some other youths instead enter an ecclesiastical career and become apostles of
1249 Regole o Costituzioni della Società di S. Francesco di Sales secondo il decreto di apporvazione del 3 aprile 1874.
Turin, Oratory of St Francis de Sales Press 1875, pp. 3-5, OE XXVII 53-55.