austraLasia
1459
Materials for you
to check out
ROME: 22nd February 2006
-- Depending on the content of certain announcements coming from the
Vatican today, there may be another austraLasia in the course of the day.
If not, then forget I ever said it!
THE
BROTHER
In the meantime, just to let you know that the
last, we presume, of the responses to the Brothers' questionnaire from last year
have now come in, so that page is complete with the exception of some
additional biographies of Brothers to come. This latter has been a labour
of love for Brother Peter Swain from AUL with a little help from others at
various times. It makes a fine collection. There is also an analysis
of several parts of the questionnaire response sets. One other item you
may wish to check is actually not on that page but on the 'Useful texts' page -
a translation of some earlier material on the Brother (e.g. Ricaldone,
Vespignani) by Fr Zuliani. This is valuable background material for
understanding Don Bosco's original concept and is generally not available in
English, meaning you are unlikely to find it anywhere else but on Bosconet at
the moment.
BRAIDO
Chapter two of
Braido's Prevention not Repression, 'Better prevention than repression'
(yes, chapter 2 is close to the original title) is also now available. It
explores the prevalence of the terms 'prevention' and 'repression' in Don
Bosco's time and the various meanings attached to the terms. You begin to
see that DB certainly did not pull his ideas out of thin
air!
COMMUNICATIONS
One more set of
documents that you may find useful is on the Communications page, under the
heading of 'Useful Salesian Communications material'. You will find the
Salesian SC 'Trinity' there - and at the moment nowhere else in the wide, wide
world! The Salesian Social Communication System is the foundation
document, you might say, and well worth a read to get an overall view of
things. The reading of this document was highlighted by Fr Chávez in
AGC390 as a sine qua non, if I may slip into Latin
for a moment! Then comes the brief but very practical document on
Formation to Social Communications. This is actually in its final
draft stage, probably with no more than a minor word here or there to change, so
you may regard it as final for all practical purposes. The value of this
document is that it has been worked on by three sectors - communications, youth
ministry and formation, and was sent to all formation and communications
delegates around the world for comment. Not all of them responded, but
those who had comments to make were listened to. And the more comments
that came the shorter the document became. You can't ask for much better
than that! The final document is the handbook, known now under the title
Salesian, Communicator. When this item first came out in 2002, it
was almost unreadable in English, and seemed only to apply to one person in the
province, the so-called SC Delegate - and many provinces didn't have one, more's
the pity. The document has been entirely re-conceived and its original
written in English, which is something of a first for the Congregation so no
problems this time with translationese. It is
intended for every confrere to read since there are practical things in there
that anyone can benefit from, hence its title. But at the very least it
should be read by provincial councillors, rectors, local people interested in
Salesian communications - and the Delegate! The first and the last of the three
docs mentioned above are in pdf format.
Happy
reading. Bosconet's search engine is very efficient and offers a weekly
summary of materials searched (not who did the searching. We are not the
CIA!). So I am well aware that an occasional austraLasia of this kind
pointing out goodies to find on Bosconet has immediate results. I see them
reflected in the search stats. JBF.
GLOSSARY
sine qua non: an absolute necessity
translationese: a style of translation that is affected by
the language being translated from. In the case of English from Italian, a
tendency to remain with the heavier latinate lexis and
syntax
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