THA: Salesian Family Seminar
as part of
Year 2 Bicentenary Preparations
HUA
HIN: 20 September 2012 -- "Salesian Pedagogy 2012 -
towards the
Bicentenary celebration 2015" has been the title of a series
of
seminars run for the Salesian Family in Thailand over recent
days.
There are two groups, the first having already completed an
intense two
days of study led by Fr Francis Gustilo, from FIN province.
The first
group had 65 participants from all sections of the Salesian
Family in
THA province. The sessions ran from 17-18 September. The
second
series is now underway - same topic, same presenter.
In all there are 8 sessions per seminar. Topics cover
our
heritage, youth today, loving presence, assistance and
animation,
reasonableness and dialogue, life identity, beyond borders -
transcendence, and an epilogue called 'everything for God' to
wind
things up.
As an example of the approach taken by Fr Gustilo, one
participant
wrote of the first session, 'Our heritage': he was
particularly struck
by the well-known Duvallet quote which the Rector Major has
more than
once referred to - "You have works, colleges, oratories
for the
young, but you have only on treasure: the pedagogy of Don
Bosco. In a
world in which youngsters are betrayed, squeezed dry, crushed,
exploited, the Lord has entrusted to you a pedagogy in which
respect
for the young person, for his greatness and his frailty, for
his
dignity as a son of God prevail. Preserve it, renew it,
rejuvenate it,
enrich it with all the latest discoveries, adapt it to these
twentieth
century creatures and their tragedies that Don Bosco could not
know
about. But for heaven's sake, preserve it! Change everything,
if
necessary lose all your houses but preserve this treasure,
forming in
thousands of hearts the way to love and to save the young,
which is Don
Bosco's heritage".
As a matter of interest, and apart from the THA seminar -
CISI, the
Italian Provincial Conference, brought out a very successful
booklet
last year for Year 1 of the Bicentenary Preparations, and they
have
just published their Year 2 version. These are arguasbly
amongst the
best set of materials prepared on each year's special topic
that we
have in the Congregation. Of course, they are in Italian only,
but as
we were able to get hold of the digital copy last year and put
it on
SDL a number of Provinces took advantage of that to translate
the parts
(or find translated versions of some primary texts) into their
own
languages. We are looking once again to get hold of the
digital
text of the second year's materials, and if successful,
austraLasia
readers will be the first to find out - and the texts will be
once
again made available to you.
And just a further codcil: one notes that these days the
scholars are
talking of the 4 'Lives' written by Don Bosco, rather than the
three.
In other words, the Comollo life is added to Savio, Magone,
Besucco.
The Comollo life has never, to our knowledge, been translated
into
English, nor in many other languages for that matter - it has
largely
escaped attention. But it is of considerable interest to us
this year.
It was first published in 1844, so the first of Don Bosco's
efforts in
this direction. He then republished an expanded and much
altered
edition in 1884. That very fact makes it even more interesting
- that
he saw fit to re-work and republish the 'Life'. A
slightly faulty
version of both Italian editions was published in digital form
by INE
(and subsequently in SDL), but we have recently put an epub
corrected
version in sdb.org (look under Resources-esdb). Any takers for
an
English translation? It's about 30 pages worth of Don Bosco's
Italian,
so one has to be familiar with a few vocabulary items that
have since
dropped out of the language. Nothing too challenging however!