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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