austraLasia #1486
"...so matters in the Indies and Australia don't interfere with those in Argentina".
ROME: 12th March 2006 -- If you don't read Italian, you are unlikely to have read Don Bosco's collected letters or much else that he wrote other than in the Memoirs of the Oratory. And yet, as Braido says, "the best interpreter for theorising or writing about Don Bosco's preventive system, is Don Bosco himself".
You now have a chance to read a few snatches from some of the letters quoted by Fr Peter Braido in Chapter 8 of Prevention, not Repression, a study of Don Bosco and the preventive system. Braido says at one point that we can't leave out any of Don Bosco's written material (and there is a prodigious amount of it!) if we want to understand how he operated and who he was.The letters are one place where you gain an idea of Don Bosco's extraordinary general knowledge and broad vision allied with downright practicality.
In the snippet which forms the headline above, he is writing to Cagliero in 1876 (not long arrived in Argentina) and says at one point, "You're a musician, I'm a poet by profession; let's do things so that matters in the Indies and Australia don't interfere with those in Argentina". We know that the Pope had offered him a Vicariate Apostolic in Australia in 1876, that he would be visited by Bishop Matthew Quinn from Bathurst but wouldn't at that stage see his way clear to be sending men, committed as he was to South America. Possibly the reference to 'the Indies' was the East Indies, or today's Indonesia and East Timor. The reference is only of superficial interest here, though it helps one immediately understand the big vision that was driving Don Bosco.
There is another extraordinary citation from a letter to Fr. Dalmazzo in 1880, when DB is much strapped for cash. "Set to work with everything you can ('in omnibus labora' are his exact words) and if you can't succeed otherwise in getting donations, then you'll have to carry out a robbery or do some mathematical subtraction in some Banker's house!" Tongue in cheek of course, and certainly out of context! We'll have to let that one slide.
The process of working through the heavily footnoted text of Braido's work has been moving ahead a little faster than expected. The fact that it has reached Chapter 8/19 is a bonus for the English reader because that's about the extent that will be made available until the translated work is eventually published, whenever. You may read individual chapters, or download the zipped file with all 8 chapters.
These first eight chapters form a unity in Braido's mind. It is where he sets the scene for discussion of the preventive system today. But the reality is that English-only readers have not previously glimpsed the substance of Braido's work; only, perhaps, heard that it is amongst the best we have for understanding Don Bosco in context. It can only whet the appetite for more. You will learn some details of his times, come to realise that many of the things he said about his 'system' were in fairly wide usage at the time, that there was a 'reality' out there of preventive approaches long before the formula came into play, but you will also learn just what is distinctively Don Bosco's about his employment of these ideas and realities, and indeed, formulas. In fact Chapter 6, the smallest chapter in the book, is a neat summary of DB's originality as well as containing a summary of key moments in his lifetime - and the footnotes are a subtext as long as the main text in this instance!
You know where to find this material - www.bosconet.aust.com/bnet06ut.htm is the complete reference URL. Enjoy.
______________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
"...so matters in the Indies and Australia don't interfere with those in Argentina".
ROME: 12th March 2006 -- If you don't read Italian, you are unlikely to have read Don Bosco's collected letters or much else that he wrote other than in the Memoirs of the Oratory. And yet, as Braido says, "the best interpreter for theorising or writing about Don Bosco's preventive system, is Don Bosco himself".
You now have a chance to read a few snatches from some of the letters quoted by Fr Peter Braido in Chapter 8 of Prevention, not Repression, a study of Don Bosco and the preventive system. Braido says at one point that we can't leave out any of Don Bosco's written material (and there is a prodigious amount of it!) if we want to understand how he operated and who he was.The letters are one place where you gain an idea of Don Bosco's extraordinary general knowledge and broad vision allied with downright practicality.
In the snippet which forms the headline above, he is writing to Cagliero in 1876 (not long arrived in Argentina) and says at one point, "You're a musician, I'm a poet by profession; let's do things so that matters in the Indies and Australia don't interfere with those in Argentina". We know that the Pope had offered him a Vicariate Apostolic in Australia in 1876, that he would be visited by Bishop Matthew Quinn from Bathurst but wouldn't at that stage see his way clear to be sending men, committed as he was to South America. Possibly the reference to 'the Indies' was the East Indies, or today's Indonesia and East Timor. The reference is only of superficial interest here, though it helps one immediately understand the big vision that was driving Don Bosco.
There is another extraordinary citation from a letter to Fr. Dalmazzo in 1880, when DB is much strapped for cash. "Set to work with everything you can ('in omnibus labora' are his exact words) and if you can't succeed otherwise in getting donations, then you'll have to carry out a robbery or do some mathematical subtraction in some Banker's house!" Tongue in cheek of course, and certainly out of context! We'll have to let that one slide.
The process of working through the heavily footnoted text of Braido's work has been moving ahead a little faster than expected. The fact that it has reached Chapter 8/19 is a bonus for the English reader because that's about the extent that will be made available until the translated work is eventually published, whenever. You may read individual chapters, or download the zipped file with all 8 chapters.
These first eight chapters form a unity in Braido's mind. It is where he sets the scene for discussion of the preventive system today. But the reality is that English-only readers have not previously glimpsed the substance of Braido's work; only, perhaps, heard that it is amongst the best we have for understanding Don Bosco in context. It can only whet the appetite for more. You will learn some details of his times, come to realise that many of the things he said about his 'system' were in fairly wide usage at the time, that there was a 'reality' out there of preventive approaches long before the formula came into play, but you will also learn just what is distinctively Don Bosco's about his employment of these ideas and realities, and indeed, formulas. In fact Chapter 6, the smallest chapter in the book, is a neat summary of DB's originality as well as containing a summary of key moments in his lifetime - and the footnotes are a subtext as long as the main text in this instance!
You know where to find this material - www.bosconet.aust.com/bnet06ut.htm is the complete reference URL. Enjoy.
______________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
