The Oratory and the Youth Centre
11.
The Oratory is an educational environment with a strong missionary slant, and open to all boys and young men.It should be organized as a service to the neighbourhood with the object of evangelizing, and offers to individuals and groups the opportunity of developing their own interests, using ways and means appropriate to their different ages.
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The activities should always have an educational scope and should foster a healthy use of spare time.
12. The youth centre is an environment intended for older boys with their different requirements. It preserves the characteristics of the Oratory, but the emphasis on group activity is more marked, and personal contacts are facilitated to a greater extent.
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Formative and apostolic activities should play a more important role than those which are only recreational.
The Salesian school and centres for teaching trades
13. The Salesian school fosters the total development of the young person through the assimilation and critical re-elaboration of culture and education to the faith in view of the Christian transformation of society.
The educational process, carried out in a Salesian manner and with recognized technical and teaching ability, should be based on solid cultural values, and be tailored to the needs of the young. The programme should provide a harmonious balance between intellectual and technical training and extracurricular activities.
A periodic examination should be made to ensure that the contents of the curriculum and pedagogical and training methods are still valid as regards their relationship with the social milieu, the world of work and the pastoral indications of the Church. .
14. A Salesian school should be for poorer people: this should be reflected in its siting, its culture, its curriculum and its choice of students. Services to meet local needs should be provided, such as courses for cultural and professional training, literacy and remedial programmes, scholarships and other initiatives.
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15. Hostels and boarding schools are a service offered to youngsters who have no family or who are temporarily away from home. In such establishments priority should be given to whatever fosters personal relationships, enables the boarders to share the responsibility for the organization of their daily life, and offers them scope for different group activities. Contact should be maintained with their families or those responsible for them, and also with their school or the places where they work.
Initiatives at the service of vocations
16. Vocational guidance centres welcome and keep in touch with young people who feel called to some commitment in the Church and in the Congregation.
This service can also be carried out by organizing local and regional meetings, by means of activities of special groups, or by inserting young people in one of our communities.
17. The aspirantate is a centre of Salesian vocational guidance. It keeps itself open to the neighbourhood and in contact with families, and helps older boys and young men who show an aptitude for the religious and priestly life to know their own apostolic vocation and to correspond with it.
18. It is the duty of each provincial with his council to lay down norms for the animation and coordination of missionary activity.
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Provinces which have mission territories within their boundaries should have at heart the service to be rendered to the missions and should prepare personnel for dialogue with cultures not yet evangelized, even though they represent ethnic minorities.
19. Every missionary should be afforded the possibility of frequenting study centres organized by the particular Churches or by provinces for his specific preparation and updating, for learning languages, and for ethnic and anthropological studies.
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20. Normally no missionary residence should have fewer than three confreres. Periodic meetings should be arranged among the missionaries to foster community life, mutual help, spiritual growth, and the exchange of pastoral experiences.
21. Every missionary may return periodically to his native land, in accordance with the norms of his province or provincial conference. His provincial will present him to the provincial of the area where he intends to pass his time and will provide him with what is necessary for his stay.
The confreres of the province which receives him should see to it that he is given a generous and fraternal welcome.
22. In non-Christian countries Salesians, by the application of their educational and pastoral method, should create conditions favouring a free process of conversion to the Christian faith with respect shown for the cultural and religious values of the neighbourhood.
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In places where the religious, social or political context does not allow of forms of explicit evangelization, the Congregation should maintain and develop a missionary presence of witness and service.
23. In accordance with the prescriptions of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, formal agreements are to be drawn up with the ecclesiastical authorities in the territories where an apostolic work is entrusted to us.
24. To support our missionary activity, the Rector Major with the consent of his council and in agreement with the local provincial, may set up mission offices to serve the whole Congregation.
Their organization and method of functioning will depend on the provincial or provincials in whose territory the offices operate, in the light of a statute made previously with the Rector Major, and in agreement with the councillor general for the missions, and with the economer general.1
For the setting up of local offices or the making of twinning arrangements the provincial is competent, with the consent of his council and in agreement with the councillor general for the missions.
25. We carry out our mission also in parishes; in this way we respond to the pastoral needs of the particular Churches in those areas which offer us adequate scope for service to the young and to the poor.
The acceptance of a parish is effected by means of a contract between the provincial and the Local Ordinary, after obtaining the approval of the Rector Major with the consent of his council.
26. A parish entrusted to the Congregation should be distinguished by its low-income population and its interest in the young, especially those who are poorer.
The religious community is responsible for its animation. It should consider the oratory and youth centre an integral part of its pastoral project; it should set great store by the systematic catechesis of all and show zeal for bringing back those who have lapsed; it should see that evangelization is linked with human advancement, and should favour the vocational development of each individual.
27. The parish priest or moderator is chosen by the provincial after hearing the opinion of his council, and is presented by him to the Local Ordinary.
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He is responsible for the discharge of the obligations assumed by the Congregation before the Church, and fulfils them in collaboration with the other confreres assigned to the parish.
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28. The confreres attached to the parish should have that stability which the office and the good of the faithful demand. Nevertheless the superior will judge when the moment is opportune for a necessary rotation of persons and duties, according to the practice of the particular Churches. The parish priest should not normally remain in office for more than nine years. When he is changed, the bishop must be informed in advance.
29. Where the situation allows it, the house serving the parish should itself be canonically erected with the parish priest as its rector.
Whenever the offices of rector and parish priest remain distinct, the rector must see that the unity and Salesian identity of the community is preserved, and should stimulate the sharing of responsibility of the confreres in the realization of the parish pastoral plan.
30. In respect of administrative operations, the prescriptions of article 190 of the general Regulations are to be followed, due regard being paid to obligations to the parish community in accordance with canon law.
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There must be a clear distinction, with appropriate registers and documentation, between what belongs to the parish qua talis and to the Congregation.
31. As far as local possibilities permit, the provincial with his council should promote our pastoral presence in the social communication sector: he should prepare confreres to enter the fields of publishing, the cinema, radio and television; he should establish and build up our centres for the publishing and diffusion of books, aids and periodicals, and found centres for the production and transmission of audiovisual, radio and television programmes.
These services should be established on secure juridical and economic foundations, and there should be liaison and cooperation between those in charge of them and the councillor general for the Salesian Family and social communication.
32. Salesians should take care to educate their charges to an understanding of the language of the social communication field, and to a critical aesthetic and moral sense. They should also encourage musical and dramatic activity, and promote reading circles and cineforum groups.
33. The channels of information and dialogue both inside and outside the Congregation and Salesian Family (bulletins, ANS, short films, video-cassettes, etc.), should be developed, with appropriate use also of the means offered by recent advances in technology.
Publishing houses in the same country or region should devise suitable methods of collaboration, so as to adopt a unified plan.
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34. Whenever required by canon law, the ecclesiastical revision of matter for publication will be preceded by that of censors appointed by the provincial.
Service In non-Salesian structures
35. Service to the young may sometimes require our presence in non-Salesian institutes for a more immediate collaboration with the particular Church in pastoral work for youth or for the world of work, and in the care of vocations.
It belongs to the provincial with the consent of his council to accept such undertakings and to assess their validity.
Members assigned to such activities must take care to remain a real part of the Salesian community. The latter will in turn show a fraternal and responsible interest in their work.