Claretian Formation

III. Drafting of the GPF

All the indications given by the General Chapter were taken into account at the time of its preparation.770

1. Claretian Character
The GPF is a pedagogical project with a strong Claretian stamp.

1.1. As a pedagogical project, it is oriented toward the formation of Claretians. In the first place, the GPF sets forth and develops, in an organic and pedagogical way and in a universal perspective, the formative principles and norms that appear in the Code of Canon Law, in the Constitutions, in the Directory and in other documents of the Church and of the Congregation. And in the second place, it has aimed at translating in a pedagogical key some other not explicitly formative contents of our project of missionary life, in order to facilitate a better transmission and assimilation in the process of formation.

1.2. As a Claretian project, it aims above all at covering the core essentials of our charism. Hence, without neglecting other necessary formative elements, it stresses those that are more proper of our specific project. Moreover, the GPF presents our charism, not in a summarily essentialist fashion, but in a pedagogical manner aimed at facilitating the transmission of formation to the new generations. It gathers together the formation experiences that have been accomplished or are being carried out in the Organisms of our Congregation. It also expresses our identifying traits in such a way as to safeguard, on the one hand, their universality and unity and, on the other, the particularity and diversity of their concrete expressions. Finally, it sets forth the allegory of the Forge as a pedagogical model. Understood as a charismatic and pedagogical process lived by our Founder, the Forge serves as a symbolic inspiration to help interpret and illumine the different stages of the formative process of the Claretians.771

2. The General Prefecture of Formation and the International Commission.

2.1. The General Formation Prefecture centred its attention in a special way, during the first part of the present six-year period, on the elaboration of the General Plan of Formation, in order to give enough time for its revision and application in the Congregation. At once it started to work on the same, following the orientations of the last Chapter of the Congregation, and putting into practice the operative decisions made by the General Government.

2.2. After the Chapter, the Superior General, Aquilino Bocos, promulgated the Chapter resolution about the GPF on 4 October 1991.772 Shortly afterwards, the General Government, in Council Session of 14 December, made the decisions to appoint an International Formation Commission (IFC) and to approve the methodology in drafting the GPF. The criteria followed by the General Government in appointing the members of the International Commission were:

* To chose persons with experience in the field of vocations and formation, apt for the type of work they were to perform (with theoretical and systematic abilities and with synthesis skills to write and compose adequately).

* They should represent all the stages of the vocational itinerary, from the vocational ministry to the on-going formation.

* They should come from the zones and cultures where the Congregation is established.
* They should represent the Fathers, Brothers and Students.
* Someone among them should have participated in the elaboration of the Claretian Formative Itinerary.
* And, as much as possible, they should speak several languages.

2.3. The IFC held its first encounter in Rome from 23 April to 15 May 1992. The objective of the meeting was to draft the project of the General Plan of Formation that would be sent to the entire Congregation for study and revision.

To carry out its task, it studied and consulted the ecclesial sources (documents from the Holy See, the Congregations and the Bishops’ Conferences), the congregational sources (documents, plans of formation of the Organisms and formative experiences) and some 30 plans of formation of different religious Institutes and Congregations. At a later date, the General Prefecture entrusted to several experts in various areas the revision of the drafted text before sending it to the Congregation for consultation.

The Formation Prefect presented the provisional text to the General Government in the Council Sessions held at the beginning of 1993 (2-15 January). The General Government determined that it be sent to the Congregation for study and, at the same time, it approved the methodology and the time for the consultation.

3. Consultation to the Congregation

3.1. Towards the end of January 1993, the General Secretariat sent the provisional project of the GPF, in Spanish and English, to the Major Superiors, the Superiors of the General Houses and of the Missions, the members of the International Formation Commission and the consultant experts. The objective, as we have said, was that the text be studied and revised in all the Organisms of the Congregation throughout the year 1993, until the first day of December. Also, the Secretariat sent a letter of the General Formation Prefect with a Methodological Guide and some orientations to carry out the work.

3.2. During the month of December of 1993 the observations and suggestions of the organisms, groups and individual persons kept on coming to the General Secretariat.

At the same time, a dossier was begun, entitled “Contributions of the Congregation” to the GPF, containing the ordered compilation of the observations, in order to facilitate the work of the IFC. The work consisted in
organising all the contributions received, with no exclusions, grouping them in the same order that appears in the draft of the GPF that had been distributed to the Congregation.
The IFC grouped in the first place the overall evaluations of the GPF. In the second place it gathered together the answers to each of the nine questions of the questionnaire sent by the General Prefecture of Formation. In the third place, it put in order the observations made to the chapters, to the numbers in particular, and to the appendices. Lastly, it also included in the dossier the contributions presented by the Major Superiors on the occasion of the Encounter held in Rome in the month of October 1992.

3.3. The General Government, faithful to the mind of the XXI General Chapter, wanted the entire process of drafting of the GPF, from the beginning to the end, to be as participatory as possible at the congregational level. For this reason it deemed it fitting to ask again for the collaboration of the IFC in the work of incorporating the contributions of the Congregation into the text of the GPF. Thus it convoked again the IFC, which met in Rome from 22 May to 11 June 1994.773

The prime objective of this meeting, which took up almost all the time foreseen, was to integrate the observations of the Congregation in the GPF and to prepare the definitive text for approval by the General Government. The work was finished on June 11, Solemnity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a highly meaningful day for the Congregation and equally significant for the work that was being concluded, the GPF of the Sons of her Immaculate Heart.

4. Study and Approval of the GPF by the General Government

4.1. On June 12, once the meeting of the IFC was over, Fr. Jesús Ma Palacios, General Prefect of Formation, wrote a letter to the General Government reporting on the work accomplished, and attached the newly drafted text
of the GPF with a view to its study and final approval.774

4.2. On June 20-25, the General Government, meeting in full Council, dedicated itself to an intense study, chapter by chapter, of the GPF. In various sessions they went about analysing and integrating opportune observations and corrections. Finally in the session of June 25 it was approved for promulgation and publication.

4.3. The Decree of Promulgation, according to the tenor of our legislation,775 was issued by Fr. General, Aquilino Bocos, on 16 July 1994, Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and the 145th anniversary of the founding of the Congregation. In it, he indicated that the GPF would take effect in the Congregation beginning 1 January 1995.776