Pastor's Corner
March 12, 2017
This past week I went to Santa Cruz, CA, for a meeting of all the superiors of the Dominican communities in the Western Province. This is a practice begun forty years ago by our own beloved late Fr. Paul Scanlon, who asked the superiors to meet together for mutual support and to informally discuss issues in the Province. The superiors’ meeting is not a formal legislative or advisory body; the Provincial Chapter which is held every four years and a council of friars selected at a Provincial Chapter who meet quarterly with the Provincial serve those purposes.
This annual meeting consists of prayer, Masses and meals together, an opportunity for each superior to “check in” about the state of the local community, and anything else the Provincial chooses to bring to the meeting to discuss. This time we received an update on a long-term planning process that our Province is engaged in. We were able to give some feedback regarding the process, and discussed some of the next steps with the Provincial.
We also talked about something called a “community plan” or “community project.” This nothing other than an ongoing conversation among the Dominican friars in a community over the relationship between our communal life and our pastoral ministry. We also received a report from our Director of Advancement on our development efforts for the whole Province. He has been helpful to Mr. Greg Cornell, our new parish and school Development officer.
One of the things we also discussed was a dividing of the friars in the Province into regions or ministries in order to engage in what is known in the Order as the “Salamanca Process”. It is a dialogue between the academics in our Province and other brothers in an attempt to identify important cultural and societal trends that effect Catholics and to fashion a pastoral response appropriate for the times and our charism.
As I tried to point out in the Pastor’s Corner during the Jubilee Year, the friars here are more than just diocesan priests in white. These meetings, and the whole process of deliberation as friars is an intimate part of our lives together, and are important in making the local Dominican community itself a “holy preaching.”