TOWARDS A NEW INTERPRETATION

With your permission I will present a simple scheme for an "itinerary of displacement", to be understood in more than a geographical sense. I will be commenting on this throughout my intervention.

It is clear that every model of formation or of education implies an ideology or a mentality (standard or point of reference) which gives a concrete image of the educator, the work, and those who are educated. Faced with this and with the scheme which follows, certain questions arise, for example:

What should our formative/educational presence be for the man of today, starting with a creative faithfulness to our charism? Is there not an urgent need to "rethink" our heritage, or to "re-situate" our patrimony? How close are we to the young people who, in many situations, both geographical and social, are placing themselves on the edges of the Church, or are in situations of risk? Is the culture, the "pedagogical/ administrative" functioning, of our schools, clearly open to the Gospel, to the dignity of the person..., or is it a culture aimed at power and competence? What are the social groups or the forces to whose service we have put our schools? What kind of men and women do we want to form, and what kind of society, what kind of men, what kind of women, are we actually forming?

Our charism is not an unchangeable myth. I see it as the strong light of a lighthouse, which, although it has one fixed centre, also has moveable reflectors which spread light and signals, "changing the dimensions of the horizon", and the further they cast their light, the better they carry out their function.