Provincial Council report

January 2007

This end of the year quarter has been a rather busy time for the Provincial Council. In October we held our annual meeting in Dallas. We discussed issues with isolates at length. Since this was our first time together since we began making visitations, we also took some time to evaluate how those have been going and what changes we might need to make to our procedures. Other items discussed during our meeting included planning out Provincial Council elections in 2008, revising our instructions to study groups on profession requests, and some concerns about specific problems around the province.

The big event of our annual meeting was having the opportunity to meet with the Father General, Luis Arostequi Gamboa.

left to right: Pascal, Nancy, Fr. John Michael, Fr. General, Gerald, Elizabeth, Fr. Provincial, Anita and Amelia at Mt Carmel Center in Dallas.

Some brief notes:
- FG spoke of our juridical ties and that OCDS have close relationsto the friars.- He explained that the Constitutions use the word "community"instead of "fraternity" because it was felt to better express what weare striving for.
- Friars and nuns live their lives for the Church. Seculars take the Church into the world.
- While in the past Seculars were passive in relation to mission and focused more on individual service, Carmel includes community service/apostolate. We are moving from that focus on individual service to community service. Seculars are being called to be more active in the mission of the Order.
- FG was excited to hear that we have so many vocations to OCDS, good vocations.
- at the end, FG encouraged us to remember to have patience.

We ended our annual meeting with a day of recollection given by Pat Thompson, president of our Austin community.

However, there was no rest for the provincial council after heading home. Soon, Amelia was on the road making visitations to our study group in Thomasville GA. Due to a lack of numbers, this study group was reduced in status and its members have been granted isolate status. Pascal went on visitation to our DeRidder LA study group.

At the beginning of November, Elizabeth, Nancy, and Fr. John Michael along with Paul Schubert from our Mobile AL study group attended the meeting of the OCDS National Council (see highlights of that meeting elsewhere in this issue). The Provincial Councils from both the California-Arizona Province and the Washington Province were also in attendance (Amelia and Pascal were making visitations that weekend and Gerald was enjoying Rome with his wonderful wife). Folks from the other provinces were very interested in hearing about our visitation process and how those have been going. All in all, it was a wonderful weekend of fellowship and the sharing of many ideas between the provinces.

In early December, Elizabeth visited our Atlanta GA and Lawrenceville GA study groups. She then rented a car and got see a bit of the beautiful state of Georgia for a visit with the OCDS in Savannah who have been a Group in Discernment for the past year. After the visit, the Savannah group will be elevated to study group status.

Last but not least, we have been thinking ahead to the fact that next year we will have our first election to replace some of the members of the Provincial Council. Soon we will be sending out letters to our canonical communities asking for nominations. We hope that there will be a number of people in our province willing to enter into this important service to the Order and any of us on the current Provincial Council would be happy to answer questions about our experiences (both good and bad, but especially the good).

Provincial Council:
Pascal Alfano, Gerald Alford, Elizabeth Korves, Nancy Thompson, and Amelia Wilken