Provincial Council report

REPORT FROM THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL
April 2007

The beginning of the year has been a slow time in general for the Provincial Council. We’ve been making arrangements for this year’s visitations as well as finally finding a date for all of us for our annual meeting. This took awhile because certain members (we’ll not name names) wanted to avoid having our meeting on their upcoming 70th birthday. If we didn’t know that their families will make a big deal about it, we’d think they were avoiding such an important event worthy of great celebration.

Only a couple of visitations have happened during this quarter. Elizabeth visited New Iberia, LA where the council offered to find her a husband. She politely declined. Pascal visited our Madison, AL study group.

We’ve also started the process for the first Provincial Council elections. Per Sec. XX of our Provincial Statutes, canonical communities are allowed to nominate one candidate. We’ve sent letters to all our canonical communities asking for nominations. Deadlines for the nominations are June 1 which will allow the Provincial Council to consider the nominees during our annual meeting. We will narrow down the candidates to five and contact each one with information about what is involved in this important service to our province. Ballots for the actual election will be mailed out at the beginning of December. In anticipation of all the elections in spring, we plan to focus the fall issue of the Flos Carmeli on leadership and election issues.

All this election business necessitated some discernment on the part of the current Provincial Council regarding who would like to step down next year and who are willing to continue serving until the 2011 elections as we start staggering the terms. Pascal, Gerald, and Amelia have all decided to step down and return to fully enjoying the life of the retired. Nancy and Elizabeth have agreed to continue serving (we note for those who might be asked to consider being nominated that Nancy and Elizabeth do both work full time jobs, so it is possible to serve on the Provincial Council without yet being retired). It is with some bitter-sweetness that we look forward to our meeting this year as we realize this will be our last time together as a Provincial Council since our 2008 meeting will be with the three new members. But it’ll be another year yet before we bid these three farewell from their service and in the meantime, we’ll have plenty of work for them.

Oh, and we should mention by way of preparing everyone that we promised Fr. John Michael that we would allow him to retire at the end of this triennium. So, we’re putting our minds towards discerning which friar we might recommend to be our new Provincial Delegate starting next year. The final decision rests with Father Provincial but last time he did ask for our input. So if you would like to recommend any of the friars, do feel free to contact any member of the Provincial Council with your thoughts. Fr. John Michael hopes to then be able to devote more attention to his duties as provincial archivist and write a history of the province.

Finally, Linda Klotz of our New Orleans, LA community has been asked to serve as one of our representatives to the OCDS National Council. She replaces Nancy who has served her three year term and now rotates off. This is the final year of Elizabeth’s term on the National Council (she’ll be replaced by whoever assumes the role of Provincial Council president next year) and Paul Shubert of our Mobile, AL study group has two more years in his term. The next OCDS National Council meeting will take place immediately before the Seattle Congress.

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