PC Report

Provincial Council welcomes new members, attends Chapter

--by the Provincial Council

We bid farewell with a great deal of gratitude to Pascal Alfano, Gerald Alford, and Amelia Wilken as they have now concluded their term of service on the Provincial Council. They will be remembered for their valued contribution to getting the Provincial Council started, writing the Provincial Statutes, and great love they have shown to Carmel and to the members of our province. We wish each of them well as they get to relax, enjoy retirement, spend time in the garden, catch up on reading, etc. We also extend our thanks to Anita Mendoza who has been serving as our secretary and also as our liaison to the Spanish-speaking members of our province.

Amelia made one last visitation to our study group in Covington where she began a discernment with them regarding whether they were ready for holding provisional elections. Elizabeth returned to Atlanta to visit both the Atlanta study group and the one in the suburb of Lawrenceville. While Elizabeth was in Atlanta, Nancy arrived to make the visitation of our Georgetown study group, followed by the visitation of Austin.

At the beginning of April, Henrietta Albright, Gloria Guajardo, and Dorothy Mansen signed on to the Provincial Council's private Yahoo Web site to "listen in" on how the PC conducts is business online. Then we all gathered in Castroville, Texas (just west of San Antonio) at the end of May for our first meeting as the new Provincial Council. Joining us was Karen Harris, [right] our new secretary from Atlanta.

On Friday evening, we drove into town to pick up Father John Michael and our new Provincial Delegate, Father Bonaventure Sauer, for dinner. Father John Michael returned with us to Castroville to help with the orientation of our new council members. [Gloria, Karen & Henrietta at orientation] Saturday was a full day, covering a great many topics about which our new Provincial Council members needed to learn.

On Sunday, we began the day very early with Mass at the San Antonio monastery of our nuns and then had a wonderful visit with Sister Rosemarie. After breakfast, we returned Father John Michael to the basilica and then headed downtown for some sight-seeing along the River Walk, the Alamo and the Cathedral of San Fernando. Finally, the heat got to us and we headed back to the cool of the retreat center in Castroville. We returned to work that evening and the new Provincial Council re-elected Elizabeth as president for the next three years.

On Monday, Father Bonaventure was able to join us as Elizabeth and Nancy gave a brief summary of every community and study group in the province.

Tuesday was our big day with the friars at their chapter. Father Provincial Gregory Ross gave a brief summary of the topics that the friars had been discussing and introduced everyone. Elizabeth then gave a report on the work of the Provincial Council over the past three years and the general state of seculars throughout the province. She then invited the outgoing superiors at each of the foundations of friars to share how the friars and seculars are collaborating in each place. At some foundations, there is a great deal of collaboration between the friars and the seculars; at others, there is minimal contact between the two. There was also discussion on how the seculars could assist the friars with vocations outreach. Father Luís Castañeda is developing a vocations plan for the friars and we encouraged him to include seculars as part of that plan.

After a very nice lunch with the friars, we gathered in a small room at the monastery to continue working through the afternoon while our friars took their siesta and then continued their chapter business. As we prepared to go over to the basilica for Mass, an ongoing health issue for Gloria became such that we contacted her husband to take her to the emergency room. About the same time, Father John Magdalene was also being taken to emergency. Both were home later that day and neither situation was as serious as originally feared, for which everyone is grateful. Since Father Provincial needed to tend to Father John Magdalene at the hospital, he was unable to join us for dinner after Mass as originally planned, although Father Bonaventure was able to come.

On Wednesday, we were all a bit too tired for more work so after some sharing of what Carmel means to us, we packed up, cleaned up our house at the retreat center, and headed for home. Henrietta, Gloria and Dorothy were feeling a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information covered for their orientation but we welcome them aboard as they begin their terms on the Provincial Council.

Among the items that did get addressed during our meeting was working out some of the details for once again hosting councilor workshops in spring 2009. We have some preliminary dates and are now searching for facilities to house us. Keep an eye out for the announcement of details, hopefully in the next issue of Flos Carmeli.

We hope many of you will be able to attend the Regional Congress in Houston this September. We look forward to seeing everyone there.

Contact information for the new Provincial Council-­- Henrietta Albright, Gloria Guajardo, Elizabeth Korves, Dorothy Mansen and Nancy Thompson— follows in the O.C.D.S. Directory.

Study Groups asked to send minutes to Province

--by the Provincial Council

All Study Groups are required to send a copy of their monthly minutes to the Province. Since Father John Michael is no longer the Provincial Delegate, please send your minutes to our new Provincial Council secretary, Karen Harris, at karenharrisocds22@yahoo.com . Karen will post the minutes to the private Provincial Council Yahoo group so that both the visitator of your study group and Father Bonaventure will have easy access to them. Please stop sending your minutes to Father John Michael and now send them to Karen instead. Thanks!

Events to celebrate with our friars

Recently the Provincial Council asked the friars to provide notice of professions, ordinations and major anniversaries so the information could appear in Flos Carmeli.

Such upcoming events include the following:

July 16 Brother Bernard, 25th anniversary of profession
Mount Carmel Center
4600 W Davis St
Dallas TX 75211-3498

July 18 Father Jenaro de la Cruz, 50th anniversary of ordination
PO Box 5280
San Antonio TX 78201-0280

July 20 Father Sam Anthony Morello, 55th anniversary of profession
2925 S. Carrollton Road
New Orleans LA 70118

Reviewing O.C.D.S. legislation

--by Elizabeth Korves, O. C.D.S.

Is your copy of our O.C.D.S. legislation gathering dust? When did you last read through the Rule of St. Albert, the Constitutions, the Statutes and the Ritual (the introduction to the Ritual has some good material!)??

When we make our Promise, we commit ourselves to living out the Discalced Carmelite charism as it is outlined in these documents. So it is incredibly important that we be very familiar with them. We should be reading through our legislation on a regular basis. Some people read through all of it every few months. Some people read an article each day. Some read through one part each week (i.e. Rule of St Albert this weekend, Constitutions next weekend, Statutes the weekend after, etc.).

Every member of the Secular Order who has been clothed should have a copy of the full legislation handy. It can be downloaded from the Provincial Web site. Bound books (both hard-copy and paperback) can be ordered from the Provincial Web site. The Provincial Web site is at http://www.carmelitesok.org/ocdsok/oklahonia_province.htm (note that AOL users have been having some problems accessing the site —the problem is with AOL, not the Web site).

So... is your copy of the legislation gathering dust or is it getting dog-eared from frequent use? Our commitment to Carmel calls for the latter!