On Pluralist Communities Part 1

If I maybe daring enough to say that the biggest threat to formation today is not provided by the external environment, it is set in the closedmindedness of some of the senior members of the congregation who will make up the formative community of todays' formands. Ergo, the biggest challenge to formators is not in so much in providing the right formative interventions (though that too is very important), but it is in convincing and training local communities to transform into formative environments.

An authentic formative environment nurtures the fragile religious identity shaped from postulance through novitiate, as well as sustain the learnings and insights from the various formation programs. It will not depend on the modeling of one virtuous member, it will hinge on the quality of the relationship between and among members.

I strongly disagree wtih some formators who warn/caution and prepare their novices about the sad realities of local communities and teach their candidates skills to survive the difficulties. Postmodern generation of formands are wired to survive, they dont need survival skills, they need consistency.

Thus it is important to see to it that local communities share the paradigms of the formation committees and the formators themselves. I would cite the examples done by the Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM), the Carmelite Missionaries (CM) and the SFIC (Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception) among others who really invested time and energy by allowing their formators to explain to all communities and members the formation paradigms today.

(next week: tips in forming formative communities)