PRESENTATION

During one of the Claretian Renewal Encounters for formators in the Congregation, celebrated in Rome towards the end of the six-year period of 1985-1991, in a dialogue about formation plans and projects, one of the formators complained about the lack of formative plans and orientations at the congregational level. Granting that a formation plan is truly necessary and is lacking in the Congregation, my answer was diametrically opposed.

I supported my opinion by spontaneously recalling the valuable postconciliar documents that we all knew and others, less known, previous to the Council. Among these were the Regulations of our Fr. Founder, published by the General Prefecture of Formation, the orientations of the Constitutions and the Directory, the circular letters of the Superiors General, especially those of Fr. Nicholas García, the Ordo Studiorum Generalis (O.S.G.), etc… I ended by affirming that the formative tradition of the Congregation had always been very rich. Furthermore, the General Government had the intention of making an operative proposal to the next General Chapter to draft as soon as possible a general plan of formation.

This anecdote made me reflect later. Partly carried by curiosity, and partly by the desire to render a service to formation, I right away dedicated myself to the investigation of the historical reality of the Congregation in the field of formation intending to make it known to the formators in a systematic form.

The first opportunity came with the drafting and publication of the General Plan of Formation (GPF). In order to underscore the connection of the GPF with our formative tradition, I wrote some brief Historical Notes on the formation in our Congregation, its evolution through some official and semiofficial documents, and a brief exposition of the drafting process of the GPF.

Now, with the launching of the Immaculate Heart of Mary School for formators, I have deemed it necessary to further develop and present those historical notes as an introduction to the study of the GPF. To this end, I have expanded them with the exposition of the contents of the documents and I have completed them with new documents, previously not quoted.

These notes are given as an aid for formators, so that they may come to know the partly scattered and forgotten tradition of our formative reality. They are also intended as a stimulus for the scholars who may want to delve in some particular aspects of our formative history.

Jesús Mª Palacios, cmf.

General Prefect of Formation.

25 December 1996

Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord