ROME, AUG. 26, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Communications technology has been fundamental for the preparations of the 290th general chapter of the Order of Preachers.
The meeting to consider the Dominican mission and to elect new superiors will begin in Rome on Tuesday and run through Sept. 21.
Preparations leading up to the chapter included a series of six videoclips, developed to help the religious go deeper into the Dominican spirituality as it is being lived today.
The clips, presented at the order’s Web page, use friar’s testimonies to preset four key elements of Dominican spirituality: mission, study, consecrated life and the governing of the order.
As well, the internet has been essential for preparing the general chapter: the organization, distribution of information and the friars’ responses.
The 130 delegates at the meeting will represent some 6,500 Dominicans around the world.
In a July 9 letter, Master of the Order Father Carlos Azpiroz Costa noted some of the challenges facing the general chapter.
«Well into the 21st century, at the beginning of the third millennium,» he wrote, «the challenges today are new. Now, certain theologians speak of the need to ‘re-found’ religious life. Not everyone accepts this expression.»
Father Azpiroz spoke of the order’s 800th anniversary in 2016 and he said the general chapter will «address and define, inspire us and motivate us to the courage of the future, to reform what needs to be reformed, restore what we should restore, renew what demands to be renewed, re-found — in the sense of returning again to the sources, to the roots — what needs to be re-founded to confirm us in our life and mission as friars preachers.»
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On the Net:
Dominican videos: http://curia.op.org/en/
