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Posted: January 30
Sometimes the suggestion that comes in an email is deceptively simple. The best ones (and the most work) are the ones that follow the form, “Why don’t you…” This fall a young Jesuit asked the obvious question why we don’t have the basic documents about communication from the Society on the Jescom web page since it would help and other young Jesuits to make their cases for a future apostolate in communication. Why not indeed? Mostly because it so obvious that it never ocurred to me. Last week I finally started to collect the documents. One of the first and still most important documents came out of General Congregation 31. I had it this summer, but could not find it anywhere in my office. It is probably hiding in the same place where single socks go, wherever that secret place in the house is. Fortunately, someone else was either more organized than I, or just had not yet tempted the document to go into hiding. So we started scanning documents.
That part was easy. Then I started working through my computer’s hard drive, looking for the best versions of documents I have written over the past few years. Several of them are very helpful in interpreting the official documents and sketching out where the communications apostolate. Once I get them all together, I will post a new version of Jescom Notes on the web site. The feedback from the first version was also very positive. It has taken awhile (and is just as obvious as the suggestion about the documents) to make the web site an effective replacement for the printed newsletter that my predecessors used to send out.
Yesterday morning at our monthly briefing with Father General, he announced that he wanted us to provide statistics about the apostolic activity in each of our areas for the meeting next December of all the provincials in the world at Loyola. Fortunately, I have been working on just the solution for that challenge. We are developing an additional database which I will be able to use to produce an online Jesuit Communication Directory. I will announce it officially in the next notes, but I spent a lot of time last week thinking about the different categories to express and count our activity. Statistics are an important statement about what is important in an activity and how you want to define it. For Jesuits, the challenge is how to balance individual and institutional activity, as well as the growth in communication in apostolates not specifically dedicated to communication. The explosion of web sites is a good example of such growth, as well as community radio stations that are sponsored by parishes and social centers.
January has been a quiet month, but very productive. Now, if I don’t get any more email suggestions, I will be fine.
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