Organization
The most fundamental unit of the Redemptorists is the local community in which members live together, combining their prayers, experiences, successes and failures, as well as any possessions for the service of the Gospel. Each community has a local superior who is chosen to exercise the ministry of leadership and the service of authority for the common good. The superior is assisted by a vicar and a group of advisors.
Local communities are organized into larger groups: provinces, vice-provinces, regions. A province is led by a provincial and his council, composed of elected members. In terms of governance, the members of each province elect representatives who gather in a Provincial Chapter Vice-provinces usually look to a founding province to provide support in terms of personnel and finances until it is able to become self-sufficient. Otherwise, it enjoys the freedom and authority necessary to adjust matters to the particular needs of its mission. Regions and Missions are normally communities established in new missionary areas and they depend on the founding province or vice-province.
The Superior General convokes the General Chapter every six years. The General Chapter is the primary governing and representative body of the Redemptorists, carefully examining the mission of the Congregation in accordance with the spirit of St. Alphonsus and its traditions. The day-to-day international affairs of the Congregation are handled by the General Council, which is composed of a superior general and six consultors. The General Council is both a directive and executive body.
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Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“When a man’s partner’s killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. As it happens, we’re in the detective business; well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere.”
—John Huston (1906–1987)