SOLT Charism Statement from the Chapter: "Disciples of Jesus through Mary living in Marian-Trinitarian communion serving on ecclesial family teams in areas of deepest apostolic need"

“Disciples of Jesus through Mary living in Marian-Trinitarian communion serving on ecclesial family teams in areas of deepest apostolic need.”

Going through the SAIDI process in small group discussions

Apart from the General Election, the primary work of this year’s extraordinary Chapter was to clarify the SOLT charism statement.  Under the direction of an expert facilitator, Dr. Rose Fuentes, and following the SAIDI process, our weeklong efforts culminated in a charism statement that accurately represents the distinct animating spirit and mission of our community as communicated through Fr. Flanagan.  Before giving the final statement, I would like to briefly describe the process.  

Approximately 100 members participated in a dialogue which began by dividing into small groups in order to answer some introductory personal questions pertaining to the individual and their involvement in SOLT.  Following this introductory discussion, the small groups attempted to identify essential concepts to the charism and then develop a charism statement.  Each small group proceeded to join other small groups in order to arrive at a common charism statement.  This process of small groups joining to become larger groups was repeated until finally there were only three large groups with one charism statement each.  At that point, the Chapter delegates from the priests, sisters and lay members met as a large group to dwindle the three statements into one.  Finally, each of the chapters met individually to ratify the charism statement as an official act of their respective Chapters.  Our updated SOLT charism statement is: 

“Disciples of Jesus through Mary living in Marian-Trinitarian communion serving on ecclesial family teams in areas of deepest apostolic need.”

Not surprisingly, the charism statement is very similar to the previous one developed in the mid1980s, “Disciples of Jesus and Mary serving on ecclesial teams in areas of deepest apostolic need.”  The only changes were to improve the theological precision by stating disciples of Jesus through Mary, and to explicitly include in the statement the specific Marian-Trinitarian dimension that marks our life.  

Fr Peter Marsalek, SOLT
General Priest Servant
July 29, 2013