The Context
On March 30th 1998, the five leading candidates as
selected by a preliminary ballot met for their fifth meeting in San Antonio,
Texas, to dialogue with over 80 members of the Southern Province of the Oblate Missionary
Order in the USA. The texts that follow consist of three parts, corresponding to the
structure of the day.
First, the candidates were asked to give a 5-10 minute talk about a) what had
influenced their lives as Oblates and how they saw leadership, b) about how they viewed
the current changes in provincial structures, and c)about their hopes for the future.
Second, the gathering broke into groups to meet with each candidate for 10 minutes to
ask them direct questions on what they had shared. The text recorded here is from only one
of several groups.
Third, the afternoon program invited the groups to formulate specific questions
relevant to their missionary work in that region, and the candidates were free to respond
to whatever questions they wished.
In capturing the texts, we have broken them into these three parts. What readers will
not get is a sense of the conversation that created the texts, and the great sense of
humor with which they were presented and received. However, our interest in narrative
process is to read them for the different stories of change that each contains, and for
the core narrative that binds them into a common story.
