The Salesian «educational-pastoral» service. Origin and use of a post-conciliar expression
Gustavo Cavagnari
The Salesian Congregation is aware that the concretization of its mission among the young people — or, in other words, its pastoral service — must always and at the same time be educational and evangelizing, without falling into dualisms or sacrificing one dimension to the detriment of the other. This synthesis, however, has not always been consistent, not only at the level of practice, but also at the level of terminology. In concrete terms, the use and abuse of the concept of «pastoral» has provoked a semantic enlargement that, in the end, makes it lose its specificity, which is to be recuperated.
Keywords
Mission, pastoral, education, evangelization.