Of The Savannah Diocese

Savannah, Georgia

The purpose of the Precursillo:

(FI) The pre-Cursillo is the first of the 3 stages of the Cursillo movement. In this stage the Cursillo movement initiates the evangelizing process it must complete in order to accomplish it’s purpose (of evangelizing the world).

This stage consists of:

In short, it is a way for us, as Christians, to find other Christians in our homes, neighborhoods, work place, and other places where we live the greater part of our lives, so that we and they may be able to live a Christian life in a more natural way as free from the evil influences of the world as possible and with other people that feel the same way so that there is a supportive environment that fosters our Christian way of life.

In case you aren’t familiar with what I mean when I say "what is fundamental to be a Christian", let me review it for you. What must we believe as Catholic Christians is this:

Today we will discuss step one (1) of the Pre-Cursillo process; i.e. The organized way of discerning environments in need of evangelizing.

Simply put it refers to the social setting a human being finds himself/herself in on a regular basis. Most people (except hermits) are a part of several environments such as family, neighborhood, work, social, cultural and even political. These environments all have characteristics of stability and patterns of interaction. By "stability" I mean: are the groups in that environment made up of the same people or do they change often? An evangelization plan is very difficult to accomplish in a changing environment. Accidental social settings will always be a "one-shot" deal and by definition "unplanned". By "patterns of interaction" I mean: are the environmental relationships superficial or deep viable and substantial so that positive outcomes can be achieved? And will these persons be able to respond to your plan in a meaningful way? I emphasize the word "plan", because in the 3-Day manual page 121, Evangelization is equated with Apostolic action only if we do it as part of God’s plan of salvation. "The focus of evangelization, in the context of this talk and in the Cursillo, is… apostolic action. Apostolic actions are those actions we plan and implement as instruments of the Lord to bring someone or a group environment) closer to Christ".

As an individual Cursillista the need to actually select an environment to evangelize is a moot point. If we are living a Christian lifestyle we will naturally want to evangelize all of the environments we are a part of. This does not mean we shouldn’t prioritize our efforts, however. The movement (FI para 217) suggests that we put our priority on those environments which have the greatest influence on our own life.

The National Cursillo secretariat is targeting our entire nation for evangelization and asks all of us cursillistas, in America, to establish our priorities to be in line with the National priorities as much as possible. The National secretariat selects broad environmental areas that they have studied and prioritizes them according to how they perceived them to have the greatest influence on our society, for example:

Our National Leaders ask all cursillistas who can penetrate and study these environments, of national priority, in a normal manner, either because they are already in them or have personal relationships with people in those environments, to make these environments their own priority. If it isn’t part of your (cursillistas) environment then at the very least you and all other cursillistas should be offering Palanca for the efforts of those others that are in these environments.

Closer to home in our own diocese of Savannah, the School of Leaders and Secretariat with the Bishops approval, have previously decided what broad environments to target based on their own criteria at the time of selection (we understand that these same criteria may not apply today). But they prayerfully decided that the following environments have the greatest influence on our society in our diocese:

Some of the criteria that were used at the time to study the various environments in our diocese included:

0. the number of cursillistas in the various environments available to study and evangelize in those environments,

0. the probability of success working with people in those environments,

0. the perceived immediacy or severity of the problem.

Each Ultreya was asked to gather specific information about these environments in their communities and deaneries and report back to the secretariat so that the information would help them make a good decision.

As you can see each layer of the movement has selected environmental priorities using it’s own criteria to determine which environment is exerting the greatest influence on our society. The closer it gets to each one of you as individual cursillistas the more personal the criteria gets.