Page 162 - 聖母軍團員手冊（英文版，2014年5月-2022年1月更新版）

Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 157

CHAPTER 28 GOVERNMENT OF THE LEGION 157
virtually a district council. This is misleading, because it is
only the nucleus of that higher council which is proper to the
district. The representatives of every affiliated council have
the duty to attend and no doubt conscientiously do so to the
best of their ability. The alternative which is proposed is that
the higher council should function separately, contenting
itself with, say, four meetings in the year. By this means it
would be enabled to secure a large representative attendance.
But indeed such a proposal, alleged to be in the interests of
representative government, is far from being so in reality. For
during the long intervals between its meetings, that council
must necessarily leave its functions to be discharged by its
officers. Thus only in name is the council exercising the
functions of government. As a consequence its members soon
lose the sense of responsibility and all real interest in its work.
Moreover, a body meeting so rarely would be more like a
Congress than a council. It would not possess the
qualifications for governing, the chief of which is the sense of
continuity and of mental closeness to the work of
administration and its problems.
20. Every legionary is entitled to communicate privately
with his Curia or with any higher council of the Legion. In
dealing with anything thus imparted to it, that council shall
act with circum spection and of course, with due respect for
the position and rights of any subordinate Legion body. It
may be objected that departure from the normal channel of
communication with higher bodies, which is through one’s
own immediate body (praesidium or council), would be an
act of disloyalty. That is not so. For the fact has to be faced
that for various reasons officers sometimes withhold from
higher bodies matters which should be reported to them; so
that — were there no other avenue of information open —
those higher bodies would be deprived of necessary
knowledge. Each council has the right — without which it
could not function properly — to know what is really taking
place in the sphere committed to its care, and this essential
right must be safeguarded.
21. The duty of contributing to the funds of its next
highest council is imposed on each legionary body. In this
connection see chapters 34 and 35.