Page 171 - 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 166

166 GOVERNMENT OF THE LEGION CHAPTER 28
14. An agenda for the meeting shall be prepared
beforehand by the Secretary in consultation with the
President, and circulated to each Spiritual Director and each
President previous to the praesidium meeting immediately
before the Curia meeting. It shall be the duty of the President
to notify the other representatives of the praesidium.
Such agenda should be provisional, and as much liberty as
possible should be extended to members to raise additional
points.
15. Vigilant watch must be kept by the Curia to ensure that
praesidia do not drift into the giving of material relief, which
would mark the end of all really useful legionary work. The
periodic inspection of Treasurers’ statements will help the
Curia to discern the beginnings of any incorrect tendency.
16. The President (and of course the same applies to all
those others in authority) should beware of falling into what is
an exceedingly common fault, that of keeping even the most
minute items of responsibility in his own hands. One result of
such a tendency will be the slowing down of work. It may
even paralyse the whole system in large centres where the
work is considerable in quantity. The narrower the neck of the
bottle, the more slowly will the contents be given forth, until
sometimes people break off that neck in their impatience.
But another serious feature is that the denial of some

respons ibility to those who are fit to assume it does injustice
both to those individuals and to the whole Legion. The
exercising of some degree of responsibility is a necessary part
of the development of great qualities in the individual.
Responsibility, indeed, can transmute mere sand into gold!
The Secretary should not be held restricted to secretarial
work, nor the Treasurer to the keeping of the accounts. All
officers, and even senior and promising members, should be
entrusted with spheres of initiative and control, for which —
subject of course to the higher authority — they will be held
responsible. The ultimate aim must be the filling of every
legionary with a sense of responsibility for the well-being and
extension of the Legion as a potent means of helping souls.
“All the works of God are founded on unity, for they are founded on
Himself, who is the most awfully simple and transcendent of possible
unities. He is emphatically One; and whereas He is also multiform in