Page 84 - 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 83

CHAPTER 13 MEMBERSHIP 83
14. Absences from the praesidium should be viewed with a
right degree of sympathy for the circumstances which are
responsible. Names should not be lightly removed from the
roll, especially where sickness is in question, even though it is
likely to be long-continued. But when a membership is
deemed to have been discontinued and the name has been
formally removed from the roll, there is required for renewal a
further probation and the re-taking of the Promise.

15. For the purposes of the work of the Legion, but only for
those purposes, members are addressed by the title of
“Brother” or “Sister” as the case may be.
16. Members may be grouped in men’s, women’s, boys’,
girls’, or mixed praesidia, as the needs suggest, and as
approved by the Curia.
The Legion came into existence as an organisation of
women, and eight years passed before the first men’s
praesidium was established. Yet it forms an equally suitable
basis for the organisation of men, and now there are in
operation men’s praesidia and mixed praesidia in great
numbers. The first praesidia in the Americas, in Africa, and in
China were of men.
Though women have thus the place of honour in the
organ isa tion, the masculine pronoun is used throughout
these pages to designate the legionary of either sex. It
avoids a tiresome repetition of the phrase “he or she.”
“The Church was founded to spread the kingdom of Christ over all
the earth for the glory of God the Father, to make all men partakers in
redemp tion and salvation and through them to establish the right
relationship of the entire world to Christ. Every activity of the
Mystical Body with this in view goes by the name of “apostolate”; the
Church exercises it through all its members, though in various ways.
In fact, the Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the
apostolate as well. In the organism of a living body no member plays
a purely passive part, sharing in the life of the body it shares at the
same time in its activity. The same is true for the Body of Christ, the
Church: ‘the whole Body achieves full growth in dependence on the
full functioning of each part.’ (Eph 4:16) Between the members of
this body there exists, further, such a unity and solidarity (cf Eph
4:16) that a member who does not work at the growth of the body to
the extent of his possibilities must be considered useless both to the
Church and to himself.” (AA 2)