Report from Father Edwin Keel S.M.
Marists to Become One Province
On January 1, 2009, the Marist Fathers and Brothers in the USA will reconfigure from two separate Provinces
into one. On Thursday, July 10, 2008, the Provincial Chapters (representative decision-making bodies), of the
current Atlanta and Boston Provinces, meeting at a retreat house in Plymouth Michigan, each decided by
unanimous vote to make a formal request to the Superior General to suppress the current provinces and
create one new province. Fr. Jan Hulshof, the Superior General, was present. He immediately communicated
with his Council in Rome. The General Council phoned back at 8:00am Friday morning with an affirmative
response. The new entity will be called The Society of Mary (Marists) Province of the United States of America.
This important milestone in the history of the Marists in the United States has been in preparation for some
time. It was preceded in 2000 with the merger of the Washington and San Francisco Provinces into the Atlanta
Province. Since that time there has been much inter-provincial cooperation between the Boston and Atlanta
Provinces on vocation recruitment, seminary formation, the USA Mission Office, and Marist Laity. Then, in
June of both 2006 and 2007, the membership of the Boston and Atlanta Provinces met in joint week-long
Assemblies at the Mundeline Conference Center near Chicago as part of a process of discernment regarding
a possible reconfiguration. Between Assemblies much work was done by various committees and also by the
province membership meeting in regional groupings.
Why go through all this trouble to reconfigure? The Marists see this move as a way of renewing their
presence and their mission in the USA in the face of a declining number and increasing age of their
membership. By reconciling their different cultures and approaches, and by pooling their resources and
sharing their ideas and ways of doing things, the Marists are hoping to deepen and intensify their spirituality,
their communal life, and their dedication to the work of Mary which is their mission.
One of the things that many of the Marist priests and brothers of the new Province agree on is that their future
vitality lies, among other things, in a closer partnership between Marist religious and lay Marists. It has been
suggested that rather than seeing the Society of Mary as simply a religious order with a lay third order
attached, we should think more in terms of a spiritual movement in the Church involving both religious and laity
together, in some cases perhaps even living together, but certainly encouraging each other in the living of the
Marist spirit, and collaborating in various ways in doing the work of Mary. Undoubtedly the reconfiguration of
the provinces will impact not only their religious membership, but their lay membership as well.