Ordo Praedicatorum

In its July 29, 2007 issue, Our Suday Visitor Newsweekly published a special section on Dominican Spirituality entitled “Dominicans’ Spiritual Adventures”. The series of articles was written by Mr. Barry Michaels, a high school teacher and freelance writer who has published a number of books and articles on a variey of Catholic subjects.

Barry Michaels’ newest book, Saints for Our Times: New Novenas and Prayers, was recently published by Pauline Books. He is also the author of At the School of Mary and Eucharist: The Church’s Treasure, both companions to teaching documents of Pope John Paul II. His website is www.barrymichaelsbooks.com.

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ST. DOMINIC AND HIS ‘CHAMPIONS OF FAITH’
by Barry Michaels
It was 800 years ago this summer that a group of nine young women gathered for the first time at the Church of St. Mary in the village of Prouille in France. Though they had no way of knowing it then, they represented an initial step in the unfolding of a project with an impact that would be felt around the world and through the centuries, right up to our own day. Gathered in a convent at the church, these women had three important things in common.  First, they had each at some point fallen prey to a popular heresy that was drawing growing numbers of Christians into dangerous error. Second, they had each been converted back to the Catholic faith by the preaching of a remarkable friar known as Dominic of Osma. Finally, each of them would now consecrate their lives to living this faith with an undivided heart, and to support the important work of the friar by their own example, their encouragement, and their prayers.  It was 1207. The foundation of St. Dominic’s famous Order of Preachers was still nine years away. But in founding this new convent of nuns at Prouille, Dominic was already beginning to respond to a powerful call by God to develop a new way to address the errors which threatened the faith of Christians and to proclaim the Gospel to the world.Defending the Faith

He was born in 1170, in Spain. Sometime during his teens, he joined a community of priests at the cathedral in Osma who followed the Rule of St. Augustine and was soon ordained. In 1201, the prior of the community, Diego d’Azevedo, was named a bishop, and it was Dominic who was chosen to fill the role he’d left vacant.

The new bishop was entrusted with various diplomatic missions by the Pope, and he took Dominic along with him. It was on these journeys that the two of them came face to face with the reality of a rapidly spreading heresy called Albigensianism.

The impressive lives of simplicity and poverty lived by the men who were teaching the heresy gave them strong credibility among the people. But what they taught called into question the most fundamental teachings of the Christian faith.

Albigensianism (named for the city of Albi where it originated) distrusted the human body, or anything that was part of the material world. It suggested that the good God had created our souls and spiritual realities, but that an evil force, another god, was the creator of all material things, including our bodies. Albigensianism looked positively on suicide and negatively on marriage and having children.

In an overnight stop that Dominic and Bishop Diego made during their travels, Dominic spent an entire night talking with the innkeeper, who was an Albigensian. By morning, the innkeeper had embraced the true faith, and Dominic knew that God was calling him to an important new mission.

When the bishop returned to Osma, Dominic stayed in France, taking every opportunity to preach and teach. But he realized that God did not want him doing it on his own. It was two years later that he opened the convent of sisters in Prouille.

He also gathered a small band of preachers to work together with him. But it was not until almost a decade later, in 1215, that he began to give more formal organization to the group, which would be called the Order of Preachers.

Champions of the Faith

Dominic wanted to form a group of preachers who were well-prepared to explain and defend the faith in convincing ways, and whose lives of humility and poverty made them credible teachers.

“He did not want his monks out working in the fields, as members of other orders did. He wanted us to study. That was to be considered a religious observance, too. The preacher must strengthen his intellect,” Fr. Basil Cole, OP, professor of theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, recently told OSV.

“Preaching is not just a fervent thought, saying ‘I love Jesus.’ The preacher has to be able to explain why Jesus is worth loving.”

Ongoing study and contemplation of the truths of the faith was, from the beginning, an essential part of a Dominican friar’s life.

“When you became a Dominican, you studied for the rest of your life. Everyone did, from the prior on down,” Fr. Cole said.

Dominic also did not want his friars cloistered in particular monasteries, because he thought it would impede their preaching ministry. Instead, he established provinces, within which each friar would travel and preach. They had a new kind of mobility previously unknown to any religious order.

In October of 1216, Dominic traveled to Rome to present his Order of Preachers for the approval of Pope Honorius III. The Pope not only approved; he called the friars “the champions of the faith and the true lights of the world.”

Having received the Pope’s approval, Dominic immediately dispersed the small group of friars far in several directions. It was at this point that things began to happen fast for the Order of Preachers. They met with extraordinary success, both in the work of preaching the faith and in gathering new members into the order.

By 1221, there were sixty Dominican friaries spread across Europe. In that year, Dominic fell gravely ill, probably out of exhaustion.

He was taken to a Benedictine monastery in the countryside, where he might rest more comfortably during his last days. When he overheard the Benedictine superior telling his friars that they would be welcome to bury their leader at the monastery, Dominic intervened immediately.

“I want to be buried under the feet of my brothers,” he protested. It was an eloquent expression both of his humility and the value he placed on the community he had created. He died on August 4, 1221, and his body was returned for burial to the monastery where he’d lived.

Dominic was canonized in 1234, just 13 years after his death, by Pope Gregory IX. Today, his remains rest in the Church of St. Dominic, run by Order of Preachers, in Bologna, Italy.

Gifts to the Church

In the centuries that followed, the Dominican order continued to produce men and women devoted to the vigorous study and preaching of the Word of God. Its friars and nuns have made remarkable contributions to the theology and spirituality of the Catholic Church. Many great saints and scholars have come from its ranks.

“The order has survived because its charism of preaching for the salvation of souls is relevant to every age. Peoples of all times and places need to hear the saving truth of the Gospel proclaimed in an intelligent manner and with conviction,” Fr. John Langlois, OP, student master at the Dominican House of Studies, told OSV recently.

One great contribution that Dominicans have made to the Church has been the promotion of the Rosary and devotion to the Blessed Mother. While most Church historians today acknowledge that the story of Mary handing the Rosary to Dominic himself during a mystical experience is most likely an invention, the Order of Preachers has without a doubt played a crucial role is making the devotion popular around the world.

It was Fr. Alan de la Roche, a Dominican priest who lived in France during the fifteenth century, who is most responsible for introducing the Rosary on a wide scale. He was a zealous apostle of this devotion. Another French Dominican who lived at the same time, Jacques Sprenger, is credited with dividing the long prayer into the various decades and mysteries.

“Devotion to Mary, especially through the Rosary, is one of the great gifts of the Dominican order,” Fr. Cole said.
Another hallmark of a Dominican lifestyle and spirituality is joyfulness.

“In the process for his canonization, many witnesses testified that [St. Dominic] was a man of great joy. He radiated the joy of knowing how deeply he was loved by Christ,” Fr. Langlois said.

“In imitation of him, Dominican spirituality is also characterized by a spirit of joy. We rejoice in God’s mercy to poor sinners and proclaim that mercy in word and deed.”

As Dominicans observe the eight hundredth anniversary of the foundation of that first monastery of nuns at Prouille, the entire Church has reason to gratefully rejoice.

IN A CLASS BY HIMSELF: ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

About four years after the death of St. Dominic, a boy was born outside a little Italian town who would not only join the young Order of Preachers, but become a shining star in the firmament of Dominican history. Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas holds a place all his own in the history of the Church and, in particular, in the theological study of the Church’s faith.

Thomas spent his life as a university professor, in Paris and several Italian cities, where he lectured and wrote books of theology and philosophy. Among many important works, his most famous is the Summa Theologica (“Summary of Theology”), a massive synthesis and reflection upon the Church’s theological knowledge. It remains a landmark in Catholic theology today.

Important as his work was to him, St. Thomas never completed his great Summa Theologica. On December 6, 1273, he had an extraordinary mystical experience while saying Mass. He told his secretary that all of his work seemed “like so much straw” compared to the awesome God whom he had encountered in prayer, and he never wrote again.

A year later, Pope Gregory X asked Thomas to put his theological expertise at the service of the Council of Lyons. The Dominican friar accepted the invitation, but died on the way to Lyons.

St. Thomas was canonized in 1323 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567 by the Dominican Pope St. Pius V.
Even today, an academic course in almost any topic of Catholic theology will include at least some consideration of what St. Thomas Aquinas had to say on the subject. An entire movement in philosophy and theology, called scholasticism, grew from Thomas’s thought.

At the end of the nineteenth century, it was given new impetus by an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, who insisted on the important place of St. Thomas as a philosopher and a teacher of the Christian faith. The renewed movement flourished, under the name of neo-scholasticism, right up until the upheavals in the study of theology after the Second Vatican Council.

“Today, St. Thomas is especially important today in the field of moral theology,” Fr. John Langlois, master of students at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, told OSV.

“The fundamental Thomistic insight is that the commandments and the beatitudes indicate the way to human happiness. God’s law is the way to true freedom and human flourishing.”

Even among the many great sons and daughters of St. Dominic, St. Thomas Aquinas is in a class by himself.

A CROWDED HISTORY OF DOMINICAN GREATS

In addition to St. Thomas Aquinas, many other Dominicans have served the Church in some remarkable ways, right up to our own day. Here is a sampling of some of the most prominent among them and their achievements.

Blessed Fra Angelico (1395-1455) is best known for his work as an artist – reverent frescoes and stirring altarpieces in historic Italian churches. He was a Dominican friar, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was an Italian lay Dominican who wrote extraordinary works of spiritual theology, advised several popes (sometimes to their own chagrin), and led a mystical prayer life. She was canonized in 1461, named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970 and a co-patron of Europe by John Paul II in 1999.

Bartolomeo de las Casas (1484-1566) left his native Spain for the Americans as part of an expedition in 1502. Repulsed by the way the native peoples were being treated by Spaniards, he became a Dominican priest and a strong advocate of human rights in his writing and preaching. He was also the editor of the published journal of Christopher Columbus.

Pope St. Pius V (1504-1572) was a holy man who achieved remarkable things during a short pontificate. He initiated an effective reform of the clergy and religious orders of his day, promulgated a new version of the Roman Missal, which was used, with few revisions, up until the liturgical reforms Second Vatican Council, and published the first official summary of all Catholic teaching in the history of the Church, the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (1851-1926), the daughter of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a married woman who converted to Catholicism with her husband when she was 40. After her husband’s death, she founded a community of Dominican nuns to serve the sick and poor, known today as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.

Cardinal Yves Marie Congar (1904-1995) was a Dominican priest whose theological work was a major part of the renewal in Catholic theology in the first half of the twentieth century. When he was forbidden by the Vatican to teach for a time during the mid-1950’s, he responded humbly and obediently. This judgment was later reconsidered, and he was invited to serve as an expert theologian at the Second Vatican Council, where he made important contributions on the topics of ecumenism and the theology of the Church.

Cardinal Georges Cottier (b. 1922) is a Dominican priest who served as the Theologian to the Pontifical Household throughout much of the pontificate of John Paul II. Named a cardinal in 2003, he only retired from the position in 2005, at the age of 83.

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn (b. 1945) is currently the Archbishop of Vienna, Austria. Before becoming a bishop, he served as a professor of theology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. While still a priest, he put his theological expertise at the service of the Church in a historic way when Pope John Paul II called upon him to serve as the Editing Secretary in the process which produced the Catechism of the Catholic Church, first published in 1992.

DOMINICANS IN AMERICA

The Order of Preachers has deep roots in the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, America’s first bishop, John Carroll, was struggling to provide adequate spiritual leadership for the Catholics entrusted to his care, especially those in the frontier lands. One of the first places he turned was to the Dominicans.

In 1805, at Bishop Carroll’s request, Fr. Edward Dominic Fenwick came from England with a few companions to found a Dominican friary in Kentucky, which was then rugged frontier territory. Fenwick had been born in the colony of Maryland in 1768, but went to Belgium to become a Dominican and study theology, then moved to England during the French Revolution.

Fenwick and his companions built St. Rose Priory church (named after the Dominican saint from South America, Rose of Lima), as well as a school, near Springfield, Kentucky. He went on to build several other churches in the region, including the first church in the city of Cincinnati. In 1822, he was ordained a bishop and appointed to be the first Bishop of Cincinnati. Bishop Fenwick continued his ministry, as well as some heroic missionary work in the American frontier, until his death from cholera in 1832.

Since then, the Dominican order has developed a strong presence in the United States. Growing from that initial foundation, parish work has been a primary part of that presence.

Another Dominican ministry in America has been in higher education. This is clear in the number of prominent colleges and universities that are known for the quality of education they provide. These include, for example, Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island; Barry University in Miami, Florida; and Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan.
In addition to these primary ministries, there are also many Dominicans friars and nuns in the United States who are heavily involved in the work of university chaplaincy, parish missions, itinerate preaching, and health care.

[In addition to these are the monasteries of the Dominican cloistered nuns in the United States, spiritual daughters of the first foundation by St. Dominic in Prouille.  Currently, there are monasteries of Dominican nuns in Marbury, AL; Los Angeles, CA; Menlo Park, CA; North Guilford, CT; Lockport, LA; West Springfield, MA (which includes the nuns relocating to Linden, VA); Farmington Hills, MI; Ortonville, MI; Camden, NJ; Summit, NJ; Union City, NJ; Bonx, NY; Buffalo, NY; Elmira, NY; Syracuse, NY; Lancaster, PA; Lufkin, TX; and Milwaukee, WI.  -- eds.]

DOMINIC AND THE DOG

Dominican legend says that while she was pregnant, St. Dominic’s mother, Blessed Juana of Aza, had a strange dream. She dreamt that she gave birth to a dog, which carried a burning torch in its mouth. She watch in her dream as the dog ran throughout the world with the torch, and wherever he ran, the world caught fire.

As some tell the story, the troubled mother-to-be went to a monk to help her understand the dream. He told her, “Don’t worry. The torch represents the Word of God, which your son will carry into the world to set it ablaze.”

Whether or not the story is true, a dog holding a burning torch clenched in its teeth has long been a popular symbol of St. Dominic and his order. In statues and paintings, the saint is often depicted with the dog sitting at his feet, with torch blazing.

The articles above are ©2007 by Mr. Barry Michaels, and are reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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