Dominican Order

The Dominican Order was founded in 1216 by St. Dominic de Guzman, a Spaniard in the south of France.  It is the only order whose official name describes its function: the Order of Preachers.  The friars’ habit consists of a white tunic, scapular, and capuce, sometimes worn with a  black cappa and capuce.  The letters “O.P.” are placed after an individual’s name to indicate his membership in the order.

St. Dominic established his community as an order of friars (a word meaning “brothers”) with some elements taken from monastic life and some innovations.  Instead of living in the countryside where monasteries are usually located, the Dominican priories were located in cities and usually near universities; instead of manual labor. The friars studied Truth wherever they found it: in Sacred Scripture, the writings of the Fathers and saints, and even the ancient “pagan” philosophers, such as Aristotle.  The friars were to live a life in common, pool their resources, eat and pray together several times during the day. In the early years of the Order, St. Dominic insisted that the friars be mendicants or beggars for their daily bread.

Veritas (truth) is the motto of the Dominican Order.  The Dominicans are committed to assiduous study of the truth wherever it is to be found.  The two most important truths are what it means to be a man or woman and the truth about God.  One of the innovations St. Dominic introduced was a dispensation from attending certain offices or services for the sake of study. 

The order was founded for “preaching and the salvation of souls” and has always emphasized the intellectual life in all its forms.  St. Dominic recognized that before one could preach, he or she needed correct knowledge of Truth.  For this reason, he sent a number of the first friars to the university in Paris.  In those days, preaching on doctrine was the prerogative of only the bishops.  However, heresy was raging particularly in southern France, and Dominic realized that a mobile body of well-trained preachers was needed to combat it.  The idea of priests going into other dioceses and preaching, even with the consent of the local bishop, was something entirely new and controversial.

In the second century of its existence, the order produced one of the greatest lights in the history of Christianity: St. Thomas Aquinas. His writings on philosophical and theological topics virtually became the standard of the Church for centuries and are still influential. Not surprisingly, various themes of Aquinas’ thought have permeated Dominican spirituality:

• the fundamental goodness of creation;
• emphasis on the human being created in God’s image and likeness and only secondarily on the disfigurement of the imago Dei caused by sin.
• the superiority of the intellect over the will;
• knowledge of the truth is the beginning of beatitude;
• the utter unknowability of the Godhead, about whom we can only say what He is not;
• nonetheless, in Christ, “we know God under a visible form [so that] we might be enraptured by him into love of the invisible” (Summa contra gentiles, IV, 54, n. 3927);
• emphasis on the humanity of Christ and who shows us the way to be fully human;
• emphasis on grace as not simply God’s forgiveness but as actual participation in the divine life;
• an emphasis on the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit as stable, positive dispositions which we should aspire to;
• sin is the result of defective knowledge and love and, therefore, a lack or privation; the sinner, himself/herself, is always the first person affected by the sin committed in that his/her humanity “shrinks” or is diminished; and
• resistance to any presentation of the Gospel as merely morality.

The positive quality of Aquinas’ outlook on creation and the human person is beautifully summed up in one of the most famous passages from his masterwork, the Summa theologiae: “grace does not suppress, but presupposes and perfects nature” (I, q. 1, a. 8 ad 2).  Aquinas was utterly opposed to any notion of the human person as fundamentally wicked, depraved, etc.

Dominicans have been great defenders and promoters of orthodoxy or right belief, knowing that an incorrect idea about God and what it means to be human can have grave consequences.  Knowledge of truth comes through not only study but also through contemplation or prayer.  For centuries Dominicans have seen in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas an unofficial second motto of the order: “To contemplate and to share with others the fruits of one’s contemplation” (Summa theologiae, I, q. 188, 6).

A tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary has been a hallmark of the Dominican Order from its inception.
The Dominican friars consist of priests and cooperator brothers, the latter being non-ordained full members of the order.  There are also cloistered, contemplative Dominican nuns who live apart from the world in monasteries and active apostolic sisterhoods such as the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters who founded Dominican University in River Forest. Dominican friars, nuns, and sisters are bound to the order through a vowed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Dominican Laity, an association of the lay faithful formerly known as the Third Order, consists of married and single men and women who strive to live out the elements of Dominican spirituality in their homes and places of work.

Besides producing great theologians, the order has also had many notable social reformers, such as Bartolomeo de las Casas who fought for the rights of indigenous people in the New World in the 16^th century, and his contemporary Antonio de Montesinos who, with his fellow Dominicans, preached boldly against slavery in Hispaniola.  The order has also produced great mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Suso, and Catherine of Siena.  Four Dominican friars have been popes.  A broad interpretation of preaching gave rise to an appreciation of the arts in which the renowned medieval artist Fra Angelico excelled.

Unlike some other religious orders, the Dominicans have never arduously promoted devotion to their founder and instead have preferred to emphasize the urgency of preaching. 

Today approximately 7,000 friars belong to the various geographical provinces of the order. The U.S. has four provinces with headquarters in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and Oakland. From the beginning, the friars have elected all their superiors: priors, prior provincials, and the Master of the Order, currently Fr. Bruno Cadoré, OP, a member of the Province of France. The international headquarters of the order is at the ancient basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine hill in Rome.

Notable Dominican institutions of higher learning sponsored by the universal order include the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem and the Angelicum, or University of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Rome. 

Since the time of St. Dominic, the theologian to the papal household has always been a Dominican friar.
By God’s grace, the order continues today to grow in all its branches.

Fr. Tom McDermott, OP