THE DOMINICANS CHAMPIONS OF HUMANITY

PEOPLE may be asking "What are Dominicans up to?" but a more pertinent question is "What are Dominicans?" It is the question which every religious order is or should be asking itself since the end of Vatican II.
A religious order is founded to answer a particular need of the Church at a particular time. Some needs are always there—no one in his senses visualises the end of the contemplative orders, though he may want to change the name. Other needs change or disappear with the times.
But a religious order does not disappear with the needs that gave it birth, usually because there was something in the personality and character of the founder which provided a rallying point, a source of energy, for certain types of men to serve the church more effectively: it breeds an attitude towards reality, a way of looking at things which adds richness to the life of the church and gives drive to her mission.
This all asks for trouble; the sort of trouble one must expect if the church is to be fully alive. It comes from the nature of religious life itself when serving the order's purpose appears to conflict with service to the church. But the sort of tension that this produces is a sign of life; absence of tension is a sure sign of death.
And tension was there from the start with Dominic. The numerous Papal bulls issued in favour of the Dominicans between 1215 and 1217 speak of the ministry of the word, pastoral care. administration of the sacrament of penance and counsel. These were the means set in a framework of prayer, study and the life of poverty which from the first Dominic used to spread the truth and confer error.
For Dominic two things mattered above all—people and truth. compassion and criticism. But the impact of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas on the reputation of the Order can hardly be exaggerated. They put the fine theological edge on the sword that Dominic had forged to champion humanity and truth.
Work at high academic level has always been and still is one part of the Dominican apostolate. But for every Aquinas there were hundreds of men like Gerard of Derby working at ground level in Norwich and Newcastle, King's Langley and Hereford; and all these men at whatever level they worked were committed like Dominic to championing people and truth.
This makes a man critical and compassionate: two qualities that are not as contradictory as they sound; two qualities that are rarely popu lar. In the twentieth century Father Vincent McNabb manifested these qualities in a high degree; it was these qualities, rather than his eccentricity or even his holiness, which caused him to do startling things. Like all Dominicans he had pledged his loyalty to the teaching of Aquinas and like the majority he was committed to the arduous task of communicating Aquinas's truth to people of every type of I.Q.
INCIDENTALLY during the Vatican Council one heard talk of "the eclipse of Thomism" and similar catch phrases. Yet now the Council documents constantly echo Aquinas. True, it is Aquinas 700 years on, but Aquinas is Aquinas for all that.
Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban has spoken clearly and forthrightly of this in his commentary on the Vatican decree on Priests and Seminaries. It is not Aquinas whose memory should perish, but the would-be "scholastics" who petrified his thought into a dead system of teaching.
"So," says Archbishop Hurley, "it looks as if we cannot escape from the basic ideas of scholasticism as long as we remain in the Catholic Church, ideas about the objective reality of being, truth and goodness; about the relationship of God and the universe . . . They (these basic ideas) can be explored more deeply, their implications can be drawn out, new applications can be made. More attention for instance can be given to the meaning of person and personal relationship, to the implications of freedom, responsibility, love, family, society. They can be probed almost indefinitely. With the evolution of human society this is likely to be the The fact remains that the probing and unravelling will go on at every level as it did in the first centuries of the order's life. The Vatican Council told bishops and religious superiors to experiment. This is bound to lead to trouble; every laboratory has its explosions. And when we are probing our responsibilities to people and to troth the explosions will be loud.
And we will all be involved willy nilly because we are all committed to the same service of people and truth. Religious life does things to a man. Wasn't it Voltaire who said, "I disagree with what you say but I would die for your right to say it"?
That is a lukewarm statement of how a Dominican will react: he will be as concerned about the man— though he may disagree with him—as he will be about the principle. This is not just a case of closing the ranks against outsiders. It is a simple case of commitment; commitment to one another and to the truth we seek to explore.
"Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is scandalised and I am not on fire?" When Aquinas was proscribed— after his death, a distinction he shares with a very different man Count Michel de Montaigne—everyone was concerned, because everyone was employed in the same exploration of truth wherever he was working.
And it is the same to-day; those ordinary looking men who pound the parish beat in Newcastle and Camden Town; those men who minister the sacraments in the hospitals and prisons of Leicester and Hinckley; the school teachers, lecturers. chaplains.. Their work is as authentic as anything that hits the headlines because they are equally committed to people and to truth; and because in the long run their work will benefit from the experiments—and the mis takes that hit the headlines.
AN examination of the directory of the English Dominicans—or for that matter of any other Province of Dominicans —will reveal the proportions. Of the 146 ordained priests in the English Province to-day 48 are occupied on the missions in the West Indies and South Africa.
This occupation is largely pastoral—some of it lonely and remote; it also includes a full-scale training priory for young Dominicans near Cape Town, a seminary for native secular priests near Pretoria. and in the West Indies a noviciate house for lay brothers as well as a project for an inter-Provincial house for training clerical students.
Of the remaining priests five work abroad either at headquarters in Rome or on assignments with other Provinces, and a few are said to be retired, retirement in this case consisting of a pretty strenuous round of hearing confessions, counselling, listening (perhaps the most arduous of all) and supporting the hopes and fears of a younger generation.
Between 35 and 40 priests are fully occupied with straight pastoral work in parishes large and small like Newcastle. Haverstock Hill, Leicester, Hinckley, Woodchester. There are university chaplains, lecturers, school teachers and of course teachers of philosophy and theology in the study houses. Most of these men are the modern counterpart of those mediaeval Dominicans of Norwich and Newcastle, Hereford and Derby, whose names are only found in domestic records.
They are engaged in the basic work of the church pledged to the service of people and truth; and this shows itself in the demands made on them — outside preaching, lecturing. writing for the press; spare time occupations where spare time has to be created. For the most part none of their work attracts public comment; that is reserved for "public" works like Spode House and the training centre at Portobello Road— and, of course, the experiments. Nevertheless their commitment to people and truth is complete. BUT this is still an incomplete picture. A religious order is a way of life and the people who make the home where this life can be lived are the laybrothers. No amount of aggiornamento will ever take away that character from the brothers. They will be engaged in new tasks: some of our 45 brothers are training—and some of them have been working for some time—as catechists; others do highly specialised work as technicians or bursars.
But whatever their sphere of operation their sphere of influence remains the same: they provide the stability and maturing significant holiness that makes a home. And they are the most compassionate and critical of all.
This never hits the headlines, but it is treasured by those who live the life and by more perceptive parishioners. It was Father Bede Jarrett, one of the greatest provincials England has ever had, who always confided in the brothers and enlisted their prayers for his work. He knew where success lay and where the enduring life of a religious order was rooted. But to claim that the enduring things are often hidden is not to write off the experiments. The experiments are as valuable as they are necessary. The headlines they make force us to read the text of our own lives and make us more critical and compassionate. Probably one of the most influential Dominicans of this century died less than two months ago at the age of 60 and to few people was he a famous name.
Yet Mark Brocklehurst had brought innumerable people to the truth; more than most he had suffered a personal anguish for justice and honesty; he was a theologian, a preacher, a writer (the greatest single influence on the writings of Gerald Vann) but above all he was a man who cared for people and was utterly regardless of his own reputation or safety when others. were at stake. He may have been rare, but he was typical: utterly committed to humanity and truth, to the teaching of Aquinas; ruthlessly critical and ruthlessly compassionate. And he never hit a headline.