A Corporate Stance for Social Justice

This chapter explores the leadership role the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael played in the social movement known as “sanctuary” that emerged in the Bay Area, California, in the 1980s. The enactment of the 1980s Refugee Act and the political crisis in Central America during the Reagan administration galvanized the San Rafael Sisters to make a “corporate and public declaration” of support and sanctuary for political refugees fleeing the violence of a civil war in El Salvador. This chapter examines this pivotal moment within the larger historical context of the Dominican Sisters’ mission in California since the state’s founding in 1850.

Afire with the Itinerant Spirit

Before the Maryknoll Sisters were affiliated to the Dominican Order in 1920 for the express purpose of planting the faith in Asia, Dominican Sisters from the United States had already begun to answer that call. After the collapse of colonial empires at the start of the twentieth century, Dominican Sisters were missioned to Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba to rebuild the Catholic church under duress in the wake of global shakeup. As women of the Dominican Order brought education, health care, social services, and faith formation to places in need around the globe, they were radically transformed by ongoing mutual conversion among the people they were sent to evangelize. The paradigm shifts that occurred in the foreign missions of the Order are described in this chapter.

More Than a Mustard Seed

The Parable was conceived by a group of Dominican women and men who imagined a future of collaboration from a past of cooperation in traditional ministries. The transformative grace of Vatican II and the renewed understanding of the Order as the Dominican Family were catalysts stimulating a new sense of possibilities for the renewal of Dominican life and mission—the possible revelation of “the extraordinary within the ordinary.” For more than thirty years Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission generated a vast network of Dominicans coming together to renew Dominican energies for mission and to strengthen the bonds of family. Within those years the prophetic mustard seed grew into an abundant living reality of retreats and conferences, think tanks and publications, and lectures and workshops that welcomed all branches of the Dominican Family.

A Joyful Spectrum of Service

In 1853 a small group of nuns arrived on the waterfront of New York City commencing the service of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) to New York City and its environs. In time the Dominicans served in health care, education, parish work, and a myriad of social services. The evolution of the Order of Preachers in New York eventually included friars, nuns, sisters, and lay members—a singular distinction. The Dominican roots in New York spread to other parts of the United States and to various foreign missions.

“In the Midst of Sorrow and Death”

This essay focuses on the work of Dominican Sisters in Memphis and Nashville during the second half of the nineteenth century. To a certain extent, their work often followed the trajectory of other congregations of religious women. They were sought after by priests and bishops, for example, who were anxious to establish schools and orphanages but needed religious women to staff and minister these institutions. On the other hand, the circumstances surrounding the arrival and subsequent work of the Dominicans in Memphis and Nashville differed dramatically from many of their counterparts in other parts of the United States. The sisters’ early years in Tennessee were marked by the devastation resulting from Civil War battles being fought on or perilously close to their properties. Following the war, Memphis and Nashville Dominicans experienced three outbreaks of yellow fever within a decade, as well as financial struggles that placed them in danger of being forced to abandon their schools and orphanages. Today, the Dominicans remain an active presence in both cities.

Call and Response

“Call and Response: American Dominican Artists and Vatican II” describes the work of fifteen American Dominican artists as each exemplifies or anticipates the priorities of the Second Vatican Council. Each artist personifies the response to a specific call: to reanimate the original scriptural and historical roots of the religious congregation, to provide leadership in liturgical renewal, to feed the spiritual hungers of the poor, to spread the gospel of justice through contemporary means of social communication. As Dominicans, these artists fulfill their vocation to preach the gospel in the multiple languages of genres ranging from design of sacred space and liturgical music to folk art, musical theatre, videography, and film. Most of the men and women chosen here to demonstrate this theme are active members of the Dominican Institute for the Arts, a national support group whose mission is to promote preaching through the arts.

Aggiornamento on Campus

Beginning in 1960, William Blase Schauer, a Dominican friar of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, developed innovative ideas for telling a story to disengaged college students of the fundamental relationship between Catholic worship (Mass and domestic rituals) and its cultural heritage—its rich tradition of art, music, and theater. Using the themes of symbol, season, and heritage, he capitalized on the catechetical nature of the liturgy in order to draw them back more deeply into their Catholic faith. With initial success in Las Cruces, he transferred the “experiment” to Santa Fe where it achieved national success in educating clergy and parish leaders about Catholic liturgy and culture.

Reclaiming the Sinsinawa Dominicans’ Legacy of Catholic Progressive Education

Contrary to widely held conceptions of Catholic schooling as “parochial,” in the 1890s the Dominican Sisters based in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, created and implemented progressive ideas of education in their grammar schools and academies in the United States. By the 1930s their curriculum in Corpus Christi School in New York City received national recognition. Sr. Joan Smith, OP, and Sister Mary Nona McGreal, OP, expanded the Dominicans’ child-centered philosophy in their curriculum for Guiding Growth in Christian Social Living, a pioneering project of the Catholic University’s Commission on American Citizenship. The Dominicans’ educational ideas, regarded as “a milestone in U.S. Catholic education,” influenced hundreds of thousands of school children who came of age before Vatican II.

From Teacher to Tutor

In the late 1980s, the Adrian Dominican Sisters faced an issue common to religious communities: the aging of its membership and a lesser need overall for sisters to teach in the parochial-school system. Wanting to find a way for its highly trained educators to remain active, and to address a significant societal need at the same time, the Adrian Dominicans began a literacy center in Detroit for adult learners. More centers followed in Michigan, Florida, and Illinois. Other Dominican communities have established literacy centers as well. The centers each serve a wide range of adult learners, including immigrant populations, in helping these learners to build better lives for themselves and their families. This essay looks at each of the Adrian Dominican-sponsored literacy centers as well as those of other communities, with input from directors, tutors, and learners.

Introduction

Preaching with Their Lives covers an era of immense change and painstaking development for both the United States and the order. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the nation was transformed from a rural, agricultural nation into an urban, industrial giant. It received a massive influx of immigrants as it emerged as the world’s leading economic power; it experienced two world wars, a great economic depression, postwar recovery and prosperity, and more than a decade of turbulent social and political change, culminating in its emergence as the world’s lone superpower. Throughout the century and a half that this volume covers, the Dominican family was present, doing its part, responding to the country’s needs, sharing its triumphs and challenges, and attempting to shape US culture according to the vision of St. Dominic, that is to say, the vision of the Gospel. Preaching with Their Lives seeks to explore the vast diversity of the Dominican family, the vast diversity of gifts, challenges, and ministries. It attempts to tell the story of those who have gone before. More important, it seeks to inspire future generations. Firmly grounded in the achievements of the past, the Dominican family can confront the challenges of the future with renewed vigor. But the essays are more than celebratory—the essays make a significant contribution to US Catholic historiography as well.