Mary Catherine Hilkert: The Dominican Charism: A Living Tradition of Grace

SPIRITUALITY TODAY
Summer 1986, Vol. 38, pp. 149-163.
Mary Catherine Hilkert:
The Dominican Charism: A Living Tradition of Grace

The preaching mission of the first Dominicans still animates the women and men who embody the spirit of St. Dominic today in their quest for justice and peace.

Sister Mary Catherine, O.P., is assistant professor of systematic theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, Missouri.

EXPLORING the future of the Dominican charism in the church of the United States on the brink of the twenty-first century,(1) I am reminded of the description of fidelity to tradition attributed to Picasso: It doesn't mean wearing your grandfather's hat; it means having a baby! Loyalty to the heritage of Dominic and Catherine and all who have gone before us in this family called Dominican demands our own unique response -- at once creative and courageous. The Second Vatican Council sent religious orders back to the spirit of their founders -- not to the times of their founders, not even to the essential elements of the life as developed in its foundation, but to the "original inspiration behind a given community."(2)
Both the tradition as it has been lived in the past and the contemporary "signs of the times" can reveal dimensions of the Dominican gift for the church if, as the gospel says, "we have eyes to see and ears to hear and do not turn away for fear" (Matt. 13:15). The "spirit of our founder" is to be found not only in stories about Dominic and his followers, not only in the history of the order and our own provinces and congregations, not only in the basic constitutions and other documents which attempt to express fundamental dimensions of Dominican life; the spirit of our founder is to be discovered also alive among us. The Dominican tradition -- the original inspiration of the order -- is enfleshed in the concreteness of the Dominican family today -- or it is quite simply not a living tradition. Cardinal Newman was right, then, in his nineteenth century assessment: the Dominican Order was a wonderful idea, but it had died.(3)
There is no document or list of essential elements which can completely define or identify what it means to stand in the Dominican tradition. To use Yves Congar's distinction, that would be to identify the "Tradition" with "traditions."(4) The Dominican tradition is far more profound than any of its expressions -- it is indeed the Spirit of God living and active among us throughout the history of the Order. If we believe that that is true in spite of all our failures and limitations (and even sinful resistance), then our search for the charism can begin with this new moment in the living tradition -- 1985, and for us, the United States. One aspect of the spirituality we need to face the future is the trust that the Dominican charism is alive -- even if not always well -- among us today. In our discussions of the Dominican charism and the future, we can begin then with the naming of our own experience as Dominicans.
THE CHARISM AND CONTRAST EXPERIENCES
In naming our experience it is important to include both positive and negative dimensions because the Spirit of God, the source of this charism or unique grace for the church, is to be found in both. Our God is a God of history, a creative God who promises to open new future possibilities even in the midst of what have been described as "contrast experiences." It is precisely in breakdowns and crises when former patterns and frameworks no longer fit, that the God who is beyond us and our expectations is met "doing a new thing" (Is. 43:19). If the God of the future does indeed lure us (as the process theologians suggest) beyond the places we find comfortable, beyond the land where we would choose to settle, beyond one cultural expression of our tradition into another, then we are going to experience conflict as the old and new clash. Former ways of living and understanding ourselves will no longer fit as we become aware that something is missing or that the Spirit is calling us to "do a new thing" as well.
Edward Schillebeeckx uses this notion of "contrast experiences" in his Jesus and Christ books(5) to explain how we can claim that God is active even among the two-thirds of the world's population whose lives are filled with excessive and senseless suffering and injustice. How can the claim of so many contemporary theologians that revelation is to be found in the depths of human experience, be true for those who suffer? Schillebeeckx also uses the concept of "contrast experiences" in his ministry books (6) to explain how the Spirit may be active in what the church is experiencing as a situation of breakdown and conflict in terms of former patterns and understandings of ministry and in what we call "vocation crisis." In both cases -- the global suffering of humanity and suffering within the church -- the point is reached eventually when people cry out: "No! It can't go on like this."(7)
Even if we don't have answers in terms of new solutions and structures, we know what doesn't work, what doesn't fit, and we have glimpses of what would be more faithful to the reign of God which Jesus preached. At the moment our immediate experience may be frustration or breakdown -- perhaps even the experience of the absence of God and certainly the absence of clear vision as to how to move toward a different future. But on the "underside" of that experience is the Spirit of God sustaining us, empowering us, stirring up the resistance we feel when our culture or structures or vision are in contradiction to the gospel we proclaim.
When we name our charism from our experience it will emerge as a charism in conflict with many of the situations within which we find ourselves. Reflecting on our experiences of dissatisfaction and resistance -- in both world and church -- we may discover at their source the Spirit of God moving us to consider new possibilities, to speak those possibilities, and to work for their realization.
There is a certain authority -- a claim to truth -- of new experiences in a living tradition. New possibilities for living the Dominican charism, or even the impasse in which we find ourselves as former ways break down, may be the result of the action of the unpredictable Spirit of God. Joan Chittister captured the paradox of the crisis confronting all religious communities today (a crisis of significance and spirituality rather than a "vocation crisis") in her probing image: Are we presiding over smoldering ruins or is there a phoenix in the ashes?(8)
TRACES OF THE CHARISM IN HISTORY
The task of leadership is sometimes described as keeping alive the memory of the group, preserving and recalling the corporate vision. As leaders of the Dominican Family of the United States, you have a unique vantage point from which to identify what may be "new moments in the tradition" as well as to locate points of frustration and breakdown which may also be the occasion for new breakthroughs of the charism. What has changed in the past fifty years since this leadership conference first met? What has happened in the twenty years since Vatican II? What is your experience of the Dominican family in the past five years? As you share those stories it is important to search together for traces of the charism alive among us in new ways.
Where is the living Dominican charism to be found in the changes which have taken place in community life in the past twenty years? What new forms of common life are emerging among us? What do we know no longer fits? How has the charism taken on new dimensions as the order and the Dominican Leadership Conference have come to recognize activity on behalf of justice and peace as "a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel"?(9) Where and how is Dominican spirituality shifting? What is happening to the order as more women and men experience frustration with women's role in the church, and particularly in our tradition, as the charism to preach is blocked? What of the aging and the declining numbers of new members in our congregations and provinces? Could God be "on the underside" of that experience? What new forms of Dominican life and mission have already begun among us? What is the impact of recognizing that the Dominican charism can be enfleshed in new ways in lay and married members of the Dominican family? Where do you perceive new life and energy in the Order? Where is there conflict? Can you see the charism there too -- "in contrast"?
It's important that we reflect on all this precisely because our future cannot be theoretically defined or described and then lived. We live in history -- we make history through our choices and decisions. We realize new possibilities or fail to do so. The ongoing creation of the world, of human history, and of our order has been entrusted to us. We are not left alone in the process -- we have Christ's promise of the Spirit, but God's grace is active in and through humanity. That is one of the profound implications of the incarnation. It is only in our concrete attempts to enflesh the Dominican charism in ways that speak the gospel in our day and in our culture and subcultures that we will discover the next steps to take and be able to face the new decisions that await us. As an ancient Peruvian saying reminds us:
Pilgrim, pilgrim, pilgrim,
There is no way, there is no way, there is no way.
You make the way, you make the way, you make the way,
By walking, walking, walking. (Source unknown)
A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
All of this emphasis on the "new moment in the tradition" and the authority of new experience is not meant to suggest, however, that the new is necessarily a faithful expression of the tradition. One of the risks and threats of living in history and being responsible for the choices we make is that we can distort the traditions in which we live. We can create stumbling blocks for the gospel in our ways of enfleshing it. That is why critical reflection -- corporate critical reflection -- is an essential part of the process in which we make crucial decisions which create the future of the Dominican Oeder in the United States. There really are only two possibilities, however. Either we will actualize the tradition by making it present in our own contemporary new moment in new ways that are faithful to the signs of our times and the needs of our culture, or we will distort the tradition by failing to make it present in a vital way in our world.
Here it is important to remember that culture is not always in contrast to the gospel. In fact, the gospel does not exist apart from some cultural expression of it. Even the Scriptures are culturally conditioned expressions of the gospel. Our culture and its subcultures provide the possibility for new expressions of the gospel and the Dominican charism. On the other hand, the gospel or the Dominican expression of the gospel can get lost or seriously compromised in our culture. That's why one of our most difficult tasks may be that of maintaining a critical perspective with regard to our enculturation of the gospel and our charism.
In addition to the question of what is being born among us, then, we need to ask a second question: In what ways is the charism (or the Dominican tradition) distorted, dying, or dead among us? Where do we need to be challenged by earlier followers of Dominic, by classic expressions of the tradition such as our rule and constitutions, by Dominicans from other cultures, or by the gospel itself? At the Parable conference, "Justice and Truth," which met last July in Caldwell, New Jersey, Albert Nolan suggested that unless we change our life-styles as United States Dominicans our prophetic message won't be heard. Here was a voice from outside our culture calling us back to part of the inspiration of our founder, reminding us that poverty is for preaching, that our life in common is part of our preaching, that we preach by our lives as well as our words. Where have we over-adapted to our culture in terms of consumerism, competitiveness, and subtle, if not overt; racism? What aspects of the gospel message are we afraid to preach -- or worse, do we no longer even hear?
It may not be possible -- nor even helpful to measure the kind of dynamic and creative fidelity to the tradition which is required in our day by a list of material norms. Perhaps what we need, instead, is a commitment to the process of corporate critical reflection on our fidelity, a process which involves a mutually critical correlation of past and present. The signs of our times call into question the way in which we have understood ourselves in the past, but the tradition of the past has formed and continues to challenge contemporary expressions of the tradition as well. Further, we are an order of women and men, of young and old. We have different ethnic, racial, and cultural experiences. We come from different regions of the country and ultimately we belong to an international order. Can we be formed and challenged by one another's experience?
The key to this process of mutually critical correlation of our experiences is discernment of the Spirit, or what we might prefer to call a contemplative stance. It involves openness and judgment, Aquinas' prudence and connatural knowledge, Rahner's "paschal courage," and the cultivation of what Walter Brueggemann calls "prophetic imagination." Those gifts are not enough, however. We also need to create structures and processes which facilitate corporate critical reflection.
As leaders of your congregations and provinces, you exercise a unique pastoral ministry in the church. It seems to me that you are uniquely qualified to reflect on the experiences of Dominicans and Dominican groups in difficult conflictual situations. Faced with conflict, how do we struggle to find just solutions, to open new possibilities, to live in hope? How have you done it? How have you seen others do it? It seems clear that at least one Dominican contribution to discernment or decision-making processes for the future arises from the emphasis in the tradition on hearing the Word of God in community rather than in a process of purely individual reflection or in processes which center on the wisdom of an authority figure. The entire church is desperately in need of new ways of discovering the Spirits activity in the whole community, ways in which the inevitable tensions between magisterium, theologians, and the sensus fidelium can become creative, so that together we can preserve and proclaim the gospel entrusted to us.(10)
FIDELITY AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
In the context of those general reflections on the charism and its culturation, I'd like to highlight four areas at this new moment tour tradition where I perceive a challenge to our fidelity to the rving Dominican tradition: 1) our mission of preaching the gospel; 2) the creation of the Dominican Family; 3) our commitment to justice and our commitment to the intellectual life; and 4) our ecclesial identity and relationship to church authority.
PREACHING
The growing strength of fundamentalism, the political power being exerted by the new right in religion, and the vast areas of this counry which are classified as "unchurched" all call for a response on the part of an order founded specifically for the proclamation of the gospel. Here the "signs of the times" and the tradition of the order are in agreement. The United States in the twentieth century is not unlike thirteenth century France, in its need for sound and vital preaching which announces the truth of God's love for humanity. The recent United States Bishops' statement formulated in preparation for the November synod stated again that "far more must be done to reach out to alienated Catholics and the unchurched" and called for programs of evangelization, catechesis, and service to human needs -- particularly in relation to Hispanics, Blacks, and recent immigrants.(11)
Why in the midst of those clear "signs of the times" are we not identified publicly with our charism for preaching? A 1979 Time magazine article carried an article entitled "American Preaching -- A Dying Art?"(12) identifying seven "star-preachers" in the United States -- all of them men, none of them Dominican, none of them Catholic, none of them operating in team situations -- all individual stars. The author described the contemporary state of preaching in the United States as "the chilling of the Word." What impact have we, as Dominicans who are to be on fire with the gospel, had on that situation? We weren't even mentioned as ineffective!
In his recent description of "a vision for our time," Damien Byrne, the Master of the Dominican Order, stated simply: "A love of preaching should mark every Dominican -- priest, brother, sister, lay Dominican."(13) Recalling that preaching is not limited to the pulpit, we could extend his exhortation to grasp opportunities to preach and say that Dominicans should create opportunities to preach. The question to a Dominican should not be "Do you preach?" but "How do you preach?"
The connection between preaching and the spirituality of the order also needs further exploration. Again we might recall Damien Byrne's insight when he was asked how to improve the life of a province. Contrasting his vision with that of another provincial who had suggested that it was by developing the prayer life of the province, the Master remarked:
My feeling is that it is by trying to get them to be better preachers. I think that is the beginning. It affects everything else -- community life, prayer, and penance. 1 do not think that anyone can preach constantly, without preaching to oneself.(14)
That kind of passion for preaching echoes St. Paul: "I have a compulsion to preach . . . woe to me if I don't preach" (I Cor. 9:16) What are "the woes" that affect us personally, as congregations and provinces, and as a family, when we are not preaching and fostering preaching?
Here we need to strike a delicate balance between identifying everything we do as preaching, on the one hand, and limiting preaching to the public proclamation of the gospel in a liturgical context on the other. The point is that those two contexts are profoundly related and as an order we are called to make the connections. Jesus' proclamation of the word of God was clearly a preaching in word and deed. He preached in his table fellowship with outcasts. He announced salvation in his healing touch. He made God's reign present in the meals he celebrated with his friends. He spoke of God's compassion by forgiving sins and liberating people from whatever shackled their spirits as well as their bodies. There are many ministries in which we can share in the preaching mission of Jesus, but it is important that we recognize and claim that in our many ministries we are announcing the reign of God.
That broader proclamation of God's word comes to focus and celebration in the Eucharist, the definitive word in which the church proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise of the future realization of God's reign in its fullness. Hence the question of the appropriate preacher in the liturgical assembly arises naturally out of the community's broader experiences of ministries of the word and of non-ordained ministers in whom the charism to preach is evident. This question of who should preach at Eucharist, at issue at the present time, deserves both our theological attention and our pastoral response as the "contrast experience" of the church grows and the "chilling of the Word" continues.
THE DOMINICAN FAMILY
A second significant "new movement in the tradition" was initiated almost twenty years ago, but is still in very initial stages of development: the creation of the Dominican Family. In 1968 the general chapter in River Forest declared for the first time that "All groups which compose the Dominican family share the same common vocation and each, in its own special way, serves the mission of the order in the world."(15) Three years later the general chapter in Tallaght confirmed that "The name Order of Preachers in its Universal Character is the same as Dominican Family."(16) The first international assembly of Dominican family members was convened as a missionary conference only twelve years ago (1973) in Madrid.
While women and men have been a part of the Dominican roject from its thirteenth century beginnings, this notion of the project family is indeed a new moment in the tradition -- coming from contemporary experience as well as from traces of historical inspiration. The vision here is not that of the relationship between friars and nuns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Neither are we defining the order in terms of hierarchical status any longer. The suggestion in an ongoing discussion of the Dominican charism in Dominican Ashram that "perhaps we would do better to begin thinking of a charism for friars, another for nuns, etc."(17) has been officially rejected by general chapters of the order.
Those who resist the notion of Dominican Family, however, may have a real grasp of what is at stake here. It is our very identity. This is a different concept of how women and men are related to one another in the order, of how women are related to one another beyond congregational boundaries, and of how we are related to our common mission. This is a different understanding of how lay and religious and cleric (to use canonical terms) are related to one another. The Dominican family ideal conflicts with many of the structures and attitudes within the order and beyond: structures of clericalism and patriarchy, attitudes of self-reliance and independence, the chauvinism of individual provinces and congregations and national identities.
Neither is this discussion of Dominican family unrelated to the earlier discussion of preaching in word and deed. Dominicans have always claimed that preaching and common life are profoundly related. Not only does our life sustain and support us in our preaching; we preach a message by our very life together and by our way of relating and working together. If, indeed, ours is a shared charism, and if we discover that charism through living it in our concrete histories, we have to expect that sharing will change us and our understanding of the charism. There is a very real risk here if we take seriously the notion of Dominican family. Once again, however, we have only two options: either we actualize the tradition in a new way which is faithful to the original inspiration and to the Holy Spirit who is the source of that inspiration, or we distort the tradition in our day.
JUSTICE AND THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE
I have intentionally connected our commitment to justice with our commitment to the intellectual life because in recent discussions the two frequently have been placed in a false dichotomy. Both are intimately tied to the preaching mission of the order. Study has always been envisioned in the Dominican tradition as "for the sake of the preaching," and the Dominican commitment to justice is grounded in the conviction expressed by the 1971 Synod of Bishops: "Activity on behalf of justice is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel."(18)
We are not dealing here with either blind social activism or ivory-tower academia. Rather we are challenged at this new moment in our tradition to re-understand the profound connection between "doing the truth" and "seeking the truth," between praxis and theory, between action and contemplation. The prophetic stances and activity that are called for today (precisely because the gospel is frequently in contradiction to values of our culture) cannot be unreflective or beyond critique. No social or political stance can be identified totally with the gospel. On the other hand, the reign of God can be announced only if it is also made present in our world. The justice and love of the gospel have to be enculturated in very concrete ways. Here I think we need to admit that our danger as Dominicans is more to over-theorize than to take stands or act unreflectively.
Further, the very motto of veritas, so precious to us, is at stake here. The truth of the gospel is not an abstract theoretical truth -- it is the living truth of discipleship. Only in the following of Jesus can we come to understand the gospel. In our day we are called to forge even deeper links between action and contemplation as we search for a spirituality which is political and, at the same time, mystical.
Just as there is a deeply reflective dimension to action on behalf of justice, there is a profoundly pastoral focus to Dominican study. This does not mean that our study is directly pragmatic, but again, that it is contemplative. Whatever the field of research, reflection, and critical inquiry, we search for the implications of our study for humanity. Ultimately, then, we search for God who is to be found at the depths of human experience and at the heart of reality.
While our Order has at some points in the past perhaps overidentified with one mode of its intellectual tradition, today we face another danger -- that of forgetting that the vocation to scholarship involving full-time commitment to the intellectual life is a valid and important ministry in the Dominican tradition. Are we cultivating that aspect of our charism today, especially among the newer members of the Order? One of the cultural trends that has seriously affected the church in the United States is anti-intellectualism. The complexity of the culture in which we are called to be prophetic as well as the very spirituality of the order (which incorporates study as a dimension of the contemplative life) requires that we find new ways of being persons and communities committed, to seeking, speaking, and doing the truth today.
ECCLESIAL IDENTITY
There has been a great emphasis in the history of the Dominican tradition on our ecclesial identity and fidelity to the church. Many of the questions that confront us today center around that fidelity and its meaning for us. Yet the tensions are not unique to our times. In a 1973 article on "How the Dominican Order Faces its Crises," William Hinnebusch described the very first pastoral crisis of the Order as one of conflict with bishops and pastors who opposed the mendicant preachers' exemption from episcopal control. Hi nnebusch said of the bishops: "When they realized that the friars exercised an apostolate beyond their control, many severely hampered the ministry of the friars."(19) It was direct jurisdiction from the pope, Hinnebusch recalled, that gave the preachers greater efficiency, mobility, and flexibility for their mission.
In another case in the early history of the order, conflict centered around the teaching of the friars at the University of Paris in 1254. Under pressure, Pope Innocent IV revoked the friars' privileges and subjected their ministry to the local clergy. Hinnebusch noted that "Two weeks later innocent IV was dead, and the friars claimed that they had prayed him into his grave."(20) Even in Hinnebusch's article, which emphasized strongly that the Dominican Order was founded by the Holy See and "has always had a great reliance on and loyalty to the Holy See," one can see that tensions have existed throughout the history of the order in the attempts to be faithful to a prophetic mission within the context of concrete institutional church structures. Prophetic voices always stand in contrast to the mainstream interpretation of the tradition-creating dissonance. That was true of Jesus in his own times and the Hebrew prophets before him. Clearly, however, not every dissonant voice is a prophetic one -- again, the difficult task is that of discernment.
The question of ecclesial loyalty takes on new dimensions, too, in light of the Second Vatican Council's renewed emphases: the claim that the word of God is entrusted to the entire church, the role given to the local church, the realization that the laity share in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly roles of Jesus Christ, the admission that the Body of Christ remains a sinful church and a pilgrim people.
Further, our experience of United States' culture in terms of political processes, styles of decision-making, the values of freedom of speech and dissent, conflicts in many ways with the processes and structures which have evolved in the church within a Roman cultural framework. We can create further problems by contrasting prophetic voices with those of church authorities when in our own culture at this very moment we have the example of bishops exercising prophetic leadership in significant areas of social concern such as nuclear disarmament and the economy. The question grows more problematic, however, when we turn from the church's prophetic role in society to the role of those calling for reform within the church itself.
Since the publication of Johannes Metz's Followers of Christ, (21) many have emphasized that religious life is fundamentally a charismatic reality within the church. At the same time we constitute part of the institutional public structure of the church. What are the tensions that this creates? What becomes the form of our fidelity? These are complex questions for which no one of us has simple solutions; we must find our way together. In terms of our prophetic mission and our ecclesial identity, however, perhaps we can take hope from the words of Pope John Paul II on the occasion of visiting the tomb in 1978 of our sister, Catherine of Siena. Let us hope that in the future these same words can be said of Dominican women and men of this generation:
I wish to thank that divine wisdom which has deigned to use the heart -- so simple and yet so deep -- of this woman in order to demonstrate in a period of uncertainty the way to the church and in a special manner to the successors of Peter. What love and what courage. What magnificent simplicity, but also what profundity of a magnificent soul, a soul open to all the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and conscious of her mission.(22)

NOTES

This essay was originally delivered as a keynote address on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Dominican Leadership Conference, Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, October 21, 1985.
Perfectae Caritatis, art. 2.
John Henry Newman, Letter to J. D. Dalgairns, July 6, 1846. The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1961), XI, p. 195. (". . . meanwhile, I am doubting whether the Dominicans have preserved their traditions -- whether it is not a great idea extinct.") Cf. the letter to Dalgairns, July 21, 1846: "I fear the Dominicans have lost their tradition. I doubt whether so pronounced an order would suit England, though it might France. The idea I like exceedingly." (ibid., p. 212.)
Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 296-307. Cf. Congar's The Meaning of Tradition (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964), pp. 14-47.
E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury, 1979), pp. 620-22; Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, (New York: Seabury, 1980), Part IV. (See n. 158, p. 897.) Cf. E. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), pp. 136-38, 154-61, 191-99; and Understanding of Faith (London: Sheed and Ward 1974), pp. 91-101.
E. Schillebeeckx, Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 76-80. Cf. The Church with a Human Face (New York: Crossroad, 1985).
E. Schillebeeckx, "The Church as a Sacrament of Dialogue," God the Future of Man, p. 136.
Joan Chittister, "The Future of Religious Life," New Catholic World 226 (Sept./Oct. 1982) : 200.
"Justice in the World," Statement of 1971 Synod of Bishops (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1972), p. 34.
Note the shift from Humani Generis (DS 3886), which states that the word of God is entrusted "solely to the teaching office," to Dei Verbum, art. 10, which states that the word of God is committed to the church.
Bishop James Malone, "Vatican II and the Postconciliar Era in the U.S. Church," National Conference of Catholic Bishops Report to the Vatican Synod Secretariat, Origins 15 (No. 15, Sept. 26 1985): 232.
"American Preaching: A Dying Art?", Time (Dec. 31, 1979): 64-67.
Damien A. Byrne, "A Vision for Our Time," Dominican Ashram 4 (March 1985): 3-4.
Ibid., p. 4.
Book of Constitutions and Ordinations of the Order of Friars Preachers (LCO, 141), quoted by M. Nona McGreal, "The Dominican Family," Dominican Ashram 3 (1984): 4.
Ibid., p. 5.
Leonard P. Hindsley, "Dominican Spirituality: Bowl or Funnel?", Dominican Ashram 3 (1984): 139.
Cf. note 9 above.
William Hinnebusch, "How the Dominican Order Faced Its Crises," Review for Religious 32 (1973): 1309.
Ibid.
J. B. Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist, 1978).
22 Informazioni Domenicane Internazionali (I.D.I.) 11, (5/XII/78): 225.

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