There are some parts of my life that I seem to have let go of when the time came for it; others remain somehow alive in me long past their due date. In working with my patients in therapy, it strikes me how some of them will constantly return to certain periods, like high school, for instance, when I hardly ever think of those same years.
But there is a season of my life that remains alive in me, and probably always will, the years I was a Dominican friar.
Except for the eventually dismantling power of my unruly eros, --and the neurotic drive in my character which makes belonging to any group both chronically desirable and chronically repelling--the Order of Preachers was a perfect match for a man like me. Even after a quarter century's distance, I still can feel twinges of loss when I remember moments of that life. I still use the Net to keep track of its doings.
I once tried to make clear for myself what it was I was looking for in a religious community, since I had not found one that really suited me. When I was younger, I had sort of fallen in love with the image of St Francis of Assisi and wanted to be a Franciscan. But then I met the Marianist Brothers, who taught me in high school, were a very likeable bunch, warm and friendly men, but locked into a pretty limited set of work options (mostly high schools) and above all, marked very much by their 19th century French foundation and its structures and pieties*. They did have one outstanding and unique attribute. Prior to the post-Vatican II revolution, they were the only religious order in the Church which allowed laybrothers to become superiors in a community that was a mix of priests and unordained members. I also spent a summer with a Benedictine community in upstate New York which had tried to go back to something closer to the original Rule, but as much as I enjoyed that experience, it revealed that I was not a rural contemplative. I had a need to communicate what I learned.
The four items that I named in my list were these: a respect for intellect and study, a rich liturgical and symbolic life, an adult community style that mixed hierarchy with democracy, and a variety of kinds of work. I actually went through the Catholic Encyclopedia as well as books that listed all the Orders of men. It came down to two groups: the Oratorians and the Dominicans.
Aside from the fact that there were very few Oratorian houses, I was not a fan of the Counter-Reformation's style, and this group had been founded then. But the medieval world had always felt more like home to me --the Dominicans began in 1216-- and there was a group of them nearby. So off I went to see them. To my pleasure, I discovered that they considered their life to be based on Four Pillars: liturgical prayer, study, common life and a mission of preaching, broadly conceived. A kind of intellectual and active monasticism, it matched my list. If I'd had to create a community out of my own desires, I could not have done better.**
Those years were turbulent ones in the Church and the community I lived in had its own very turbulent history, --to which I certainly contributed my unfortunate share--so I cannot say it was easy or serene. On the contrary. But it connected with deep parts of my soul and I felt at home in its traditions, in a way I have never known since. I loved the rhythm of the daily Offices and the default assumption that serious learning was a good thing which you never stopped. As one of them said to me, "If you break your vow of chastity, we'll deal with that and get you back on track. But if you can't read a book, out you go."
Unlike the family-style Marianists, the Dominicans were not really nice guys. A more masculine ethos and plenty of interpersonal and intellectual conflict. (They had, after all, been a big part of the Inquisition!) But there was also plenty of laughing. And excellent food!
When, years later, I finally realized that I could not stay the course, it was a heartbreaking failure for me. It was never the case that the Order let me down. I just could not hold together the tectonic oppositions in my own strange soul. (Probably still can't.) I was proud and honored that I had belonged and not proud of myself for deciding to leave. I simply had to. And although any reader of Ex Cathedra can tell that this non-practicing Catholic alumnus is still tied to the Faith, I really miss the Order far more than the Church it belongs to.
When B was in Italy a couple of years ago, he stayed in Bologna, where St Dominic is buried. He went to the basilica to visit the tomb and found the marks of the 800 year old Order's history all around.
He told me that he felt jealous of me then, that I'd had the opportunity to be a part of something like that. I understood.
*One of my layteachers, when he heard I was thinking of joining them, pulled me aside and pleaded with me not to waste my intellectual gifts in a group that had no real use or appreciation for them. He was not wrong.
**All the "Justice and Peace" BS and the baleful influence of the feminist Dominican sisters is a temporary product of Vatican II syndrome, which the Order was happily ignorant of for 750 of its 800 years.
___
But there is a season of my life that remains alive in me, and probably always will, the years I was a Dominican friar.
Except for the eventually dismantling power of my unruly eros, --and the neurotic drive in my character which makes belonging to any group both chronically desirable and chronically repelling--the Order of Preachers was a perfect match for a man like me. Even after a quarter century's distance, I still can feel twinges of loss when I remember moments of that life. I still use the Net to keep track of its doings.
I once tried to make clear for myself what it was I was looking for in a religious community, since I had not found one that really suited me. When I was younger, I had sort of fallen in love with the image of St Francis of Assisi and wanted to be a Franciscan. But then I met the Marianist Brothers, who taught me in high school, were a very likeable bunch, warm and friendly men, but locked into a pretty limited set of work options (mostly high schools) and above all, marked very much by their 19th century French foundation and its structures and pieties*. They did have one outstanding and unique attribute. Prior to the post-Vatican II revolution, they were the only religious order in the Church which allowed laybrothers to become superiors in a community that was a mix of priests and unordained members. I also spent a summer with a Benedictine community in upstate New York which had tried to go back to something closer to the original Rule, but as much as I enjoyed that experience, it revealed that I was not a rural contemplative. I had a need to communicate what I learned.
The four items that I named in my list were these: a respect for intellect and study, a rich liturgical and symbolic life, an adult community style that mixed hierarchy with democracy, and a variety of kinds of work. I actually went through the Catholic Encyclopedia as well as books that listed all the Orders of men. It came down to two groups: the Oratorians and the Dominicans.
Aside from the fact that there were very few Oratorian houses, I was not a fan of the Counter-Reformation's style, and this group had been founded then. But the medieval world had always felt more like home to me --the Dominicans began in 1216-- and there was a group of them nearby. So off I went to see them. To my pleasure, I discovered that they considered their life to be based on Four Pillars: liturgical prayer, study, common life and a mission of preaching, broadly conceived. A kind of intellectual and active monasticism, it matched my list. If I'd had to create a community out of my own desires, I could not have done better.**
Those years were turbulent ones in the Church and the community I lived in had its own very turbulent history, --to which I certainly contributed my unfortunate share--so I cannot say it was easy or serene. On the contrary. But it connected with deep parts of my soul and I felt at home in its traditions, in a way I have never known since. I loved the rhythm of the daily Offices and the default assumption that serious learning was a good thing which you never stopped. As one of them said to me, "If you break your vow of chastity, we'll deal with that and get you back on track. But if you can't read a book, out you go."
Unlike the family-style Marianists, the Dominicans were not really nice guys. A more masculine ethos and plenty of interpersonal and intellectual conflict. (They had, after all, been a big part of the Inquisition!) But there was also plenty of laughing. And excellent food!
When, years later, I finally realized that I could not stay the course, it was a heartbreaking failure for me. It was never the case that the Order let me down. I just could not hold together the tectonic oppositions in my own strange soul. (Probably still can't.) I was proud and honored that I had belonged and not proud of myself for deciding to leave. I simply had to. And although any reader of Ex Cathedra can tell that this non-practicing Catholic alumnus is still tied to the Faith, I really miss the Order far more than the Church it belongs to.
When B was in Italy a couple of years ago, he stayed in Bologna, where St Dominic is buried. He went to the basilica to visit the tomb and found the marks of the 800 year old Order's history all around.
He told me that he felt jealous of me then, that I'd had the opportunity to be a part of something like that. I understood.
*One of my layteachers, when he heard I was thinking of joining them, pulled me aside and pleaded with me not to waste my intellectual gifts in a group that had no real use or appreciation for them. He was not wrong.
**All the "Justice and Peace" BS and the baleful influence of the feminist Dominican sisters is a temporary product of Vatican II syndrome, which the Order was happily ignorant of for 750 of its 800 years.
___
5 comments:
Educationally and spiritually, Mississauga has never recover'd from your loss.
But in terms of the Black Friars (brothers who wear a black mantle over a white habit, cf Oreo Cookies; also Domini can[aanit]es):
Don't you agree that only sheer racism motivates Republicans who assert that the president's birth certificate is fake?
Quite obviously the simple solidarity that binds all white males in a privilege cabal means that if Bill Clinton's father was Irish, say, or Bulgarian, and he had maybe spent part of his childhood in New Zealand, Republicans wouldn't have try'd to raise quibbles about his birth certificate etc in order to undermine his presidential campaign and his re-election campaign.
Yes, some Republican whites hated WJC, but surely they would never have gone after him vis-a-vis his birth certificate.
Q.E.D.
P.S. Did you ever hold any "limites"?
Re the Church that isn't to be loved but only liked or imitated, does Ex Cathedra regret not staying with the Dominicans to help them re-tool as Order of Sufis for the Ummah? ... I suppose that in a black mantle and a white habit, Ex Cathedra would have been a "No [Thebes js44996] Limites Nigga" (shiner or point of light [js5050 NGH. cp 5065, 5066]) type of brother.
... You know, if genealogy is the inner path out of the world them of the birther brotherhood, perhaps the Starr hearings' theme re the blue (and white) dress was the Madonna of Dmitry Karamazov. ... maybe even though bkw and with the J usd WJC ("the first black president") looks like the letters for Cush js3568 black, an ego identity for pale Canaanites, the suit of hearts cf 3563. ... Paul Bunyan's aleph or ox Babe Blue is us, eh?
You would have been an excellent Orthodox Talmud Scholar as well.
Speaking of OT(Y)Sh(H) js5846, re Ex Cathedra's statement »I really miss the Order far more than the Church it belongs to«: is Ex Cathedra on track to agree with Mario Cuomo »If the church were my religion, I would have given it up a long time ago. ... Christ is my religion, the church is not«?
Quoted by Maureen Dowd in 'Here Comes Nobody' NYT, 19 May 2012
P.S. I suppose the key is to understand the astonishing thesis in my "...": »All the mad and crazy popes we’ve had through history, decapitating the husbands of women they’d taken.«
The petrine principle: crazy-ing, revealing the genealogy of the Christ saying unto the 'me' becoming the Ego "thou" art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Matthew 16:16.
"Where Peter estins, there is the Church" -- protest ants should appropriate this surplice value when the Roman See balks. Luther says that the Roman See was once a gate of heaven (Of the Freedom of a Christian Man).
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