In hopes of providing greater insight into the vision of Dominican mission and ministry, Rev. Thomas D. McGonigle, O.P., associate professor of history and director of the Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies, presented a lecture on this topic to members of the College community on Wednesday, April 26, in the Campus Ministry Center of St. Dominic Chapel.
His presentation, “St. Dominic de Guzman and St. Catherine of Siena: Models of Dominican Mission and Ministry,” represented the first St. Catherine of Siena Lecture at the College and was sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies of the Office of Mission and Ministry.
Following an introduction by Rev. Joseph J. Guido, O.P., vice president for mission and ministry, assistant professor of psychology, and a counseling psychologist in the Personal Counseling Center, Father McGonigle began his lecture by asking, “What do we mean by Dominican mission and ministry?”
The devout lives of St. Dominic and St. Catherine, he said, provide an insightful answer to this question. He explained that their preaching of the Good News of Jesus Christ to the poverty-stricken and the ways in which they lived their lives in accordance with the Gospel make St. Dominic and St. Catherine exemplars of the mission and ministry of the Dominican Order.
The vision of St. Dominic
In providing an informational context on the Order, Father McGonigle addressed St. Dominic’s teachings on the Gospel and the importance of preaching as it relates to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—inherent in the Dominican tradition. In St. Dominic’s view, being a preacher meant living according to the Gospel and thereby adhering to the three vows, which “were meant to recreate and transform the preacher into an apostle, a living witness to the crucified, risen Lord,” Father McGonigle said.
Furthermore, St. Dominic’s vision of the preacher helped ease the pastoral problem experienced by laity in the medieval Church who believed that the opulent lifestyle of the clergy of the time conflicted with the Gospel’s emphasis on shared common life and preaching in poverty.
“The breadth and universality of Dominic’s vision made it possible to incorporate a wide variety of people into the Dominican family,” Father McGonigle said. “The Order of Preachers included not only the priests, lay brothers, student brothers, and novices—who constituted what came to be called the first order—but also the contemplative nuns, the second order, and lay men and women living a form of Dominican life in the world, the third order.”
Together, the members of the first and second order constitute a Gospel community formed by the Holy Spirit, which is sustained through the preaching of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Father McGonigle noted. The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and the community life combined with monastic observances were the primary means by which the Dominican family fulfilled its mission as a community of contemplative preachers, he said.
The fulfillment of St. Dominic’s vision of this community “requires a careful balancing of all the means so that both the active-preaching dimension and the contemplative-prayer-study dimension are held in creative tension,” Father McGonigle said.
A life of mission and ministry
Turning his attention to St. Catherine of Siena, Father McGonigle said that following her mystical espousal to Christ in 1368, she joined the women of the Dominican Third Order in Siena, known as the Mantellate, dedicating her life to serving the poor and the sick. Born the 24th of 25 children, St. Catherine traveled throughout Italy to help ease political tensions in the country.
Father McGonigle explained that in Pisa, for example, she used her influence to sway the city away from allying with an anti-papal league that was growing in strength and number at the time. While in Pisa, she received the stigmata and began a prolific writing career.
St. Catherine’s efforts to spread the teachings of the Gospel through writing and contemplative preaching help make her a true model of Dominican mission and ministry, Father McGonigle said.
“She did not pray simply to ‘refuel’ herself for further activity. It was precisely what she experienced in contemplation that impelled her into action,” he noted. “All that she touched or was touched by her in her activity was present in her prayer.”
Many of her views on prayer and reflection are discussed in her great work, Dialogue, the sections of which Father McGonigle briefly outlined. Furthermore, in part four of Dialogue, entitled “The Bridge,” St. Catherine calls for the bridging of faith and reason and the necessary fulfillment of both in order to live a contemplative life. The book, Father McGonigle said, offers great insight into the understanding of Dominican mission and ministry.
“On the opening page of her Dialogue, Catherine describes herself as ‘dwelling in the cell of self-knowledge,’” he said. “This statement is crucial to our understanding of Catherine’s mission and ministry for it is in the context of self-knowledge that she has developed her theology and spirituality.”
Responses to presentation
In response to Father McGonigle’s talk, Sister Ann P. Stankiewicz, O.P., associate professor of philosophy, and Dr. Patrick V. Reid, professor of theology and department chair, presented brief remarks highlighting the main arguments in his lecture.
Sister Stankiewicz reflected on Father McGonigle’s comments regarding the meaning of mission and ministry in relation to the College’s motto, Veritas. She encouraged faculty members in the audience to consider ways in which they can encourage their students to seek Truth. “How do we engage our students in the search for Truth? We need to bring to our students the importance of silence and reflection,” she said.
Reid noted that, similar to the Dominican Community that St. Dominic created, the community at Providence College should unite in its pursuit of truth. “We should study and listen to the apostles’ teachings . . . we should strive together to live in charity as a community of scholars,” he said.
— Mallary Jean Tenore ’07