Dominican Priories: Oxford

“At the University of Oxford where I am presently staying, Our Lord has given [us] the promise of a great catch…” These words of the year 1230, written by Jordan of Saxony—St. Dominic’s first successor as Master of the Order—could just have well been written by his 84th Successor, fr Timothy Radcliffe, a member of today’s Dominican community in Oxford. By the time of Jordan’s visit, the brethren had been settled in Oxford for nine years and were already looking to build a larger house to replace the one they’d established on 15th August 1221. ‘Friar Fever’ had swept the city, with many new recruits signing up. John of St Giles was so overcome by fervour that in the middle of a sermon he was preaching on poverty, he was clothed in the habit. His biographer notes that he eschewed much more lucrative work to lecture in the Blackfriars Studium (plus ça change).

It was St. Dominic himself who sent the brothers to England, and who gave explicit instructions that they should settle in Oxford first. On 6th August, the day of Dominic’s death, the brothers had presented themselves to the Primate at Canterbury; by August 10th they were passing through the seat of royal power at London. It was with some haste, however, that they made their way to their final destination of Oxford, already the country’s intellectual capital. It was here that the then highly innovative Dominican way of life was established at the heart of the nascent University, preaching the Gospel of Our Lord to the opinion formers of their time. In time, three of the friars would become Chancellors of the University, including John Bromyard OP, who holds the unique distinction of having been both Chancellor of Oxford and a more modern University situated the other side of Milton Keynes (excuse the anachronism). The brethren’s work was, of course, not limited to a narrow intellectual and liturgical apostolate: by 1250, Dominicans had established a reputation as defenders of the marginalised (particularly the Jews); by 1246 Oxford was designated by the Order as an international study house, a studium generale that attracted brethren from across Europe. We were welcoming international students to Oxford long before anyone else.

Writing in 1662, Anthony Wood tells us that “there was not so much as one stone to give testimony to the world that so famous a place as the college of the Dominicans of Oxon was there once standing”. There remains nothing of our first priory, and no monument or plaque records where it stood; the remnants of the second are not worth writing home about, although the names of some roads hint towards its presence. But the pains and divisions of this sad interruption to our Dominican life in Oxford need not be dwelt upon here, save to pray that we learn the lessons of the past. The inscription above the gate to the third and current Blackfriars reads, “[h]aving returned after a long exile, the Friars Preachers, established this second new convent on 15th August 1921, the same date that the former was founded in the year of Our Lord 1221”. This return was made possible by the vision of then provincial Fr Bede Jarrett OP and the generosity of an American widow, Mrs Charlotte Jefferson Tytus. The innocuous gate on St Giles conceals a unique three-fold institution—Dominican Priory, Oxford University Hall, Studium Generale—and a community of prayer and study, dedicated to preaching at the heart of the University and in service of the townsfolk. As well as study, brothers are engaged in apostolates across the University and town; the twenty-seven current members of the Blackfriars of today are conscious of the past, grateful for the way of life that has been bequeathed to us by our elder brothers, and yet convinced that the faithful proclamation of the Gospel is as essential in the University of the future as it is throughout the world of today. “Not so much as one stone”?!

Dominican Priories: Durham

St Cuthbert's Catholic Church, Old Elvet, Durham

We begin our series on Dominican Priories with the newest and smallest house in the English Province: St Cuthbert's in Durham. Erected on 28 September 2012, with fr. Benjamin Earl OP as Vicar, this is a Filial House of the Newcastle Priory, meaning that the two houses form one single Dominican community. The brethren meet regularly in order to foster these bonds, even when their pastoral work keeps them busy in different places and apostolates.

Durham Cathedral seen from Old Elvet

St Cuthbert's, of course, is named after the great monk-saint whose shrine is found at the high altar of the magnificent Durham Cathedral. The relics of King St Oswald and Saint Bede the Venerable, the finest scholar of his generation and a Doctor of the Church, are also in the Cathedral. St Cuthbert's Catholic Church is located on Old Elvet, one of the more ancient parts of the city and a centre of Catholic activity even in the periods of state persecution, which led to several martyrdoms. By the 17th century, Jesuits were running a chapel in this area, and in the 19th century it was possible for the first Catholic church since the Reformation to be built here, replacing the two Elvet Chapels.

The Venerable Bede, in the Canon Brown window by Harry Clarke (1931)

Today, St Cuthbert's also houses the Durham University Catholic Chaplaincy. It is well situated near the University buildings, especially the Students' Union. The pastoral opportunities and the intellectual climate (Durham University is home to the Centre for Catholic Studies) make this a natural environment for Dominicans, as chaplains, teachers or students in theology.

Members of Durham University CathSoc with the Chaplain

The house has space for up to four brothers, having a more domestic feel than our large priories elsewhere. But this is enough to sustain an active religious life, including the daily singing of the Divine Office. There is daily Mass and Office, as well as regular Adoration and Confession, and a packed Student Mass at 6.30pm on Sundays for which there is a growing student choir.

Mass with the Bishop

The Chaplaincy has space for study and socialising, to which students can have access. The CathSoc organises a varied programme of events throughout term, including CathSoc Night on Wednesdays, billed as "the best night in in Durham!" A high proportion of Catholic students participate in some way or other in the life of the Chaplaincy, and there is no doubt that they and the parish benefit from their symbiotic link. St Cuthbert's in Durham may be our newest house but it must be one of the most dynamic.

Pope Francis photobombs the CathSoc selfie

You can find more information on the relevant websites:
Parish websites: http://www.stcuthberts-durham.org.uk
University Chaplaincy: http://www.durhamcatholic.org
Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University: https://www.dur.ac.uk/theology.religion/ccs/
Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle: http://www.rcdhn.org.uk

Academic Mass 2014

The start of the academic year was marked by a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit and Vespers celebrated by the Regent of Studies, Fr. Simon Gaine OP. We prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill us with wisdom and understanding; to sustain us in our desire for knowledge and love of God's truth, and of one another. The occasion was a wonderful opportunity to come together as a community of students and teachers in order to consecrate the work of the term ahead to God.

After Mass, Dinner was served in the refectory and the brethren were able to meet our new students, and catch up with older friends.

DYM Study Day: Science vs Religion?

Dominican Priories: a new series on Godzdogz

The Priory of the Holy Spirit, Oxford

Where will you be sent after you're ordained?

As Dominican brothers studying for the priesthood in Oxford, we often get asked this question. The ultimate answer is: 'Anywhere in the world!'

When a man is clothed in the habit of St Dominic and becomes a Dominican friar, he immediately finds himself a member of a global Order, an international brotherhood. Indeed, as a member of the Dominican Family he also discovers he has many sisters and brothers in all its branches. As a friar preacher, his obedience is owed to the Master of the Order, presently fr Bruno Cadoré OP, who can assign him to any house or mission run by friars, anywhere in the world.

But the new Dominican also becomes a son of a particular Province. In our case, the student brothers at Godzdogz are generally sons of the English Province, but we also have among our number student brothers from other Provinces. A Province is composed of various communities, called priories and houses, and is an important level of governance for the strategic planning of our mission. The Prior Provincial is the 'ordinary' superior, who assigns brethren to a particular place according to both the needs of the mission and their particular capabilities.

The Master with the Godzdogz team last year

There is normally a process of discussion between each brother and the Provincial, to discern where that brother might be maximally useful. But, in the final analysis, religious obedience means we have to go where we are sent! And rightly so. We might think that we desperately want to be assigned to one place, only to find that a different assignment makes us flourish in ways we had not imagined. After experiencing this very situation, an older and wiser Dominican brother told me: 'God does not give us what we want; he gives us what we need!'

In practice, we are likely to be assigned within our own Province. That means, for the English Province today, there are several places where we might go: London, Cambridge, Leicester, Durham, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the West Indies – not counting Oxford, where we might return on a future assignment.

In this new series, we would like to introduce you to these different priories and houses, offering a bit of historical context but focusing mainly on our present apostolates, with the challenges and opportunities they entail. At one level these are just our homes, where we happen to live; but the way we live together, and the things we do in and from these places, all contribute to our mission to preach the Gospel.

So, as our medieval brethren put it, the priory itself becomes a praedicatio, a preaching of the Gospel!

The Priory of St Albert the Great, Edinburgh

The Rosary: Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is an apposite day on which to conclude our series on the Rosary. The series has focused on the cycles and prayers of the Rosary in which we have seen the richness and depth of this devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as its ultimate Christological character.

This is a special feast for Dominicans because of the tradition that Our Lady gave the traditional Rosary to St. Dominic. St. Dominic was not the first to use beads as a means of prayer - for example, the practice of saying 150 Our Fathers or the “Paternoster” certainly predated the Rosary. However, the tradition was affirmed by Pope Leo XIII especially and on several occasions, to say nothing of the endorsement of other Popes, besides.

St Dominic de Guzman receiving the Rosary, Federico Barocci, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Given this background, the Dominicans have a special role in promoting this Marian devotion and do so in various ways. One way we promote the Rosary is by personal recitation. After all, it would be useless to promote a devotion that we did not ourselves practise. The Constitutions of the Friars Preachers state "The brothers should recite daily five decades of the rosary in common or in private… This form of prayer leads us to the contemplation of the mystery of salvation in which the Virgin Mary is intimately associated with the work of her Son." [LCO 67]. Of course, we are greatly assisted in this task by the fact that we wear the Rosary as part of our habit! [LCO 50]

Elsewhere in the Constitutions, the importance and value of our devotion to the rosary and its implications is underscored: "The Rosary as a way of contemplating the mysteries of Christ, is a school for developing evangelical life. As such, it is a form of preaching particularly appropriate to our Order, in which the truths of faith are proposed in the light of the blessed Virgin Mary’s participation in the mystery of Christ and the Church. Since the Rosary is a characteristically Dominican devotion, the brothers should fervently preach it, so that it may flourish, and they should promote its societies.” [LCO 129].

Further reading on the meaning and value of the Rosary, together with advice on the way to say it can be found in various Papal documents, including Adiutricem (Leo XIII) , Marialis Cultus (Paul VI), and Rosarium Virginis Mariae (St. John Paul II).

In writing this series, we hope that we have been true to our Dominican heritage and mission, and that some encouragement has been provided to our readers to dedicate themselves to this wonderful devotion.

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God – that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Sermon for the Funeral of Fr Bede Bailey OP

Sermon for the Funeral of Fr Bede Bailey OP, 19th August 2014 

by Fr Richard Conrad OP

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9 and John 6:51-58

With the death of Fr Bede Bailey at the age of 97, we have lost an important link to a key part of our English Dominican history, for Bede was the last surviving Dominican to know, personally, Fr Bede Jarrett, who, as Provincial, brought us back to Oxford and Edinburgh. I presume David Bailey, as he then was, met Fr Bede Jarrett through growing up near Hawkesyard. His mother became a Catholic early on; his father, courageously, did so some years after her, and was instructed by Thomas Gilby. David Bailey was schooled at Ampleforth, but he decided to join the Order of Preachers. That was at the time Fr Bede Jarrett was ill, too ill in fact for David to visit him in hospital. Bede Jarrett died in 1934; David entered the novitiate a year later, and was delighted to “inherit” the earlier Fr Bede’s religious name. This went well with his veneration for what might be called “continuity of line”.

Priory Church of St Dominic, Newcastle, where Fr Bede was Prior in the 1950s

Bede studied at Hawkesyard and Oxford; he was pleased that his “ordination line” took him back to Archbishop Ullathorne and, through him, to the Vicars Apostolic – a precious part of English Catholic history.

Bede’s ordination was followed by a dizzying series of moves, eight in sixteen years. In each place he was assigned, he held several jobs at once. Often he was cantor, owing to his musical voice and, I guess, the feel for the chant he had picked up at Ampleforth. For some of the time he was in Edinburgh where, decades later, he taught the novices to sing, and used to encourage them to “soften their endings” – not always with success.

The job of guest-master was also often undertaken by Bede, going well with his sense of hospitality – and with his skill at being “conversible”. When I was in Edinburgh with him, I noticed that if he was away we didn’t always know what to talk about at supper, whereas when he was present there were no embarrassing silences.

Bede also had a pastoral streak: he was often assigned roles such as curate or air-force chaplain – and (in those early years and later) he was sometimes chaplain to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He had a real concern for the poor: when he was Prior in Newcastle he was proud that the men’s club in the parish had good, and cheap, beer; and he was assiduous in visiting the poor.

During a short time in Oxford around 1948, Bede worked with Conrad Pepler for Blackfriars Publications, and, because of Conrad’s Ditchling connections, I’m sure this helped develop Bede’s interest in Eric Gill and David Jones. But his interest in the work of these craftsmen would also have struck a family chord, for Bede’s father had been managing director of Royal Doulton.

At that same period, Leonard Boyle was a student in Oxford, and remembered later how easy it was to tease Bede, who was rather solemn, and very English.

When I was Prior in Cambridge in the early 90s, Bede visited and complained, “When I was young I had to kow-tow to the old, and now I am old I have to kow-tow to the young.” But he glossed over the middle period of his life, when he made something of a career of being Prior himself in various places! – though I am not sure to what extent people did kow-tow to him, given that he always seemed to have to take on himself several jobs he should have been able to delegate.

This phase of Bede’s ministry began in 1956, when he became Prior of Newcastle; he held that post for six years. After two years as parish priest in Woodchester, he was Prior in Oxford for three years. Then after three years as university chaplain in Leicester he was Prior there for three years. He spent two years as chaplain to the Dominican nuns in Carisbrooke, then returned to Newcastle as curate and after two years was elected Prior there again.

It was in 1965, when he was Prior of Oxford, that Bede became Archivist of the Province. He was given two shoe-boxes of materials, and set himself to build up the archives. He was not trained as an archivist – he used to boast that he only had two letters after his name, O.P., and none of these pretentious doctorates – but several publications emerged from his time as Archivist, notably the entry on Gerald Vann in the great Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, and of course the letters and other papers of Bede Jarrett that he selected for publication in “Dominican Sources in English”. Bede had a profound interest in our heritage, and a passion for its preservation. His time as Archivist began traumatically: we had closed our novitiate house at Woodchester, and a certain brother sold off a great deal of the library, including some rare books that were very valuable for our history. Bede tried, without much success, to recover some of them, and years later was still trying to make good some of the gaps. He went to Rome once or twice around 1990 to obtain replacements for some items, and was received kindly, but was much distressed at the state of the library in our mother-house at Santa Sabina: “The library,” he wrote, “is in a most disgraceful state, and is used more by the [book]worms than by the brethren.”

After his final three years as Prior in Newcastle, Bede returned to Carisbrooke. I visited the nuns there a couple of times, and put up some extra shelves for the archives. There were two friars living there: Bede – and the brother who had dispersed the Woodchester library! I was amazed at how kind and solicitous Bede was to the older brother, despite what had happened. He could be critical, he could recognise mistakes and injustices; with a deft turn of phrase he could sum up people’s foibles (he sometimes referred to the Provincial Council as “that quango”) – but he was also aware of the need to forgive, and to put the past into the past. When he was around 75, he wrote about the importance of “denying oneself the right of disappointment even for five minutes or so,” and about how brooding can destroy one’s obedience to the brethren – and can even destroy oneself in some degree.

When Carisbrooke closed, Bede and the archives moved to Edinburgh. He filled a huge basement with material relevant to our history, to the context of our history, and illustrative of our influence.

Bede’s interest in our past went with an interest in people – a wide-ranging, and largely non-judgmental interest, an attitude which also made him a very kind confessor. All sorts of people came to visit Bede and the archives.

Of course Bede was upset by things like betrayal of confidence, and by the Order’s failures to appreciate and cherish its past and the people who were important to it, notably David Jones. He was (rightly) angered by stupidities and injustices in the Church. It was notable that along with his interest in the past, he was in many ways forward-looking. He was struck by the work of Conrad Pepler at Spode House, and how this prepared English Catholics for Vatican II. Bede was aware that many old rigidities and fussy rules would have to go – I guess he saw them as unnecessary, un-Dominican, un-English. His three years as Prior of Oxford, 1964-67, were rather traumatic, and I am not sure he ever referred back to them.

Bede was also interested in ecumenism, and when he was in Oxford set up some joint lectures with Pusey House. Later he invited Michael Ramsey to lecture in Newcastle. Bede was himself a visiting lecturer for a term at Lincoln Theological College.

In 1996, at the Diamond Jubilee celebration that Bede shared with Columba Ryan and Bernard Jarvis, Malcolm, then Provincial, spoke of the determination that had kept them faithful for 60 years, a determination born of love of the brethren, love of the project set for us by St. Dominic, and above all love of the Divine Word whom we have to preach. That determination kept Bede faithful during tough periods. But a few years earlier he had written, “I am quite convinced that I have been given more happiness by the Order ... than most people in life experience, and I am happy and hope to help in other people being happy… our province is blessed more than most in that. On the whole we don’t seem to bicker.” Then he added, “One has to prepare for old age just as one has to prepare all the time for dying, and dying happy.” That fits with a story Bede sometimes told of a renowned monk and teacher at Ampleforth, who was asked what he was concerned to impart to the young, and replied, “I prepare them for death.”

Almost exactly 10 years ago, Bede reported that his doctor had said he might live another ten years – “A prospect that does not fill me with enthusiasm.” But he was given all of 97 years. I feel that the last eight or so of them were years of waiting, in the spirit of our first Reading: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.” So we pray that Bede will “be glad and rejoice in [God’s] salvation.”

A great deal of Bede’s ministry was of course sacramental, and he had a profound sense of the power of the Sacraments. He once remarked to me that if we had to choose between keeping Mass going without preaching, or keeping preaching going without Mass, the Mass would do more to build up the Church. It is that Eucharistic Sacrifice that we now offer for the repose of his soul, that Eucharist which, as we heard in the Gospel reading, is the pledge and cause of the final resurrection. Here, the Word who became flesh still lives among us, to impart grace and love. This grace and love must “take flesh” in the fabric of our lives and relationships, in our historical “locatedness”. Bede could see how grace and love “took flesh” in the lives of real people, not bypassing their characters and their connections, their strengths and their foibles. He could see how grace and love had to “take flesh” in the life of the Province, the Order and the Church – and often had to empower the forgiveness of mistakes, betrayal, injustice, enabling us to build for the future rather than brood on past hurts. We saw grace and love “take flesh” in Bede’s own life and ministry, not bypassing his own talents and foibles. So we pray that God “who began the good work in” him, may “bring it to completion in the Day of [our Lord] Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).