Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Dominicans talk about Study being one of the pillars of Dominican life. Lately, I’ve been thinking lately of how that means so much more than “book study.”   True, Dominicans are traditional students with degrees and certificates; some of us have impressive vocabularies and skills; these all evidence book-learning.   Study should, however, encourage so much more in us than piling up “credits.”   Study and everything else we do is, after all, in service to our mission: to preach the gospel.   Formal study is only part of an attitude of learning.   We keep learning from everything we do. That is what matters.   Recently, when I rewrote a book review for an academic journal, a couple of editors made suggestions that helped me write a better review.   One of the computer techs at Edgewood College helped me recall the ins and outs of an editing program I hadn’t used for years.   Dominicans do tend to read a lot of scripture and theology, but a...

This is my second attempt at blogging and I wish to share today a very special experience I had over the Easter weekend.  My brother, John, is a priest for the Sioux City Diocese and has always worked in small parishes in rural Iowa.  After 46 years of ministry, he will be retiring.  Saturday, I drove to Wall Lake, Iowa where my family gathered to celebrate this occasion.  John and I are less than a year apart in age and we grew up like Irish Twins. There were six children in our family and we were blessed with loving parents and a marvelous education by the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.  Both John and I began our religious vocations right after high school and I celebrated my final vows at his first Mass. The prayer card that we created for this occasion expressed our hopes. Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; the thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the upst...