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...

Some days ago, I completed and returned my absentee ballot because I won’t be at home on the day that my state holds its primary elections. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the continuing barrage of campaign ads and the unending media coverage of primary elections and caucuses leading-up to the July political conventions? The many political action committees and individuals who use enormous wealth to influence campaigns and elections make me wonder whether our “government of the people, by the people, for the people” still exists. My tendency toward cynicism was brought-up short in recent conversations with the two Dominican Sisters from Vietnam with whom I live in community. Both Sisters are college students. One Sister has received course assignments related to our US political parties and current candidates. Discussing an assignment with her, I realized how difficult it must be to understand all this political activity when a person has spent a lifetime in a country that fo...

For I know the plans I have in mind for you; plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future full of hope (Jeremiah 29:11) We are in the midst of our congregation’s 24 th General Chapter, my first.  As un-Dominican as this may seem, I find myself in a space where the events of the world, while so present to me and to all of us in both our conversation and our prayer, almost seem suspended. I am finding Chapter to be an immersion experience. While in session, General Chapter is our highest governing authority, making decisions affecting the entire congregation and electing the prioress and congregational council.   Its purpose is to protect the patrimony of the congregation, understood not as money, but as the intentions of our Founder - that which we most treasure.   I love that we are being asked to look to both our Dominican identity and our Sinsinawa Dominican identity to root us in the work we are being called to do. So far, I am f...

Dominicans are Easter people.   First of all, we are devoted to newness and open to risk.   Our founder, Saint Dominic, began the Order of Preachers in order to launch new ways of spreading God’s Word. Secondly, we are women and men of hope.   As our brother, Thomas Aquinas said, “Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not as hand.”   We want to see with eyes of abundance, not scarcity.   Finally, we are committed to the belief that anything is possible.   When a situation appears without promise, we will look for what could be there.   We will live in the paradoxical.   We will strive to turn our deepest sorrows into a joy that cannot be contained.   We long to share our talking to God and about God.        So, how about you?   How are you connected to Easter? Peggy Ryan, OP Waukegan, IL