Preaching with Their Lives: Dominicans on Mission in the United States after 1850

By Margaret M. McGuinness, Jeffrey M. Burns, Arlene Bachanov and 11 more

This volume tells the little-known story of the Dominican Family—priests, sisters, brothers, contemplative nuns, and lay people—and integrates it into the history of the United States. Starting after the Civil War, the book takes a thematic approach through twelve essays examining Dominican contributions to the making of the modern United States by exploring parish ministry, preaching, health care, education, social and economic justice, liturgical renewal and the arts, missionary outreach and contemplative prayer, ongoing internal formation and renewal, and models of sanctity. It charts the effects of the United States on Dominican life as well as the Dominican contribution to the larger U.S. history. When the country was engulfed by wave after wave of immigrants and cities experienced unchecked growth, Dominicans provided educational institutions; community, social, and religious centers; and health care and social services. When epidemic disease hit various locales, Dominicans responded with nursing care and spiritual sustenance. As the United States became more complex and social inequities appeared, Dominicans cried out for social and economic justice. Amidst the ugliness and social dislocation of modern society, Dominicans offered beauty through the liturgical arts, the fine arts, music, drama, and film, all designed to enrich the culture. Through it all, the Dominicans cultivated their own identity as well, undergoing regular self-examination and renewal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780823289653

Arlene Bachanov

Arlene Bachanov is a researcher and writer in the history office of the Adrian Dominican Sisters and an Adrian Dominican Associate. She is the author of “Sister Cannonball: The Nun Who Shook Up Adrian,” Michigan History (May/June 2017): 41–47, and the coauthor with Sister Nadine Foley, OP, of To Fields Near and Far: Adrian Dominican Sisters History, 1933–1961 (Adrian Dominican Sisters, 2015).

Book preview

Introduction

Dominicans on Mission

JEFFREY M. BURNS

The Dominican family has made significant contributions to the history of the Catholic Church in the United States and to the history of the United States. Unfortunately, this history has been largely ignored or forgotten. In 1990 the Dominican Leadership Conference in the United States gathered together a team of Dominican historians and researchers to organize Project OPUS to remedy this situation. OPUS was charged with directing the researching and writing of a family history of the Order of Preachers in the United States (OPUS), a history that was to include the role of Dominican priests, sisters, brothers, contemplative nuns, and laypeople. As the preface of its first volume asserted, For the sake of present and future service to the Church, there is need to know the history of the Dominican family on mission together, beginning in the earliest years of the nation. In 2001, Project OPUS celebrated a major achievement—the publication of Dominicans at Home in a Young Nation: 1786–1865,¹ the first volume of a projected multivolume history of the order, edited by Mary Nona McGreal, OP. The first volume told the story of the Dominican family’s pioneers and pioneer institutions, and their role in the creation of the early republic in the United States. The first volume covered the order’s many accomplishments and establishments through the Civil War.

Our second volume, Preaching with Their Lives: Dominicans on Mission in the United States after 1850, picks up where the first volume left off—in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the second volume takes a vastly different approach. Rather than attempt a unified, chronological narrative as volume 1 had done, volume 2 takes a thematic approach through twelve essays examining Dominican contributions in a number of areas: parish ministry, preaching, health care, education, social and economic justice, liturgical renewal and the arts, missionary outreach and contemplative prayer, ongoing internal formation and renewal, and models of sanctity. Throughout the twelve essays, the Dominican lived virtues shine through—preaching the Gospel in word and deed, caring for the poor and marginalized, proclaiming the reality of an incarnational God who dwells in our midst, an appreciation of beauty, spirituality, and lively community.

Preaching with Their Lives covers an era of immense change and painstaking development for both the United States and the order. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the nation was transformed from a rural, agricultural nation into an urban, industrial giant. It received a massive influx of immigrants as it emerged as the world’s leading economic power; it experienced two world wars, a great economic depression, postwar recovery and prosperity, and more than a decade of turbulent social and political change, culminating in its emergence as the world’s lone superpower. Throughout the century and a half that this volume covers, the Dominican family was present, doing its part, responding to the country’s needs, sharing its triumphs and challenges, and attempting to shape US culture according to the vision of St. Dominic, that is to say, the vision of the Gospel.

As the country grew and developed, so did the Dominican family. Dominicans responded to the needs each era generated. When the country was swept by wave after wave of immigrants from around the world, and cities experienced unchecked growth, Dominicans responded by providing multiple educational institutions; community, social, and religious centers; health care; and social services. In an era in which there was no social safety net, Dominicans acted to fill the breach. When epidemic disease—yellow fever, influenza, typhoid, and cholera—hit various locales, Dominicans responded with nursing care and spiritual sustenance. As the United States grew and became more complex, and social inequities and iniquities appeared, Dominicans cried out for social and economic justice. Amid the ugliness and social dislocation of modern society, Dominicans offered beauty through the liturgical arts, the fine arts, music, drama, and film—all designed to enrich the culture and hold social ennui at bay, reminding the world of the Incarnation. As globalization became a reality, the Dominican vision expanded, as Dominicans created programs of missionary outreach abroad and interior outreach through contemplative prayer at home. Through it all, the Dominicans cultivated their own identity, undergoing regular self-examination and renewal, striving to answer the central question: Where is God calling the Dominican family? Dominicans have contributed much to church and nation, not the least of which are the models of sanctity they have produced. Some have officially been acknowledged as saints by the church, but most have not. This volume hopes to bring to light some of the stories of this unsung multitude.

Preaching with Their Lives seeks to explore the vast diversity of the Dominican family, the vast diversity of gifts, challenges, and ministries. It attempts to tell the story of those who have gone before. More important, it seeks to inspire future generations. Firmly grounded in the achievements of the past, the Dominican family can confront the challenges of the future with renewed vigor. But the essays are more than celebratory—the essays make a significant contribution to US Catholic historiography as well.

We have divided the book into two parts: the first six chapters begin with what we call Dominicans in the World. These essays explore the interconnection and interaction of the Dominican story with the larger narrative of US history. These essays look outward. The second part, Being Dominican, takes a closer look at developments that occurred within the order and are more particular to the Dominican family. These essays tend to look inward, but they also intersect and are dependent on the larger history of the United States. These latter essays may seem more celebratory than those in the first part and of more interest to the Dominican family, but they too make an important contribution in laying out a story that has not previously been told.

Our story begins in the second half of the nineteenth century in the nation’s largest and most important urban center, New York City. In A Joyful Spectrum of Service: The Order of Preachers in New York James T. Carroll examines the Dominican response to US modernization brought on by industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. All branches of the Dominican family—priests, sisters, nuns, brothers, and laity—were established in New York City during this era. They encountered the all too common effects of modern urban life: poverty, abandoned women, orphans, the sick, the elderly, and the forgotten. Dominicans responded in traditional ways with schools, hospitals, and social services but also with innovative responses such as settlement houses. They also provided for the city’s spiritual needs by creating mission bands of preachers who went from site to site and by fostering devotions. Carroll contends that Dominicans were creative thinkers who did not simply rely on rote responses, but thought innovatively. One innovation gave birth to a third order (distinct from the cloistered second order), which could work directly in the community to address specific social needs. Carroll addresses several areas that will be treated in later chapters—the work of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (Samuel Mazzuchelli, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, and the Making of American Saints, by Kathleen Sprow Cummings), the founding of the Maryknoll Sisters (Afire with the Itinerant Spirit, by Donna Marie Moses, OP), and the establishment of contemplative houses (Dominican Monasteries, by Cecilia Murray, OP).

In ‘In the Midst of Sorrow and Death’: The Work of the Dominican Sisters in Tennessee during the Yellow Fever Epidemics Margaret M. McGuinness examines the work done by the Dominican community of sisters in response to repeated yellow fever epidemics in Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. McGuinness addresses two traditional weaknesses in US Catholic historiography—the neglect of the important contribution of women religious, as well as the neglect of the geographical location of her study, the South. McGuinness relates the extreme difficulties and dislocations the sisters faced in establishing the order in Tennessee: the disruption of the Civil War, followed by repeated epidemics. The order survived through hard work, strategic leadership, and prayer, but not without cost. McGuinness records the suffering the sisters endured. For instance, Sisters Joseph McKernan, who had volunteered to nurse patients [in Memphis in 1873], was the first member of the St. Cecilia congregation to die from the disease during this epidemic. Sisters Martha Quarry and Magdalen McKernan (Sister Joseph McKernan’s biological sister), who died within twelve hours of each other, followed her. The cost of discipleship was more than a remote ideal for the Dominican women of Tennessee. Nonetheless, McGuinness claims, the order was established successfully, despite adverse conditions.

In Reclaiming the Sinsinawa Dominicans’ Legacy of Catholic Progressive Education Ellen Skerrett and Janet Welsh, OP, address another lacuna in US and US Catholic historiography—the role of women religious in US educational history. They write, "To an extent that historians of education—as well as ‘baby boomers’—have not fully appreciated, These Are Our Friends presented a positive view of American Catholic life for thousands of children enrolled in parochial schools in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s." Two unheralded grammar school teachers, Sisters Joan Smith, OP, and Mary Nona McGreal, OP, were the driving forces behind the development of what became the standard curriculum guide for Catholic schools in the United States, Guiding Growth in Christian Social Living, published in three volumes between 1944 and 1946 by the Catholic University of America Press. Smith and McGreal benefited from a Dominican tradition of progressive education, which recognized the individuality of the teacher and the student alike, was not limited to learning by rote, encouraged learning by doing, and taught the children to think through the use of the Socratic method. They attempted to balance church doctrine and secular subjects. As with other Catholic educators of the era, Dominican educators sought to create good Catholics and good citizens. Skerrett and Welsh examine and explore little known aspects of Catholic educational history—the interplay of strong pastors and strong Dominican women superiors and principals, Dominican women pursuing advanced study at premier secular universities such as the University of Chicago and Columbia University, exchanges between women religious and secular educational authorities, and the mixing of various orders of women religious in educational training and advancement, which contributed to collaborative efforts between the orders. Skerrett and Welsh argue that historians have undervalued the role of women religious, and in this case, Dominican women, in US educational history. Their essay, in contrast, celebrates the contributions of the Dominicans.

The next essay, Walking in Solidarity: Dominican Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in the Modern United States, addresses another lacuna: the role of women religious in promoting and developing Catholic social teaching in the twentieth century in the United States. According to Heath W. Carter, this lacuna points to a larger problem—the neglect of the Catholic Church in the new histories of capitalism currently being written. In this essay, Carter examines the surprising history of one of the giants of the era who has been all but neglected by historians, Sister Vincent Ferrer Bradford, OP, a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa. Working for the US Bishops’ Social Action Department, Sister Vincent was of such renown that she once was highlighted in a talk by Communist leader Earl Browder, earning her the unfortunate nickname, the Communist Sister. Using Ferrer as his primary example, Carter argues that, contrary to popular perceptions, women religious have played essential roles in the fight for a more economically just society. Indeed, women religious who worked with the poor and working class seemed more inclined to support organized labor than to get caught up in abstract debates about socialism and in antisocialist crusades as many clerics did. Ferrer’s distinguished career startled many who found it difficult to believe a Catholic sister could be so expert and well-spoken on economic issues and Catholic social teaching. Carter concludes his essay with what might be considered a legacy of Sister Vincent—the Adrian Dominicans’ contemporary attempt to live out the teachings of the papal social encyclicals by implementing the call for a living wage in their communities and institutions. It is not easy.

The next essay continues to focus on the difficulties of living out the demands of the Gospel and Catholic social teaching. In A Corporate Stance for Social Justice: The Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, California, and the 1980s Sanctuary Movement Cynthia Taylor probes the development of the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael’s decision to take a corporate and public stance in favor of the sanctuary movement in support of Salvadoran refugees in the 1980s. Taylor charts the history of the congregation through three eras: the pioneer era in which strong hierarchical authority contributed to the order’s establishment in California; the second period, in which the traditional ministries of education and health care were developed; and the third period, which sought the implementation of the directives of the Second Vatican Council. The postconciliar era saw two significant changes—first, the transition from a hierarchical authority structure to a more democratic one that placed more importance on dialogue and consultation, and second, the development of a communal social consciousness that privileged concern for the poor. In the 1980s, as the civil war in El Salvador escalated, the flow of refugees from El Salvador increased. The US government declined to acknowledge them as refugees, and so they were designated as undocumented immigrants, officially regarded as being in the United States illegally. Numerous groups defied the law and provided sanctuary to the refugees. The Dominican Sisters of San Rafael underwent a six-stage discernment process that resulted in the community’s taking a corporate and public stance in favor of sanctuary, and in making the motherhouse an actual sanctuary refuge by taking in a refugee family. The decision was a courageous one. First, the community openly dissented from stated US governmental policy, and second, they broke the law. Taylor’s essay once again highlights the risks of following the Gospel.

"Aggiornamento on Campus: William Blase Schauer, OP, and the Las Cruces Experiment takes us in a different direction—to Dominican contributions to the liturgical renewal movement. Christopher Renz, OP, explores the underappreciated life of Dominican friar William Blase Schauer, founder of what came to be popularly known as Liturgy in Santa Fe. Schauer was a disciple of the liturgical movement, and before the Second Vatican Council he sought to implement the new liturgical principles at the Newman Center at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He considered the campus a type of laboratory where he pursued what he called adventures in liturgy, mixing tradition with experimentation, attempting to integrate the liturgy with daily life. Schauer saw the importance of and made use of the local cultural heritage. He stressed the importance of the liturgical environment and adopted a multimedia approach that made use of art, music, drama, chant, slides, symbols, and paintings. Surprisingly, Schauer was not overly enthusiastic about some of the changes brought on by the council and the way they were being implemented. As he put it, he preferred evolution, not revolution. Schauer summed up his appreciation for the liturgy: In liturgy, all the great truths of faith are embodied, are celebrated, and are enhanced by art, symbol, and imagery, and liturgy is the greatest teaching instrument the Church has." Through the life of Father Schauer, Renz explores the difficulties and promises of liturgical reform, Dominican style.

The second part of this volume examines what it means to be Dominican from the US perspective. In Call and Response: American Dominican Artists and Vatican II Elizabeth Michael Boyle, OP, examines the development of Dominican art following the Second Vatican Council. Like Schauer, Boyle explores the intersection of experimentation and tradition. Boyle presents a variety of postconciliar Dominican artists—liturgical artists, musicians, painters, architects, poets, and filmmakers—and concludes with the groundbreaking work of the Dominican Institute for the Arts. Dominican artists have created inspired artworks in multiple media that proclaim the reality and presence of God in and to the modern world. As such, they are fulfilling the primary Dominican charism, preaching. Good music is preaching. Good art is preaching. Good architecture is preaching. Moreover, good art is a form of prayer. The Second Vatican Council freed artists to experiment with new forms and modalities, though the teaching remained essentially the same. Nonetheless, several Dominican artists have used their art to explore the demands of social justice, to serve as voices for the unheard, the poor, and the oppressed. The medium of filmmaking has been utilized by several Dominican men to explore sensitive and thought-provoking topics. Despite using vastly different forms and approaches of art, Boyle concludes, all Dominican art is incarnational. Like silence, Dominican art calls us to an experience of God.

In Afire with the Itinerant Spirit: Paradigm Shifts in the Foreign Missions Donna Maria Moses, OP, presents a thorough history of the missionary efforts of US Dominican women beginning in the early twentieth century. In 1908, the Vatican no longer designated the United States a mission country. With its newfound maturity the church in the United States began to look outward and sponsored missionaries to foreign lands. Several Dominican congregations sent sisters abroad. By the end of the twentieth century as many as twelve US Dominican congregations had sent missionaries to more than fifty-five nations. Most significant was the foundation of Maryknoll, the Foreign Missionary Society of St. Dominic, affiliated with the Dominican Order in 1920 by foundress Mother Josephine Rogers. Initially formed as a society in 1912, the women were not allowed to send missionaries abroad until 1921, when the first sisters were sent to China. Over the next century, Maryknoll and other Dominican congregations expanded to other parts of Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Moses charts the triumphs, challenges, and transformation of mission work that led to changes in the mission paradigm that directed the Dominican mission over the course of more than a century. While experiencing the exhilaration of community and solidarity, Dominican missionaries also experienced persecution, and even martyrdom, at the hands of Communist China, Latin American dictators, and others. In each land and era, it was the sisters’ work with the poor and marginalized that made them vulnerable and dangerous. Moses concludes with the challenges brought on by declining numbers of sisters.

In Dominican Monasteries: Ever Ancient, Ever New Cecilia Murray, OP, probes the Dominican response to the American longing for the contemplative life. For many Americans, cloistered life seemed strange or exotic; for others, it provided an answer to a call. Murray provides a detailed chronology of the foundation and expansion of Dominican monasteries for women throughout the United States. By the 1890s, Murray asserts, there were two networks of contemplative women: one dedicated to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the other to perpetual recitation of the rosary. Both traditions grew in numbers and expanded across the United States until the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, when decline, and at times closure, became the norm. Several monasteries closed in response to divisions caused by debates over the implementation of Vatican II within their monasteries. Despite the decline, Dominican monasteries have given a witness to Dominican prayer and contemplation in the midst of a frenzied world.

The next essay turns inward to look at the Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission. Parable was a direct result of the Second Vatican Council’s mandate for the renewal of religious orders. In More Than a Mustard Seed: The Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission Diane Kennedy, OP, lovingly tells the story of Parable’s foundation, remarkable growth, and ultimate demise. From 1976 to 2008, Parable attempted to create collaborative efforts and projects involving Dominican men and women, who were to meet on an equal basis. It sought nothing less than the renewal of Dominican life and mission, and the renewal of Dominican spirituality. Research, study, spirituality, collaboration, and community were the key words of the movement. Particularly effective were the Encounter with the Word retreats, in which Dominican men and women came together to pray, reflect on the Word, and explore their common calling. Over the thirty-two years of Parable’s existence, thousands of Dominicans either attended or participated in the planning of the retreats. Despite its enormous success, the Parable Conference began to flounder amid the changing demographics of the order. By the early 2000s Dominican men and women began to drift apart. Dominican women were aging and had increasingly adopted a feminist lens to view the work of the conference and order. This conflicted with many of the younger Dominican men, who increasingly entered the order with conservative tendencies. Collaborative efforts became difficult. The official reason for the demise of Parable was that it was no longer fiscally viable.

Nonetheless, for more than thirty years, Parable injected life into the Dominican family. As Diane Kennedy concludes, For more than three decades the Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission dramatically influenced the shape of the Dominican family in the United States. Its legacy continues to live on in the many forms of collaboration evolving to meet the changing needs of the order and the world that it serves. In the 1980s and 1990s Parable had become a symbolic center of the American Dominican family, a center of influence rather than a center of authority and power. Though Parable passed from the scene, it had reaped an abundant harvest.

In From Teacher to Tutor: Adapting a Historic Ministry of Education to Contemporary Realities Arlene I. Bachanov tells the story of the creation of Dominican Literacy Centers by the Adrian Dominicans in the late 1980s. By that time, the majority of Adrian Dominican Sisters (570) were sixty-five years old or older. Many had retired from formal ministry but were not ready for complete retirement. Fortuitously, the sisters became aware of a major problem in Detroit and other urban centers—adult illiteracy, a problem in which the sisters saw an opportunity to make use of their traditional charism, teaching. As they had done in previous eras, Dominican women responded to a perceived need: They established and staffed the Dominican Literacy Center in Detroit. The center was a major success, and the concept spread rapidly to other locations. Like the more traditional Dominican educational ministries that had preceded them, the centers transformed lives.

The final chapter serves as a conclusion for the book in which the past meets the present. Underlying Dominican ministry, for both men and women, was the desire to live out the Gospel, to proclaim the Word of God in a specific time and place. In a sense, all Dominican ministry is preaching. In Samuel Mazzuchelli, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, and the Making of American Saints Kathleen Sprows Cummings concludes the book with the stories of two US Dominican candidates for canonization, Samuel Mazzuchelli and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. Their lives, Cummings notes, reflect the capaciousness of the Dominican spirit and the extraordinary ways it has manifested itself in the United States. Mazzuchelli was a missionary to the Upper Midwest, where he built churches, preached to Native Americans and to European settlers, and established the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary of the Order of Preachers (Sinsinawa Dominicans). Lathrop began a hospice for patients suffering from incurable cancer in New York City and created the Dominican congregation Servants for the Relief of Incurable Cancer. Both have been proposed for sainthood. Both led holy lives, but, as Cummings points out, holiness is not the only consideration. The canonization process reflects what captures the Catholic imagination in particular times and places. Mazzuchelli was a pioneer builder during an era in which Catholic Americans still had their citizenship questioned and continued to seek acceptance. Lathrop represented a later era, in which Catholics had been assimilated and accepted; as such, they felt more at ease critiquing the nation’s policies and culture. Lathrop’s loving care of those dying of cancer made her a prime model of defending the dignity and sanctity of life, in the midst of what some considered a culture of death. Cummings concludes that Mazzuchelli and Lathrop, from different starting points, combined a dedication to meaningful service, an openness to the broad diversity of American society, and an unflinching embrace of their faith. These have been the markers of so many sons and daughters of St. Dominic.

Preaching with Their Lives attempts to share these untold or underappreciated stories of the sons and daughters of St. Dominic in the United States. These unsung men and women have contributed to the building of the church and nation. Confronted by turbulent and changing times, Dominican men and women responded in earnest wherever they saw a need. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, they responded to the signs of the times. Often this led them to side with the poor and the marginalized, the sick and the elderly, the oppressed, those seeking educational opportunities, and with the ordinary person seeking beauty and meaning in an often difficult and discouraging world. In the end, the Dominican family is a family of preachers, preaching the Good News as told through the lens of St. Dominic through their words and through their lives. Preaching with Their Lives tells their story.

Note

1. Mary Nona McGreal, OP, ed., Dominicans at Home in a Young Nation: 1786–1865, vol. 1 of The Order of Preachers in the United States: A Family History (Strasbourg, France: Editions du Signe, 2001).

Dominicans in the World

A Joyful Spectrum of Service

The Order of Preachers in New York

JAMES T. CARROLL

On August 26, 1853, four Dominican sisters arrived in Manhattan, New York, after a month-long journey that started at the Holy Cross Monastery in Regensburg, Germany. They were expecting to be met by a German Benedictine priest who would transport them to Pennsylvania to minister to German immigrants. A combination of happenstance and miscommunication left the women to their own devices during their first hours on American soil. In short, the priest was not at the pier, forcing the sisters to seek out the Redemptorist Fathers at the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer on East 3rd Street, a short distance from where they disembarked. This event changed the entire future direction of Dominican life in New York. The women found temporary housing in New York and New Jersey, and Father John Stephen Raffeiner, pastor of Holy Trinity Church and Vicar General of the Diocese of Brooklyn, recruited them to work in his parish in Williamsburg. This Brooklyn neighborhood was home to a growing population of German immigrants, mostly Catholics, who were crossing the East River to escape the slums of the Lower East Side. It was an ideal setting for the German-speaking sisters from Bavaria. More important, however, for this story, Saint Alphonsus School in Williamsburg became the first permanent foundation of Dominicans in New York.¹

The original group of Dominican sisters arrived in Brooklyn at an opportune time. Within two months of taking up residence in Williamsburg, they witnessed the creation of the Brooklyn diocese, welcomed the installation of Irish-born John Loughlin as the first bishop, and tethered their community’s future with the affairs of the diocese.² Amid all this Catholic activity, in 1853 the sisters faced the stern realities of rapid assimilation, shouldered significant debt to establish a school and convent, confronted intense anti-Catholicism and xenophobia when local Know-Nothings menaced the convent and school and even used a battering ram on the door of the convent, happily to no avail. The tenacious attributes of resiliency, adaptability, accommodation, and resourcefulness that the sisters forged in these early years served them ably as they considered new apostolic endeavors, navigated clerical interference and intrusion, eliminated monastic practices over time, and supported the creation of new communities to minister to the Catholic faithful in New York. The first new endeavor of the fledgling community took place in 1859 when the sisters arrived at Saint Nicholas Parish and opened Holy Rosary Convent on East 2nd Street in Manhattan. Slightly over a decade later this convent would lay the foundation for two new Dominican congregations—Newburgh (1869) and Caldwell (1881).

This essay briefly sketches the growth and development of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) in the New York area from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to the US entry into World War I in 1917. The focus includes friars, nuns, sisters, and tertiaries who assisted the Catholic Church in responding to the temporal and spiritual needs of the faithful during a very tumultuous period in US history. Brooklyn and Manhattan receive significant attention since dense pockets of Catholic faithful during the Gilded Age and Progressive eras lived in these areas. At the same time, several communities of Dominican sisters established convents and motherhouses in healthier settings outside of the city—Amityville, Blauvelt, Newburgh, and Sparkill—as well as continental expansion to Caldwell, New Jersey; San Jose, California; Great Bend, Kansas; Tacoma, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

New York was the only place in the United States that included all branches of Dominican life in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The Friars (First Order) were present on the Upper East Side, nuns (Second Order-Contemplative) at Corpus Christi Monastery in the Bronx, nine congregations of active sisters working in a number of ministries (vowed members of the Third Order), and a vibrant group of tertiaries (lay members of the Third Order) operating from Saint Vincent Ferrer and Saint Catherine of Siena parishes.

The various communities of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) arrived in New York City at the midpoint of the nineteenth century when both the city and the nation faced significant challenges. By the mid-1850s New York City’s population was growing exponentially—between 1850 and 1860 the population increased by 58 percent—and an increasing number were listed as foreign-born. The immigrant population, primarily Irish and to a lesser extent German, tallied one-half of the city’s population in the 1860 census. Steadily and quietly New York City emerged as the center of American Catholicism in the United States. However, these Catholic New Yorkers were impoverished, marginalized, and vilified for their religious beliefs and ethnic practices. The tensions between the immigrants and nativists in New York City turned violent on a number of occasions in the 1850s and 1860s. The pressing spiritual and temporal needs of immigrants in New York City could not be met by the church hierarchy without the assistance of religious orders. Between 1860 and 1890 the number of religious orders and congregations ministering in New York increased significantly, responding to the multiple needs of the immigrant population.

The three major factors influencing New York during the Gilded Age (1870–1900) were immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. These forces formed the life and ministry of Dominican men and women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As noted above, the Dominican sisters from Regensburg, Germany, were the first to arrive in New York in transit to work with German Catholic immigrants in Pennsylvania. Happily, due to mishaps and miscommunication New York was their terminus. They settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, epicenters of both industrialization and urbanization. Amid opening schools and asylums, the Dominicans responded to cholera outbreaks, racist riots during the American Civil War, tragic tenement fires, and nativist attacks on many institutions founded by the Dominicans.

Challenges and Blessings: Dominican Friars in Gilded Age New York

The Dominican Sisters of Brooklyn provided an ambitious and insightful roadmap for the Dominican friars and sisters who emerged after the American Civil War to assist in preserving, maintaining, and spreading the spiritual and temporal endeavors of Catholicism. The end of the war ushered in rapid changes across the entire nation. However, the epicenter was New York City. The triad of urbanization, immigration, and industrialization—the clearest markers of the Gilded Age—made a visible imprint on New York City. The demographics shifted from lower Manhattan to uptown environs as well as a significant migration to Brooklyn. The conspicuous wealth of the era was present in the erection of urban mansions, museums, and parks, which dotted the skylines of Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, these excesses competed with the rise of notorious slums, hazardous factories, and tenements, and the presence of thousands of poor immigrants. The ministry of the Dominicans would stretch from the opulence of the Upper East Side to the squalor of the East Village and would range from parish ministry and mission bands—teams of Dominican preachers assigned to preach parish missions and retreats in the northeastern United States—to homes for abandoned babies and vulnerable women. The Dominican spirit of generosity and service prompted both the friars and sisters to assist those people on their doorsteps by developing ministries and strategies to alleviate suffering, to provide for the temporal needs of the impoverished, and to ensure that Catholics had clear access to the sacraments.

The Dominican friars of Saint Joseph Province were invited by Archbishop John McCloskey in 1866 to deliver a series of parish missions in the Archdiocese of New York. The mission band was developed by the Dominican friars to enliven the faith of local Catholics and to counter Protestant revivals that were increasingly popular in the second half of the nineteenth century. These parish missions were so successful—and thoroughly treated in both the secular and religious press—that almost immediately an invitation was extended for the Dominican friars to staff a parish in the archdiocese.³ The Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer, mother church of the New York Dominicans, was established in 1867.⁴ Although both church and priory were located at 65th Street and Lexington Avenue and included some wealthy Catholics, the majority of the parishioners were working-class first- and second-generation Irish who lived in modest accommodations nearer to the East River in what was dubbed Shanty Town.

The Dominican friars at Saint Vincent Ferrer worked quickly to build a church and, equally important, to develop innovative approaches to serving a vast and diverse parish population. The priests responsible for parish missions on the East Coast were assigned to St. Vincent Ferrer from the inception of the church, which ensured high-quality preaching and drew the acclaim of both Catholics and non-Catholics.⁵ The parish not only expanded to include a parochial school under the direction of the Sisters of Saint Dominic of Columbus, Ohio,⁶ but extended its reach to include the founding of the Holy Name Society for men and the Rosary Apostolate (Rosary Altar Society) for women; opening and funding the mission church of Saint Catherine of Siena to accommodate an exploding Catholic population (1898); and encouraging the establishment of Saint Rose Settlement House to serve poor Italian women by providing language classes, instruction in domestic sciences, and child care (1898).

The Holy Name Society, a sixteenth-century Dominican-sponsored confraternity of the laity committed to performing the corporal works of mercy, was introduced to the parish in 1885. The friars recognized that many of their parishioners, especially men, were drawn to various political, social, and labor organizations common in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and they wanted to provide an additional option, a decidedly Catholic one.⁷ Father Charles McKenna, OP, the apostle of the Holy Name Society of the United States, was assigned to the parish as a member of the mission band and served as moderator of the society for over two decades. The group became the largest men’s fraternal organization in the archdiocese and proved beneficial to the growth of the parish by spearheading successful fundraisers, reaching out to prominent Catholic men throughout New York City, and encouraging religious vocations. On the national scene, New York Dominicans commenced publication of The Holy Name Journal (1907), and Father McKenna authored the widely distributed Pocket Manual of the Holy Name Society (1909). These efforts, along with a papal decree, allowed the Holy Name Society to reach virtually every parish in the United States.⁸ In 1903, the Pittsburgh Catholic noted that President Theodore Roosevelt opined that the Holy Name Society typified one of those forces which tend to the benefit and uplifting of our social system.⁹

The Rosary Altar Society was also a prominent organization at Saint Vincent Ferrer. Initially, this pious society endeavored to increase devotion to the Blessed Mother through a regular recitation of the rosary. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the society had broader and more public objectives. These women—likely more visible in the parish than their counterparts in the Holy Name Society—raised funds for the school, assisted in the physical care of orphans and abandoned children, readied vessels for mass and religious ceremonies, and supported Catholic efforts to enact laws alleviating the suffering of the poor, especially women and children.¹⁰ The minutes of the weekly meetings are replete with assignments for Sunday and daily masses, yet their efforts to assist Sacred Heart Home for the Aged, Holy Rosary Convent (orphans), Saint Ann’s Maternity Hospital, the New York Foundling Hospital, Saint Dominic’s Guild for Girls (women’s residence), and the Catholic Center for the Blind—all within the territorial boundaries of the parish—are often overlooked. The presence of such a diverse set of institutions gives credence to Jay Dolan’s observation that as the city expanded and immigrant neighborhoods developed, the parish was transformed into a community institution, and as the parish became a community institution numerous societies were founded with a greater diversity of purpose. These societies or organizations had explicit social, recreational, charitable, and educational goals.¹¹

Moreover, the growth and popularity of both pious societies reflected wider societal shifts occurring in the United States. Arthur Schlesinger dubbed the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as a Golden Age of Fraternity during which people sought to be members of formal associations and to affiliate with various voluntary groups. The priests and parishioners at Saint Vincent Ferrer certainly observed firsthand the immense popularity of German nationalist associations in nearby Saint Joseph’s Parish in Yorkville (East 87th Street) and the growth of the 92nd Street Young Men’s Hebrew Association. The establishment of parish-based associations reflected these desires and served as a way to create a sense of community and to connect laypeople with the parish.

By the 1890s the parish was huge in numbers and predominantly Irish, at least, in descent. Seven thousand people crossed the church threshold on an average Sunday. Masses were celebrated upstairs and down and all were packed to the doors.¹² The need for a mission church within the parish was clear to Patrick Hartigan, OP, pastor and prior, who received enthusiastic support from Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, who suggested dedicating it to Saint Catherine of Siena. The chapel, located on East 68th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A (now York Avenue), opened in 1896. Clement M. Thuente, OP, a widely respected Dominican, was named the first administrator, and he smoothly integrated the mission into the wider parish.¹³ In 1906 the mission was elevated to an independent parish, and the school was opened under the direction of the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill.¹⁴

The newly built mission church instituted traditional devotions and fraternal organizations, but the needs of the people nearer to the East River presented some challenges. Saint Catherine’s had greater ethnic diversity and higher rates of poverty that called for quick and efficient ways of meeting the temporal needs of the people. The Italian Catholics were of particular concern since they lacked established charitable organizations in the United States, tended to be cast aside by the predominantly Irish clergy, and were inclined to associate with Protestants. Father Thuente was captivated by the settlement house movement that was blossoming at the end of the nineteenth century and decided that this was an appropriate vehicle to address many of the needs of his parishioners. This movement was not popular in some quarters of the Catholic hierarchy, who feared it