For the first time since 2002, and only the second time in 110 years, the Diocese of Columbus will not ordain a priest this year.
It’s no secret that vocations to the priesthood have declined since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The latest figures show that the number of priests in the United States has gone from a peak of 59,000 in 1970 to approximately 35,000 in 2020.
Several religious orders are bucking the trend, though, and one of those is the Order of Preachers, more commonly known as the Dominicans, and more specifically its St. Joseph Province that encompasses Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New York and the New England states.
The Dominicans’ St. Joseph Province has experienced steady growth over the past 20-plus years. So much so that its House of Studies in Washington, D.C., expanded in 2008 to accommodate the number of student brothers.
The order’s roots are firmly planted in Ohio. Father Edward Fenwick, a Dominican who later became the bishop of Cincinnati, celebrated the first Mass in Ohio in 1808 near Somerset, where the Dominicans maintain a presence today, more than 200 years later, at St. Joseph Church, where the first Catholic church in the state was built in 1818.
For more than 135 years, the Dominicans have staffed St. Patrick Church in downtown Columbus. Some of the priests who worked at St. Patrick through the years also taught at Aquinas High School, which closed in 1965. The school building remains in use by Columbus State Community College.
Hundreds of Dominicans have spent time at St. Patrick through the years, and at least two student brothers (the equivalent of diocesan seminarians) are sent to the parish during the summer as part of their formation.
There’s no shortage of student brother candidates who want to come to St. Patrick each summer. And there’s no shortage of candidates to assign here.
The St. Joseph Province completed the 2021-22 academic year with 41 student brothers at various levels of formation. Ten were ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, May 21 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
Another 14 are novice brothers spending a year in Cincinnati discerning their call to Holy Orders before making first vows this summer and then moving on to the House of Studies, the Dominican equivalent of a diocesan seminary. The order also accepts what it calls cooperator brothers, who do not seek ordination but want to serve the church in various capacities.
The combined 55 student brothers and novices this year is a representative average for the number of men in formation for the order over the past 20 years.
The men who enter the novitiate have graduated from college, which is a requirement to be considered a candidate to pursue the Dominican priesthood. Most of them have attended prestigious schools such as Yale, Brown, Vanderbilt, Duke, Providence, Villanova, Catholic University of America, Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College. Their undergraduate degrees range from liberal arts to engineering to molecular biology.
Somewhere along the way in the discernment process, many of the men studied philosophy or encountered a Dominican through campus ministry, retreats, online searches or recommendations from a priest or someone familiar with the order.
“I think perhaps most foremost is that our Lord calls men to the order, and it’s not so much what we’re doing as what our Lord is doing,” said Father Jacob Bertrand Janczyk, OP, the province’s vocations director since 2018.
“Obviously, there has to be a cooperation, but as far as fidelity, orthodoxy, those kinds of things, broadly speaking, are things that are attractive. It’s as simple as the Lord might be calling them to give their life and service to Him and to His church, and they want to do so in a way that’s not half-hearted and that encompasses the entirety of their life.
“Men are drawn to an academic life, and it’s part and parcel of being a Dominican to study, so if somebody is already kind of intellectually inclined, it’s an easy fit.”
The House of Studies also houses the Thomistic Institute, named after the great Dominican philosopher and doctor of the church St. Thomas Aquinas, which is open to students outside the order who are pursuing advanced degrees. In addition, the Dominicans operate Providence College in Rhode Island.
“The work of the Thomistic Institute has helped nourish the intellectual life of the province,” Father Janczyk said, “and because we also run Providence College, there are a lot of men who come to us who are so interested in being academics but being teachers and professors at an undergraduate level, especially because of their experience on a college campus and coming to know the Lord and their time in college.
“So because of that, because of Providence College, because of the Dominican House of Studies, we’ve obligated ourselves to carry on an intellectual and academic tradition and formation in the provinces to sustain those ministries.”
Why are the Dominicans so successful in attracting vocations when other orders and dioceses struggle?
“It is a desire for Christ,” Father Janczyk said. “And I think the Dominican track record of 800 years and a great host of saints kind of proves itself, and there’s holiness and how a man wants to pursue that.
“Our big thing is community life, and that’s very important and central to our way of living, to that fosters our daily routine and our daily rhythm but also the way we pray together. Our prayers are prayed communally, which is a unique kind of reality to Dominican life.
“Then I would say this, and I think these go hand in hand, are study and preaching. Our community life is marked in our prayer, by our study – all ordered to a life of preaching or the mission of preaching – and a desire for devotion to sacred truth, not simply to have knowledge but to know Christ.”
The St. Joseph Province, one of four U.S. Dominican provinces (South, Midwest, West), also is known for embracing sound doctrine and authentic Catholic teaching. The order’s three main areas of focus in each region are parish work, campus ministry and academics.
“If you look across the board at religious communities that are attracting vocations, it often has to do with the sort of fidelity, or at least the attempted fidelity, to their founder and their charism,” Father Janczyk said.
“So, for us, I think that’s the case. We have a desire to live Dominican life in its various components and aspects, from the smaller things like wearing a religious habit and praying together, taking our meals together, but also the bigger things of our preaching mission and our desire to preach the Gospel with conviction.”
After an aspirant makes initial contact with the vocations director, Father Janczyk said, there’s a period of getting to know one another and learning more about St. Dominic, the order and the province.
Interested candidates are encouraged to spend a weekend at the House of Studies. If men are interested in moving forward, an application and interview process begins. Anyone who is accepted enters the novitiate that lasts one year and one week at St. Gertrude Church in Cincinnati starting on Aug. 8, the feast of St. Dominic.
Temporary vows are made on Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when they receive the white Dominican habit and their religious name.
“The novitiate is also a very important time for continued discernment, living the life and trying it out to see if there’s a good fit there,” Father Janczyk said. “The highest attrition is certainly in the novitiate. That’s how the process is designed, that men would have sort of a trial year with kind of no strings attached.”
Father Janczyk’s own vocations story resembles those of his colleagues. He grew up in Connecticut, went to college in New York and entered the order as a novice in 2010. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2017, spent one year as the assistant chaplain at Dartmouth College and then was appointed vocations director in 2018.
His duties give him some insight on how dioceses might encourage more vocations. The Diocese of Columbus had 18 seminarians in various stages of formation at the Pontifical College Josephinum during the academic year that ended this month.
“I think it’s sort of a holistic approach,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the best word, but I don’t think growth in vocations comes from simply trying to have better vocation promotion from the diocese or from the vocation office.
“That’s part of it, but it has to be more of a, what would I say, an all-encompassing effort from within families, within campuses, that vocations to the priesthood, to religious life, is seen more as something that is not strange but that it’s the Lord who calls men and women to serve Him in these sorts of ways.
“And I think it needs to be nurtured at an ecclesial level as a whole rather than simply having vocation directors do this sort of work simply because it’s the job of a vocation director. It’s something that is fostered within the family and the campus and parishes.”
For more information on the Dominicans’ St. Joseph Province or vocations to the order, visit opeast.org/vocations.
