The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘IT’S VERY HARD TO GO’
New Haven Dominican friars are losing St. Mary priory, which is not just a home, they say, but the center of life and work in the community
NEW HAVEN — There are times in every Dominican friar’s life when he must move on to a new ministry, called to serve Jesus and the Roman Catholic Church in a new place, among new people. But Dominican friars are priests who live in community, relying on each other as a spiritual family. The priory at 5 Hillhouse Ave., next to St. Mary Church, where the Dominicans have lived since it was built in 1907, is not just a home, say the friars there, but the center of Dominican life in New Haven.
Now that Archbishop Leonard Blair has told the Dominicans that St. Mary soon will be served by diocesan priests, the friars in the priory will go in different directions.
“These familiar faces … these white habits will no longer be here,” said the Rev. John Paul Walker, pastor of
“These familiar faces … these white habits will no longer be here.” The Rev. John Paul Walker, pastor of St. Mary Church
St. Mary for six years.
The friars serve not only St. Mary, but work in other ministries, such as at colleges and the Knights of Columbus.
“Our communities are very diverse,” said the Rev. Jordan Lenaghan, executive director of religious life at Quinnipiac University and part-time chaplain at Albertus Magnus College. “It’s unusual to find a community that’s small in number and only serving a parish.”
Lenaghan calls the priory a “beehive” of activity. The friars welcome seminarians during the summer and visiting friars doing research at Yale University. One, the Rev. Marcel Sigrist, comes to study Sumerian cuneiform. “He’s come here for 40 years every summer to work in Yale’s collection,” Lenaghan said.
The nature of such a community requires a residence like the priory, with its 18 bedrooms, Walker said. “Unlike, say, a diocesan priest that can live in a rectory or a smaller space, in order to fulfill the obligations of our religious life we need a larger space because we need a space like a refectory,” the large dining room, he said. “Having meals in common is very sacred to our life.”
“This room is the secondholiest room in the house” after the chapel, said Lenaghan.
What is important is not the carved, dark wood and religious art in the priory. “A group of people living together does not necessarily make a community,” Lenaghan said. “Our lives are gathered. These are my brothers.”
Most of the priory is private. “We make a distinction between what we call cloistered space and public space,” Lenaghan said. Only ordained men normally are allowed in the private living quarters. In order to give two lay visitors a tour of the building, though, “We’re going to lift cloister,” he said.
The upper floors include the plainly decorated bedrooms, but most of the friars’ life in the priory is in common. They pray twice a day in the chapel, a gift from the Knights of Columbus. There are two common rooms, small and large. The large room, with comfortable leather chairs, is where much of the community’s time is spent.
“This is where the Christmas tree goes. This is where the Super Bowl party goes off,” Lenaghan said. Celebrating together, as well as praying together, is “sacred time for us,” he said. “It’s a time when we build our relationships with each other as brothers.”
The kitchen is industrial size, to accommodate the friars and their visitors. “We have to be able to cook frequently for four, six, 10, 15 people,” Lenaghan said. Walker said the “student brothers” who visit “know how to pack it away.”
Lenaghan, 56, said six friars are needed to make up a priory, but one of their brothers, the Rev. Ignatius Schweitzer, recently was elected prior of St. Catherine of Siena Priory in Manhattan. The oldest, the Rev. Henry Camacho, 85, is visiting Peru, where he has spent much of his ministry.
The youngest, the Rev. Joachim Kenney, associate pastor of St. Mary, is 34. This was his first assignment when he was ordained four years ago. “Being the youngest member, when I first got here I was very welcomed and have learned a lot from the brothers I’ve lived with,” he said.
Lenaghan and the Rev. Jonathan Kalisch, prior, who works at the Knights of Columbus, will stay in New Haven while the others will be assigned by the Very Rev. Kenneth Letoile, their provincial, to new ministries in other states in the Northeast and upper Midwest, which form the Province of St. Joseph.
Lenaghan said Blair has offered a rectory, likely at a church that is closed, for him and Kalisch. Letoile will have a conversation with each friar about “what would be a good next assignment for us,” Walker said. “My six years as pastor here have been an incredible blessing. The people of this parish are truly amazing in so many ways.”
St. Mary was Walker’s first ministry as pastor. He previously worked in college ministry and taught at the Dominican House of Studies seminary in Washington, D.C.
Lenaghan has “worked everywhere from Zanesville, Ohio, which is in Appalachia, to St. Petersburg, Russia, since I’ve been a priest.”
Their diverse ministries and experiences are what invigorate the community, the friars said. “When we come together, we’re not all at the same place,” Lenaghan said. “It adds a depth to our life together.”
“It’s very hard to go because I’ve loved this place so much and loved the people so much,” Walker said. “We pray that it results in many blessings both for the archdiocese and the people of this parish.”
Letoile said Dominicans moving from one ministry to another is not unusual. “Just in terms of our own charism or lifestyle we tend to move more frequently than diocesan priests,” he said. “We work in a fraternal, communal and consensus way in our governance as opposed to a top-down, more military approach.”
The Dominicans’ only priory in Connecticut is on Hillhouse Avenue. St. Mary is where the Rev. Michael McGivney, assistant pastor, had formed the Knights of Columbus in 1882. But after he left to be pastor of St. Thomas Church in Thomaston, St. Mary fell on hard times. The Dominicans were invited to pastor St. Mary in 1886. “We were invited to reverse the debt, which we did rather quickly,” Lenaghan said.
Since then, St. Mary has grown into a diverse parish of more than 400 families, Walker said, including Yale University students attracted by the Dominicans’ values of learning, prayer and service. Founded by St. Dominic Guzman 800 years ago, they are formally known as the Order of Preachers.
Walker said the friars watch out for each other as a family would. “Praying together and eating together, all of the things you’d have in a family, we have with each other,” he said. “When you live so intensely with each other … you learn the art of apologizing. You learn mercy.”
“They accept me with all of my flaws, faults and limitations, and they know them,” Lenaghan said. “As I age, I realize there will never be a time when, if I needed someone, had to go to a doctor’s appointment, that there would not be a brother who would say, ‘OK, I’ll get the keys.’”
“There’s a calmness about them. They’re welcoming,” said Joann D’Auria of East Haven, who was leaving the noon Mass Kenney had celebrated Friday. “I just told him I’d like to carry you around. I’d like to put you in my pocketbook.”
“I’ve been coming here since I was younger than 5,” said her niece, Maggie Acabbo of North Haven. “I made my first Holy Communion here. They are by far the best I’ve seen at all the churches I’ve been to.”
David Elliott, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Hartford, said in a statement, “The Archdiocese of Hartford is very grateful for the years of service that the Dominican Friars have given to St. Mary’s Church, and we welcome individual Dominicans continuing to minister within the Archdiocese.”
Letoile said he had faith the future would be positive for the Dominicans and St. Mary. “In this instance, it’s not something we would have chosen, but we trust that Jesus will bring about through this change new life. There are blessings that we can’t see right now but he does.”