"Why are young people being attracted to the Dominican Order in such numbers?"

The question was posed in 2010 at America's National Catholic Register which reported:

The Dominican order – both male and female – is experiencing what Sister Joseph Andrew OP, vocation director with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, MI, describes as a “spiritual explosion.” 

On Aug. 28, the teaching order of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist welcomed 22 new young women as aspirants to their community. The average age of the aspirants who just came in is 21.

The average age of the entire group is 26. Founded in 1997 by four sisters originally from the Nashville Dominicans, the order presently has a total of 113 in the community. The order is looking at the possibility of starting another mother house in either California or Texas, where land has already been donated.

Other Dominicans are experiencing growth as well.

On Aug. 2, the Dominican Province of St. Joseph accepted 21 men as novices. That’s the Eastern province’s largest novitiate class since 1966. As evidenced both in diocesan seminaries and religious orders, those entering religious life are trending younger. The average age of those coming into the Eastern province is 24.

The Nashville Dominicans thought that last year’s class would be their largest group of incoming postulants at 23. However, during the order’s 150th Jubilee, they had their biggest incoming class ever this year with 27 women entering. The order’s average age is 24. Overall, the order is comprised of 274 nuns teaching in 34 schools across (the USA).

Fr Augustine Di Noia OP, Assistant Secretary in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2013) and titular Archbishop of Oregon City, USA, responded:

“Our tradition is constituted by a unique convergence of qualities: optimism about the rationality and fundamental goodness of the natural order; an abiding certitude that divine grace and mercy are sheer gifts, unmerited and otherwise unattainable; a healthy realism about the peril of the human condition apart from this grace and mercy; a determination to maintain a God’s-eye view of everything that exists and everything that happens; an appreciation of the inner intelligibility of everything that God has revealed about himself and us; a wholly admirable resistance to all purely moralistic accounts of the Catholic faith; an unfailing devotion to the Eucharist and the Passion, combined with an unshakable confidence in the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary; a zealous willingness to preach and teach about all this, in season and out, because we are convinced that the world is dying to hear it and dying from not hearing it; and, internally, a commitment to liturgical prayer, to study for the sake of the salvation of souls, and to a capitular mode of governance in a common life consecrated to God by poverty, chastity and obedience. This is a powerful combination, and the Church really does need us to be true to it now more than ever.”

Pray the Lord of the Harvest that He send workers into his (British!) vineyard.

Via @Lancasterdioces

(dates are all 2010)