Vocation Discernment
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Vocation Office
Western Dominican Province
5890 Birch Court
Oakland, CA 94618-1626
(510)-596-1821
Our Vocations require a great deal of support, from the first moment they begin their novitiate until the last moments of their retirement. Please do conside visiting our donation page and helping form and sustain the priests and brothers who will serve you in the future, serve you now and have served you in the past.
Saints and Blesseds
The Order of Friars Preachers,
The Dominican Order,
has a beautiful history of learning, service and holiness manifested in its saints and blesseds of every age since its foundation by St. Dominic de Guzman. Do enjoy the periodic postings of such stories as are available from various sources, especially our own archives.
Religious Retirement
Our elderly and infirm friars receive the best care we have available to us, as in any family. We rely heavily on the donations of others for our own existence and thus when one of our own becomes incapable of further ministry due to age or infirmity, those same donations help us support the sometimes necessary special care required by such members of our communities.
We prefer to care for our elderly and infirm in our own houses so that the life of a religious community can be a part of a friars life as long as possible. This is also the most economical in many ways. We strive to use donations wisely. But sometimes a care facility is essential. As we, as a Province, do not benefit from the national collection for retired religious, we ask that you assist us in caring for these friars who have prayed, taught, served and ministered for so many years amomg the people of the Western United States and beyond.
Please, in your kindness, consider assisting us in this work of brotherly love.
Many thanks in advance.
Catholicism
It's just the right thing
Fr. Michael Dodds, OP
How do we talk about God? How do we speak of one who infinitely exceeds all that we can know or imagine? Our inclination is to picture God as somehow like us, only bigger and better. This is to speak of God univocally, to assume that our words mean just the same thing, whether we say them of God or of creatures. But when God is conceived in this way, it soon looks like God's activity must interfere with the agency of creatures whether with human freedom or with contingency and chance in nature. There is therefore an urgent need in theology today to recover the language of analogy, which begins with the affirmation that God is not like us.
Fr. Michael hopes to instill in his students an integration of Classical Philosophy and Theology with current questions and issues. His teaching style evokes a Socratic dialogue with his students, which at least initially involves not so much supplying answers as exploring questions. He enjoys interacting with students, exchanging ideas, allowing the tradition to challenge student and student to challenge the tradition.
The courses Fr. Michael Dodds teaches are:
Philosophy of Nature
Philosophical Anthropology
One Creator God
The Trinity
Theological Anthropology
Divine Action
God and Suffering
Fr. Michael is currently working on a book about Divine Action. Given the scientific account of causality and the world, how can we conceive of God as acting in the world and causing events? His other academic interests are: Theology and Science; Thomas Aquinas; and Theodicy.
His Select Publications
"The Teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the Mysteries of the Life of Christ (Summa Theologiae, Part III, Questions 27-45)", in Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM. Cap., et. al., Thomas Aquinas and Christian Doctrine. London: T&T Clark/ Continuum, 2004 (projected).
"The Doctrine of Causality in Aquinas and The Book of Causes: One Key to Understanding the Nature of Divine Action," in Timothy L. Smith, ed., Aquinas's Sources: The Notre Dame Symposium, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, (forthcoming).
"Science, Causality and Divine Action: Classical Principles for Contemporary Challenges," CTNS Bulletin, 21, nr.1(Winter, 2001) 3-12.
"Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside Out? Retrieving Aristotelian Causality in Contemporary Science," in John O'Callaghan, ed., Science, Philosophy and Theology, South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, (forthcoming).
Living the Beatitudes Today: Happily Ever After Begins Here and Now, (with Bill Dodds), Chicago, IL, Loyola Press, (1997).
"Of Angels, Oysters, and an Unchanging God: Aquinas on Divine Immutability," Listening 30 (1995):35-49.
"Thomas Aquinas, Human Suffering, and the Unchanging God of Love." Theological Studies 52(1991) 330-344.
The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of the Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Criticism of this Doctrine. Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions Universitaires, 1986.