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. Paul M. Conner, OP
As a pre-med student and hospital orderly, I always thought about medicine as my future, until graduation from St. Mary's College, Moraga. Then I went to France to teach English in a French high school. Slowly that year, the deeper desire to become a priest emerged, along with the thirst to pursue the truth of life and religion as I had experienced this thirst in the teaching and preaching of Fr. Joseph Servente, O.P., Chaplain and Professor at St. Mary's. I cancelled my medical school acceptance and entered the Western Dominican Province formation program. I loved Dominican life and my philosophy and theology years at St. Albert's College, and after a year of pastoral ministry at Holy Rosary parish in Antioch, I began teaching theology at Mt. St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. But my thirst continued, and I next completed my licentiate and doctoral work in Rome.
I began my 13 years of teaching at St. Albert's College (which became the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology), at our Lady of the Rosary College at Mission San Jose, and half-time some years at our University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. During most summers I gave retreats and up-date classes in moral and spiritual theology. Next, I engaged in more pastoral ministry at St. Dominic's in San Francisco, followed by teaching at Notre Dame College in Belmont and Silver Lake College in Wisconsin. During my years on the East Coast, I introduced the master's program in ethics at New York Medical College, worked at the Pope John XXIII Center for Research and Education in Medical Ethics in Boston (now the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia), and finally was asked to help at the only college in the USA run by the Dominican Fathers and Brothers, Providence College in Rhode Island. I have been here for 13 years happily teaching my specialties of moral and spiritual theology to both undergraduate and graduate students. Thus, my innate thirst for the truth, God's grace, and the peerless Dominican vocation have led me to a life of fulfillment I would never trade! [updated: September 6, 2005]
Photo 2006
Christian Totality: Theology of the Consecrated Life
by Basil Cole, OP & Paul Conner, OP (1997)
ISBN: 0818907983
Married in Friendship
by Paul M. Conner (1987)
ISBN: 0722052642
Celibate love
by Paul M Conner (1979)
ISBN: 0879738278
Providence College, Associate Professor of Theolgoy