09/07/2025 14:00 - 17:30

HALL: Seminar Room 01

Proponent: Kopack A.

Speaker: Hewitt S., Howell C., Jankowski J., Kopack A., Tyler P.

The English Dominicans of the 20th century offered a challenge to their society, questioning its structures and orientations. A century of tumult and uprooting progress, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe O.P. describes it as 'something of a cultural desert [with] no common vision of what it is to be human and of the destiny to which we are called,' a culture of consumerists with only a 'stunted and shrivelled perception of the human being'. Inhabiting this malaise, the English Dominicans recognised in it moments that could be cultivated to fruition, presenting alternative visions of the human being and the social order. This provides a model of relating religiously to society that is not merely counter-cultural (the counter-cultural must derive itself from the culture it counters) but is open to the possibilities of the world. Their critical engagements with Carl Jung, Eric Gill, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and David Jones among others combine a confidence in received tradition with a willingness to delve beyond inherited systems of thought.


According to Cardinal Radcliffe, this posture stems from 'the contemplative rhythm of their lives'. Rooted in a living tradition they remained radical (in both senses), open to new ways of expressing this inheritance. Contemplation became a site and source for intellectual and practical engagement with society, dealing not only with abstract issues - What, if anything, can we know of God? What is the Good Life? - but also with the concrete - How Should We Respond to British Colonialism in Ireland? How Should We Promote Peace and Oppose the Nuclear Threat?


Nevertheless, such a study cannot avoid the fact that the ambition of these Dominicans ultimately failed. The English Order of Preachers may have had a contemplative vision for the transformation of society, but it never came to fruition. Any reading of this attempt to renew culture through a contemplative mode of life must grapple with this failure.