Great Reasons to Attend

Dominican Education

Since its inception, the Dominican Order has utilized a pedagogical model which envisions the classroom as much more than a place. Key to Dominican pedagogy is the interchange between student and teacher, through which the student acquires not only important information but also the critical thinking skills necessary for its proper analysis. The paradigm for this pedagogical interchange is found in the relationship between two 13th-century Dominican friars: St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas .

In his early days in the Order, Thomas Aquinas was considered to have insufficient intellectual skills for the work of the Order, so much so that he was nicknamed the "dumb ox" by the friars. By engaging him on a deeper level, his teacher, Albert, saw a different Thomas, someone who was in fact "too smart" for the program being offered, and too humble to publicly outwit his mentors. Albert saw the great potential in this young friar and, taking him under his tutelage, predicted that Thomas would bring forth a teaching which would echo throughout the world. At the heart of the mission of DSPT, students receive this same kind of care and attention so that their natural gifts and talents are brought to bear upon the philosophical and theological inquiry at hand.

The Order of Preachers was founded by St. Dominic de Guzman in 1215 to combat the heresy known as Albigensianism. From its earliest years, the Dominican Order established its communities in towns and cities where major universities were located so that the friars could be actively engaged in the intellectual and cultural discussions of the age. Dominicans were present early on in great university cities such as Paris, Bologna, Padua, Cologne, Oxford, and Cambridge. This is why DSPT was established near the University of California, Berkeley and continues to be actively engaged with that university and the surrounding community.

The Dominican "model" of education is the only such system ever to be canonized by the Catholic Church. It is centered in particular on the method and tradition of the "Angelic Doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), one of the greatest and most influential figures in human history and certainly one of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the Catholic Church. St. Thomas eagerly sought truth wherever it could be found, drawing on the great Christian, Jewish, Muslim and pagan thinkers of the tradition. He was a priest and a composer of some of the most beautiful hymns in the Christian tradition. His monumental work of Christian doctrine, the Summa Theologica , was called by one modern scholar "the work of a heart fundamentally at peace" and continues to have a profound influence today. St. Thomas insisted that philosophy is extremely important in the study of theology, not separating them as so often happens in universities today. DSPT carries on this tradition in its quest for truth, seeking those foundational principles from which we can confidently and meaningfully address the pressing concerns of our time. We believe that there is no conflict between the academic and the pastoral, or between science and religion. The Dominican approach is characterized by a balance between faith and reason, action and contemplation, philosophy and theology. Study, in the Dominican tradition, is itself a form of prayer, and everything is geared toward the important work of preaching the Gospel. This preaching takes many forms, and DSPT strives to prepare its graduates to be actively engaged in preaching the Gospel and speaking to contemporary culture, whether their work takes them into the classroom, a parish community, the mission field, or the business world.

The Dominican tradition has produced a great many saints down through the centuries, including St. Albert the Great (the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas and patron of the DSPT), St. Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin de Porres, Pope St. Pius V, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Raymond of Penafort, Bl. Fra Angelico, and the Dominican Martyrs of Vietnam and Nagasaki. More recently, the Dominican tradition has produced great thinkers such as Bede Jarrett, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Yves Congar, Servais Pinckaers, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Paul Murray, Jean-Marie Tillard, Fergus Kerr, Simon Tugwell, Jean-Pierre Torrell, Romanus Cessario, Augustine Di Noia, and Aidan Nichols. Ours is a rich intellectual and spiritual tradition spanning more than eight centuries.

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