2023 Profession Mass Full Chapter (about half of the English-speaking segment Order present as well as four members of the Latin American segment)
By Br. Noah McLellan
The Diocese of Huron seems to be experiencing something of a Renaissance of religious communities. Though if one was to ask around, they would be likely to hear that “the Anglican Church does not have religious communities” or perhaps that “that’s more of a Roman Catholic thing”.
While we are certainly less prolific than our Roman Catholic counterparts, religious communities have actually been an Anglican “thing” since around 1841 when communities of vowed religious sprang from the Oxford Movement. First with the foundation of religious orders of women such as the Community of St Mary the Virgin and the Society of St Margaret, which was shortly followed by the monastic SSJE or Cowley Fathers who still operate today with a monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
By the time the Cowley Fathers were beginning to spread from their beginnings, a Roman Catholic Group was Celebrating their 650th anniversary; a group of Religious who were not Monastic but Mendicant in nature, their male members dubbed Friars as opposed Monks.
This group, founded by Dominic de Guzman at around the same time as St. Francis founded his Order of Friars Minor, were dedicated to Preaching and Teaching the Gospel Truth lovingly dubbed the “Hounds of God”, stemming from two-fold reasoning: one being the story of Dominic’s Mother having a vision while pregnant with the future saint; that she would give birth to a great hound born with a torch in its mouth who would set the world ablaze with the Holy Spirit. This of course being coupled by the much more practical creation of the term when the Order's colloquial name was translated to Latin (Dominican = Dominicanis) two words were noticed within Domini (God) and Canis (Hound).
Fast forward a few hundred years to the late 1990s in the United States. These two traditions of Anglican Religious Communities and the Order of Preachers would finally intersect 85 years after our Franciscan siblings emerged in the Anglican Church.
Episcopal Priest Rev. Dr Jeffery Mackey developed a rule of life for a Dispersed order of Brothers and Sisters with a spiritual heritage tracing back to the original Order of Preachers, while maintaining an Anglican identity. The Order consists of Brothers and Sisters of the order who, after one year of postulancy, and two years of novitiate, live as life-professed (or "vowed") religious, following vows of obedience, simplicity and purity; oblates of the order, as well as associates of the Order.
This order has, over the ensuing decades, grown and spread across the world with its largest concentrations in North and South America, but with Brothers and Sisters in the UK, and Australia among other places. All formed into groups called Priories or “Houses”.
The Canadian Priory, or “Jordan House”, encompasses all of Canada, led by our Prior, Brother Jason Carroll, a priest in the Diocese of Calgary; our Sub-Prior, Brother Peter Cory, a licensed lay reader from the Diocese of Kingston. Presently in the Diocese of Huron we have two members: Br John Maine whose novicing (initial promises and receiving of the Black Dominican cowl or hood) has been covered in a previous issue, and myself.
More information about the Anglican Dominicans can be found at anglicandominicans.org
Br. Noah is a life Professed brother of the Anglican Dominicans, where he serves as Co-Director of Inquiry. He is a Licensed Lay Reader for St Johns Parish in Cambridge where he has served for nearly 10 years and is a Licentiate of Theology Student through Huron’s LTh program.