Plans are underway at the University of Dallas (UD) to build a convent for the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia who teach at the Irving, Texas, university. The sisters also teach at nearby Mary Immaculate Catholic Elementary School and currently live off campus.
“The house they’re living in is large but it’s not conducive to their spiritual life and to their community life, which are very important parts of their vocations,” said university president Jonathan J. Sanford.
Known as the Nashville Dominicans, the teaching order based in Tennessee has sisters serving across the United States and abroad. When he was the dean of education, Sanford in 2016 invited them to join the faculty. Three years later Bishop Edward Burns invited them to teach at the elementary school.
The sisters’ community in Irving now includes two professors, one doctoral student and four teachers at the elementary school. Discussions about building a convent began in 2019, and the project was announced in January. Fundraising for the $7.1 million project is in progress and has already attracted donors.
“After the word got out, a number of people expressed an interest in getting behind this,” Sanford said.
Italian themes
The sisters had input in the design of the single-story brick convent that features simple lines plus some Italian themes inspired by the university’s 15-acre campus in Rome. There will be a common eating area, a gathering area, a chapel and a courtyard where the sisters can walk and plant gardens.
Ten rooms — known as cells — will be built for the sisters with a hallway designed to accommodate future expansion.
“We are so grateful to the university for its desire to provide a convent on campus for our sisters teaching there and at Mary Immaculate,” said Sister Anne Catherine Burleigh, OP, the congregation’s vicaress general. “We know that the presence of religious sisters played an integral part of the founding and early days of the university, and we are humbled to be involved in such a wonderful community that takes seriously the pursuit of truth, wisdom and virtue.”
A history of vocations
UD was founded in 1956 and is under the sponsorship of the Diocese of Dallas. The original faculty included members of the Cistercian Order, the Sisters of Saint Mary, Franciscan priests and a number of laymen. Dominican priests arrived in 1958 and the Sisters of Notre Dame came to teach four years later.
The university is blessed with the proximity of Holy Trinity Seminary, St. Albert the Great Priory and Novitiate (of the Dominican Province of St. Martin de Porres), and Our Lady of Dallas Cistercian Abbey. The presence of the Nashville Dominicans adds to the campus in many ways.
“They are exemplary teachers,” Sanford said. “Their patron St. Cecilia is the patron of fine arts and they have a real love for beauty and each of its manifestations. They model for our students a radical countercultural commitment and do so in a way that’s inspiring. They are in the world amongst us on campus, and the student body has responded well to their presence.”
[The sisters] model for our students a radical countercultural commitment and do so in a way that’s inspiring.
— Jonathan J. Sanford
The university itself has a rich history of inspiring vocations and counts among its alumni more than 100 men and women in various religious orders, 12 bishops, six permanent deacons and over 200 priests.
Asking deeper questions
The two sisters who currently teach are alumnae, and so is Dominican Sister John Thomas Armour, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theology in 2001. She met the Dominicans on a retreat when she was UD’s Rome coordinator in 2002 and soon entered the convent. She returned to UD for doctoral studies in literature.
“The university challenges students to ask the deeper questions about life, its purpose and our responsibility, and what is a life well lived, and that often leads one to God,” Sister John Thomas said. “That raises up questions about vocations and callings and raises us up to the transcendent, to the one who can answer those questions.”
Sanford noted that the university is dedicated to orienting its students towards wisdom, truth and virtue, and to having a vital engagement with the contemporary world.
“Our evangelistic mission that’s executed through professional excellence helps to power our commitment to intellectual and character formation,” he said. “The sisters help in both forming the minds of students in their roles as professors, and in the forming of their character.” They also provide spiritual direction and participate in student life through campus ministry, retreats and other activities on and off campus.
“First and foremost, we are religious, consecrated women and our presence, our priority and our primary identity form that,” Sister John Thomas said. “And so we are happy to be part of the spiritual as well as academic and intellectual mission of the university.”
The University of Dallas has a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. “We are asking for her intercession and for the intercession of St. Joseph the Worker,” Sanford said about the project.
