The Only Sin Allowed?

(But only when you are a Dominican)

I have admitted it on national radio before, and I will repeat it here: I am a sinner. And when I was packing my stuff to move to Leuven, I was confronted with my biggest sin. It was unbearable, in a literal sense. I had to ask other people to remove this sin for me. And my sin had grown considerably since I moved to Rotterdam four years ago. Slowly, week by week, parcel by parcel, it got worse.

The fantastic team that came to transport my “sins” to Leuven

Luckily, I have joined a religious order where this sin is very well understood. When I joined the Dominicans in 2013, a brother told me explicitly that this was the only sin allowed by the order. I am not sure whether this has been a definitive decision by the superiors or whether everyone simply has given up on trying to fight this sin. When it comes to this sin, all Dominicans are guilty. It affects our daily lives. There are also horror stories about how even our buildings have suffered under the weight of this sin. Rooms had to be emptied. Floors had to be reinforced. Sometimes buildings had to be temporarily evacuated until the brothers had removed some of their sins.

When you live in a Dominican community, brothers may question why you had a new haircut, why you go to the gym, or whether you have been to the pub with friends. But this one sin is not being spoken of directly. Brothers will never, at least that has been my experience, question you when you buy a book…

Sins ready for transportation

For Dominicans, reading a book does not come without prayer. Prayer is leading here. In the school of prayer, we learn to contemplate, which helps us in our studies. In other words  - paraphrasing Scottish theologian P. T. Forsythe  - you could say that “prayer is to theological study what original research is to science.” Without prayer, our studies make no sense.

So - at least in theory - Dominicans should never study for their own glory but for our mission of preaching the Gospel in a complex world. All the hard work aims to share what we have found in prayer and study with others who may have very different backgrounds and experiences than we have had. Thomas Aquinas summarised it as “contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere.” Through the exchange with others of what we have found, we will learn more about the Truth, Jesus Christ, in whose friendship lies our ultimate happiness (John 14:6).

Every day I challenge myself to live up to that ideal so that the sins I collected on my bookshelves can be transformed into something that benefits the preaching and teaching in which I am engaged.