If we were to consider the connection between spirituality and art in view of our modern situation we might easily conclude that there is little to tie them together. The world is full of obviously good Christians, devout living, earnest and regular at prayer; while the churches in which they pray are cluttered with hideous objects of piety and resound to the most dismal hymns. Bad sculpture and painting and bad music are associated with devout Christian folk. But it is impossible for man to see his own age in true perspective; we can only guess at what is growing or declining in our own life-times. But when we look back in history patterns begin to stand out before us in clearer outlines. And if we look back at our own English scene we can see examples of spiritual revival and decline and can examine the various arts that accompanied these phases. Thus in the age of Dunstan there was a great revival in the Christian spirit of the country, and in fact this can be detected in its contemporary art.

I should like you to look upon this paper as the basis of a symposium. What I want to do is to put forward certain fundamental principles which lie at the very heart of our Dominican vocation, and to draw from them one or two seminal ideas, ideas which like seeds will grow and fructify in the mind and, so produce fruit in the way we live our day-to-day Dominican life. I want to do this moreover with a special eye on your office as superiors. Superiors hold a key place in community life. They are fathers and mothers of the family, and like good fathers and mothers their chief function is to foster and develop the family spirit, which is the chief educative factor in the religious community, as it is in the secular home.

We are sometimes asked, and we sometimes ask ourselves, ‘What is Dominican education?’ It sounds a foolish and perhaps an arrogant question, as if Dominicans were supposed to possess a secret which made their teaching substantially different from everyone else's. That is not the idea at all. It is simply the question asked by an intelligent parent who is thinking of sending his child to a Dominican school. He knows what is meant by education; the process of equipping children with the means to know, love and serve God, and of developing their power to use these means. Education should produce wise men, naturally and supernaturally. There are many right but different ways of achieving this purpose, and to a great extent these different ways are represented by the different religious orders who teach.

One does not need to be a snob to be interested in, or even to admit the existence of, people's different social background or family origins. Moreover, it is even customary to give special credit to the distinguished person who succeeded in spite of“a ‘bad start', to the field-marshal who began in the backstreet and not on the playing-fields of Eton, or to the business magnate who graduated in the cycle-shop and not at the university. Of course all this may have little or nothing to do with sanctity, but when we are considering Dominican Saints (and Beati), in an order where a certain level of education is required in its subjects, to carry out the order's aim, the matter of childhood opportunities does have a certain relevance. The same may be said to some extent of the priesthood in general.

Stories told to illustrate the different spirits prevailing in Religious Orders are legion. One, that must have many variations, jibes at the Order of St Dominic for being coldly intellectual. Whatever foundation in fact can be discovered for these diverting little legends, it must be admitted that the founder of the Order himself was anything but cold. There is an abundance of detail from eye-witness accounts which glows with warmth—a warmth which proves, if any proof were needed, that if an intense intellectual activity dries up the heart it need not necessarily do so. The Lessons for the Commemoration of St Dominic in Suriano, for example, must make surprising reading for those for whom the name of St Dominic conjures up visions of a heartless inquisitor or even an absent-minded if holy professor. The people who knew him and indeed had to live with him, tell us a very different story, a story that is not a vague eulogizing, but one that is alive with human interest: that relates little incidents from personal reminiscence.