By Thea Jarvis

When Dominicans of the southern province began searching for a university around which to focus the intellectual life of their community, they bypassed such noteworthy institutions as Duke, Vanderbilt and Southern Methodist.

Instead, they chose Emory University in Atlanta, citing its ecumenical spirit, the high caliber of scholastic achievement, and a genuine desire to welcome the Dominican Order into its campus life.

“Emory was just right. They had a real invitation to us,” Father Neal McDermott said of the Emory connection. “They wanted to develop their Catholic dimension.”

The gregarious Dominican, with traces of an old Chicago neighborhood still ringing in his voice, recently sat in the handsome living room of the Virginia-Highlands residence the province has claimed as its own and explained the direction the order is taking on the southern front.

Administratively, St. Martin de Porres Province calls New Orleans home. In Atlanta, Father McDermott indicated with a wide sweep of his hand, is found the Dominican Study Center – Augustine House, named for that fourth century dynamo revered by Catholic and Protestant Christians alike, and situated, appropriately, on St. Augustine Place just a block from Ponce de Leon Avenue.

Augustine House, which has as its model study centers found in every other province of the Dominican Order, is at once the intellectual hub of the community’s southern flank and a residence for local members of the order.

It is here that the director of Augustine House, Father Bob Perry, has undertaken the three-fold mission of establishing a full-blown study center, forging Catholic bonds with Emory University, and setting up a base for the study of the Dominican apostolate in the southern province.

Since the founding of St. Martin de Porres Province in 1979, southern Dominicans have targeted preaching, parish work and campus ministry as essential priorities. The Dominican Study Center will enhance all of these areas and, in addition, lend itself to the spiritual development of the local church through its programs, speakers and courses.

The center has already sponsored three separate conferences on preaching, campus ministry and parish ministry. The preaching symposium, held at Emory last year, drew a mix of 250 Catholic and Protestant priests, ministers and laypersons.

“This is not just a Dominican thing for Dominicans,” Father McDermott emphasized. “We hope to bring to the city some of the best people we can to develop programs of religious, priests and laypeople in the diocese.”

This may include, he continued, courses for credit that could be applied at various institutions of higher learning; Barry University in Miami, Loyola University in New Orleans, and Union of Cincinnati in Ohio are possible affiliates.

“Our objective is not to impose on the diocese what we think the diocese needs,” he said, but to “serve the needs of the church in Atlanta.”

On the practical level of religious community, Augustine House is haven to some seven live-in Dominicans and offers family-like reinforcement to other members of the order who live and work at either a parish or campus outside the center.

Moving through the spacious old home – it is reputed to have been built in the twenties by the owner of West Lumber Company – Father McDermott introduced a visitor to two Dominican brothers studying for the priesthood.

Along with a third brother, the men spend their days studying and interning in various parts of the city, where pastoral experience is “hands-on.” All have completed their master’s work and are doing advanced theological and philosophical study at Emory.

The remaining residents are also involved with the Emory community, pursuing further study while either supervising Augustine House or on sabbatical leave.

Father McDermott, who is the religious superior of Augustine House and is currently completing a doctoral dissertation on Catholic campus ministry, pointed to a long wooden table in the dining area and explained that supper is generally shared by nine men, though visitors and guests can be easily accommodated at the spacious groaning board.

Around him on all sides are the exquisite beveled windows and rich mellow woods that are the hallmarks of the house. The kitchen is large and roomy, the basement converted to a relaxed and comfortable den. A small room on the first floor serves as the chapel, with a unique circular altar dominating the space.

A heavy wooden banister rubbed to a satiny finish by hands that have touched it over the years stretches to the second level and a tri-level wooden deck connects the house with its modest backyard.

Augustine House is a peaceful place. It is attractive to the spirit as well as to the eye. This was not always so.

Before the advent of the friars, the house was a boarding establishment that, in its heyday, sheltered up to 14 men. Rooms were partitioned haphazardly to provide optimum economic return on the investment. The gracious lines of the house were hidden and twisted.

When the Dominicans arrived on the scene, the house was “in a mess,” Father McDermott remembered, but the structure, one of five the province considered, seemed the best of the lot.

“This house we could buy,” he said realistically. “It was probably cheaper to buy an old place and fix it up” than attempt the hefty expense of a new building.

The house opened officially just last summer, on the feast of St. Augustine, August 28, but not before a major overhaul had been completed.

Because Father McDermott had prior experience restoring existing structures for the needs of Dominican life in other parts of the country, he was brought in to assist Father Perry, who was juggling his own pursuit of a doctoral degree at Emory with the rigors of a new foundation. On the Atlanta front, it was Father McDermott’s job to “oversee day to day construction,” he explained.

The result of the arduous effort is a tasteful and welcoming center of community for area Dominicans, a house that blends easily into the electric ambience of Virginia-Highlands yet is distinctive in its serenity and substance.

For their part, Southerners in general and Atlantans in particular have made the new arrivals feel at home.

“We love it. We’re well received and happy to be here,” Father McDermott confirmed. “The tradition of the South, the different pace,” is all to their liking.

Moreover, he observed, “Southern Catholics are not so pushy about their faith. They are people who have been very firm in their faith” under circumstances in which such perseverance was neither easy nor often acceptable.

It was St. Dominic who first sent his friars out two by two to preach and teach at twelfth century centers of learning. In the twentieth century, the tradition continues, with modern day Dominicans enriching surrounding communities with their scholarship and preaching.

“We’re making good progress,” Father McDermott concluded, looking back on the Dominicans’ southern journey and the challenges that await them around the bend.