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It’ll probably be the last time so many Friars Preachers will gather at All Saints Catholic Newman Center in Tempe. The Dominicans, whose efforts at ASU’s Newman Center are recognized throughout the United States, will be hanging up their habits for good June 30, the day before diocesan priests take over the campus ministry.

Fr. Nathan Castle, me, Fr. Daniel Rolland. (Photo by my mom, Bertica Garcia-Dubus)

I took photos at the April 15 “Dominicans through the Decades” celebration, which brought together 13 Black Friars who’d served at the Newman Center since 1969. Several hundred Catholics whose lives have been changed by the Dominicans joined in to celebrate and, well, say goodbye.

I would have been there even if I wasn’t working. From 1999-2000, I served at the Newman Center doing campus outreach. In the years before that, I’d been part of a young Lay Dominican group. The group traveled to Maynooth, Ireland for an International Dominican Youth Movement conference, where I met my wife. So I have the Dominicans to blame, er… thank for that.

The group dissolved after our trip to Ireland, despite my efforts to maintain it. Dominican Fathers Nathan Castle and Daniel Rolland (“Rolland like Holland not Roland like Poland,” as he would explain) were the priests at the Newman Center at the time. They let me fail. I can’t tell you how important that was for me. They trusted me enough to let me try and fail. As they say, the “spirit wasn’t right” for the group, but I kept trying to force it. But, lesson learned, you can’t force these things, JD. The Dominicans taught me about good stewardship and the value of subsidiarity and consultation without me even realizing I was learning about canon law.

As part of my work in campus outreach, I ran the student newsletter, which was then called The Catholic Student Times. It’s since been renamed to Newman News,which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a whole lot catchier. Anyway, that work — as well as my outreach efforts to Hispanic students — prepared me for my job here at The Catholic Sun. Fr. Nathan also had me do some research about the demographics at the university, which also helped me along the way, especially in grad school.

But what I really want to talk about is something I’ve come to think of as “spiritual residue.” When I saw Fr. Nathan and Fr. Daniel for the first time in years, my first reaction wasn’t “Hey, what are they doing here?” It was more like just “Hello.” I just associate this place with them. My parish is in Mesa, but I’ve gone back to the Newman Center many times — sometimes just because I miss all the other Masses and the 9:15 p.m. is the last show in town. But when I do, I just expect to be at home. I’ve run into folks that I haven’t seen in years and it feels like I just saw them yesterday.

At the celebration, I caught up with Fr. Jerome Cudden and Fr. James Junipero Moore, who serves at the Tucson Newman Center. After my time at the Tempe Newman Center, I went on to study at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley. Fr. Jerome and Fr. James, then Dominican brothers in formation, were my classmates. I didn’t think to catch up much with Fr. Nathan or Fr. Daniel because, well, I sort of forgot they didn’t minister there anymore.

What I’m saying is that it wasn’t this extraordinary event that felt somehow foreign or exceptional. I certainly wasn’t a painful goodbye or anything like that. It just felt like going to dinner with my family, catching up with cousins. And I think it feels like that because the Dominicans over the years have left their spiritual residue all over that place. Those of us who are familiar with it will feel that residue well after the Dominicans are gone.

Let me belabor this some more: When I was at the Newman Center, there were all these stories about Fr. Tom DeMan. He would draw Catholics and non-Catholics alike with his preaching, overflowing the church; there was great spiritual renewal during his tenure; he was a great confessor, that kind of thing. Anyway, I’d never met him. Then I went to the Dominican School and met this other lay student, Patrick Finn. He started talking about this priest that ran the Newman Center at University of Washington. “Fr. Tom DeMan is brilliant,” he said. “Oh sure, I know him,” I found myself saying. I knew him because of this spiritual residue that he’d left behind.

The new church building, which Fr. Nathan started planning for, will have his fingerprints and spiritual residue on it. And Fr. Daniel’s favorite homily to preach — “You are a good and holy people” — will reverberate through its walls. I’ll never forget this homily from Fr. Fred Lucci, in which he talked about euthanasia. He pointed out the great lack of humility of those who, suffering from a terminal illness, take their own lives. Letting another person take care of you is humbling and it’s good for the caregiver, he said. You can’t deny a person the opportunity to take care of you when you can’t take care of yourself. You’re denying them the opportunity to love. That homily would have taken any other priest 45 minutes to preach — but Fr. Fred preached it in about 12.

I met Fr. James Thompson, the current pastor, while I was doing campus outreach in 1999. He was serving as a student brother that year, and when he returned to Berkeley to complete his theological studies, I went to start mine. Fr. James had the unhappy duty to run the Newman Center in this last, transitional year under Dominican leadership. But by all accounts, including Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted’s, he’s done it admirably.

After Mass last Sunday I bumped into Fr. James and he asked me what I thought of the celebration. I thought it was great. “Good,” he said. He wanted it to be joyous, not mournful. And it certainly was that. For those of us who have come to know the Dominicans have been filled with a joy that only comes from God. And that joy, which changed our lives, will never leave us.