Order of Preachers
Lay people in the following of Dominic
Lekmannadominikanerna is the lay branch of the Dominican Order in Sweden. We are Catholics who live ordinary family and working lives, and who are bound by a special promise to the same Order that St Dominic founded in the thirteenth century.
Who we are
Among Dominicans the lay branch belongs to the Order itself; it is not a side association. Lay members are full members of the Order without living in a convent. The older name “Third Order” is still heard in everyday speech. The present name is Lay Dominicans, or the Lay Fraternities of St Dominic.
The first rule for Dominican laity was approved in 1285. The rule now in force was drawn up at an international congress in Montreal in 1985 and confirmed in 1987. It says that some of the faithful, moved by the Holy Spirit to live in the spirit of St Dominic, are incorporated into the Order through a special promise according to statutes proper to them.
Final promises are made before a representative of the Master of the Order and before the person responsible in one’s own group. In both their spiritual life and their way of serving God and neighbour in the Church, Dominican laity have a distinctive character.
Prayer, study and preaching
The Rule names study, prayer and preaching as the distinctive marks of Dominican laity. The Dominican motto contemplata aliis tradere — to hand on to others what one has contemplated — belongs to the laity as well, in the manner proper to life in the world. The Order also bears the word Veritas, truth, as its mark.
In Sweden
The Dominicans came to the Nordic countries in 1222, when the first convent was founded in Lund. In the Middle Ages, friars of the Order of Preachers were present in several towns in what is now Sweden. The Reformation ended that presence. The Order returned in the twentieth century.
Today there are Lay Dominicans in Lund and Stockholm. They belong to the Dominican Family together with the friars of St Mary Magdalene Convent in Lund, the Dominican sisters of Rögle Abbey outside Lund, and the apostolic Dominican sisters in Stockholm.
There are on the order of seventy Lay Dominicans in the Nordic countries. The number shifts, but it shows that the lay branch is a living part of the Order in our countries.
The Dominican Family
Dominicans are not only the friars. The family holds friars preachers, contemplative and apostolic sisters, and lay men and women who live the same charism: the preaching of the truth, carried by prayer and study.
Approaching the vocation
A Catholic drawn to a life in the spirit of Dominic — without leaving family, work or parish — is welcome to seek contact with one of the fraternities. A time of discernment and probation precedes the promise.