It's been said that the Dominicans opposed the doctrine of the immaculate conception and excessive Mariolatry before they threw in the towel once it became a codified dogma. Thomas Aquinas is said to have been a forerunner to the Dominicans. I've heard Roman Catholic apologists smear them by saying most Dominicans were not that holy and very few became saints because they lacked sufficient grace due to denial of these Marian dogmas. Depending on how you look at it, Dominicans were either demons or what to non-Romanists are good Christians. The claim that Aquinas confessed to accepting belief in the immaculate conception is argued to be a forgery and late insertion. Likewise, the original Dominican rosary prayer format was less tailored towards such a high view of Mary as it was later, which would make sense if, like in the case of Aquinas, was to undo the influence of the Dominicans which went contrary to the controversial dogmas of the day. Another attempt to smear the Dominican reaction to Romanist corruptions is the fact that many were involved in calling out the perversion in the church which foreshadows the sex scandals prevalent nowadays. Romanists claim this was an exaggeration due to prejudice against their theological opposites, but there may have been more Romanists--not simply Dominicans--who were involved in recognizing these abuses in the church early on than the supposed 'fabrications' attributed to reformers like Martin Luther. What else is there to say regarding the role of Dominicans in the Catholic Church? I'd like to know how much of these is true including the addendums attributed to Aquinas and other notable figures from this and other orders.
By whom? A quotation or source would be useful. I have never previously heard such an accusation levelled against the Dominicans.
I am very surprised by this. I leap, or stagger, to their defence. As far as I know Dominicans in England have been greatly admired and valued. There are a few points to be made to support this. There was a tremendous Dominican generation and almost revival in England in the 1920-1960, with tremendously well educated,cultured and apostolic Dominicans.They wrote a great deal about Christianity and culture; the arts and everyday life. Please look at Fr Aidan Nichols O.P. DOMINICAN GALLERY, a magnificent study of many of these men. Fr Gerald Vann's delightful books are re-printed in the USA. They also influenced in the 1940s the very radical and counter-cultural magazine INTEGRITY (in the USA) In the 1960-1980 period they did go through a bad dose of the "trendies" and many espoused social and theological opinions that were, shall we say, rather "forward looking". They seem to have come up smelling of roses and there are many fine, traditional and orthodox members of the Province. Fr Aidan Nichols is certainly one of them and they are finding good young vocations. Many of the priests are working in Universities now. From the other parts of the Dominican world I would mention the writings of St Thomas Aquinas, still studied and in more modern times Fr Garrigou-Lagrange. In the 1930/1940/1950 they did tremendous apostolic,cultural & liturgical work in France. There were Anglican Third Order Dominicans in the 1920-1980,both in England and in the USA with Fr Paul James Colby,they followed the Tertiary RC rule but were never connected with the Order. With the death of their aged founder Fr Silas Harris in 1982 they became defunct as far as I know.
Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican, actually. I like St. Dominic Guzman and am willing to consider him a saint for his efforts to preach orthodoxy to the Albigensian Gnostics. After his death, you had the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition, which was chiefly run by Dominicans and Franciscans. And I am not a fan of that. In recent times however some of my favorite Catholic theologians have been Dominicans, and a disproporttionate number of traditionalists in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith have an OP after their name. ~ The pre-Vatican II Dominican Rite liturgy is quite interesting in that it represents an alternative synthesis of the Gallican and Old Roman Rites to the Tridentine Rite, with the same objective, that being to replace the myriad slightly divergent local rites (such as the uses of Salisbury, Hereford, Bangor and York within England, for example), but for a different purpose than the reforming agenda of Trent and Pius V, this being rather to facilitate the ease of moving Friars from one diocese or province to another depending on the needs of the church and the order. So the result is a simple, elegant liturgy, not quite as visually splendid as the Tridentine mass, or some of the surviving regional liturgies (the Gallican-based Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites in particular, and the ornate Rite of Lyons), which in antiquity lacked features common elsewhere which were later begrudgingly adopted by the Dominicans for the sake of conformity, for example, the Last Gospel at the end of mass (the reading of John 1:1-14, which coincidentally, the Armenian Orthodox started doing in antiquity as a result of dialogue with the Roman Church, only they sing it). In recent years there has been a small scale revival of this beautiful liturgy by some of the more traditionally minded friars in the US. By the way, if one is curious about anything involving Roman Catholic liturgy or the liturgical rites which they share with the Orthodox, and now, to a degree, due to the Ordinariates, with the Anglicans, the New Liturgical Movement blog is invaluable and fascinating. It represents a traditionalist approach to liturgics to which the spirit which inflicted upon Anglicans the horrors of Rite II, or the Alternative Service Book, or Common Worship, is anathema. I am not a Catholic and don’t intend to go that way, but I like the NLM and their work: http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/ ~ So in general, I like St. Dominic Guzman, probably more than Francis of Assisi, who is unpopular in the Orthodox church for his perceived mystical excesses; I also greatly admire many recent and contemporary Dominican friars committed to traditional liturgics and traditional theology. I am not a huge fan of Thomas Aquinas or Thomistic theology, or Scholastic theology in general, as I find it a bit dry compared to Patristic theology or Palamist theology in the Eastern Orthodox Church (in the Oriental and Assyrian churches, the output of theological scholarship was greatly reduced for many centuries due to extreme persecution afflicting all of the churches except the Ethiopian, and Ethiopian theological writings are alas very obscure). On another forum I read a thread where someone proposed organizing in the Episcopal Church a religious community of Dominicans in an effort to use Dominican principles to combat the liturgical and theological departures in that church, which was an idea I liked, but I am not sure if the Episcopal Church in the post-Spong era is sufficiently broadminded and tolerant for such a group to be permitted.
I'm curious where this impression came from. Most the Marian dogmas were settled either centuries before the arrival of the Dominicans, or in the 19th Century (though, they were remarkably uncontroversial within Catholicism, and even didn't seem to be all that particularly controversial to Orthodox Christians except that they didn't understand Original Sin the same way for the Immaculate Conception to have much to do). St. Dominic and the Dominicans are rather more famous for embracing, enhancing and spreading Marian devotions than the other way around. St. Dominic is credited with having received the current usual form of the Rosary from Mary in a vision sometimes, but the records for that indicate it was more of he promoted the particular form of the Rosary and maybe fleshed out or solidified the practice as is common today. Prior to St. Dominic, the Rosary was known to exist and be practiced, but not always in a Marian format (some report the earliest use had just 10 Our Father's per decade and not necessarily the same mysteries to meditate on; such variations are still in use today, presumably, along with some additional ones like the Divine Mercy Chaplet, but are generally less popular). One of the hallmarks of dominicans is, of course, the giant rosary they wear about their waist. Moreover, Dominic reportedly had a vision of heaven where he saw Christ at the center and Mary beside him, where Christ showed him the members of his own order in heaven as being kept within the veil of Mary, as Christ had entrusted his order to His Mother's care. Others have already pointed out, of course, that St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican, not a forerunner. As for the Immaculate Conception, Aquinas was centuries before the matter was settled and declared a dogma, so there wouldn't be much need for him to confess to belief in it at any time. That said, as I understand, his view is one no one particularly considers anymore as it's pretty niche: Mary was without any personal sin, and definitively so since she would not properly be prepared for the office of Mother of Christ if she ever had, but God prepares people for their office. However, he seemed to think somewhere in the time period after her conception but before her birth, she was sanctified from whatever stains of original sin (not personal sin) she may have. He would himself argue though that whatever he says on the matter becomes unimportant once the Church settles the matter. Dominicans certainly aren't as popular in at least American minds I know of as the Franciscans, but I've never heard of them being particularly disliked (the Franciscans are just a favorite for many people). The Popes certainly held them in pretty great esteem, with Dominican being ordered to stick by the Pope because of his great skills rather than being permitted to go off preaching in dangerous heathen lands as was his desire. Notably, there was already an Albigensian campaign/crusade during Dominics time (his order is sometimes said to have been formed to combat the Albigensian, but that's not entirely the case). Dominic is credited though with opposing the plan to resort to violence in the matter, and actually protecting many Albigensians so that they wouldn't be killed by the armies. Supposedly, the man put in charge of the attacks actually rather liked Dominic, despite Dominics opposition. As for more recent times, there may be some confusion with the Jesuits. That's certainly an order that in the last Century or so has been met with much controversy and doctrinal issues (honestly, not really the order as a whole, but they seemed prone to something showing up among their members and not doing too much about it in many instances, which is a little strange since their order started as a group seeking out unorthodox thinking and trying to reform the Church to more strict adherence to both right teaching and spiritual soundness).