Since 1982, the mission of the Dominican University College Foundation has been to help the Dominican University College develop as a center for university studies in philosophy, theology and pastoral theology, while ensuring its sustainability and outreach.
At the service of a changing world
First recognized as a center of studies for the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), the College acquired in 1967 a civil charter from the Ontario government allowing it to award university degrees in the fields of its teaching activities. For its part, the Pastoral Institute, active in Quebec since 1960, has devoted itself to training in pastoral theology, in particular to respond to the new orientations proposed by the Second Vatican Council.
Like all faculties of theology and philosophy in Quebec and elsewhere, the Dominican University College and the Pastoral Institute are seeing the number of enrollments in their programs decrease. While it is true on the one hand that fewer students are enrolling in our so-called “traditional” programs, on the other hand we are seeing a lot of interest in short courses, such as conferences, workshops, or others, dealing with current issues, and for which the light of a philosophical or theological thought, and the Word of God in particular, are necessary and appreciated.
It is important to go beyond the walls of the College to meet the needs of this time, in a largely secularized world. We need to ask questions differently and find other ways to stay relevant.
This is how the Dominican Center for Ethics and Spiritual Life (CDEVS) was born in 2021 The CDEVS aims to deepen the major contemporary ethical and spiritual issues, in a dialogue with society, in its places of fragility and its peripheries.
It is aimed at the women and men of today, in order to seek together a better life and rekindle a momentum of hope and liberation in their lives and in their professional and personal commitments.
It is led by a team of researchers from various places and backgrounds, who walk and build this project together and gradually, listening to and sharing their experience.
The CDEVS, integrated within the Faculty of Theology of the Dominican University College, brings together the Sainte-Catherine-de-Sienne Chair in Theology of Spiritual Life, the Gospel Theology and Life Chair and the Noël-Mailloux Chair in Ethics of Care which are added to the existing chairs of the College (the Lawrence Dewan chair on Thomas Aquinas and philosophy and the Jean-Marie Roger Tillard chair on the study of religious life).