Lay Dominican group carries on centuries-old commitment

Prom nights are the stuff of movies. And Pat Brown, who has an “OP” after her name — standing for the Dominican “Order of Preachers” — tells a true story worthy of a screenplay.

At her senior prom, sometime in the early ’60s, she told her date that she would be entering the order within the next six months.

“He said, ‘You’re not going to last,’ ” she says. ‘I’m going to bring up a bottle of Champagne after six months, and we’re going to take you home.’ He brought the bottle of Champagne up. I didn’t go home.”

Brown’s religious life began in the Adrian Dominican order, in Adrian, Mich. Adrian Dominican nuns, she later discovered, played a major role in the early history of the valley’s St. Rose hospitals. She wasn’t, after all, destined to stay in the order. But she returned to her Dominican roots, decades later, by a circuitous route, via the Blessed Bartolo Longo Lay Dominican Chapter in Formation, in Las Vegas.

The group meets at the UNLV Catholic Newman Center, 4765 Brussels St., at 9 a.m. on the last Saturday of the month. The namesake, Bartolo Longo, was a Satanist-turned-champion of the Catholic rosary — with help from a Dominican.

Brown attributes her attraction to religious life to the modeling of the nuns who taught her and the Catholic faith of her deeply religious mother. That Catholic momentum continued with her Lutheran father’s conversion to Catholicism, about a year after she entered the order.

She spent the next seven or eight years praying, learning and teaching. With her college degree and advanced education on the way, she taught Catholic grade school, and young adults.

“I loved the order very much,” she says. But teaching took her away from prayer and her obligations to the Dominican community. She asked to be relieved of her orders and was excused. Then she took over teaching for an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister in Dearborn, Mich.

While pursuing a master’s degree at Wayne State University — and preparing for class in a coffee shop — she overheard someone saying he was looking for a guitar player at Mass. She turned around and told him she played guitar and was willing to help out. He took her up on her offer and they became friends and, later, married. It was the late ’60s. They were married for three years, until he died of a heart attack.

“We had three years of a marriage that probably lots of people don’t have in 30 years,” she says. “I vowed to never, ever marry.”

She traveled to Newfoundland in the mid-1970s to teach and met her second husband, who was a corpsman in the medical field. He used the GI Bill to go to school, becoming a teacher. They were married for 25 years and adopted six children in Newfoundland, before he, too, died of a heart attack.

In the course of their careers traveling overseas to teach, the couple made a stop in Las Vegas in the ’90s.

“It was like a new city,” Brown says. “It was upcoming.”

The couple sealed the relationship with Las Vegas when both won jackpots at Excalibur, within hours of each other. The money went for the purchase of a home in Henderson — although they didn’t come back to live here right away. Brown’s husband died in 2003, a few years after the family finally came to stay.

On Christmas Eve 2004, she attended Mass at Twitchell Elementary School, in Henderson. It was the beginning of what would be her relationship with St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church. While attending a meeting at St. Francis, she heard from one of the Knights of Columbus about the Dominican group at UNLV.

“When I took my first vows, I made myself a Dominican,” she says. “So I was a Dominican within me. And I had to continue this. I could not continue it as a nun because I was teaching at one of Clark County’s schools.” She has since retired from teaching.

The group has been meeting at the Newman Center since early 2008, according to moderator Joseph Haller, who holds a doctorate in astronomy. Ten active members, and four “inquirers” exploring the possibility of a good fit, meet to develop themselves, spiritually and intellectually. Those who stay eventually undergo a two-year formation process, with opportunities to make a profession, or commitment, to live their lives as lay Dominicans.

Staying means committing to a life based on the Dominican “four pillars” —prayer, religious community, study and ministry. Activities range from reading Scripture and praying the Divine Office — an ancient form of ceaseless Roman Catholic prayer rotating throughout the day — to preaching and teaching.

“A common element, for many of us in the group, is that we’ve been educated by Dominicans, or had exposure to Dominicans somewhere along the way,” Haller says. “This group allows us to not just be instructed by them, but to live out our spirituality ourselves.”

Felixberto “Tet” Saldi, and his wife, Ellen “Len,” have been with the lay group for three years. Every Saturday, they also run a home group called Trumpets of the Lord. Many attendees aren’t Catholic but come for training in preaching and teaching, based on the four pillars.

When it comes to balancing marriage and the religious life, Tet says, “we believe that nobody can make a marriage work without putting Christ in the center of it.”

“Since we’re husband and wife, wherever he goes, I actually tell him, I should go as well because I don’t want to be left behind,” Len chimes in. “Especially for my spiritual life!”

As for the popularity of the lay chapters, it is “most definitely growing,” according to Denise Harvey, president of the Lay Dominicans’ Most Holy Name of Jesus province, encompassing the western United States.

“I think all of the members are trying to increase their prayer life,” Brown says. “And be able to share with others.”

The Blessed Bartolo Longo Lay Dominican Chapter in Formation is currently seeking new members; contact the group at bartololongo.org. For Trumpets of the Lord, contact Tet and Len Saldi at saldilaw@yahoo.com.