St. Catherine Newman Center priest named to regional post in Western Dominican Province

Friday, Mar. 04, 2016

SALT LAKE CITY — Dominican Father Peter Hannah, associate pastor of St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center, was appointed promoter of the Angelic Warfare Confraternity of the Dominican Western Province in 2015.

The worldwide Angelic Warfare Confraternity is a fellowship of men and women dedicated to pursuing and promoting chastity; it was canonically designated an association of the faithful in 1727.

Any baptized and confirmed Catholic, whether single or married, is encouraged to join. Members promise to support and pray for everyone else in the confraternity and to pursue and promote chastity, Fr. Peter said.

The confraternity is under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose family attempted to dissuade him from entering the Dominican order by sending a prostitute to his cell. He drove the woman out and prayed to be preserved in his chastity, purity and intent to live a religious life. He then fell into a mystic sleep and had a vision of two angels from heaven, who bound a cord around his waist on God’s behalf. 

“He wore the cord until his death, but nobody knew about it,” Fr. Peter said. “It protected him in chastity and purity throughout his life; he revealed it to his confessor on his death bed.” 

The cord became a sacred object; it is in a monastery in Vercelli in northern Italy, where people in the late Middle Ages made pilgrimages to seek Aquinas’ patronage for chastity and wore cords around their waists. 

In the 17th century a Dominican priest from Belgium made a pilgrimage to Vercelli to gather information on the devotion for college students at the Catholic University of Louvain and started the first official society, Fr. Peter said. 

Today members of the confraternity are enrolled by a Dominican priest, who confers the blessing upon a medal, which has an image of St. Thomas on one side and Our Lady of the Rosary on the other. Rather than a medal, members may be given a cord, which they wear around their waist under their clothing as often as possible; they are enrolled in an official register, Fr. Peter said. They also pray daily for chastity and purity for themselves and all confraternity members.

“The virtue of chastity is a special challenge today with our media culture and generally lowered standards of modesty and sexual restraint constantly before the public eye,” said Fr. Peter. 

Dominican Fr. Brian Mullady, the promoter of the confraternity prior to Fr. Peter, updated confraternity material for the late 20th century by combining the devotion to Thomas Aquinas and the difficulties with sexuality. 

“I used Pope John Paul II, who said there is nothing evil about the body, but if a person gives into lust about it, it is egotistical; they are saying that the body and sexuality are valued but not sufficiently appreciated,” Fr. Brian said. “So we have to reintroduce love into love by self-control. St. Thomas emphasized the goodness of the body and the goodness of emotions and passions; there is nothing wrong in feeling good about the body provided people respect the goodness of marriage.”  

The confraternity gives fellowship and extra spiritual support and help to its members, Fr. Peter said. “There is a connection between chastity and the sharpness of one’s mind; chastity frees our mind and our soul.”

Fr. Peter is promoting the confraternity and developing a web-based catechetical series on the virtues, called “Pure Truth,” he said. 

For information, visit www.angelicwarfareconfraternity.org, or call Fr. Peter Hannah, 801-359-6066.