Dominican Nuns Of The Perpetual Rosary

[sistersintigo]

[quote name='DevotedtoHim' date='05 September 2008 - 01:46 PM' timestamp='1220636767' post='1648272']
What differences do the Monasteries have? Other than people, of course. What is different from them as opposed to Summit or Menlo Park for an example? Thanks.
Katherine
[/quote]

The answer to your question can be found in many texts, some of them not very user-friendly!
For a user-friendly answer, I recommend Novice Mistress Sr. Mary of the Sacred Heart Sawicki OP from West Springfield, Massachusetts' Dominican Monastery of the Mother of God. She has recently published a book called Celebration of Surprises, about the 800th year Jubilee of Saint Dominic's establishment of the first monastery of Dominican Cloistered Nuns. Yes, all Monasteries of Dominican nuns trace their origins back to this first foundation eight hundred years ago. It is true, however, that the tree has more than one branch.
The Dominican Sisters of the Perpetual Rosary were established in a fairly recent century, one that was not kind to solemnly professed religious in Europe. The French/Belgian co-founders agreed that rather than be a Second Order of solemn professed nuns, they would be a Third Order Religious Institute of perpetually professed nuns. I guess there are many different reasons for this distinction, some of the differences are probably way over my head. But, again, it was a difficult time for monasteries in particular, there was much intolerance of the Catholic Church.
Between then and now -- and after surviving some massive outbreaks of war -- the Order of Preachers, and its Promoter of cloistered nuns along with the Master General, took advantage of an improved situation at the Vatican, and extended to the Perpetual Rosary Sisters, the option of solemn profession and becoming true Second Order monasteries with the formal enclosure. I think most of them sprang for it.