Apart from the major holiday seasons, meetings are held monthly normally on the first Tuesday of the month. Currently (2022) they are held in Cathedral House, Clifton Cathedral, Bristol and preceded by the 7.00 evening Mass in Clifton Cathedral although it may be worth checking if you are attending for the first time.

Mass is followed by any business or announcements, a discussion of the theme for the meeting, and then we always finish with a glass (or two!) of wine. Usually the theme for the meeting will be a chapter or section from a book that will have been suggested and agreed upon by our members. For example, after its publication we devoted a session to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’. We read Timothy Radcliffe OP’s Why Go to Church, followed by his What is the Point of being a Christian? and we have devoted several sessions to studying the biography and reading, contemplating and praying with the Dominican Saint Catherine of Siena, a Doctor of the Church.

Since the group started we have had enormous support from the Dominicans nationally. We have had several Dominican visiting speakers. Fr Richard Finn OP has visited us from Oxford and the former Provincial Promoter Fr Bob Eccles OP from Cambridge. Fr Richard Conrad OP has been to Bristol several times both to conduct rites of profession and rites of acceptance and also to give illustrated talks on e.g. the art of the Dominican Blessed Fra Angelico. Fr Paul Murray OP, author of the wonderful introduction to the Dominicans’ spiritualty, The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality, has spoken at our meetings and said Mass in Bristol. In 2012 the Mass for Final Profession was conducted by Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, former Master of the Dominicans. Our current Religious Assistant is Fr. Robert Gay OP, the Prior of Blackfriars, Oxford.