“Just One More”: He Slept on a Chapel Floor—and Never Went Back
by Chris Mann
“One night, I came home and found my girlfriend’s stuff in a trash bag, dumped outside the door. She wasn’t welcome inside any more.”
That was the moment. Dominic was dating the woman who would become his wife, and the ultra-radical Catholic group he was living with decided she had to go. Her presence threatened everything.
The choice was brutal: stay in the only world he had ever known or follow a woman he wasn’t even sure he’d marry yet.
“I met my girlfriend online, when I was in Sydney, Australia, and she was in Maryland, USA. I flew back, and we started dating. She drove down to spend a week with my family, and that’s when it all blew up.
“I couldn’t send her away,” he remembers. So they drove to the local church. She slept in the van. He slept on the chapel floor. And in the grey, early morning, they looked at each other and I knew: “I’m not going back.”
That choice shattered everything. His identity, his family ties, his role in the community. And it launched a decade of reconstruction.
“For the last ten years,” Dominic says, “I’ve been deconstructing away from that cult-like environment, and reconstructing what it means to be in communion with the Church.”
And maybe most importantly: how to be a good man.
“Heroism,” Dominic says, “is taking on a bigger cross than people would expect you to carry.”
Grit with a Smile: Merry and Brave.
Dominic grew up loving Batman and Robin Hood. Grit and joy. Brooding and brightness. And it turns out, that tension is the key to the kind of heroism he believes in now.
“Anybody can be brave and grim. And we know plenty of merry people who aren’t brave at all. But to be both? That’s something the world really needs.”
He found that idea echoed in the stories of the Inklings—those wartime writers like Tolkien and Lewis who carried joy into the teeth of despair. Heroes like Samwise, who looks beyond the clouds and finds one star still shining.
Dominic says we need that right now, more than ever. “There’s been this anti-hero movement, a cultural cynicism. But what we need are real figures who show what can be done. The kind of people who live merry and brave, in spite of the darkness.”
That spirit shows up in one of his favorite moments from Hacksaw Ridge, where Desmond Doss crawls through the mud to rescue soldier after soldier.
“He’d just whisper, ‘Just one more. Just one more.’ That’s the kind of man I want to be.”
The Call to Brotherhood.
Dominic doesn’t have a son. But he talks like a father Not just to his daughter, but to the men he sees around him—especially the young ones. The creatives. The sensitive ones. The ones who dream.
“People with creative gifts have drawn a special card in life,” he says. “They’re more sensitive to life’s pain, but they also see deeper truths. They dream up the futures the rest of us want to live in.”
His life has become a kind of rallying point for them. Through community work, storytelling platforms, and Heroic Men, he’s building spaces for those young, hungry souls who are looking for a push, a witness, someone to say, “I see you. You can do this.”
He sees himself in them. The lost boys of Neverland. The inner child he had to leave behind.
“I didn’t feel like I got the support I needed as a kid. So now, I show up. It helps them. And maybe it helps me heal a little, too.”
What are his favorite mysteries of the Rosary now? Not the sorrowful ones. Not anymore. “The Joyful Mysteries hit different when you’re older,” he laughs. “Mary gets the call, and the first thing she does is go help someone else. She learns how to live her mission by walking with someone else in theirs. That’s what I want to do.”
No Man Left Behind.
Dominic now leads R&D - research and development at Heroic Men, a movement building brotherhood for Catholic men. And he carries that Hacksaw Ridge mindset into his mission.
“Every man makes it home,” he says, choking up. “Even if I have to carry you, you’re going to make it home.”
That’s the legacy he wants to leave. That’s the legacy Heroic Men is building. Because heroism isn’t born. It’s made. In the trenches. In the tears. In the tiny decisions to be just a little more faithful. A little more brave. A little more joyful.
And then, when the moment comes, to say yes. Just one more.