Dorothy Day: Wholly Holy Radical
That Dorothy Day was "wholly holy radical" in the midst of a, more often than not, conservative Catholic Church reveals something more than a denominational choice: it is the revelation of a decision to stand with the Christ-Event extending throughout time and across every boundary...
"I was just as much against capitalism and imperialism as ever... I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal..." (D.D.)
It wasn't long after Dorothy's conversion that respectable parishioners could hear the sounds of some "strange birds" flying in and out of the steeples... the Catholic Radicals (and others) were gathering... Peter Maurin was the worker / intellectual founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Directed by a mutual friend, Maurin went to Dorothy Day and immediately compared her to St. Catherine of Siena...
"Before he knew me well he went about comparing me to a Catherine of Siena who would move mountains and have influence on governments... He was a man of enthusiasm and always saw great talents in people..." (D.D.)
Peter had come to Dorothy announcing what he called a "Green Revolution". He began instructing her in the history of the Church, the lives of the saints, the Mystery of Christ, and described the importance of Christ's "voluntary society" -- it had to be that church and society changed, not by being destroyed, but by "building a new society within the shell of the old"...
"He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God... seeing Christ in others, loving the Christ you saw in others." (D.D.)
Peter's program included Round-Table Discussions, Houses of Hospitality, and Agronomic Universities (farming communities). This was what he meant when he spoke of the "Green Revolution". He said that the first step was to make known the good news, to make known the social teachings of the Church: that is, to publish a newspaper...
"We started publishing The Catholic Worker in May, 1933, with a first issue of 2,500 copies... By the end of the year we had a circulation of 100,000 and by 1936 it was 150,000... Zealous young people took the paper out into the streets and sold it... at one cent a copy... they gave free copies and left them in streetcar, bus, barber shop, and dentist's and doctor's office." (D.D.)
From the beginning The Catholic Worker was not just a radical newspaper. It was a place, a place where the unwanted could come -- somebody cared. It was the first House of Hospitality. And poor people came by the droves. Soon the editors became workers: making soup, serving meals, finding places for homeless people to sleep. Catholic Workers found that the hardest part wasn't loving ungrateful derelicts but rather the insensitive bishop and pastor concerned more with the legacies of new buildings and parking lots...
It's not right nor fair that we should bear so large a burden; that we should face long lines of hungry, sick, and aged people... It could well be distributed through the parishes... the parish societies; and if the old societies are too stodgy to take care of these new needs in a changing world, then new societies should be formed." (D.D.)
The Catholic Worker began with an activist love: serving, marching, and picketing; and then went deeper into the mysticism of contemplation through a love of prayer and meditation. This spirituality of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker can be summed up by the phrase "being-in-Christ". It includes the Works of Mercy (such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless); the Works of Justice and Peace (such as advocacy and civil disobedience); and the "Works of Lunacy" (going back to the land and playful fiestas)...
"We are trying to work out a theory of love... so that the revolution of love instead of hate may come about... too few there are who will consider themselves servants, who will give up their lives to serve others." (D.D.)
Dorothy was intoxicated with the illuminating wonder of Yeshua's New Commandment: "A new commandment I give to you: love one another as I have loved you." Her understanding of this "Manifesto of Liberation" required of her a radical reverence of life: her response to this New Commandment was not only to resist, challenge, and obstruct the institutional forces which led to poverty and war, but also to engage in the discipline of contemplative prayer and daily scriptural meditation...
"I try to practice the presence of God after the manner of Blessed Lawrence, and pray without ceasing... I am trying to learn to recall my soul like the straying creature it is as it wanders off over and over again during the day, and lift my heart to the Blessed Mother and His saints, since my occupations are the lowly and humble ones, as were theirs." (D.D.)
All people of faith are called to become "wholly holy", so Dorothy believed. A "saint" in her mind referred to those persons who have effectively reminded us of the Holy One, and who in their lives, enlarged the boundaries of human love and invited us to follow...
"... we are called to be saints. More than ever I am convinced that the solution lies only in the Gospel and in such a leader as St. Francis... Too little has been stressed the idea that all are called... Where are our saints to call the masses to God? Personalist's first, we must put the question to ourselves. Communitarians, we will find Christ in our brothers and sisters." (D.D.)
Certainly, with talk of revolution mixed in with contemplative prayer, Dorothy did not fit the popular mold of "saint". Over the years the F.B.I. amassed a file on the Catholic Worker which reached 500 pages. J. Edgar Hoover considered the movement dangerous enough to merit prosecution on the charge of sedition, and he recommended such action to the Attorney General on three separate occasions. His advice went unheeded, and Dorothy persisted in her "suspect" activities...
"Some F.B.I. man by the name of Daly came down to query me about one of our friends who is a conscientious objector. He asked me the usual questions as to how long I had known him, how he stated his position as C.O. or pacifist, whether or not he believed in defending himself. Evidently, one of my answers offended him, because he pulled back his jacket and displayed the holster of a gun under his armpit, which he patted bravely as he said, "I believe in defending myself." I could not but think, 'How brave a man, defending himself against us unarmed women and children hereabouts'." (D.D.)
The Works of Mercy and the Works of Justice and Peace are the direct opposite of the Works of War. From its very beginning, the Catholic Worker Movement has opposed and resisted the madness of war, the arms race and arms profiteering, and the economic system that makes war inevitable. Beginning with the Spanish Civil War and continuing through the Vietnam War, Dorothy wrote and worked for Justice and Peace...
"We are trying to spread the gospel of peace, to persuade others to extend the peace movement, to build up a mighty army of conscientious objectors. And in doing this we are accounted fools... Our Lord Himself has already pronounced judgment on the atomic bomb. When James and John wished to call down fire from heaven on their enemies, Jesus said: 'You know not of what Spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save'..." (D.D.)
The spirituality of Dorothy Day was based on the effort to encounter Yeshua in her daily life. He was present, she believed in everyday situations, in the "sacrament of the present moment". Yeshua is also present in all the people around us, especially in the aspect of their needs, in the needs of the poorest and weakest. But to find Yeshua among the poor, then we too must practice an honest simplicity of life. And so "voluntary poverty" was a vital element of her faith practice...
"God seems to intend us to depend solely on Him... What security did the Blessed Virgin herself have as she fled in the night with the Baby in her arms to go into a strange country? She probably wondered whether St. Joseph would be able to obtain work in a foreign land, how they would get along, and anticipated the loneliness of being without her friends, her cousin St. Elizabeth, her other kinfolk... What right has any one of us to security when God's poor are suffering? What right have I to sleep in a comfortable bed when so many are sleeping in the shadows of buildings... What right have we to food when many are hungry... Through voluntary poverty we will have the means to help our brothers. We cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves. It is the only way we have of showing our love." (D.D.)
In the last two decades of her life, her traveling took her to Cuba, Mexico, England, Rome, and Sicily... In Russia she disrupted a meeting of writers by expressing her admiration for Solzhenitsyn. In India she visited her friend Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as well as Gandhian centers of cottage industry. Wherever she went she continued writing her journal, praying, and packing away a jar of instant coffee. As the '60's and '70's came, many questioned the continued importance of the Works of Mercy and rejected the personalist revolution of Peter Maurin, preferring instead media gestures of radicalism, protest, and the cultivation of the "appearance" of revolution. But Dorothy continued to insist on the Works of Mercy: as both a sign of contradiction and a means of our mutual liberation in solidarity...
"... the most effective action we can take is to try to conform our lives to the folly of the Cross... the Works of Mercy are a wonderful stimulus to our growth in faith as well as love. Our faith is taxed to the utmost and so grows... It is pruned again and again, and springs up bearing much fruit... God help us, we give... so little: soup and bread... We will never stop having 'lines' at Catholic Worker houses. As long as men keep coming to the door, we will keep preparing each day the food they need..." (D.D.)
One of the sayings Dorothy was very fond of quoting was this line from Dostoevsky: "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." Dorothy's ability to love in reality was one of her greatest gifts. A former editor of The Catholic Worker has related this story: "One day a woman came in and donated a diamond ring to the Worker. We all wondered what Dorothy would do with it. She could have one of us take it down to a diamond exchange and sell it. It would certainly fetch a month's worth of beans. That afternoon, Dorothy gave the diamond ring to an old woman who lived alone and often came to us for meals. 'That ring would have paid her rent for the better part of a year', someone protested. Dorothy replied that the woman had her dignity; she could sell it if she liked and spend the money for rent, a trip to the Bahamas, or keep the ring to admire. 'Do you suppose God created diamonds only for the rich?'"
"Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up... an act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all... God sees Christ, His Son, in us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it... as Father Hugo likes to say, 'You love God as much as the one you love the least'... The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others we increase our knowledge of and belief in love... Love shows itself in gentleness, in tenderness, and manifests itself physically in serving and accepting service from another... We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love..." (D.D.)
Dorothy Day's faith was both deeply traditional and revolutionary -- at the very same time... She was a challenge to the "lukewarm" faith of a clergy and laity that easily glossed over the grit of the Gospel of Yeshua for a religion, a culture, an economics, and a politics of Domination: showing itself in conservatism, capitalism, and consumerism... Dorothy witnessed to the radical truth of a Living Spirit capable still of stunning Beauty, Kindness, Compassion, and Love: in us and through us...
"Since there is no time with God, we are all one, all one body... and He has commanded us to love one another...'A new commandment I give, that you love others as I have loved you', not to the defending of your life, but to the laying down of your life. A hard saying. Love is indeed a 'harsh and dreadful thing' to ask of us, of each one of us, but it is the only answer." (D.D.)
"I was just as much against capitalism and imperialism as ever... I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal..." (D.D.)
It wasn't long after Dorothy's conversion that respectable parishioners could hear the sounds of some "strange birds" flying in and out of the steeples... the Catholic Radicals (and others) were gathering... Peter Maurin was the worker / intellectual founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Directed by a mutual friend, Maurin went to Dorothy Day and immediately compared her to St. Catherine of Siena...
"Before he knew me well he went about comparing me to a Catherine of Siena who would move mountains and have influence on governments... He was a man of enthusiasm and always saw great talents in people..." (D.D.)
Peter had come to Dorothy announcing what he called a "Green Revolution". He began instructing her in the history of the Church, the lives of the saints, the Mystery of Christ, and described the importance of Christ's "voluntary society" -- it had to be that church and society changed, not by being destroyed, but by "building a new society within the shell of the old"...
"He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God... seeing Christ in others, loving the Christ you saw in others." (D.D.)
Peter's program included Round-Table Discussions, Houses of Hospitality, and Agronomic Universities (farming communities). This was what he meant when he spoke of the "Green Revolution". He said that the first step was to make known the good news, to make known the social teachings of the Church: that is, to publish a newspaper...
"We started publishing The Catholic Worker in May, 1933, with a first issue of 2,500 copies... By the end of the year we had a circulation of 100,000 and by 1936 it was 150,000... Zealous young people took the paper out into the streets and sold it... at one cent a copy... they gave free copies and left them in streetcar, bus, barber shop, and dentist's and doctor's office." (D.D.)
From the beginning The Catholic Worker was not just a radical newspaper. It was a place, a place where the unwanted could come -- somebody cared. It was the first House of Hospitality. And poor people came by the droves. Soon the editors became workers: making soup, serving meals, finding places for homeless people to sleep. Catholic Workers found that the hardest part wasn't loving ungrateful derelicts but rather the insensitive bishop and pastor concerned more with the legacies of new buildings and parking lots...
It's not right nor fair that we should bear so large a burden; that we should face long lines of hungry, sick, and aged people... It could well be distributed through the parishes... the parish societies; and if the old societies are too stodgy to take care of these new needs in a changing world, then new societies should be formed." (D.D.)
The Catholic Worker began with an activist love: serving, marching, and picketing; and then went deeper into the mysticism of contemplation through a love of prayer and meditation. This spirituality of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker can be summed up by the phrase "being-in-Christ". It includes the Works of Mercy (such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless); the Works of Justice and Peace (such as advocacy and civil disobedience); and the "Works of Lunacy" (going back to the land and playful fiestas)...
"We are trying to work out a theory of love... so that the revolution of love instead of hate may come about... too few there are who will consider themselves servants, who will give up their lives to serve others." (D.D.)
Dorothy was intoxicated with the illuminating wonder of Yeshua's New Commandment: "A new commandment I give to you: love one another as I have loved you." Her understanding of this "Manifesto of Liberation" required of her a radical reverence of life: her response to this New Commandment was not only to resist, challenge, and obstruct the institutional forces which led to poverty and war, but also to engage in the discipline of contemplative prayer and daily scriptural meditation...
"I try to practice the presence of God after the manner of Blessed Lawrence, and pray without ceasing... I am trying to learn to recall my soul like the straying creature it is as it wanders off over and over again during the day, and lift my heart to the Blessed Mother and His saints, since my occupations are the lowly and humble ones, as were theirs." (D.D.)
All people of faith are called to become "wholly holy", so Dorothy believed. A "saint" in her mind referred to those persons who have effectively reminded us of the Holy One, and who in their lives, enlarged the boundaries of human love and invited us to follow...
"... we are called to be saints. More than ever I am convinced that the solution lies only in the Gospel and in such a leader as St. Francis... Too little has been stressed the idea that all are called... Where are our saints to call the masses to God? Personalist's first, we must put the question to ourselves. Communitarians, we will find Christ in our brothers and sisters." (D.D.)
Certainly, with talk of revolution mixed in with contemplative prayer, Dorothy did not fit the popular mold of "saint". Over the years the F.B.I. amassed a file on the Catholic Worker which reached 500 pages. J. Edgar Hoover considered the movement dangerous enough to merit prosecution on the charge of sedition, and he recommended such action to the Attorney General on three separate occasions. His advice went unheeded, and Dorothy persisted in her "suspect" activities...
"Some F.B.I. man by the name of Daly came down to query me about one of our friends who is a conscientious objector. He asked me the usual questions as to how long I had known him, how he stated his position as C.O. or pacifist, whether or not he believed in defending himself. Evidently, one of my answers offended him, because he pulled back his jacket and displayed the holster of a gun under his armpit, which he patted bravely as he said, "I believe in defending myself." I could not but think, 'How brave a man, defending himself against us unarmed women and children hereabouts'." (D.D.)
The Works of Mercy and the Works of Justice and Peace are the direct opposite of the Works of War. From its very beginning, the Catholic Worker Movement has opposed and resisted the madness of war, the arms race and arms profiteering, and the economic system that makes war inevitable. Beginning with the Spanish Civil War and continuing through the Vietnam War, Dorothy wrote and worked for Justice and Peace...
"We are trying to spread the gospel of peace, to persuade others to extend the peace movement, to build up a mighty army of conscientious objectors. And in doing this we are accounted fools... Our Lord Himself has already pronounced judgment on the atomic bomb. When James and John wished to call down fire from heaven on their enemies, Jesus said: 'You know not of what Spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save'..." (D.D.)
The spirituality of Dorothy Day was based on the effort to encounter Yeshua in her daily life. He was present, she believed in everyday situations, in the "sacrament of the present moment". Yeshua is also present in all the people around us, especially in the aspect of their needs, in the needs of the poorest and weakest. But to find Yeshua among the poor, then we too must practice an honest simplicity of life. And so "voluntary poverty" was a vital element of her faith practice...
"God seems to intend us to depend solely on Him... What security did the Blessed Virgin herself have as she fled in the night with the Baby in her arms to go into a strange country? She probably wondered whether St. Joseph would be able to obtain work in a foreign land, how they would get along, and anticipated the loneliness of being without her friends, her cousin St. Elizabeth, her other kinfolk... What right has any one of us to security when God's poor are suffering? What right have I to sleep in a comfortable bed when so many are sleeping in the shadows of buildings... What right have we to food when many are hungry... Through voluntary poverty we will have the means to help our brothers. We cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves. It is the only way we have of showing our love." (D.D.)
In the last two decades of her life, her traveling took her to Cuba, Mexico, England, Rome, and Sicily... In Russia she disrupted a meeting of writers by expressing her admiration for Solzhenitsyn. In India she visited her friend Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as well as Gandhian centers of cottage industry. Wherever she went she continued writing her journal, praying, and packing away a jar of instant coffee. As the '60's and '70's came, many questioned the continued importance of the Works of Mercy and rejected the personalist revolution of Peter Maurin, preferring instead media gestures of radicalism, protest, and the cultivation of the "appearance" of revolution. But Dorothy continued to insist on the Works of Mercy: as both a sign of contradiction and a means of our mutual liberation in solidarity...
"... the most effective action we can take is to try to conform our lives to the folly of the Cross... the Works of Mercy are a wonderful stimulus to our growth in faith as well as love. Our faith is taxed to the utmost and so grows... It is pruned again and again, and springs up bearing much fruit... God help us, we give... so little: soup and bread... We will never stop having 'lines' at Catholic Worker houses. As long as men keep coming to the door, we will keep preparing each day the food they need..." (D.D.)
One of the sayings Dorothy was very fond of quoting was this line from Dostoevsky: "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." Dorothy's ability to love in reality was one of her greatest gifts. A former editor of The Catholic Worker has related this story: "One day a woman came in and donated a diamond ring to the Worker. We all wondered what Dorothy would do with it. She could have one of us take it down to a diamond exchange and sell it. It would certainly fetch a month's worth of beans. That afternoon, Dorothy gave the diamond ring to an old woman who lived alone and often came to us for meals. 'That ring would have paid her rent for the better part of a year', someone protested. Dorothy replied that the woman had her dignity; she could sell it if she liked and spend the money for rent, a trip to the Bahamas, or keep the ring to admire. 'Do you suppose God created diamonds only for the rich?'"
"Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up... an act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all... God sees Christ, His Son, in us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it... as Father Hugo likes to say, 'You love God as much as the one you love the least'... The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others we increase our knowledge of and belief in love... Love shows itself in gentleness, in tenderness, and manifests itself physically in serving and accepting service from another... We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love..." (D.D.)
Dorothy Day's faith was both deeply traditional and revolutionary -- at the very same time... She was a challenge to the "lukewarm" faith of a clergy and laity that easily glossed over the grit of the Gospel of Yeshua for a religion, a culture, an economics, and a politics of Domination: showing itself in conservatism, capitalism, and consumerism... Dorothy witnessed to the radical truth of a Living Spirit capable still of stunning Beauty, Kindness, Compassion, and Love: in us and through us...
"Since there is no time with God, we are all one, all one body... and He has commanded us to love one another...'A new commandment I give, that you love others as I have loved you', not to the defending of your life, but to the laying down of your life. A hard saying. Love is indeed a 'harsh and dreadful thing' to ask of us, of each one of us, but it is the only answer." (D.D.)