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Dear Friends, All of us at the Guild were saddened to learn of the death of Monica Ribar Cornell , founding member of and advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild, on Friday, August 8th.
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope this missive finds you well! The heat has finally broken in South Bend, and all of us at the Worker are grateful for the relief as we’ve passed the mid-point of the summer season. For many of us in the Midwest and the Northeast, this time of year is marked by transitions and heightened activity as we begin to bring in stone fruit and tomatoes from our gardens or look towards the start of a new school year. With that in mind, we have a lot of great things to share with you this month, including new resources, song lyrics, events, and two peace and justice action items! Dorothy on the Small Screen: Friday, August 1st marked the third anniversary of the death of Tom Cornell , former editor of the The Catholic Worker, founding member of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and close personal friend of Dorothy. Tom met his wife Monica (pictured here at their wedding, where Dorothy was among the guests!) at the Worker in New York in the 1950s; the Cornells passed on their vocation of hospitality and Gospel nonviolence to their children, Tommy and Deirdre, and to the hundreds of others they welcomed into their homes and lives over the course of nearly sixty years of marriage.
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings on what for many of us in North America is already shaping up to be another hot, sticky summer day! We hope that those of you in hot climates are staying cool and are finding creative ways to support those in your towns and cities who are unsheltered from the elements. Emma, a member of our Catholic Worker community in South Bend, washes out empty milk jugs, fills them halfway with clean water, and freezes them overnight. In the morning, she fills them the rest of the way and hands them out to guests at our drop-in center to help them stay cool and hydrated throughout the afternoon. If you regularly walk or drive past homeless community members on your commute, we encourage you to pack an extra sealed bottle of water to give away on days like this. Here in the United States, we just celebrated the Fourth of July, a holiday which admittedly doesn’t mean very much to many of those who admire Dorothy and seek to follow Christ as she did. Dorothy practiced a very different kind of revolution than the kind which is celebrated by military parades and fireworks displays. In 1940, she wrote , “we consider the spiritual and corporal Works of Mercy and the following of Christ to be the best revolutionary technique and a means of changing the social order rather than perpetuating it. Did not the thousands of monasteries, with their hospitality change the entire social pattern of their day?” To all those who undertake the responsibility of sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, and all works of mercy in the heat, thank you for these revolutionary acts! Summer events: Our Guild’s online and in-person summer programming is in full swing as of this week! As a reminder, we are running TWO book clubs this summer, one in English and one in Spanish. Our English-language club is reading The Long Loneliness and has already had two meetings, but it’s not too late to sign up!
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Happy Pentecost! On this feast, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in Jerusalem, we thank God for the ways in which that same Spirit is alive and well in the Church today. We see the Spirit’s presence in those who like Dorothy, and who like so many of you, have dedicated their lives to working for peace, living in solidarity with the poor, and to offering the works of mercy to those most in need.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, We’re only eight days in, but May has definitely been an exciting month already! Last week marked the 92nd anniversary of the founding of Dorothy and Peter’s founding of the Catholic Worker movement with the first issue of the newspaper, and right now, the College of Cardinals is in between ballots, working to elect the next shepherd for our Church. By the time you read this, we might have a new Pope! Upcoming events from the Guild and our friends: We sent you a special invitation last week, but we would like to remind you that registration for our Easter-season webinar is still open! Please join us on Tuesday, May 13th from 7:00-8:30 PM Eastern for a conversation on Dorothy and Pope Francis’ shared vision for our world. While we await the decision of the College of Cardinals we look back with gratitude on the many ways in which Pope Francis brought a great love for the earth and the poor, as well as commitments to voluntary poverty and peacemaking to the forefront of our Church's continuing encounter with the world– priorities which Dorothy also found to be at the heart of the Gospel.
Dear friends, All of us at the Dorothy Day Guild are deeply saddened by the news that Pope Francis died early this morning, on Easter Monday. The Holy Father used his final Urbi et orbi Easter message and blessing yesterday to proclaim the joy of the Resurrection and call for a ceasefire in Gaza . During this time of grief, we are also filled with gratitude for the courage and tenderness with which Francis shepherded our Church these past twelve years. We are particularly grateful for Pope Francis’ support of Dorothy’s cause for canonization. During his papacy, Pope Francis frequently upheld Dorothy’s method of living out the Gospel as worthy of our emulation. In his address to the US Congress ten years ago, the Holy Father named four men and women as steadfast exemplars of goodwill for the American people: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Merton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and Dorothy Day. What the Pope said then is as true today as it was a decade ago: “In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Holy Week is finally here! The long season of Lent is drawing to a close, and we are quickly approaching the sacred Paschal Triduum. We hope that these past weeks have been spiritually fruitful for each of you– it’s been great to be with so many of you over the past month, online and in person, and we have a lot we’re excited to share with you here. Guild news and other updates: March was a busy month for the Guild! In addition to hosting several walking pilgrimages through lower Manhattan, we also began the month with the first meetings of our online book club, where we read through Robert Ellsberg’s Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings over the course of five Sunday evenings. This was a wonderful experience, and we were so grateful to have Robert’s expertise guiding us through some of Dorothy’s classic and lesser-known writing, as well as the thoughtful questions and reflections offered by members of the reading group each Sunday. We hope to offer another reading group this summer, so stay tuned for more info! We also hosted our first-ever Dorothy Day Symposium on March 28th and 29th. “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee,” a hybrid in-person and virtual event, welcomed participants to Maryhouse and Manhattan University and featured roundtables by Catholic Workers and other peacemakers, students, and academics from five different states!
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Happy Feast of St. Patrick! This feast is always a special day for us at the Guild– Dorothy’s mentor Peter Maurin was deeply inspired by the work of early Irish monastics and missionaries like St. Patrick, finding in their witness to the Gospel a model for the contemporary Catholic Worker movement. In one of his Easy Essays, “Reconstructing the Social Order,” Peter wrote, “The Holy Father and the Bishops ask us to reconstruct the social order. The social order was once constructed through dynamic Catholic Action. When the barbarians invaded the decaying Roman Empire Irish missionaries went all over Europe and laid the foundations of medieval Europe. Through the establishment of cultural centers, that is to say, Round-Table Discussions, they brought thought to the people. Through free guest houses, that is to say, Houses of Hospitality, they popularized the divine virtue of charity. Through farming colonies, that is to say, Agronomic Universities, they emphasized voluntary poverty. It was on the basis of personal charity and voluntary poverty that Irish missionaries laid the foundations of the social order.” Certainly today, just as in Peter’s time and in the time of St. Patrick, the social order we know is once again in need of reconstruction. As we work together in this season, we pray for a renewal of voluntary poverty and personal charity in the service of the common good. We know that many of you are celebrating today– we wish you good fellowship, good tunes, and good craic on this bright morning in the midst of Lent! Guild news and updates: At the beginning of this month, we were thrilled to welcome Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe to New York to celebrate a Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on Shrove Tuesday. All of us at the Dorothy Day Guild were thrilled to be able to co-sponsor this event along with several other Catholic peace organizations.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope that this missive finds you well on the feast of St. Scholastica, twin sister to St. Benedict and the founder of the first Benedictine monastic community for women. Taught by Peter Maurin, who loved the communitarian spirit of the Benedictine monks and nuns, and the esteem in which they held hospitality and manual labor, Dorothy took an early interest in the Benedictine tradition.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings to each of you on a chilly winter morning! As I write this, the sun is peeking over the trees and illuminating the bird tracks on the snowy rooftop outside my window. These crisp days are exciting, especially for those of us who are just beginning the semester at school or university, and we hope each of you is finding fulfillment in good work undertaken in the new year. Our Catholic Worker community here in South Bend was recently blessed with a visit from our dear friend Carmen Trotta, an advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild and long-time member of the New York Catholic Worker community.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, As Advent draws to a close and we anticipate the Nativity of the Lord, we hope that these are days of joyful waiting for each of you! All of us at the Guild welcome the chance to be in touch with you and to share a few updates, photos, and reflections before the great celebrations of Christmas. Dorothy loved this time of year
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings to each of you on Dorothy’s 127th birthday! On this day in 1897, Grace Satterlee Day and John Day welcomed their first daughter into the world in Brooklyn, New York. We know that for many of you in the United States the election season has been a time of anxiety and tension, and we hope that remembering Dorothy’s witness to nonviolence and voluntary poverty on the anniversary of her birth reminds you that the Gospel is always ready to be born into our world through our commitments to peace and to the works of mercy. Here in South Bend this past weekend, our friend Flora Tang invited members of our Catholic Worker community to her home for an All Saints and All Souls prayer service. Flora asked us to bring photographs and mementos of holy men and women, members of our families and our friends, to place on an altar as we gathered to remember our beloved dead who have gone before us in faith. The month of November is dedicated to remembering all the faithful departed, who are members of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and encourages us with their prayers and with their love. Dorothy is among that cloud of witnesses, and she is especially close to us when we live as she did, embracing poverty in solidarity with the poorest members of our communities, working for peace and refusing to participate in war, and inviting the unhoused and hungry into our homes and into our lives.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Hello! We hope as always that this missive finds each of you well. Here at the Catholic Worker in South Bend, the leaves have started changing in earnest, and as we look ahead to what I always think of as the ‘Autumn Triduum’ of All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls, I am reminded of how intimately we are connected to our beloved dead and all those who have gone before us in faith. Dorothy is my favorite exemplar of what the belief in the communion of saints looks like in practice: as a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, Dorothy understood herself to be part of a community which reached back through the generations and extended into the future. She prayed with the saints, asked artists like Ade Bethune to create images of them for the newspaper, and even met with a few in person, receiving communion from St. Pope Paul VI in Rome and receiving a visit from her friend St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata in her home at Maryhouse.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Hello, and warm greetings from all of us here at the Guild! We hope that the change of seasons has brought all of your summer projects to a satisfying conclusion, and for those who are now back to school as either students or teachers that the fall semester is off to a great start. I look forward to writing this letter every month, but particularly at the start of the school year when everything feels crisp and renewed. We have so many exciting updates and new resources to share with you this month! First, in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which began last week in the United States, we are very proud to announce that the main pages of our website are now available in Spanish . You can use the language buttons on our home page to toggle back and forth between English and Spanish. Many thanks to Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic for her work on this translation. Originally from Chile, Magdalena is a recent graduate of the Master of Theological Studies program at the University of Notre Dame and now lives and works as a member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend, Indiana. Magdalena’s linguistic skills, theological knowledge, and lived commitment to Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality have been invaluable to us in increasing the accessibility of our online resources. As we work to promote Dorothy’s cause for canonization in our global Church, we hope to continue making our Guild’s educational and devotional materials available bilingually, and eventually in other languages as well. Please keep us in your prayers as we continue this work, and for those who live, work, and worship in Spanish-speaking communities, please consider sharing Dorothy’s story with someone new this month!
Updates from the National Eucharistic Congress, reading recs, and some amazing documentary footage.
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope this month’s missive finds you well! Here at the Guild, we are enjoying some beautiful summer weather and making prayerful and practical preparations for the National Eucharistic Congress next week. It’s hard to believe how the summer is flying by, so I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to pause and reflect on the events and fellowship of the past month before we dive into another busy time of fellowship, liturgy, and celebration.
Dear friends, Warm June greetings from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild! As we settle into the liturgical season of Ordinary time, the time of the Church, we hope that this missive finds you enjoying a sense of vitality and growth in community. For Dorothy, the rhythms of Ordinary time reflected the goodness of everyday life and the quiet presence of God in the shared meals, celebrations, and work of life together in her family and at the Catholic Worker. A disciple of Peter Maurin and of “the Little Way,” Dorothy knew that the path to holiness is found through a lifetime of these small moments and practices undertaken with love.
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Happy May Day! Today marks the 91st anniversary of the publication of the first issue of The Catholic Worker on May 1st, 1933. Dorothy, her brother John, her daughter Tamar, and a few others distributed the first run of 2,500 papers in Union Square for a penny a copy and by the end of the year, circulation had grown to 100,000. From this little paper sprouted the houses of hospitality, soup kitchens, co-ops, and farms which have offered the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and sheltered and sustained so many of us for the past nine decades. As Dorothy wrote years later in The Long Loneliness,
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings, and happy feast of St. Joseph! We hope that this Lenten season has been a fruitful time of growing closer to Christ for each of you– in prayer as well as through action on behalf of and in solidarity with those around the world who are suffering the effects of war, displacement, and poverty. Dorothy loved the peace and solitude of this time of year; in 1965, she hoped to spend the last ten days of Lent in holy silence , although we have doubts that her bustling community ultimately left her undisturbed that long! While maintaining holy silence in the midst of our busy lives may feel like a stretch for most of us, please know that we at the Guild are praying for you and your intentions as we approach Palm Sunday and the sacred events of the Paschal Triduum.
Dear friends, Greetings, and happy Feast of the Presentation! Today’s Gospel reading brings the Holy Family into the embrace of Anna and Simeon, faithful prophets who trusted that God would send them a redeemer, and who recognize the child Jesus in His mother’s arms as their long-awaited Savior. As we continue to await news of a miracle which will further Dorothy’s canonization cause, may we remain as prayerful and vigilant as Anna and Simeon, and as ready to welcome Christ in our neighbors, especially the poor.
Dear friends, Merry Christmas from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild! We hope that all of you were able to enjoy some rest and refreshment as Advent concluded and we began the celebration of the Christmas season. Every year, Kelly Latimore’s beautiful image of Dorothy welcoming the Holy Family to Maryhouse captures for us the spirit of hospitality, vulnerability, and peace that characterizes this time of year. Many thanks to the artists and musicians who have brought such beauty and variety to our homes and our liturgies over the past few weeks!
Dear friends, Hello, and Advent greetings from the Dorothy Day Guild! You might know that we received a really important canonization update last month: the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome appointed Monsignor Maurizio Tagliaferri as the relator for Dorothy’s cause! Our Guild steering committee, George Horton, Deirdre Cornell, and Dr. Kevin Ahern, met with our postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman, at the beginning of November, when he shared this news. This was a great gift for Dorothy’s birthday on November 8th and her anniversary of death on November 29th! All of us here at the Guild are thrilled with this development, and we wanted to take this opportunity to explain what happens at this stage of the canonization process and outline the next steps towards sainthood for our members.
Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,
“The main thing is not to hold on to anything.” -Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, May 1952
