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The Dorothy Day Guild
4513 Manhattan College Parkway
Bronx, NY 10471
Greetings from Maryhouse! I’m writing to you today from a cozy library in the home where Dorothy spent the last few years of her life. Dorothy’s presence feels alive in this house, and in the New York Catholic Worker community. It has been a gift to chat on the wide, generous staircases, help serve lunch in the dining room that Dorothy envisioned as a place of respite and welcome to the unhoused women of the neighborhood, pray in the chapel where she was waked, and to fall asleep to the sounds of Third Street blowing in through the lace curtains. As we have been preparing for some in-person Guild events to close out Dorothy’s 125th year, I am so grateful to our friends at Maryhouse for their hospitality.
Saturday afternoon marked our first-ever walking pilgrimage, beginning at Union Square and winding southwards to the various places where Dorothy played, prayed, protested, and offered the spiritual and corporal works of mercy for six decades of the last century. Stepping into her footsteps, visiting the places she loved, and remembering the people she cared for brought Dorothy’s New York to life. And, as every good pilgrimage ends with a feast, we concluded our time together by breaking bread with the Maryhouse community for mass and supper! If you weren’t able to join us this time, we hope you’ll be able to visit these holy sites yourself the next time you’re in Manhattan.
Speaking of pilgrimage, a recent reflection in Our Sunday Visitor by Adele Chapline Smith, whose mother helped start a Catholic Worker community in Rochester, New York, discussed Dorothy’s Eucharistic devotion and experiences of contemplation in the busy neighborhoods of the Bowery and the East Village. Dorothy’s quiet practice of remaining “in a spirit of thanksgiving” after receiving the Eucharist made a strong impression on Adele’s mother, who remembered their conversation for decades afterwards. We’ve heard from many people who knew or had even briefly met Dorothy that those encounters stayed with them for the rest of their lives. Many of you have these personal recollections of Dorothy either from your own experiences or passed down from friends or family members who knew her. We love hearing these Dorothy-anecdotes and reflections on how these encounters shifted the trajectories of individual lives in great and small ways, so if you have stories you’d like to share, please reach out to us!
We have two more in-person events to help us celebrate the conclusion of Dorothy’s 125th year, both up at the Guild’s new home at Manhattan College. This Thursday is the reception and artist talk for Kristi Pfister’s Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day. Words really can’t do justice to this stunning installation, which brings the beach together with the soup line and the newspaper office. Kristi’s installation, currently on the main floor of Manhattan College’s O’Malley Library, is flooded with light. As she writes in her artist’s statement,
“Suspended columns as a concept grew out of my interest in their cylindrical form, but without the weight. Weightlessness creates a sense of transcendence and fast forwards these light filled columns into contemporary times– they are flexible, translucent and permeable. The columns encircle an idea rather than being made of physical matter. They are a reinvention of both inherent and inherited associations relating to capitalism, power, and democracy… The columns move as you walk past them– a metaphor for the active mission of the Catholic Worker movement.”
While Dorothy’s vocation brought her in touch with some of the most painful aspects of the human condition, those of you who knew her in life remember her as a woman who loved deeply and sought out beauty in art, music, and the natural world.
Join us for Kristi’s talk and reception on Thursday, October 26th from 5-7 pm and experience a taste of this beautiful vision for yourself!
Looking ahead to the Feast of All Souls, we’re excited to welcome Lincoln Rice back to New York for the annual Dorothy Day Lecture, also up at Manhattan College. Lincoln’s critical edition of Maurin’s Easy Essays is a gift to scholars, activists, and anyone who wants to learn more about the intellectual heritage of the Catholic Worker movement. As we move towards the close of the harvest season, we look forward to learning more about what Peter can teach us about the land and community, what we owe to each other, and what we receive from the places where we make our homes. Lincoln’s talk takes place on Thursday, November 2nd at 6:30 pm in the O’Malley Library at Manhattan College. We hope to see you there!
As part of the process of settling into our new space in the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan College, Dr. Kevin Ahern and our undergraduate interns have been curating a library collection of the best, most recent scholarship on Dorothy. Earlier this month, Guild member Marty Tomszak reached out to us with news of his recent book, Political Theology Based in Community: Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker Movement, and Overcoming Otherness. Marty also sent us a podcast he recorded with Telos Press on the spirituality of Dorothy and the Catholic Worker as a living-out of a theology of divine weakness.
Dorothy’s understanding of Jesus as a laborer, as a working man reflects the Christology of “Divine weakness” that contemporary philosophers like John Caputo draw from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In a time when our culture is quick to assume our own right to wield the power of God against our enemies, this view of Christ as poor and vulnerable can meaningfully shift how we see the Divine. However, Marty notes, “what Caputo is hinting at already exists functionally in active radical lay communities. Dorothy Day’s declaration that the Divine is present in the ugliness of the world, in the vomit-covered and urine-stained drunk knocking at the St. Joseph House door…—this is the pinnacle of what Caputo defines as “Divine weakness.” The mode of Gospel living that Dorothy developed in her years at the Worker and in all of her work for peace puts flesh onto these heady theological concepts!
It’s an incredible blessing that so many scholars, workers, and artists have shared their talents with the Guild, and we are so pleased to recommend their work. If you are also working on an academic, creative, or activist project related to Dorothy, please let us know. We would love to share your efforts with our readers and members.
The Feast of All Saints is quickly approaching, and in that little Triduum of Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls, the liturgical calendar reminds us how intimately we are all bound together, the living as well as the dead. It can be difficult to remember our connections to one another, particularly as war rages piecemeal in so many places around the world. Dorothy spent her life reflecting on and living out that connection, both before and after her conversion. As a Catholic, she spoke of that unity in terms of the Mystical Body of Christ and of the communion of saints. We would like to leave you with her words from January of 1944, a time much like the present:
Charles Peguy wrote: “I am afraid to go to Heaven alone. God will say to me, ‘Where are the others?’”
In one sense we live and die alone in an awful solitude. But, joyful thought, we are all members one of another, members of the same body and our Head is Jesus Christ…
Here, too, is the idea of the communion of saints. “When the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered.” And contrariwise, if one is uplifted, he lifts others with him. We share in the honor and glory and beauty and love of others. We can draw upon their merits. We are inspired by their example. We are followers of Christ, our Head.
We are looking forward to sharing further updates from the Guild with you next month, including a new website, so stay tuned for an upcoming email from us. In these last days of October, leading up to the month of All Souls, please join us in praying for the repose of the many recent victims of war and violent conflict and as always, for peace.
Yours,
Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild
A Woman of Conscience, a Saint for Our Time
The Dorothy Day Guild supports and advances the cause for canonization of Dorothy Day, initiated by the Archdiocese of New York as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, and promotes, for the benefit of all people interested in social justice, awareness of Dorothy Day, her writings, the Catholic Worker Movement she co-founded, and her life and witness to the Gospel.
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