Import from Neon - Honoraria - Current Live Email - Advisory Board - Mailchimp Archive Feed

Happy 100th Birthday, Tamar Day Hennessy!

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:20:24 GMT

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Lenten greetings to each of you! Even just one week in, it’s been a great gift to journey with Dorothy, who reminds us that the practices of Lent, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are powerful tools in the struggle for justice and peace. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper , Dorothy wrote about the seamless garment of love that was the animating force of Christian faith. “We want to show our love for our brother, so that we can show our love for God,” she said in 1943,

“and the best way we can do it is to try to give him what we’ve got, in the way of food, clothing and shelter; to give him what talents we possess by writing, drawing pictures, reminding each other of the love of God and the love of man. There is too little love in this world, too little tenderness.”

In those years, much like our own time, the entire planet was consumed with the horrific violence of the Second World War, especially in Europe and the Pacific theater. Traveling with her friend Sister Peter Claver, Dorothy also witnessed the violence of racial terrorism and extreme poverty at home. Dorothy reminded her readers that,

“We cannot talk of the love of God, the love of our neighbor without recognizing the dire need for penance. In a world in which such cruelty exists, in which men are so possessed, such a spirit cannot be cast out but by prayer and fasting. Our Lord Himself said so.”

As we begin this holy season of preparation for the Paschal Triduum, please know that all of us at the Guild are praying in a special way for you and your intentions through Dorothy’s intercession. We hope that over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to join us for one of our spring events, or that you’ll enjoy learning more about Dorothy’s ongoing legacy of Gospel nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty through the new resources we’ll share below. We’re excited to be on this journey with you!

Upcoming Spring Events from the Guild

First, we are really excited to present a new webinar to celebrate International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8th at 8:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Central . Please join us for our program, “In the Footsteps of Dorothy Day: Catholic Women and Social Justice,” which will feature internationally-acclaimed activist Sister Helen Prejean, Clare Grady, Michelle Sherman, and Brenna Cussen-Anglada.

Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up for this incredible opportunity to learn from Catholic women whose social justice advocacy has been inspired and informed by Dorothy’s witness to the Gospel. Register here to receive the Zoom link and presenter bios, and we’ll see you Sunday night!

We had a great first two meetings of our Lenten book club yesterday evening and last Tuesday, with a historical presentation from Dr. Anne Klejment and a lively discussion of Dorothy’s Loaves and Fishes. These book club meetings are always fascinating, because our members bring in so many unique perspectives and resources– at our first meeting, one club member shared this 1952 New Yorker profile of Dorothy and the Catholic Worker, “The Foolish Things of the World” (Read Part 2 here ).

We still have room for additional participants! If you’d like to take part in the remaining meetings of our online reading group, you are warmly invited to register here . We’ll meet each Tuesday night (March 10th, 17th, 24th, and 31st) from 8:00-9:15 PM Eastern through the end of the month, so if you are still looking for something special to engage your heart and mind in this season, check out our weekly reading schedule and come join us!

The Dorothy Day Guild also hosts an in-person walking pilgrimage through lower Manhattan, with seven upcoming opportunities for you to visit and pray at important sites from Dorothy’s life both prior to her conversion and after the founding of the Catholic Worker in 1933. If you’re in the greater New York area, these walking pilgrimages are a wonderful way to deepen your connection with Dorothy, literally walking in her footsteps to see the sites where she prayed, picketed, and performed the works of mercy for more than fifty years. This month, we are offering pilgrimages on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, March 15th, 21st, and 22nd with additional dates in April and May. Bring a friend, or download our printable guide to make a self-guided pilgrimage any day of the week. We hope to see you in Union Square!

Finally, looking further ahead, we are hosting our annual Easter-season webinar on Sunday, May 17th at 1:30 PM Eastern . This year, our event features four of Dorothy’s recent biographers, Kate Hennessy, author of Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother, D.L. Mayfield, author of Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day's Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times, and Blythe Randolph and John Loughery, co-authors of Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century. Register here to join us for what promises to be an engaging and enlightening conversation (and maybe win a free autographed book!).

For more information on any of the Guild’s upcoming free programs, please visit the events page on our website.

Events from Our Friends

We’re also very pleased to share some upcoming events featuring Dorothy being sponsored and organized by friends of the Guild and other Catholic organizations. First, Jesuit Media Lab’s Lenten “Fridays with Dorothy Day” group was so popular that they decided to add a Lenten Thursdays group as well! Hosted by Renée Roden, this group will meet on Thursdays, March 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th at 12:00 PM Eastern/9:00 AM Pacific. All of the readings will be provided by PDF, and the weekly discussions will take place over Zoom. Register here to participate or email medialab@jesuits.org to join the waiting list for the Friday cohort if additional spots become available.

In New York, you still have time to register for the third annual Catholic Women Speak conference, hosted by Fordham University’s Campus Ministry, which will take place on Saturday, March 21st, from 12:00-5:15 PM, with Eucharist to follow at 5:30 .

This year’s theme is "Cultivating the Fruits of Justice from the Seeds of Hope.” The one-day symposium will include lunch and a communion service, and will feature Martha Hennessy speaking on Dorothy as one of the two keynote addresses. Please register for this free event by March 15th.

In Rome, the local chapter of the Carmelite Ecclesial Movement (MEC), has already started hosting a series of Friday evening gatherings focused on the lives of saints and holy men and women. The “Portraits of Saints” series will feature Dorothy, presented by actress Carolina Zaccarini, on Friday, March 20th at 8:30 PM local time. The entire series will take place at the Basilica of Saint Teresa of Avila, Corso d'Italia 37, Rome.

For more information, please contact Teresa Gentiloni by email at teresagentiloni@gmail.com or roma@mec-carmel.org . The MEC is hosting talks on Dorothy in other locations throughout Italy as well! Please visit the MEC’s event page to find other locations in Lombardy, Veneto, Trento, and Sicily where the series, including Carolina’s presentation on Dorothy, will be traveling.

Looking further ahead to the Easter season, the Franco Family Institute at the University of Notre Dame is hosting the first Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good Symposium on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 2:30 PM Eastern .

The series is named for Dorothy and Thomas Merton as “two of the foremost socially engaged Catholic thinkers of the 20th century,” This year’s panel includes speakers Vauhini Vara, Shankar Vedantam, Jenny Odell, and Rainn Wilson, who will respond to the question, “How should we hold attention?” Register here for free tickets.

Dorothy in the News

We’re excited to share two new articles featuring Dorothy from L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. Both are in Italian, so we recommend using Google translate to read them in English or another language. First, on February 7th, Federica Re David published “Quelle che hanno fatto la differenza” (“Those who made a difference”), highlighting seven Catholic laywomen who devoted themselves to the needs of the world, sometimes literally stepping into the breach and defending the lives and dignity of the poor and the oppressed with their own bodies. This article places Dorothy in the company of Simone Weil, Madeleine Delbrêl, Blessed Armida Barelli, Chiara Lubich, Adelaide Coari, and Tina Anselmi, seeing the significance of human labor as a common thread in the lives and careers of each of these twentieth century Catholic radicals and activists.

On February 23rd, Lorenzo Fazzini published “Pepite di un fiume carsico: La prefazione a «La pratica della presenza di Dio» di fratel Lorenzo scritta da Dorothy Day nel 1974” ( “Nuggets from a karst river: The preface of ‘The Practice of the Presence of God,’ by Brother Lawrence, written by Dorothy Day in 1974”). The Practice of the Presence of God is a spiritual classic, recently republished in Italian with a foreword by Dorothy, which she wrote while living at Maryhouse in the last years of her life, helping to care for the homeless women of the Lower East Side.

Dorothy’s preface cites her many intellectual and spiritual influences, and notes the continuing relevance of the seventeenth-century Carmelite, Brother Lawrence, for contemporary Christians seeking to follow Christ in the course of their ordinary lives and labors. "The times of Friar Lawrence were no different from ours," she notes.

"Saint Teresa of Avila, who lived through the time of the Inquisition, wrote that all times are dangerous. And just as St. Paul asked us to become another Christ, so Lawrence was another Christ, who lived in the presence of the Father at all times."

You can read the whole article on page 10 of the February 23rd Issue of L’Osservatore Romano.

Reading and Viewing: New Documentary, A Long-Form Interview, and a Detective Novel!

French Catholic television channel KTO recently released a new hour-long documentary entitled Anarchistes chrétiens - Dieu comme seul maître (“Christian anarchists: God as sole master”). The film, which is directed by Guillaume Paqueville, traces the roots of Christian anarchism to figures like Dorothy, who refused to accommodate the proclamation of the Gospel to the capitalist, imperialist, and militaristic power structures of the present age. The film goes on to explore contemporary initiatives who claim this Catholic, anarchist heritage, including the Plowshares and Catholic Worker movements. The film is in French, but many of the documentary interviews are conducted in English and subtitled, so we highly recommend checking it out. Those of you who have spent time with the New York Catholic Worker community are guaranteed to recognize many familiar faces!

We’re also excited to share a long-form, archival interview about Dorothy over at CatholicWorker.org . In “A Conversation with Nina Polcyn Moore, 1986,” oral historian Rosalie Riegle explores the connection between Dorothy’s radicalism and the network of Catholic Worker communities serving the poor today. In this interview, Nina and Rosalie consider tensions in the movement related to family life, lay and female leadership, and the future of the Catholic Worker in the years following Dorothy’s death. Speaking here on responsibility and action, Nina reflected,

“There is no policy manual for any of this, you know. You come and you see what needs to be done, and you do it. There is no computer printout, no charts, no recipes. You just do what needs to be done. That, to me, is the joy and the richness of somebody like Dorothy and all the people who have done all these things.

It is the age of the laity, and I feel this has always been primarily emphasized in the Worker. A personal responsibility which gives people an opportunity to be, which they frequently get no place else. And I think Dorothy has always said we really don’t need to ask about any of these things. We just do it.”

Many thanks to Rosalie for this excellent and thought-provoking interview, and for our friends at the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker Archives at Marquette University and CatholicWorker.org for making this transcript available!

Finally, we recently heard of a new work of fiction featuring Dorothy. Upstate New York author Robert Conner released his new mystery thriller, The Detective and Dorothy Day at the end of February. The jacket summary states that the novel, which is set in New York in the 1970s,

“follows Manhattan private investigator Sy Johnson, hired by a labor union to investigate the murder of upstate chemical tycoon Jack Williams… What begins as a straightforward murder inquiry soon reveals connections between five deaths and a system poisoned by greed and moral compromise.

Sy’s investigation brings him to the Catholic Worker farm in Tivoli, New York, where he encounters seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Day, the famed writer, pacifist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. There and elsewhere he forms relationships which complicate the case and his own life, drawing him into deeper questions than just solving a crime.”

Robert lived at the Tivoli farm in 1974 and 1975, where he had the chance to meet and work alongside Dorothy.

While none of us from the Guild have had the chance to read the novel yet, we are always delighted to learn about these creative projects in art, music, and literature which engage Dorothy’s moral and spiritual witness in innovative and imaginative modes. If you get ahold of your own copy of The Detective and Dorothy Day, let us know what you think!

Other Canonization Causes of Note

Sister Thea Bowman’s cause for canonization is officially on its way to Rome! We were thrilled to hear how well-attended the closing mass for the diocesan phase of her cause was last month in Jackson, Mississippi.

We know that many of you who love and are inspired by Dorothy’s life and legacy also have strong devotions to Sister Thea; we are very proud to share the news that two of our cause’s biggest supporters, Brother Mickey McGrath and Dr. Anne Klejment, also contributed art and scholarly work to Sister Thea’s cause. Brother Mickey, who has created 47 separate pieces of art inspired by Sister Thea, also created this sketch of the liturgy which marked the closing of the first phase of her cause for sainthood last month.

In December of 2023, Anne Klejment was invited to join the historical commission for Sister Thea’s cause. Anne’s research and teaching as a professor emerita of history at the University of St. Thomas has focused on the social history of American Catholicism; in this context, she has published extensively on Dorothy’s life, journalistic career, and spirituality. Her own study of the U.S. Catholic Church, particularly the experience of Black Catholics amply prepared her for the archival research involved in preparing the documentation for Sister Thea’s cause. In a recent article for The Catholic Spirit , Anne said,

“As a historian, context is essential for understanding the past. Bishops in the Dicastery of the Causes of the Saints will read the positio, or position paper, prepared by the postulator, who reads all the documents and our reports. Sister Thea’s virtue will be more intelligible with historical context on race relations during her lifetime and spiritual influences, such as her immersion in Black American Christianity and later in Catholic spirituality.”

This whole article is a fascinating read for those interested in the nitty-gritty of these early stages of a canonization cause and we encourage those of you who have been involved in promoting Dorothy’s cause as well as Sister Thea’s to check it out! “Laity can play an important role in the canonization process, that is, if they choose to do so,” Anne said.

“Those who are officially on the path to sainthood proceed from servant of God to venerable, then with a verified miracle to blessed, and, with a second verified miracle to saint. Prayers of petition contribute greatly to the success of a cause.”

In addition, we were very pleased to hear that the cause for Adele Brice, the Belgian immigrant to whom Mary appeared as Our Lady of Champion in the Wisconsin woods in 1859, is moving forward . Adele was declared “Servant of God” on January 30th, meaning that the diocesan phase of her cause is now officially open.

The Dorothy Day Guild has been invited to participate in a “Catholic Saints of America” event at the Our Lady of Champion Shrine in the first week of July, so stay tuned for more information!

Prayer Requests

This month, we would like to invite you to pray for a potential community garden project in Texas. The person who wrote to us met and was inspired by the Catholic Worker community in San Antonio and submitted the following prayer request, which has been lightly edited for clarity:

“I am asking for the intercession of Dorothy Day that I will be able to build a community garden here in Corpus Christi in order to demonstrate environmental sustainability and to donate the fruits of the earth to the homeless shelter. I pray that I will be able to inspire a community to collaborate together and help alleviate the needs of the poor by providing them with the crops from the garden. I am yet to work on the garden belonging to a church and see if I am able to maintain it. I pray for the sustainability to spread here in Corpus Christi and beyond.”

We know that this is exactly the kind of responsible, self-directed and community-focused initiative that Dorothy and Peter would have loved! Please join in asking Dorothy’s prayers for this potential work of the Green Revolution and for the many people whom it will serve.

A few words from Dorothy: Happy 100th Birthday, Tamar Day Hennessy

Today, March 4th, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tamar Teresa Day Hennessy, Dorothy’s beloved daughter. Tamar’s birth was a transformative spiritual event for Dorothy, and her experience of motherhood was one of the most significant factors that set her on the path towards Christian faith and the founding of the Catholic Worker movement.

We love this tender image of mother and daughter in the days after Tamar’s birth by artist Sarah Fuller– it’s available as part of Sarah’s Catholic Worker print series on her Etsy store !

In the chapter “Family,” in part three of The Long Loneliness, Dorothy wrote about the lingering sadness of ending her relationship with Forster, Tamar’s father, following her conversion to Catholicism. “The sense of loss was there. It was a price I had paid. I was Abraham who had sacrificed Isaac. And yet I had Isaac. I had Tamar,” Dorothy said.

“She was, of course, everything to me. I have not even to this day ceased to look upon her with wonder. When I looked at her tiny, perfect hands and my own, already worn though I was only twenty-seven, I marveled at her newness. Tamar crowing on the beach, learning to walk on the sands. Tamar at three, meeting her father again, and saying to me resentfully, ‘That is my father, not your father’-- oh, cruel stab! Tamar singing, Tamar praying– ‘Does the Blessed Mother mind if I say my prayers standing on my head? And how can I pray when I have to keep laughing.’

Tamar growing up in community.”

Dorothy’s love for Tamar was boundless, and yet Tamar was perhaps the one person who sacrificed the most so that the Catholic Worker movement could come into its full flourishing. Tamar had to share her mother with the world. This could not have been easy for the girl who would become one of Peter Maurin’s first disciples and grow up to become the mother of nine children, raising them on a series of hardscrabble farms and developing a unique practice of hospitality to the young.

We are grateful for Tamar’s strength and endurance, and for the tireless care and support she offered to so many people, including to Dorothy at the end of her mother’s life. Today, on what would be her hundredth birthday, please join us in honoring Tamar and thanking her for sharing the gift of Dorothy with all of us.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

A Saint for Our Time: February Updates from The Dorothy Day Guild

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:25:23 GMT

Dear friends,

Happy February! We hope that each of you had a joyful Christmas season. After a busy autumn of travel and excitement, all of us at the Guild were grateful for a little time to rest and enjoy the holidays and are now looking forward to being back in a more regular rhythm of activity. We have a number of great, free programs coming up in the next few months and lots of other news and updates to share with you just below!

Upcoming Guild events:

Our popular walking pilgrimage events are returning this month! For the hardiest among us, the first pilgrimage sets off from Union Square at 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 21st , with a second pilgrimage the following day, Sunday, February 22nd, also at 2:00 PM .

We have seven pilgrimages scheduled so far this year, (other dates include Sunday afternoons on March 1st, March 15th, March 22nd, April 25th, and May 3rd ), and we hope you will join us! We especially invite you to sign up with a friend or a group from your parish, for one of the Lenten Sunday pilgrimages as a particular way to invite Dorothy to accompany you during this holy season of preparation. These pilgrimages are an opportunity to literally walk in Dorothy’s footsteps, visiting the places in Lower Manhattan where she herself prayed, protested, and offered the works of mercy for more than fifty years. Please click here to view all of the available dates and register for an upcoming pilgrimage.

We are also hosting an extended series of online events this spring, starting this month with our third annual Lenten book club. For 2026, historian and long-time friend of the Dorothy Day Guild, Dr. Anne Klejment, will host our online reading group over the course of five Tuesdays in Lent. During our time together, we will read Dorothy's memoir of the first thirty years of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes.

Originally published in 1963, Loaves and Fishes is an excellent companion piece to Dorothy's spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness. In this later book, Dorothy brings her journalistic eye for detail and character sketches to the first three decades of the vibrant Catholic Worker family, focusing on the varied community members who brought their gifts and talents to the growing movement, and on the persistence of poverty in affluent post-war America. Please click here to register for our book club!

This spring, we are also excited to announce that we are hosting TWO online roundtables, each featuring an inspiring and insightful panel of speakers. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day, March 8th, is “Social Justice”-- a perfect fit for a conversation with contemporary activists whose faith and work has been shaped by Dorothy’s witness. Next month, on Sunday, March 8th at 8:00 PM Eastern , please join us for this special webinar “In the Footsteps of Dorothy Day: Catholic Women and Social Justice.”

For this roundtable, we've chosen to feature an intergenerational group of Catholic women whose activism has been inspired by Dorothy's legacy of Gospel nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality. You're invited to join Clare Grady, Michelle Sherman, Brenna Cussen Anglada, and Sister Helen Prejean for an evening of conversation on how faith and exemplars like Dorothy have shaped their work on behalf of the poor, the incarcerated, youth, Indigenous communities, and victims of war and violence in the United States and abroad. This conversation will be moderated by our 2025 Dorothy Day Guild Graduate Research Fellow, Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic. Register here to receive the zoom link!

Looking further ahead, we are also hosting our third annual Easter-season webinar on Sunday, May 17th at 1:30 PM Eastern. This year, we've chosen to highlight some of the past decade's most notable books on Dorothy. Please join us for a conversation with Kate Hennessy, author of Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother , D.L. Mayfield, author of Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day's Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times , and Blythe Randolph and John Loughery, co-authors of Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century .

Our roundtable discussion will be moderated by our Dorothy Day Guild chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern and will include plenty of time for a Q&A with these excellent writers. To register for “Writing Dorothy Day: Perspectives from Four Recent Biographers,” please click here , and for more information about all of these exciting opportunities, please visit the upcoming events page on our website.

Events from our friends:

We would also like to draw your attention to two additional events being hosted by friends of the Guild next month. First, Renée Roden, co-editor of Roundtable and member of the Harrisburg Catholic Worker community, is leading a four-week discussion group, “Lent With Dorothy Day. Hosted by Jesuit Media Lab, this group will meet on four Fridays (March 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th) from 12:00-1:00 PM Eastern to read and discuss selections from a range of Dorothy’s writings. The group is currently full, but if you would like to join the waiting list, please send an email to Mike Jordan Laskey at medialab@jesuits.org .

In New York, Fordham University’s Campus Ministry is sponsoring the third annual “Catholic Women Speak” Conference. This one-day event, which features Martha Hennessy as a keynote speaker will take place on March 21st, 2026, from 12:00 PM-6:30 PM on the Fordham University Rose Hill Campus, in the McShane Center Great Hall (on the third floor).

Martha’s keynote on her grandmother’s legacy and how Dorothy inspired her own faith and activism is currently scheduled to take place at 3:25 PM. In their invitation, the event organizers wrote,

“Catholic Women Speak is inspired by both the Global Synod’s discernment of the role of women in the Church and the desire to uplift Catholic women in our community who live a variety of vocations. In 2024, Catholic Women Speak focused on creating an intentional community to affirm, empower, and rejoice in Catholic women’s voices.

In the context of America’s precarious socio-political climate and the release of the Synod on Synodality’s final document, Catholic Women Speak 2025 asked, “Now what?” We began discerning how the Holy Spirit is inviting today’s Catholics to move forward and respond to injustice in the world and in the Church by emphasizing storytelling and relationship-building.

Our world today, in 2026, feels quite heavy, filled with overwhelm, division, and fear. But our story does not end here. We invite you into the practice of groundedness, joy, and community. Together, we will remember and celebrate who we are: women of strength and resistance. What can resistance look like, and how can we practice it as women of faith?

As we strive to cultivate the fruits of justice from the seeds of hope, we pray that Catholic Women Speak 2026 can participate in the vital work of community-building and action. We invite you to plant the seeds, and it would be a privilege to walk with you in the garden.”

This conference is free and open to all and includes lunch and a closing communion service, as well as an option to attend the two keynote addresses by Zoom for those who cannot be present in person. If you would like to participate, please register using this form by March 15th.

Reading and listening recommendations:

We have several new articles and podcasts featuring Dorothy to share with you this month! First, for Roundtable , Ashley McCormick shared a reflection from the Advent retreat led by Martha Hennessy and organized by the Mary’s House Catholic Worker community in Birmingham, Alabama. She writes,

“Martha reminded us that Dorothy regarded the Catholic Worker as a university to be studied with more to learn all the time. Dorothy invited those in attendance to become apprentices of the work, not merely academics absorbed in the principles. The works of mercy are just that—work to be undertaken.

Though we understand that both work and prayer are at the heart of the Catholic Worker movement, as Martha emphasized Dorothy’s commitment to both personal and communal prayer with regular participation in church sacraments. Though steeped in traditional practice, Dorothy also had an expansive view of what prayer could be.”

Roundtable has featured a number of other recent articles that mention or invoke Dorothy this winter; we encourage you to read through their recent archive (all free!) and subscribe to this great resource for news and fresh thought from around the Catholic Worker movement.

Last month in L’Osservatore Romano , the English-language edition of the Vatican newspaper, Ritanna Armeni published an article contextualizing Pope Leo’s choice to cite Dorothy in his public catechesis on November 22nd. In “Dorothy Day, the small great American who shows the way,” Armeni writes,

“It is hard to escape the impression that by quoting her, Leo intended to indicate a direction. He recalled that in the building of the Church, the contribution of the laity is by no means secondary. Instead, it can become decisive, as was the case with Dorothy. The pope emphasized that the Gospel must not be limited to offering consolation; rather, it must enter society, build, transform, and must be embodied in concrete, everyday actions. Dorothy chose to live her life right up to the end in the Houses of Hospitality of the Catholic Workers. Her life and words show that her model, which is rooted in active hope, social engagement, and service to the poor, remains central today in the Church’s vision.”

This week actually marks the anniversary of the first time a Pope mentioned Dorothy in a public address. On February 13th, 2013, Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about Dorothy’s conversion to Catholicism as evidence that "God guided her to a conscious adherence to the church, in a lifetime spent dedicated to the underprivileged." Only two years later, Pope Francis would visit the United States and name Dorothy as an American exemplar in his address to a joint session of Congress . It is incredibly exciting to realize that the three most recent Popes have all looked to Dorothy as a model of holiness and action for the Church today– she is truly a saint for our time!

The most recent issue of Interchange , a publication of the Rochester, MN Franciscan community, features an article on Kristi Pfister’s Dorothy Day mosaics. These mosaics are stunning as stand-alone pieces and also form part of a larger multimedia installation, Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day , which Kristi has exhibited at Manhattan University, Iona University, and other gallery spaces in the New York metro area. You can download the article, “Learning from the Witness of Others,” here , or visit the Sisters of St. Francis’ website to browse the full back catalogue of Interchange .

Robert Ellsberg also appeared last month as a guest on Fr. John Dear’s The Nonviolent Jesus podcast. Robert recently published Blessed Among Us: Volume 2 , a collection of daily introductions to and reflections on holiness and discipleship through the lives of saintly figures, both canonized and not. He spoke with Fr. John on a range of topics, but at the close of their conversation, Fr. John asked if Robert could offer “a memory or two about Dorothy for me, and maybe share a word about the ongoing process of her impending canonization,” adding “She's got to become a doctor of the church. She's way beyond being a saint. It's true. She's Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena. She's St. Francis and Gandhi combined.”

Robert responded with a few comments on Dorothy’s disciplined spiritual life and how he came to recognize the attention Dorothy put into her prayer and her daily examination of conscience in greater depth when he edited her diaries twenty-five years after her death. He also spoke about Dorothy’s own critique as a young woman, when she admired saints who served the poor but wondered where in the Church’s calendar were the saints who tried to change the social order. “That's where she takes this great big leap,” Robert said.

“What other saint ever said that? And who tried to live there, you know? And yes, she performed the works of mercy and she lived in voluntary poverty with the poor, but she was also trying to change the social order. And not just through protesting, but also by offering a kind of critique and offering a model of an alternative way of being and alternative values for our society and trying to live them in the present.”

Click here to listen to Robert and Fr. John’s full conversation and visit The Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus online for a full archive of podcast episodes and see their list of upcoming Zoom programs.

Finally, Kevin Ahern appeared as a guest on Asheville, NC’s “A Better World” community radio program. In this hour-long interview with host McNair Ezzard, Kevin offers an introduction to Dorothy’s life, the publication of The Catholic Worker newspaper, and the foundation and continuing history of the Catholic Worker movement.

In their conversation, McNair also asked Kevin about his own exposure to the Catholic Worker and to Dorothy and how he became interested in promoting her legacy of Gospel pacifism, voluntary poverty, and hospitality. Kevin talked about volunteering in the New York Catholic Worker community during the Iraq War and participating in peace activism with the community. Years later, as a professor, Kevin said, “I was seeing in the classroom, whenever I taught about Dorothy, students would perk up. They can’t put this woman in a box… She breaks barriers and stereotypes, and I think that’s really fun to teach.”

This is a great interview, in part because the show’s secular orientation speaks to the appeal Dorothy holds for non-Christian and non-religious listeners. We’re excited to share this conversation with you as a unique resource for introducing new audiences to Dorothy’s life and legacy, and we encourage you to check out some of the other fascinating guests McNair has brought onto the show.

Other canonization news:

We received some wonderful news about another (hopefully!) future saint who is dear to many of us: Sister Thea Bowman’s cause is moving forward! The diocesan phase of Sister Thea’s cause is complete and the Roman phase is about to begin. Today, February 9th, at 12:00 PM Central , Bishop Joseph Kopacz, of the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi will celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving along with other bishops and clergy from the Province of Mobile (which includes dioceses from across Mississippi and Alabama). The Mass will take place in the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle (123 North West Street, Jackson, MS 39201).

After the Mass, our friend Emanuele Spedicato, who is the Roman postulator for Sister Thea’s cause, will seal the official documents and findings from the diocesan phase in a similar closing ceremony to what we celebrated on December 8th, 2021 at the close of the diocesan phase of Dorothy’s cause . Both the Mass and the Closing Session are open to all, and we hope that those of you who live in the area plan to attend!

Please join all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild in congratulating all those who have worked on Sister Thea’s cause and those who have been inspired by her life and legacy. To learn more about Sister Thea and the efforts for her canonization, please visit the Diocese of Jackson’s official website , where you can access articles, film clips, photographs, and a full documentary about her incredible life of faith and activism.

We also invite you to check out the work of our friends over at The Dorothea Project , a community of Catholic Women inspired by Dorothy and Sister Thea and formed by Catholic Social Teaching. This group meets monthly (online!) for clarification of thought and ongoing formation of conscience and works to advocate for our most vulnerable neighbors.

Currently, the members of the Dorothea Project are asking our bishops to continue speaking out on behalf of immigrants and those who stand with them. Their website has a number of resources you can use for prayer, education, and action in your own community. We encourage you to pray with Sister Thea and Dorothy and ask how you might be called to participate in this work!

Prayer requests:

This month, we have several joyful updates to share with you– prayers have been answered for several of the people who have been on the Guild’s prayer list in the past year! First, we are so happy to report that Kenzie, the young mother in Indiana we had prayed for during her difficult pregnancy with her second daughter, is doing well, and her baby is finally home after a long stay in the NICU. Kenzie is still struggling with ongoing health issues, so as we give thanks to God for her daughter’s safe return home, please continue to ask Dorothy’s intercession for Kenzie’s own healing as she, her fiancé, and the girls settle into life at home as a family of four.

We have also been praying for a young woman from Illinois who had been stuck in a low-paid, dead-end job for five years. Last week, we were thrilled to hear from her that she had been hired in a new position which will offer her opportunities to gain skills and advance in her career and which pays enough to cover her expenses. For this good news, Deo gratias!

Edward from Nevada also wrote to us to share that he had been asking Dorothy’s intercession on his own behalf to resolve a medical issue which seems to have fully healed in the time he has been praying using the canonization prayer on our website. He also sent us news that he had been praying through Dorothy’s intercession for the son of a family friend who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. During the friend’s last medical appointment, the doctor noticed that the tumor had entirely disappeared– amazing news!

Our medical team is looking into this case to see whether this has the potential to be a miracle attributed to Dorothy’s intercession, but whether or not it meets the stringent criteria required for the canonization process, this healing is an incredible grace, and we are so honored to share in the joy of this family and their loved ones.

Edward has also asked us to pray for two members of his family, his mother, who suffers from macular degeneration, and his cousin, who hopes to improve his mobility so that he can return home from the nursing facility where he has been staying. Please ask Dorothy to intercede on behalf of these dear ones.

Additionally, we received a request from a woman in Colorado who has recently received a diagnosis of persistent postural-perceptual dizziness. She has asked that we pray that she receive the grace to accept life with this challenging new reality.

Finally, we were very sad to hear of the death of Bob Murray in Ireland, whose son, Fr. Seóirse Murray is a close friend of the Guild through his work with the Catholic Peace Fellowship. Through Dorothy's intercession, please pray for the repose of Bob's soul, and the comfort of his family, especially his widow, Maureen. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

On behalf of all of those who have written to us this winter, please join us in asking Dorothy to uphold their needs before a loving and faithful God.

A few words from Dorothy:

In preparation for our Lenten book club, I’ve been reading through Dorothy’s Loaves and Fishes again, and came upon this encouraging (and bracing!) passage from the chapter “A Block Off the Bowery.” Dorothy writes,

“One reason I feel sure of the rightness of the path we are traveling in our work is that we did not pick it out ourselves. In those beautiful verses in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, Jesus tells us that we must feed the hungry, and shelter those without homes and visit the sick and the prisoner. We cannot feel too satisfied with the way we are doing our work– there is too much of it; we have more than our share, you might say. Yet we can say, ‘If that’s the way He wants it–’.

I say we did not choose this work, and that is true. So it was with each of us. John Cort thought he was coming to us to study and work with the problems of labor unions and he found himself ‘running a flophouse,’ as he said. I, being a journalist, looked to editing and publishing a paper each month, writing what I chose, and not being subject to any publisher. But because we wrote about the obligations of those who call themselves Christians and who try ‘stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds and putting on the new,’ as St. Paul said, it is as though we were each being admonished, ‘All right, if you believe as you say, do it.’”

As we look forward to Lent, Dorothy’s words remind us of the awesome obligations incumbent upon us as members of Christ’s Mystical Body. The weight of this responsibility should give us pause, but, as Dorothy reminds us, so should the freedom that it offers. So much about our world and our future is uncertain. We make plans and begin projects not knowing when they will come to fruition, but in Matthew 25, Christ offers us a clear path forward. The works of mercy are not easy, but they are simple, and Christ has promised us that they will in fact accomplish something meaningful in this world and in the next. “If that’s the way He wants it,” we can rest in the assurance that our contributions to the common good will bear fruit. In the upcoming season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, let’s pray for the grace to respond generously to the needs of our neighbor, and like Dorothy, do as we say we believe.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Advent Greetings

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:09:03 GMT

Dear friends,

Advent greetings to each of you! We hope that in the midst of what for many of us is a busy, exciting, and sometimes stressful time of year, you have had a few moments of peace where you have been reminded of the joy we are all anticipating. Christ is again coming into our midst, in order to make us members of His Body and draw us closer to each other and closer to God in love.

All of the prophets, both in Scripture and in our own time, point us towards this truth: following her conversion, Dorothy’s entire life was a response to the reality of the Incarnation and the presence of God in each person she encountered, especially the poor. Dorothy lived as if the Good News of the Gospel were really true! In this edition of the Dorothy Day Guild’s missive, we likewise have a lot of joyful news to share with you, as well as some incredible resources and reflections we hope will help you prepare to celebrate Christ’s birth into our world and into our hearts next week.

News from Rome!

When Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te , came out earlier this fall, many of us eagerly read through it to see if the Holy Father would mention Dorothy in this text on love for the poor. Dorothy’s name never explicitly came up in the exhortation, but Pope Leo’s remarks, particularly in the section on popular movements, strongly reflected Dorothy’s unique mode of discipleship in the modern world. We suspected that given his emerging pastoral priorities and his American background, the Holy Father was likely aware of Dorothy and the Catholic Worker movement she founded, but we were floored when the Pope named her in his Jubilee Audience for pilgrims on Saturday, November 22nd!

“Jesus came to bring fire: the fire of God's love on earth and the fire of desire in our hearts. In a certain way, Jesus takes away our peace, if we think of peace as an inert calm. This, however, is not true peace,” Pope Leo said to the assembled pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. Instead, “the peace Jesus brings is like a fire and asks much of us. Above all, it asks us to take a stand.” Speaking in Spanish, the Pope then invited the audience,

“to remember a small, great American woman, Dorothy Day, who lived in the last century. She had fire inside her. Dorothy Day took a stand. She saw that her country's development model didn't create equal opportunities for everyone; she understood that for too many, the dream was a nightmare; that as a Christian, she had to engage with workers, migrants, and those rejected by a killing economy. She wrote and served: it's important to unite mind, heart, and hands. This is taking a stand. She wrote as a journalist; that is, she thought and made others think. Writing is important. And so is reading, today more than ever. And then Dorothy served meals, gave clothes, dressed and ate like those she served: she united mind, heart, and hands. In this way, hoping is taking a stand.

Dorothy Day has involved thousands of people. They have opened homes in many cities, in many neighborhoods: not large service centers, but centers of charity and justice where they can call each other by name, get to know each other one by one, and transform indignation into communion and action. This is what peacemakers are like: they take a stand and bear the consequences, but they move forward.”

What an incredible gift, and an amazing surprise! English-language Catholic news sources including Aleteia and OSV News provided early summaries of the Pope’s remarks, and the entire audience is available to watch on YouTube with an English-language voiceover; Pope Leo’s address to the pilgrims begins at minute marker 26:28. This is the ninth catechesis in a series of Jubilee Audiences on hope, begun by Pope Francis in January of this year, and continued by his predecessor after his death this spring. You can read the full text of the Holy Father’s remarks on the Vatican website .

Pope Leo’s catechesis on Dorothy as an exemplar for the close of this Jubilee Year of Hope felt like a real grace as a small delegation of Dorothy Day Guild members and Catholic Workers began a pilgrimage to Rome the following Monday. This “pilgrimage of hope” took place in the days surrounding the academic symposium on Dorothy at the Pontifical Gregorian University– our first ever in-person international event! You can check out some of the pilgrimage highlights, including a papal audience in St. Peter’s Square, a meeting with our postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman , at the Dicastery for Causes of the Saints, a visit to Santa Maria Maggiore to pray at the tomb of Pope Francis, and the closing mass in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in this series of short videos on our Youtube channel. Enormous thanks to Thomas Gould, one of our pilgrims, for creating these mementos of the pilgrimage!

On Wednesday, November 26th, our pilgrims assembled at the Gregorian with approximately one hundred graduate students, professors, Vatican workers and officials, and members of the public to take part in a day-long academic symposium on Dorothy’s legacy. In addition to the in-person guests, dozens of additional participants tuned in virtually to the two main panels and the concluding remarks by Dorothy’s granddaughters, Kate and Martha Hennessy.

We’re delighted to share the full recordings of each of these talks with you, and we encourage you to watch or listen to them, perhaps as an Advent reflection in these last days before the Christmas celebration. Robert Ellsberg and Dr. Margaret Pfeil, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend each offered their comments for the opening panel, “The Spirituality of Dorothy Day: Significance, Originality, and Limitations.” Looking to Dorothy’s preconversion life for the first sources of what would ultimately bring her to God and become her distinctive expression of communion with the Divine, Margie remarked that,

“The wholeness, the integrity of God's love drew her to the sacramental life of the church as the hermeneutical key for her pilgrim journey. In her June 1956 Catholic Worker newspaper article entitled ‘Creation,’ she uses this lens of sacramental wholeness encompassing all of creation to set up what theologian Edward Schillebeeckx called a contrast experience, an awareness of beauty and joy contrasted against the background of devastation and suffering so acute as to sharpen their intensity.”

In this column, Dorothy compares the humility of the Incarnate Jesus with the hubris of American military scientists, who chose the feast of Pentecost to test a new hydrogen bomb over the Enewetake and Bikini atolls in the Pacific. She wrote,

"Americans are reaching for the moon now and our planes climb to unbelievable heights. And it is not just a desire to seek the womb to return to the earth when we say that it is necessary as never before man for all people to kiss the earth from which we spring and which has been so ennobled by Christ who took on our humanity. Man must become humble and know that it is God who created him and all the beauty around him. In the midst of this beauty, yesterday on Pentecost, the hydrogen bomb was dropped from the air over a Pacific island. The flash was equal to 500 suns and according to one reporter, it was like a nightmare in broad daylight… The contest between man and God. It was as though man were trying to shut off the earth from heaven, from God himself."

“Pentecost,” Margie went on to note,

“happened to be Dorothy's favorite feast, the day of her confirmation when she wrote about feeling indeed the Holy Spirit. That sacramental lens helped her name the existential danger at hand with eyes wide open. And it led her once again to praise God the creator. Kissing the earth, the humus became for her a sacramental reminder of human creatureliness. Called to cooperate with God the creator rather than worship idols of our own making. To surrender to the Holy Spirit's flame of love rather than glory in the hydrogen bomb's flash.”

The symposium’s second panel, “The Social Action of Dorothy Day: A Critical Evaluation,” opens with a brief message of welcome from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, expressing his good wishes for the symposium and his hopes for Dorothy’s eventual beatification and features talks from our Guild chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, and Dr. Diego Alonso-Lasheras, SJ, a faculty member at the Gregorian.

These presentations consider Dorothy as not simply a Catholic activist, but as a Church reformer and exemplar of Catholic social engagement in what theologian Kristin Heyer calls the “prophetic style,” working “outside traditional structures to denounce injustice and challenge those in positions of power through direct action and moral witness.” This legacy, Kevin notes, is alive and active today in the work of Catholic peace organizations like Pax Christi and the efforts for nuclear disarmament in the Plowshares and Catholic Worker movements.

The events of the symposium concluded with a joint closing address from Martha and Kate Hennessy, entitled “The Legacy of Our Grandmother.” Kate and Martha’s comments are intimate, personal, and reflective; the formation Dorothy offered each of them and the relationships they shared are not relics of their childhood and early adult years, but a living flame and continuing challenge.

“People often comment to me on how taken they are by Dorothy's love for the poor. I have never felt that this is an accurate representation of her life and work,” Kate said.

“The Catholic worker wasn't the poor. It was her family. It was her community. and its creation came from a deep recognition and response to the human condition and how we are all in need in one way or another. She said there is always some way we can be generous with one another and to truly perceive one another in our humanness, our capacities, our sorrows and sufferings, not as observers or social workers but as community. Dorothy challenges us in many ways, Institutionally, economically, and politically. But most of all, she challenges us personally. She asks us to trust, to trust Christ when he says to love one another, our neighbors and our enemies, and to open our doors and our hearts to strangers in need.”

Fiona Murphy offered a brief summary of the symposium’s major themes , published in National Catholic Reporter on December 2nd. For a full recap of the Dorothy Day Guild’s first pilgrimage of hope, check out Renée Roden’s article, “‘This is her time,’ Catholic Workers Bring Dorothy Day’s Radical Witness to Rome,” which includes some great photos from our delegation and notes from Thursday’s roundtable discussion at the Lay Centre and Kevin Ahern’s Friday presentation at the Pontifical Lateran University. This was truly a banner week for our cause, and we couldn’t be more excited to see what the new year brings, both in terms of Dorothy’s formal canonization process, and all the ways in which her legacy of Gospel nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality is lived out in our Church and our world today.

Local Interest:

Closer to home (for those in and around New York City, anyway!), we’d also like to pass along two brief news items. Many Catholic Worker communities and their supporters , including the Staten Island Catholic Worker, celebrated special masses, vigils, and prayer services to mark Dorothy’s anniversaries of birth and death last month . It’s been a joy to witness the return of the Catholic Worker movement to Dorothy’s beloved Staten Island, and we were excited to learn that the community “has also been in contact with Councilman Frank Morano to discuss several potential proposals to honor Day’s legacy, including a street sign, a commemorative marker and a community garden.” Projects like these are important for our canonization cause, as they indicate widespread devotion to and interest in Dorothy and her legacy among the faithful; we look forward to hearing more about these plans as they progress!

At Maryhouse and St. Joe’s on the Lower East Side, we’ve also received notices from neighbors, concerned parishioners, and members of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation about the campaign to preserve Most Holy Redeemer Church , located at 173 East 3rd Street and grant the building landmark status in recognition of its significance for the architectural and cultural heritage of the neighborhood.

Most Holy Redeemer is a historically German parish, founded in 1844 by Redemptorist missionaries to serve the growing immigrant community. Dorothy occasionally attended services or stopped into this church to pray, writing in March of 1952 ,

“We walked a few blocks north to Third street between Avenue A and B and visited the Church of the Holy Redeemer, where the altar was gorgeous with cala lilies and roses, surrounding the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. There are many Slavs in this neighborhood, but Germans predominate, and the streets are quiet and clean and orderly compared with the hectic clamor of the market district a few blocks below.”

The church still displays a small memorial to Dorothy near the entrance. Although Redeemer was never Dorothy’s primary parish, following the demolition of the Church of the Nativity, it is the only remaining Catholic Church in her neighborhood that can boast this connection. If you would like to send an email to the mayor’s office requesting that Redeemer be preserved as a historic landmark and receive updates on this campaign, please click here .

D orothy at National Catholic Worker Gathering 2025:

We have several excellent talks and articles to share with you this month, covering a wide range of topics and perspectives. First, our thanks go out to Renée Roden, Jerry Windley-Daoust, and Brianna DellaValle for making the video recordings and transcripts of several presentations from the October National Catholic Worker Gathering in San Antonio, Texas, available online at CatholicWorker.org . On Friday, October 3rd, Robert Ellsberg and Fr. Ron Rolheiser each offered keynote addresses focused on Dorothy’s legacy and ongoing significance. Robert’s talk, “What I Learned from Dorothy Day” is a reflection on his years first working alongside Dorothy at the Catholic Worker in New York and then, following her death, working with her columns, diaries, and letters as her editor. Robert remembers one of the first things he realized about Dorothy when he first met her fifty years ago:

“She was not a sentimental person. She knew that poverty and suffering are hard. She knew the sights and smells of destitution, the craziness, the life of the insulted and injured, as she said. People used to praise her for her, quote, ‘wonderful work among the poor.’ She knew that a lot of it wasn’t really all so wonderful. It was also discouraging. It was exhausting. It was unrelenting.

And yet, I also learned from Dorothy that you have to learn to see beneath the surface of things. On the surface, you can see what seems like noise, chaos, ugliness, squalor. Dorothy had an eye for the transcendent, a capacity always to see something deeper—a deeper truth, a deeper goodness. It was there if you knew where to look for it…

I learned from Dorothy that to live that way can be a tremendous adventure. When you were with Dorothy, you didn’t have a feeling of gloom or hopelessness at all, despite all the difficulties and frustrations. There was so much joy and celebration.”

Fr. Ron Rolheiser, the former president of San Antonio’s Oblate School of Theology, gave the second keynote, “Dorothy Day as a Template of Christian Prophecy.” Fr. Rolheiser’s talk is organized around nine principles he identifies as paradigmatic for Christian prophecy, including a commitment to nonviolence, a foundation in love rather than ideology, a preferential option for the poor, hope, patience, and discernment. Dorothy embodied each of these. “Prophets don’t predict the future; they name the present—especially in light of God’s love for the poor,” Fr. Rolheiser reminded those gathered. He continued,

“In the Old Testament the prophets insisted that the quality of your faith is judged by the quality of justice in the land—and justice is judged by how the most vulnerable fare: widows, orphans, and strangers.

Today we might say: immigrants, the incarcerated, the unhoused, the excluded…

Dorothy Day lived with and for the poor. Breadlines and hospices weren’t enough—she pushed for communities of work, solidarity, and justice.”

If you weren’t able to attend the gathering back in the fall, we encourage you to check out both these excellent talks!

The following day included a full slate of roundtable discussions, two of which we’d like to highlight for you here. First, Brian Terrell offered a presentation on protest and incarceration, “Fill the Jails! A Catholic Worker Vocation,” which he began by quoting Dorothy’s February 1957 column on her own experiences of being jailed following that year’s civil defense drill protests:

“When I think of the long sentences served by so many others, of so many miscarriages of justice; when I think of the accumulation of prisons, outmoded and feudal, that dot the land… I’m not particularly interested in writing about my few days in jail last month. I’m just glad that I served them, and I’m ready to serve them again if there is another compulsory air-raid drill next summer. It’s a gesture, perhaps, but a necessary one. Silence means consent. We cannot consent to the militarization of our country without protest.”

Brian continued with a reflection on the works of mercy, and incarceration as a formative experience that blurs (though does not entirely erase) the boundaries of class, privilege, and status between the poor and those who seek to serve them. “Dorothy wrote not only about the number of people in prison, but about how American prisons have become so much worse. Visiting the prisoner is harder now; many prisons only allow video visits,” he said.

“Sometimes you must bring your family to a jail lobby to sit in front of a screen to see your loved one. Mail has also changed. Some jails allow only prepaid postcards. Martha was once in a jail where that was the only mail you could send. Imagine what we would lose: no Letters of Paul, no Dostoevsky, no Solzhenitsyn—only what fits on a 3×5 card. More than ever, the way to “visit the prisoner” is to be one.

Dorothy often quoted Dostoevsky: “The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” It’s true: you understand the whole country better after that experience.”

Our thanks to Brian for leading this discussion of one of the most challenging aspects of Dorothy’s legacy and reminding us of the reality experienced by so many people, especially the poor of the United States, who are unable to escape the impact of our system of mass incarceration on their families and neighborhoods.

Finally, Scott Schaeffer-Duffy and Martha Hennessy together led a roundtable discussion on ordinary practices of nonviolence for daily life, published as “Living Nonviolence Every Day: Stories and Insights.”

Scott opened the discussion with a brief explanation of where opportunities to practice Gospel nonviolence are hidden in our day-to-day encounters with others:

“I want to touch on two examples of nonviolence that are different than protests and taking a political position. Because some of us will decide to do that—put ourselves on the line, risk arrest, and whatever—and that’s a kind of nonviolence. But all of us in our life have situations where people threaten us. They get angry. People might even threaten us legally. What do we do?”

Scott then offered two anecdotes where Dorothy’s example inspired him to respond to potentially violent or volatile situations with creative and disarming nonviolence. On one occasion, he found himself,

“walking at night near the house down on New York Avenue. A guy comes up to me, pulls out a knife, and says, “Give me your money.”

I reached in my front pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and gave it to him. I thought about Dorothy Day, and I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He said, “What?”

I said, “What do you need it for?”

He said, “If it means anything to you, it’s for food for my kids. I lost my job. It’s for my kids.”

I said, “Wait a minute.” I reached into my back pocket where I had a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Here, take this. Go to the Catholic Worker House. It’s over here. This is the address. We get food all the time. Come on over tomorrow. We’ll hook you up. We’ll take care of you.”

He goes, “Oh, wow. I can’t take your money.”

I said, “Here, look at this. Put the knife away”...

He ended up being a volunteer and really helping us. And I thought, you know, this is a good idea.”

In a culture that is so primed to equate violence with strength and to see the ability to strike first as a demonstration of righteousness, Scott and Martha here offer us wise reflections on a Little Way of Nonviolence. We encourage you to check out these talks and the others that are archived on the Catholic Worker website’s page for the 2025 National Gathering. This was a wonderful celebration, and we’d like to express our gratitude to the San Antonio Catholic Worker for organizing and hosting this weekend and congratulate them on their community’s fortieth anniversary!

Additional Reading and Viewing Recommendations:

This season always brings so many excellent new pieces inspired by Dorothy’s life and witness to the Gospel; in addition to the wealth of longer presentations and talks we’ve curated this month, we’re also excited to share a few stand-alone pieces. Last month, Renée Roden spoke at a meeting of Francesco Collaborative, giving a short talk called “Why Catholics Embrace Voluntary Poverty.” Here, Renée says,

“Poverty is a mystery that Dorothy Day describes as one we must constantly write about and encounter. For if we are not among its victims, she says, its reality fades from us. We must talk about poverty because instead we'll become people insulated by our own comfort and lose sight of it. Voluntary poverty is a path you walk. It's never over. It's never complete. You've never given away enough. We’re never poor enough except for the one God-man who emptied himself deeming equality with God not something to be grasped and who took on the form of a slave within that sacrifice of Christ, the ultimate voluntary poverty. All of our efforts are sanctified and completed but here in this practice of Christian life on earth all of us are constantly battling with what Dorothy Day called ‘the octopus of our grasping self.’”

Later, Renée offers a few suggestions on how we might incorporate the practice of voluntary poverty into our own lives– perhaps you might be inspired to choose one of these examples as a spiritual discipline for the final week of Advent!

For Commonweal , Colin Miller recently published “Dying to Work: Byung-Chul Han and the legacy of the Catholic Worker.” This piece is a solid introduction to the work of Han, a Korean Catholic philosopher who engages issues of efficiency and alienation in contemporary economic and technological culture. Colin sees Han’s work as a lens through which we can realize the increasing significance of Dorothy and Peter Maurin’s often-baffling practices of pacifism and voluntary poverty in economic conditions which have only become more totalizing and demanding in the forty-five years since her death. Han

“helps us see the way that Catholic Worker theory and practice are related. The most radical critiques of our social order, he shows, come from those who refuse to submit to the demand that we spend our lives trying to get out of life alive. In this way, Day’s and Maurin’s prodigal lives made them walking rejections of the order of totalized work.”

Dorothy “lived in close proximity to bodily harm, fights and weapons being commonplace at St. Joseph’s House. And yet, consistent with her pacifism, she placed a strict ban on calling the police,” Colin reminds us.

“Such laid-back prodigality is a ‘festive’ or ‘playful’ way of life—in stark contrast to the anxious capital accumulation and obsession with health and safety so typical of our age. Han pinpoints exactly what made Day’s life so radical: she refused to try to work her way free of death.”

As we approach the Christmas season, these reminders of how Dorothy teaches us to respond to God’s extravagant generosity in the gift of the Incarnation are especially timely. The ‘holiday season’ in much of the Western world is a time when the dominant culture ramps up its economic demands to produce and consume more and more; Dorothy’s example reminds us that life itself is God’s gift and that our best response is simply gratitude and our own analogous, prodigal open-handedness.

Paulist media outlet Busted Halo also published a brief introduction to Dorothy as an activist and journalist whose work for justice was the expression of a prophetic vocation grounded in a Catholic understanding of the world and our place within it. Responding to his college-aged son’s anger and despair over ICE raids in the neighborhood where they once lived, author Michael O’Connell asked,

“How does one respond in the face of injustice? There are, of course, no easy solutions for wanton cruelty or rising authoritarianism, or for the targeting of the marginalized and weak. One place I’ve been turning for both inspiration and consolation is to the work of Dorothy Day, and I suggested that my son check out some of her old columns from ”The Catholic Worker,” where she wrote eloquently and powerfully about the Gospel imperative to resist injustice, and to embrace both the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy as an antidote to the works of war.”

Last week, in an interview for Plough entitled “We Are the Alternative to War,” editor Charles Moore spoke with theologian Stanley Hauerwas on nonviolence as a Christological position, an expression of commitment to the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ rather than another ideology or foreign policy proposal. In the interview, Moore asks,

“Christians have a higher allegiance [to Christ] than to nation states. And yet it seems like nation states do what nation states do. How do we live faithfully in the midst of such a world where nation states and what they do or fail to do have such dramatic and horrendous effects?”

Hauerwas responds,

“We produce people like Dorothy Day. That’s how you go about providing an alternative to the nation state. In the book that I’ve written, War and the American Difference, I tried to show how the war-making character of the modern nation state is a sacrificial system that commands a loyalty that is, from a Christian perspective, idolatrous. And that is something that the church has to say in America in particular.”

It is deeply encouraging to see Christian publications and writers from a variety of denominations and traditions engaging with the implications of Dorothy’s nonviolent praxis for the conflicts we face here in the United States as well as in the global political sphere as we look forward to the coming of the Prince of Peace!

Finally, we came across a profile of College of the Holy Cross director of liturgy and music Laurence Rosania, “The Lessons of a Life in Music,” published in the most recent edition of Holy Cross Magazine . Rosania, who grew up in a working-class Catholic family in Philadelphia, attended the 1976 International Eucharistic Congress, where he heard both Dorothy and Mother Teresa speak. Both women made a strong impression on the young college student.

“I remember Mother Teresa brushing past me as she was walking, and I thought, I am in the presence of something extraordinary,” he recalled. “I don’t know what it was — saintliness, holiness. With Dorothy Day, it was a completely different impression. With her, it was a feeling of tremendous strength, like you were in the presence of a great mountain or something.”

Rosania went on to join the New York Catholic Worker community in 1979, helping on the soup line at St. Joe’s and coming to know Dorothy in the last year of her life. Already a skilled musician who had been performing professionally from the age of nine onward, Rosania began taking small gigs playing organ and piano at local churches to supplement his modest volunteer stipend of five dollars per week from the Catholic Worker house. When Dorothy died in 1980, Rosania played the organ at the Church of the Nativity for her funeral mass.

“The organ I played on barely made a sound, and the church was kind of falling down, and Dorothy was in the simplest little pine box,” he remembered, “but everybody was there, from the cardinal to the papal nuncio.”

This profile is a beautiful testament to the impact Dorothy had on one of the countless young people who spent time at the Catholic Worker over the decades. Dorothy never felt that it was imperative that every young person who came to volunteer remained at the Worker for the rest of their lives, as she had. Rather, she had a gift for encouraging each person she met to discern and live out their own vocation, helping Rosania and many others like him to use their God-given talents in the service of the common good. Many thanks to Holy Cross Magazine for this unique window into Rosania’s encounter with Dorothy and the good fruit it has borne.

Prayer Requests:

Recently, we mentioned a parish in Vermont where a group was meeting on Tuesday nights in order to discern the possibility of opening a Catholic Worker house in the Williston area. Led by Deacon Josh McDonald, the group began with a series of talks on Catholic social teaching and has now published seven editions of a newsletter. You can read more about their initiative in this profile from Roundtable . As Deacon Josh and his fellow discerners continue meeting, assessing local needs, writing, and discussing fundraising, please keep this new community in your prayers!

We also received a request last month from a woman in Massachusetts whose friend is suffering from Stage 4 cancer. Please join us in praying through Dorothy’s intercession that T. makes a full recovery, and that God would guide the hands of her medical team and offer consolation and sustenance to T. and her loved ones in this difficult time.

Finally, Phillip wrote to us from Saskatchewan with an incredible story and a request for intercession. He recently invited a formerly homeless woman, K., to come and live with him, and together, they have transformed his modest home into a true house of hospitality, welcoming others from the street to share meals with them, shower, and enjoy a few hours of respite from the elements. Phillip has asked for prayer on behalf of K., that she might be healed of all the trauma she experienced earlier in life and that God will continue to bless their efforts to offer hospitality to unhoused their neighbors this winter. Please join us in praying for this good work of the Gospel.

A few words from Dorothy:

In November and December of 1966, Dorothy wrote a four-part series for Ave Maria magazine, entitled “Reflections During Advent.” She chose a different theme each week, beginning with her own spiritual journey and continuing with a reflection on one of the counsels of perfection, poverty, chastity, and obedience each of the following weeks. In the first reflection , Dorothy says that from early childhood, she had been literally haunted by God, plagued by terrifying dreams of an awesome and awful Divine power. It was Dorothy’s mother, Grace, who would come to her in the night and comfort her when these nightmares frightened her awake, and later, a Catholic childhood friend named for the Blessed Mother told her about Mary as a warm and loving presence in heaven. When Dorothy finally came to faith in the Catholic Church, it was her own experience of motherhood that awakened in her a need to adore and to give thanks to the Creator and Parent of us all. She writes,

“God was our Father, so I could approach Him, daring to say, Our Father. But it was reading of Jesus Christ in the New Testament that made me want to put off the old mail and put on Christ, as St. Paul said. And who had given me our Lord but the Virgin Mary? It was easy to pray to her, repetitious though it might seem. Saying tire rosary as I did so often, I felt that I was praying with the people of God, who held on to the physical act of the rosary as to a lifeline, a very present help in time of trouble…

Every day at the Catholic Worker Farm when we gather for meals we say the Angelus before asking God’s blessing on us and the food we eat. And it rejoices me to hear all the men, who are in the majority, saying, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy Word,’ and repeating together that marvelous and yet terrible prayer,

‘Pour forth we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to the glory of His resurrection.’ This Incarnation came about by Mary’s consent, she ‘through whom we have received the author of life.’

So Advent must begin with Mary, who presents us with the infant Christ. “The flesh of Jesus is the flesh of Mary,” St. Augustine wrote. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

When I go to the crib this year I will think, as I always do, that we are not dependent on the governments of this world for our safety, but ‘the government will be upon His shoulder.’ This baby cradled in a manger, this boy talking to the doctors in the temple, this youth working with St. Joseph as carpenter, this teacher walking the roads of Palestine, ‘Do whatever He tells you,’ Mary told us.”

We’d like to leave you with this beautiful reflection on the Mother of God in these last days of Advent. As we wait with Mary for the birth of her Son, let’s pray along with the Blessed Mother that like Dorothy, we receive the strength and courage to follow Him and do what He asks of us with that same faith and trust. We pray that each of you takes comfort in the reality of the Incarnation this season and the peace Christ promises his people.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Signposts for the Gospel: News from the Guild for the Month of Dorothy!

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:49:39 GMT

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Happy Dorothy-month! November is always a very special time of year for the Guild, since amid the close of the liturgical year, the beginning of Advent preparations, and the start of the winter holiday season for those of us in Northern Hemisphere, we also celebrate the anniversaries of Dorothy’s birth on November 8th and her death on November 29th. Thank you each for coming alongside us on this journey of faith as together, we work to make Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality more widely known and practiced in our Church and in our world.

News from the Guild:

We kicked off this special month a little early this year with our October 30th fall webinar on Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation. Many thanks to each of our panelists, our student host, Analucia Romero, our moderator, Kevin Ahern, and to all of our participants for their lively contributions to a great discussion. If you weren’t able to attend live, the recording of “Dreaming of a Church for the Poor: Dorothy Day and Dilexi Te” is now available on our YouTube channel.

During our conversation, Dr. Kelly Johnson referenced Sister Thea Bowman’s prophetic 1989 address to the USCCB on what it means to be a Black Catholic in the American Church. Last year, Dr. Kim Harris opened our 2024 fall webinar with the same haunting spiritual Sister Thea sang for the bishops. November is also Black Catholic History Month, so we encourage you to check out our video, “Dorothy Day and the Saintly Six” as well!

The following week, our Dorothy Day Guild board and advisory committee met at Manhattan University’s Dorothy Day Center. Our annual meeting is primarily an opportunity for us to take stock of the past year and organize ourselves for the events and projects of the months ahead, but this year, we also got to celebrate Dorothy’s 128th birthday with a cake and party! As we continue to plan and to anticipate the publication of Dorothy’s positio and the next stage of her cause for canonization, we look forward to sharing more ways you can work with us to bring her life and unique witness to the Gospel to your own communities.

We have a few major events coming up, but before that, we wanted to put one more small news item on your radar: our Guild chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, will be speaking with our friends from the Catholic Faith Network for their show CFN Live on Thursday, November 20th at 9:20 AM Eastern .

You can watch the live show on their website , or (for those in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas) on television at 9:00 AM and again at 7:00 PM Eastern. For a sneak peek at the upcoming segment, here’s a short clip of Cardinal Dolan sharing the canonization prayer that is printed on the back side of our Guild’s holy cards.

Upcoming events from the Guild and our friends:

We are currently in the thick of preparations for our first-ever Dorothy Day Guild event in Rome, “A Pilgrimage of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day,” and we are so excited to invite you to join us! This free symposium takes place on Wednesday, November 26th, from 3:30 to 7:00 PM Roman time (9:30 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern time) . Registration is open for both in-person and online participants using this link .

The full program, including the livestreaming links for both English and Italian, is now available on the Pontifical Gregorian University’s event page. We hope you will join us, and invite your friends! The symposium will feature two panels, on Dorothy’s spirituality and her social action, and concludes with remarks from Kate and Martha Hennessy on their grandmother’s enduring legacy and a reception for those joining in person.

We are so grateful to our speakers, our partners at the Gregorian, the Lay Center, Manhattan University’s Dorothy Day Center, and all of those who have worked so hard to put this international collaboration together in time for the forty-fifth anniversary of Dorothy’s death. The Gospel nonviolence, commitment to voluntary poverty, and generous hospitality to the poor that Dorothy taught us is as necessary today as it was in 1980 and 1933. Whether you are in Rome or will be joining us from home, you definitely do not want to miss this symposium!

We would also like to share an upcoming retreat opportunity from our friends Shelley and Jim Douglass of the Mary’s House Catholic Worker community in Birmingham, Alabama. Martha Hennessy will be leading an Advent retreat, entitled “Dorothy Day and the Nonviolent Gospel: A Discipline for Life in Our Time,” from Friday, December 5th to Saturday, December 6th at Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School (1832 Center Way S Birmingham, AL 35205). The Friday session takes place from 7:00-8:30 PM Central and Saturday’s program begins at 9:00 AM and lasts until 8:00 PM.

Of the retreat program, Shelley writes,

“In these times of upheaval, it's important to meet together to reflect on our lives an hour response to the issues we confront. How shall we live in these times? It's always an appropriate question, perhaps more so now as we expect the situation to become more challenging.

We've invited our friend Martha Hennessy to come for our Advent reflection time and share her wisdom and her questions with us. Martha is a member of the New York Catholic Worker Community… [and] is also a wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. She's an activist for peace and disarmament who has served time in prison for resistance to nuclear omnicide and other warmaking. And she's a granddaughter of Dorothy Day. She spent years studying and meditating on the life of her granny.

This Advent, Martha will lead us in reflection on the witness of Dorothy Day and her life lived in radical obedience to the Gospel. We will examine choices she made then and the choices we can make now to move toward lives of justice leading to peace.”

The Mary’s House community suggests a $60.00 donation for each retreat participant, which includes Saturday lunch and dinner. Shelley told us they still have a few openings for retreatants, and scholarships are available to help with or cover costs, so if you’re in the Birmingham area, we highly encourage you to attend! Learn more and register, visit the Mary’s House community website or reach out to Shelley directly at shelleymdouglass@gmail.com .

Reading and viewing recommendations:

Every year, this season brings a number of new, thoughtful reflections on Dorothy as an activist, an evangelist, and peacemaker, as well as writings from many who are encountering Dorothy for the first time. We’re very pleased to be able to share a few of these with you (doubtless with many more to come at the end of the month!) here in this missive.

First, for the All Saints and All Souls holidays, Robert Ellsberg shared a selection from the introduction to his new book , Blessed Among Us: Volume 2 , with America , speaking on Dorothy as an active participant in and interlocutor with the communion of saints during her own lifetime:

“Thus, among the stories of her favorite saints, Dorothy also appealed to a wider “cloud of witnesses,” including martyrs of the labor cause, peacemakers, prisoners of conscience, artists, philosophers and many who did not know Christ, yet would discover in the end that he was the hungry one, the homeless one or the stranger whom they fed, sheltered and welcomed. Of the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi, she went so far as to say: ‘There is no public figure who has more conformed his life to the life of Jesus Christ than Gandhi’ or ‘carried about him more consistently the aura of divinized humanity.’”

In his many years first as editor of The Catholic Worker and then as Dorothy’s editor, shepherding her letters, columns, and diary entries to publication, Robert has developed the same gift for recognizing holiness in the ordinary, the strange, and the marginal that Dorothy herself possessed. Acknowledging the limitations of the institutional Church’s processes for ‘official’ canonization, he writes,

“Nevertheless, I hope Catholics can recognize in many saintly stories figures whose holiness or witness was expressed not simply according to the all-too-stereotypical features of traditional hagiography, but in their wit, creativity and prophetic courage in circumventing obstacles; in claiming vocations and identities apart from those assigned by society or religious authorities; for doing what all saints do: demonstrating that a way of heroic discipleship is possible in all times, under all circumstances.

They share what Pope Francis called the true sign of the saints: they reject complacency; they go, like Jesus, to the margins and ‘fringes’; they exhibit boldness and passion. Above all, ‘they surprise us, they confound us, because by their lives they urge us to abandon a dull and dreary mediocrity.’”

We also loved this warm, funny interview, published on Dorothy’s birthday, with Jane Sammon, the longest-serving member of the New York Catholic Worker community . Jane met Dorothy in 1972, moved into the community, and never left. She was drawn to visit St. Joseph House after reading The Catholic Worker and witnessing community members’

“genuine love for the Catholic Church, their willingness to live in voluntary poverty and their readiness to risk jail opposing the Vietnam War.

‘This idea that your beliefs might have engendered an idea that would cause you to get arrested — and they were willing to do that," Sammon said. "That was it. And then when I got here, they also had some good fun.’”

While there are several lifelong Catholic Workers who knew Dorothy in parts of the United States as far-flung as Houston, TX, Los Angeles, CA, and Maloy, IA, Jane is the last remaining live-in member of the New York community who had the chance to work alongside Dorothy as a young adult.

Remembering her first meeting with Dorothy, Jane said, “‘Her voice … it was very disarming to me,”... [She] recalls that in her mid-20s, she expected the then-75-year-old Day to sound old or possibly crotchety, but she didn't.” Dorothy wrote about Jane in her final diary entry; the young Catholic Worker had brought Dorothy’s medicine up to her room in the days before Dorothy’s death

"The last thing she said to me was, 'and I really want to thank you,' " Sammon said. "And I said, 'OK, Dorothy.' " At the time, Sammon and Day had lived on the same floor of Maryhouse for several years. "She said it to be comforting, in a way," Sammon said.

Our thanks to Fiona Murphy for this article, and to Jane for fifty-three years of embodying Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality to the poor of New York!

Also on Dorothy’s birthday, Fr. John Dear published an interview with singer and activist Joan Baez, who met Dorothy during the United Farm Workers protests in 1973. Dorothy knew of and admired Joan as a musician as well as an activist, writing in her January column that year ,

“Joan Baez, who sang at two of my meetings on the West Coast last winter, went to Hanoi and miraculously lived thru those bombings last month. She and a few others, acting as postmen for the prisoners of war, brought and returned with letters. Yes, the world will be saved by such beauty, such courage! She stood on a balcony in Hanoi and sang to the people in the midst of this inhuman war. How could she keep that heavenly voice of hers from trembling with the fear she confessed to enduring all thru her visit? She has suffered imprisonment (and her mother, too) in protesting this longest war in U.S. history. I hope you have all seen those pictures of her accompanying the children in Birmingham, Alabama, as they faced up to, marched against, police dogs and men lined up some years ago against demonstrating women and children of the South in a racial and class war which goes on still, and is even more prevalent in the North.”

In the interview with Fr. John, Joan said,

“I have brief memories of Dorothy. In the early 1970s, we were with the farmworkers in Southern California, and she was about to get arrested. And I remember her just sitting there with a very peaceful look on her face in a chair while everyone else was bustling around. I didn’t get arrested with her and it would have been nice to have been. But I just remember that elderly calm that some of us have. I almost have it sometimes.”

You can read this interview at Waging Nonviolence , or listen to it as a podcast from The Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus.

Earlier this month, Word on Fire Institute conducted an online seminar on evangelization, the second day of which featured Dorothy and Peter Maurin as exemplars of living out the Catholic social tradition. You can read an introductory interview with the presenter, Dr. Joshua Bitting, here . In this interview, Bitting notes that

“Both Day and Maurin shared a deep love for Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist and in the poor. For them, as for many saints up and down the centuries, it was unthinkable to separate the Christ whom they receive bodily in the Eucharist from the Christ whom they encountered in the poor. It is precisely because of their great devotion to the Mass––both were daily communicants––that they were compelled to see Christ in each and every person they encountered.”

We’re excited to see so much interest in both the founders of the Catholic Worker movement from a well-known Catholic media company like Word on Fire; as the Guild for the cause of her canonization, we also feel strongly that Dorothy’s entire witness to the Gospel must be presented in its fullness if we are to share her legacy with integrity. This legacy includes not only her charity to the poor, but also her structural critique of the systems of militarization and imperialism which create so much suffering, her pacifism, and her challenging practices of protest and voluntary poverty, all of which were fueled by her love for Christ in the Eucharist. While the seminar is only accessible to Word on Fire members, the Institute is offering a free trial period– if you sign up, let us know what you think!

Also interesting this month is a brief introduction to Dorothy’s life and her significance for the Church today by the Spanish-language Chilean publication Reflexión y Liberación , originally founded by Jesuit priest and human rights activist Father José Aldunate and lawyer Rafael Agustín Gumucio Vives, both strong voices of opposition to the violent Pinochet dictatorship. Reflexión y Liberación has continued to publish global news and analysis focused on social justice through the lens of liberation theology and the social teachings of the Catholic Church for over thirty five years, so it’s truly an honor to see a piece on Dorothy on the front page of their journal! You can read “Dorothy Day, vive en los pobres de USA” here.

We also have several recordings and videos to share with you this month, including a fun surprise shoutout from New York City’s new mayor!

On November 3rd, the night before New York’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani released the fifth video of his “Until It’s Done” series , speaking on the legacy of Vito Marcantonio, a member of Congress who represented East Harlem during some of the hardest years of the Great Depression. Mamdani references Dorothy’s September 1954 obituary for Marcantonio , saying “In the words of the great Dorothy Day, ‘the poor of East Harlem felt that Vito loved them and was interested in them.’”

Mayor-elect Mamdani will be sworn into office January 1st, 2026, on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We pray that as mayor, he lives up to his campaign promises to care for the needs of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents!

We’re also very pleased to share a recording from Martha Hennessy’s recent visit to Villanova University, where she participated in a fireside chat with Janine Dunlap Kiah, the director for public service and pro bono initiatives at Villanova’s law school. This event, “Her Legacy Continues: Dorothy Day, Martha Hennessy, and the Impact of Radical Hospitality,” celebrated Dorothy’s legacy and explored how Dorothy’s life among the poor and her total commitment to pacifist action continue to bear fruit in today’s world.

We particularly appreciated Martha’s explanation of how we might understand Dorothy as a radical Christian anarchist. “First and foremost, she was a pacifist,” Martha said, “and it’s very important to keep that in mind, because the definition of anarchism can be misconstrued” Martha then turns to the words of St. Augustine, who states as a principle for Christian action “Love God and do what you will,” by which Martha notes that “We do have free will and primacy of conscience to apply ourselves to the works of God.” Dorothy’s radical Christian anarchism meant freedom to act for the common good. To this axiom from St. Augustine, Martha adds a quote from Ammon Hennacy,

“an illustrious figure in the movement; ‘One-man revolution, he was called.’ And Ammon said you don’t need laws to be good, you don’t need cops to tell you to be good; you just have to understand what the human needs are and meet them. And people would be able to function more independently and honestly in a society that values that.”

Janine and Martha’s entire conversation is nuanced and thoughtful, and is framed around a series of photographs of Dorothy as a mother, grandmother, antiwar and labor justice activist, and partner in ecumenical dialogue, as well as photographs from Martha’s own work for peace and nuclear disarmament in the United States and abroad. The whole conversation and slide presentation is well-worth your time as we contemplate Dorothy as a living signpost to the Gospel and the future of her cause for canonization.

Finally, the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative has recently concluded their annual fall webinar series, this year entitled “The World Will Be Saved By Beauty: Nonviolence and the Transformative Power of the Arts.” The series includes conversations with filmmakers, actors, dancers, choreographers, playwrights, musicians, visual artists, and poets whose work is informed by a belief in creative work as an agent of nonviolent social change and who offer their artistic labor in the service of this vision. A recording and study guide for each of the six sessions is available on the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative website, and the “Theater” selection includes panelist Lisa Wagner-Carollo, speaking about her work with Stillpoint Theatre Collective and her play, “Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day.”

A few words from Dorothy:

As the liturgical year winds to a close, and we begin to look towards Advent and the coming of the Light of Christ, we would like to share a selection from Dorothy’s December 1935 essay, “Liturgy and Sociology.” Here, she writes,

“The age of individualism, laissez-faire industrialism and self-seeking capitalism is dead and gone. Embers of the charred structure built up by the Protestant Revolution remain but it is nevertheless as dead as a doornail. Men are beginning to realize that they are not individuals but persons in society, that man alone is weak and adrift, that he must seek strength in common action.

The Mystical Body of Christ is a union—a unit—and action within the Body is common action. In the Liturgy we have the means to teach Catholics, thrown apart by Individualism into snobbery, apathy, prejudice, blind unreason, that they ARE members of one body and that “an injury to one is an injury to all,”...

The Liturgy, then, is common worship, concorporate worship, worship in one mind and with one heart, and with one mouth. Our common action in the Sacrifice of the Mass, impersonal, anti-individualistic is the best weapon against the world.

‘Pius X tells us that the liturgy is the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit.

Pius XI tells us that the true Christian spirit is indispensable for social regeneration.

Hence the conclusion: The Liturgy is the indispensable basis of Christian social regeneration.’”

Every three years, our Church begins a new liturgical cycle, opening the first Sunday of Advent with Isaiah’s proclamation that the people “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” We will hear these words afresh when Advent begins this year on November 30th. We are renewed and strengthened through the words of the biblical prophets who point us towards Christ, year after year.

Dorothy published these words on the liturgy and our participation in the Mystical Body of Christ on the first Sunday of Advent ninety years ago, but we likewise must hear them again with fresh ears. The Eucharist makes us members of one body. When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we are made one with the child sheltering in Holy Family Church in Gaza, the elderly homeless woman keeping warm in the public library in South Bend, and the young father locked away in ICE detention.

We are all members and potential members of the Mystical Body of Christ, who is constantly renewing His Body through the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Our prayer for each of you as we look towards Advent is that you are strengthened by these words from the prophets of scripture and the prophets of our time and are refreshed and renewed to participate in this great work of building a new society in the shell of the old.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy and the Little Way: October 2025 Dorothy Day Guild Missive

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:05:47 GMT

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Hello! We hope that this missive finds you all well, and hopefully wherever you are, enjoying the same beautiful weather we’ve been experiencing in South Bend. Our Catholic Worker community is starting to look towards colder weather and anticipate the upcoming needs of our unhoused guests and neighbors for warm clothing, tents, and sleeping bags, but we have still managed to squeeze in a tiny bit more warm-weather fun: camping, picnics, and making Dorothy and Catholic Worker-themed art as a fundraiser at a neighborhood fall festival!

Living in community with so many creative people is a gift, one which Dorothy also enjoyed in her many years at the Catholic Worker, where she worked closely with artists like Ade Bethune, Fritz Eichenberg, and Rita Corbin, as well as lesser-known painters and muralists like Mary Lathrop. Those artistic traditions continue into the present, and Dorothy is continuing to inspire new creative work today– we just saw this incredible chalk portrait of Dorothy from a different local arts festival with the following quotation from her June 1946 column :

“What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute — the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words — we can, to a certain extent, change the world. We can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.”

Dorothy Day Guild News:

Before we share more about what we’ve been up to recently, we wanted to remind you that membership in the Dorothy Day Guild is now dues-free. Last month, our Guild chair Dr. Kevin Ahern shared the following note:

Dear Friends,

Thank you for supporting our cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization. The Dorothy Day Guild is excited to announce that membership is now dues-free. As subscribers to our missive and supporters of Dorothy’s cause, we are happy to welcome you as members!

Membership in the Guild is a simple, direct way for us to acknowledge the significance of Dorothy Day’s life and to get involved in her cause for sainthood. We invite you to pray for miracles garnered through Dorothy, to financially support our cause to the extent that you are able, to learn more about her life, and to share her Gospel witness in the world through words and social actions.

To opt out of membership and stop receiving our monthly newsletter, please use the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of this email or message us at ddg@archny.org.

To learn more about what it means to be a member of our Guild, check out our membership page on the website.

In gratitude for all the support,

Kevin Ahern,

Chair of the Guild

Thank you all for being members of the Guild and for being part of this cause! We are so excited to continue sharing news and updates with you and finding more ways in which we can all work together to share Dorothy’s life and legacy with our communities and our world.

Last month, a number of Guild members gathered at St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York to celebrate Mass and witness the dedication of the new mural by Adam Cvijanovic, which covers the narthex and visually connects the nineteenth-century Irish immigrants who were the cathedral’s first parishioners to their spiritual descendants, contemporary migrants and refugees depicted carrying their children on their backs and their possessions in plastic shopping bags. In the company of the newly-arrived migrants, the mural features holy figures such as St. Mother Cabrini, the great champion of the city’s immigrant poor, and Venerable Félix Varela y Morales, a Cuban-born priest and abolitionist who accompanied migrants and who was himself forced to flee to New York as a refugee after receiving a death sentence from the Spanish crown for his radical political activity. In another panel, Dorothy is depicted alongside other Catholic exemplars of New York, including St. Kateri Tekakwitha and Venerable Pierre Toussaint. In an article for the Catholic Worker website, “New Mural in NYC’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral Features Dorothy Day and the Stories of Immigrants,” our Guild chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern wrote that,

“The images in the murals have the potential to offer a prophetic message that contrasts with the golden letters on the nearby Trump tower and the ICE raids happening in other parts of the city. Like an inscription on the inside of the Old St. Patrick’s that denounce nativism, these images are a counterpoint to the soul sickness of America first nationalism…

Art and beauty, as Dorothy herself knew, has the power to transform and communicate the Gospel. The images of these women and men around the doors of St. Patrick’s means that they are not only present to those entering and leaving the church, but that they can be seen by anyone standing at the Altar. I pray then that they will remind all those who celebrate in this place about the social demands of holiness, and in particular, the Gospel call to show hospitality to migrants and to work to end the violence of racism and xenophobic nationalism that so deeply wounds the country and the church today.”

The luminous, Byzantine and Art Deco-influenced visuals and the theological content of the mural have been profiled in a number of news outlets, including Anabaptist World and The Guardian . To Guardian reporter Barry Yourgrau, Cvijanovic explained the purpose of his deliberately representational style for an American context:

“‘Europeans have hundreds of years of incredible ecclesiastical art,’ he said. ‘They don’t need to do it that way any more. But we do.’ The European sort of ‘anchor sanctuary art-faith places’ don’t commonly exist in the US. So when thinking about making imagery for one of the country’s most important churches, Cvijanovic wanted the mural to be ‘foundational’.

‘From a European perspective, the painting is completely retrograde,’ he says. ‘But from an American perspective, it’s needed to form a basis for other things to come out of.’

If you’re in New York, be sure to check out the mural, and send us a picture with Dorothy and the rest of this great cloud of witnesses; we love hearing from you!

We were also very happy to partner with the Dorothy Day Canonization Prayer network last month to co-sponsor the webinar “Dorothy Day: Benedictine Oblate and Candidate for Canonization,” the recording of which is now available on our YouTube channel. This panel featured several members of our Guild leadership as speakers and included a special interview with our postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman. If you are interested in learning more about how the canonization process works, especially regarding the role of miracles, or you have been a supporter of Dorothy’s cause for a long time now and are wondering exactly where we are in the process, we encourage you to check out this panel!

In the final section of the webinar, David Mueller, who leads the Canonization Prayer Network, mentioned that the prayer network has a number of open spaces on their calendar . The Prayer network is looking for “groups, organizations and religious communities to join our prayer calendar to pray for those who are asking for Dorothy's intercession for a special favor or grace” on a monthly basis. There are still open spots for the month of October, so if your family, class, parish group, or Catholic Worker community wants to sign up, please reach out to the Prayer Network! If you or someone you know is in need of intercessory prayer, you can submit a request to the Dorothy Day Canonization Prayer Network using their website , and members will remember you and your intention daily.

In the next two months, we have a number of Guild projects and activities underway. The annual meeting of our Dorothy Day Guild Board of Directors and Advisory Committee members will take place on Dorothy’s birthday, November 8th, at Manhattan University. The following week, on November 11th, the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, we will be co-sponsoring the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner for our bishops at their November USCCB meeting in Baltimore. Please pray for the success of both of these undertakings. We especially ask for your prayers that in the coming year, the Dorothy Day Guild can continue to promote Dorothy’s legacy of hospitality, voluntary poverty, and Gospel nonviolence in our Church and in our world, and help others to incorporate these values into their own lives and work. Keep reading to find out more about how you can be involved!

Upcoming Dorothy Day Guild events:

Our walking pilgrimages are wrapping up for the season as we anticipate colder weather in New York, but we have two upcoming events we hope you can join us for in October and November! Some of you may have seen that Pope Leo released his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te , earlier this month on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4th. The subject of the Holy Father’s first exhortation is love for the poor– no doubt Dorothy would have been as thrilled to read this as we were!

In the exhortation, Pope Leo writes,

“We must also recognize that, throughout centuries of Christian history, helping the poor and advocating for their rights has not only involved individuals, families, institutions, or religious communities. There have been, and still are, various popular movements made up of lay people and led by popular leaders, who have often been viewed with suspicion and even persecuted. I am referring to “all those persons who journey, not as individuals, but as a closely-bound community of all and for all, one that refuses to leave the poor and vulnerable behind... Solidarity ‘also means fighting against the structural causes of poverty and inequality; of the lack of work, land and housing; and of the denial of social and labor rights. It means confronting the destructive effects of the empire of money… Solidarity, understood in its deepest sense, is a way of making history, and this is what the popular movements are doing.’”

Last week, in his “Analysis: Pope Leo’s theological vision of a church for the poor in Dilexi Te,” for America , Kevin Ahern writes,

“Chapter 3 concludes with a section on popular movements, a category that describes groups of indigenous peoples, landless farmers, unskilled workers, those with disabilities and oppressed minorities. Quoting extensively from Pope Francis’ addresses to these groups, “Dilexi Te” praises their organizing work in “fighting against the structural causes of poverty and inequality … [and] confronting the destructive effects of the empire of money” (No. 81). This attention to grassroots organizing represents an important affirmation that the church’s option for the poor extends beyond acts of charity to solidarity with movements working for systemic transformation.”

Elsewhere in the text, Pope Leo states,

“All this entails one aspect of the option for the poor that we must constantly keep in mind, namely that it demands of us an attitude of attentiveness to others… ‘Only on the basis of this real and sincere closeness can we properly accompany the poor on their path of liberation.’ For this reason, I express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who have chosen to live among the poor, not merely to pay them an occasional visit but to live with them as they do. Such a decision should be deemed one of the highest forms of evangelical life.”

Although she is not mentioned directly, many of us thought instantly of Dorothy and the Catholic Worker upon reading these selections! We know that many of you have been looking forward to reading this exhortation, so we decided to organize a webinar for the end of this month. Please join us on Thursday, October 30th at 7:00 PM Eastern for “Dreaming of a Church for the Poor: Dorothy Day and Dilexi Te.”

Our conversation will be moderated by Kevin Ahern and will feature panelists Dr. Kelly Johnson, a former Catholic Worker and professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, Dawn McCarty, of the Houston Catholic Worker, and Fr. Michael Thomas, a Holy Cross priest and doctoral candidate at Stanford University who has worked extensively with the Catholic Peace Fellowship.

We are really excited to host this webinar on Pope Leo’s first official papal document and look forward to hearing from our panelists, and from you! To join us on October 30th, please register here .

In addition, we hope that some of you will join us in Rome for “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day” on Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 from 15:30-19:00 local time (9:30 AM-1:00 PM Eastern) at Gregorian University, Palazzo Frascara, Piazza della Pilotta 4, 00187 Roma. Click here to view the preliminary schedule for the day. We are so excited to partner with Pontifical Gregorian University, University of Notre Dame Rome, the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University, and the Lay Center to present this free symposium– our first official Guild event in Rome! All of the presentations and discussions are open to the public and will be offered in English with translation provided in Italian, so if you or someone you know is studying in Rome or planning to visit next month, please share this invitation! We also plan to welcome participants from around the world to join the symposium by livestream– we’ll share more information and a registration link from the Gregorian very soon, so stay tuned!

Events from our friends:

As a reminder, the St. Bakhita Catholic Worker community in Milwaukee, WI is starting their seven-session Wednesday night study, “Dorothy Day: Patron Saint of Both/And” on Wednesday, October 15th, at 6:00 PM. Over the course of the seven sessions, participants will watch Claudia Larson’s documentary Dorothy Day: Don’t Call Me a Saint , read and discuss William Miller’s two books on Dorothy, attend a retreat at the Catholic Worker house, and visit the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University. If you’re in the Milwaukee area and are interested in participating, contact Anne Haines at anne@bakhitahouse.org with your full name, email address, and phone number to register for the study group.

For those in the greater Chicago area, St. Joan of Arc parish in Lisle, IL is hosting a free production of Lisa Wagner-Carollo’s Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day on Wednesday, October 29th at 7:00 PM. The Guild co-sponsored a production of this one-woman play back in April– Lisa puts on a fantastic show, and we highly encourage you to attend! St. Joan of Arc is located at 820 Division Street, Lisle, Illinois 60532 .

In Vermont, we recently learned of a new discernment group that has just formed at Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Williston. Deacon Josh McDonald and his wife were participants at the Dorothy Day Retreat at Pyramid Life Center this summer, where they met Fred Boehrer and Martha Hennessy. The McDonalds were inspired to think about what it might look like to open a Catholic Worker house in northern Vermont and have invited others to discern with them. If you are interested in learning more about Dorothy and the Worker, praying about, and discussing the possibility of starting a Catholic Worker community, the group is meeting every Tuesday evening at six pm in the parish hall at Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church, 7415 Williston Road, Williston VT. To learn more, reach out to Deacon Josh at jmcdonald@vermontcatholic.org .

Articles, Reading, and Listening Recommendations:

At the beginning of October, Catholic Workers from across the United States came together in San Antonio, TX for the first National Gathering hosted by the San Antonio Catholic Worker community. Martha Hennessy gave the morning keynote address on Friday, October 3rd, and the following day, speaking on “three principles that have inspired the [Catholic Worker] movement and her own work in it: works of mercy, a critique of the ‘putrid industrial capitalist system,’ as Dorothy called it, and her Catholic faith.” Later that evening, participants in the gathering held a peace vigil at Fort Sam Houston. Read the initial report on the gathering in Roundtable , and stay tuned for more reports and talks from the weekend in upcoming issues!

Also from Roundtable , we are extremely proud to share an article by Graceann Beckett, our 2024 Dorothy Day Guild Graduate Research Fellow, who first presented a version of “Three Ways to Remember Dorothy Day as a Model of Egalitarian Sainthood” at our March Dorothy Day Symposium at Manhattan University. Using a “companionship model” of sainthood, “in which we understand the communion of saints to be instead a ‘company of friends of God and prophets,’ ….[and] as fellow people of God who walk with us in our struggle for peace and justice, whose holiness is realized in their creative fidelity in the midst of day-to-day life,” Graceann offers several practices through which we can recall and remember with Dorothy to deepen our participation in this living community of God’s people. Noting in particular Dorothy’s “commitment to justice and equality, her cultivation of community and mutuality in the name of a relational God, her persistent faithfulness, and the way in which she exemplified creative fidelity in her day-to-day life,” Graceann recognizes her as an especially

“strong and steadfast companion of the laity, surely a friend of God and prophet, a saint for our times. In her, the laity can find a persistent traveling partner, a fine model who encourages contemporary disciples to respond to the Spirit’s call to holiness.”

Thanks, Graceann, for this excellent paper, and to Renée and Jerry over at Roundtable for making it more widely available to our readers!

Over at America , James Keane recently published a profile, “Jesuit James Vizzard, the larger-than-life ‘labor priest,’” detailing Vizzard’s career as an advocate for migrant workers and a fierce critic of the bracero program. Like Dorothy, Fr. Vizzard had a deep respect for and worked closely with Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers. Their similarities did not end there; Keane writes,

“Like Dorothy Day, Father Vizzard had the occasional habit of refusing to mince his words. In 1966, while director of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, he wrote in a Catholic paper: ‘Since these growers seem incapable of self-reform, they need to be told emphatically and with finality by outraged citizens and their legislators that the approximation of slave-labor conditions which they have perpetuated will no longer be tolerated in this nation.’”

We encourage you to read the whole article! Labor Day has passed in the United States, but as Dorothy would remind us, every day is a good day to support organized labor and justice for working people.

Last month also marked the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’ apostolic visit to the United States, where he addressed Congress and named Dorothy as one of four “great Americans,” who embodied the best values of the United States in their own lifetimes. After his speech for the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, Pope Francis spent the rest of the afternoon with the staff, volunteers, and clients of Catholic Charities in downtown Washington, DC. The Catholic Standard newspaper has published a four-part retrospective on Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit, the final part of which is available here .

National Catholic Register published a short reflection from Larry Chapp on the true meaning of charity as Dorothy understood it– not as a virtue in opposition to justice, but as something “kenotic and cruciform wherein an encounter with a real face and a real name lays a claim upon us.”

Finally, for our listening recommendation, we really enjoyed the October 3rd episode of Glad You Asked , “Does the church support civil disobedience?”

In this podcast, US Catholic editors Emily Sanna and Rebecca Bratten Weiss interview Jack Downey, a professor of religion and classics at the University of Rochester, who is also the author of The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross , a study of the contemplative retreat movement which influenced Dorothy after her conversion to Catholicism .

The episode opens with a brief anecdote about Sister Pat Murphy, who died over the summer at the age of ninety six. Sister Pat joined the Sisters of Mercy directly out of high school in 1947 and co-founded Su Casa Catholic Worker House in Chicago. She was a tireless advocate for immigrant survivors of torture and was arrested six times (the last at the age of ninety) at protests for the just treatment of migrants and refugees. During this conversation, Downey, Bratten Weiss, and Sanna ask what civil disobedience really means and where it fits into the lay and magisterial traditions of the Catholic faith. Speaking on the civil defense drills, which took place in New York City during the Cold War, and which Dorothy and other Catholic Workers staged sit-ins in the park to protest, Downey remarks,

“The thing that was interesting to me about that choice was that essentially, these were, in their minds, kind of scare tactics that were being used by the government to give the illusion of safety by conscripting civilians into accepting war as a norm. So in some way, shape, or form, it seemed to be counter-intuitive… but the logic of the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day as the spokesperson for that noncompliance was that even attending to the practice for bombing was in some way shape or form an accommodation to the reality of war that they found to be morally unjust.”

Later in the episode, they go on to discuss “more active” forms of civil disobedience, such as the draft board raids during the Vietnam War, actions undertaken by members of the Plowshares movement, and the deliberately liturgical orientation of these protests. Downey understands civil disobedience in the Catholic tradition to be “a capacious term,” which encompasses a far greater range of practices and goals than can be easily mapped onto the liberal/conservative axis of secular American political discourse. We highly encourage you to listen to the whole discussion!

Prayer requests:

In the Church, October is the month dedicated to the rosary, and the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary took place last week on October 7th. Pope Leo has asked all the faithful to pray the rosary for peace each day in October, “personally, with your families, and in your communities.” Many of you have enthusiastically taken up this charge– thank you for undertaking this important spiritual work of mercy on behalf of all those who are living in conflict zones, especially for the people of Gaza.

Pope Leo has continued Pope Francis’ practice of speaking regularly with Fr Gabriel Romanelli , the pastor of Holy Family Church, which is the only Roman Catholic parish in Gaza. The Holy Father has continued to assure the parish community of Holy Family of his prayers and closeness to them. Over 450 residents of Gaza, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, have taken shelter in the Holy Family parish compound, where they remain hopeful that the current cease-fire will hold in spite of their present difficult conditions.

Last month, we received a note from friends at Holy Cross Family Ministries, an organization founded by Venerable Patrick Peyton with a goal of building family unity through prayer. To support Pope Leo’s call for a daily rosary for peace and the unity of our global family, HCFM has invited members of the Dorothy Day Guild to participate in a Global Rosary for Peace on Wednesday, October 22nd, at 10:00 AM Eastern/4:00 PM Rome. We hope that you will be able to join our friends at Holy Cross Family Ministries and the Patrick Peyton Guild for this moment of intercessory prayer later this month!

We wrote to you last week about Pat Jordan , a dear friend of the Guild and of Dorothy’s, who died on October 2nd. Pat’s funeral Mass will be celebrated at Maryhouse at 11:00 AM on Saturday, October 18th. Last week, his former colleagues at Commonweal published an obituary which remembers his time at the Catholic Worker and his incisive journalism, a talent he shared with Dorothy. As his loved ones prepare to commend him to Christ, please continue to pray for the repose of Pat’s soul and the comfort of his wife, Kathleen, their children and grandchildren, and his many friends and former community members.

We also recently learned of the death of Sister Ann McManamon , founder of Dorothy Day House, the Catholic Worker community in Youngstown, OH, on Monday, September 29th. Sister Ann, a member of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary for over fifty years, opened the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality in 2009 at the age of 76. Please join Sister Ann’s community and all those she served in thanking God for the gift of her life, and in asking that He grant her eternal rest.

Last month, we wrote to you on behalf of a woman in Illinois who is stuck in a difficult, underpaid employment situation. She has asked for our continued prayers through Dorothy’s intercession on her behalf, asking that God grant her “a swift, miraculous breakthrough to a stable, fair-paying vocation. All I need is a chance at a dignified job that restores my worth and grants me the financial independence and the spiritual freedom that this toxic environment has stolen.” Please continue to hold this young worker, A., who has asked to remain anonymous, in your prayers and ask that God help her meet her most pressing needs.

Thank you all for your continued prayers for Kenzie, the young mother in Indiana who has been struggling with cancer while awaiting the birth of her second child. To give both mother and infant the best possible chance of safety, Kenzie’s medical team recommended that her baby be delivered on Monday at 31 weeks. We are so grateful and relieved to report that both Kenzie and her new daughter made it through the birth and are so far doing well. In her lifetime, Dorothy prayed for many expectant mothers with complex pregnancies and difficult births; please continue asking Dorothy to add Kenzie to her prayers as well as your own while we await further news from this dear family.

We also received some happy news of graces and favors that a couple from Louisiana and a woman from Massachusetts all believe they received through Dorothy. From Massachusetts, R. wrote to us to say that in the days leading up to a surgery to repair a hernia in her abdomen, she learned that the way her stomach was twisted could lead to a medical emergency. Between May 21st and her July 1st surgery, she prayed novenas, asking Dorothy to intercede for her so that she would not face surgical complications– thanks be to God, this favor was granted, and her surgery was uncomplicated and successful! From Baton Rouge, E. wrote to us, saying,

“My wife and I have not been active parishioners until recently. After learning about Dorothy Day, her ministry really spoke to us and we became motivated to begin looking for a church home. During that time we moved into a new Parish, Sacred Heart of Jesus. To our amazement, Sacred Heart had just finished building a new community cafe called The Dorothy Day cafe. The cafe offers free coffee to the neighboring community and is the home of Vagabond Missions, a teen focused urban ministry. Since the cafe opened I have been volunteering regularly and the Holy Spirit has moved us to get involved in multiple ministries. I truly believe the spirit of Dorothy Day led us to our church.”

We wrote to you over the summer when the Dorothy Day Cafe opened at Sacred Heart– it is so wonderful to learn that this outreach ministry is already bearing such good fruit!

A few words from Dorothy:

In addition to the month’s dedication to the rosary, October also marks the feast days of two of Dorothy’s favorite saints: St. Thérèse of Lisieux on October 1st, and St. Teresa of Avila tomorrow, on October 15th. Dorothy knew of and admired Teresa of Avila prior to her conversion, and even named her daughter Tamar Teresa in her honor, but it took her longer to appreciate the significance of Thérèse of Lisieux and her Little Way.

E ventually, however, after many years of tending to her family and the constant needs of the growing Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy realized that the Little Way of love taught by St. Thérèse had a revolutionary force she had not initially realized, and which is accessible to all of us, especially the most ordinary and disenfranchised. In 1960, Dorothy published a biography of Thérèse and explained in the introduction why she felt it might be helpful to offer another account of a saint who was already so well known and beloved by her co-religionists:

“I still knew nothing of modern saints. Perhaps, I thought, the days of saints had passed. At that time I did not understand that we are all ‘called to be saints,’ as St. Paul puts it. Most people nowadays, if they were asked, would say diffidently that they do not profess to be saints, indeed they do not want to be saints. And yet the saint is the holy man, the ‘whole man’ the integrated man. We all wish to be that, but in these days of stress and strain we are not developing our spiritual capacities as we should and most of us will admit that. We want to grow in love but we do not know how. Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it…

My purpose in writing the book in the first place was to reach some of the 65,000 subscribers to The Catholic Worker, many of whom are not Catholic and not even ‘believers,’ to introduce them to a saint of our day. Many of them are familiar only with a St. Francis of Assisi or a St. Joan of Arc. Also I wrote to overcome the sense of futility in Catholics, men, women, and youths, married and single, who feel hopeless and useless, less than the dust, ineffectual, wasted, powerless. On the one hand Therese was ‘the little grain of sand,’ and on the other, ‘her name was written in heaven”; she was beloved by her heavenly Father, she was the bride of Christ, she was little less than the angels. And so are we all.”

Dorothy wrote these lines at the height of the Cold War, during the years when she and other Catholic Workers were in and out of jail protesting the normalization of nuclear attack during the 1955-1962 civil defense drills. The United States was enjoying a time of great prosperity for some, but this wealth did not reach the hundreds of men and women who waited in the early mornings for the soup line at the Chrystie Street and Spring Street houses of hospitality. It was a time much like our own, when it was easy to give in to the sense of futility and hopelessness and believe that nothing could be done to remedy such great injustices. By then, Dorothy had seen the transformative power of the Little Way. In the final pages of Thérèse , Dorothy wrote that the seeds of the Little Flower’s path of spiritual childhood were then

“being spread, being broadcast, to be watered by our blood perhaps, but with a promise of harvest. God will give the increase. At a time when there are such grave fears because of the radioactive particles that are sprinkled over the world by the hydrogen bomb tests, and the question is asked, what effect they are going to have on the physical life of the universe, one can state that this saint, of this day, is releasing a force, a spiritual force upon the world to counteract that fear and that disaster. We know that one impulse of grace is of infinitely more power than a cobalt bomb. Thérèse has said, ‘All is grace.’”

Many of you are practicing the Little Way in your own families and communities every day, and you have seen the wisdom of its powerful simplicity. Dorothy’s interpretation of Thérèse’s Little Way is revolutionary because she recognized its social implications, and she wrote this small and ordinary biography of a small and ordinary saint to give us courage. What links these two holy women, Thérèse and Dorothy, is the idea that every task done with love increases the amount of love in the world, that tiny acts of love are transformative, and that in God’s economy, nothing goes to waste.

In Thérèse , Dorothy offers us an example of perseverance and a faith which embraces suffering and failure, knowing that the God of Love sees the pain of the world and will not abandon us to destruction. She also offers us the bracing truth that our lives, however small and ordinary, are filled with eternal purpose. Every act of solidarity, every protest or witness for peace, however foolish or futile it might seem, sends an echo of love out into the universe, an echo that God amplifies on its return. God, for both St. Thérèse and Dorothy, is deeply relational, working both within and through us. Nothing in creation fails to hold His interest, and nothing is left behind or forgotten. This month, we encourage you to pick up a copy of this little book on the Little Way, and in all our prayers and all our work, to keep planting those seeds of love which God has promised to increase in our world.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

In Memoriam: Patrick Jordan, Personalist and Friend of Dorothy Day

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 17:56:50 GMT

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

We are writing to share the sad news that our friend Patrick Jordan, former editor of The Catholic Worker , founding member of the Guild, and close friend of Dorothy’s, died last week on Thursday, October 2nd. Pat joined the Catholic Worker movement in 1968, and met his wife, Kathleen DeSutter Jordan, working together on the soupline soon afterwards.

Pat was a draft resister during the Vietnam War, and was eventually sentenced to serve community service hours at the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality– a piece of situational irony which no doubt delighted Dorothy and his fellow Workers. Here, in this 1973 photograph by Bob Fitch, Dorothy and Pat are seated in conversation at St. Joseph House, the current Catholic Worker house of hospitality on First Street.

Reflecting on his life at the Worker and friendship with Dorothy, Pat shared dozens of small, grace-inflected moments in the interviews, talks, and articles he offered over the years. “I remember once I was down at the front door of the Worker, working off my anxieties or something by cleaning. Sometimes we'd get loads of white shirts that nobody on the clothing line wanted because they'd get dirty so quickly,” he said in an oral history interview which was later published in Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her .

“So we had stores of white shirts, and I was just about to rip up this perfectly fine white shirt as a rag for cleaning Dorothy stopped me. She said, ‘You can't do that with that perfectly good shirt. Everything is sacramental.’ It stopped me short. That you really have to pay attention to everything.” (78)

Pat and Kathleen remained close to Dorothy after their marriage, particularly during the years when they lived next door to the Catholic Worker retreat cottage in the Spanish Camp beach community on Staten Island. Dorothy wrote frequently of their growing family, including their two children, Hannah and Justin, in her columns throughout the 1970s. In this photograph, taken by their friend Stanley Vishnewski, Dorothy is pictured with the Jordans’ daughter, Hannah, on Staten Island.

As Dorothy grew older and more physically frail, the Jordans helped care for her. In a 1988 interview with Rosalie Riegle, Kathleen remembered the time Dorothy shared with their family as a particular gift. “We were blessed to have the time with her out here on Staten Island,” Kathleen said. “With one baby and another on the way and spending day after day with this elderly woman on the beach. We miss her very much” (from Voices from the Catholic Worker , page 127).

Pat went on to become the managing editor of Commonweal , a role for which he was amply prepared by his years writing for and editing The Catholic Worker throughout the 1970s. Last year, in honor of Commonweal ’s centennial, Pat wrote about the enduring connection between these two lay journals and the unique contributions both papers have made to Catholic political, social, and theological discourse across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Pat later published two edited volumes of Dorothy’s writing, including Hold Nothing Back , and Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal , and is also the author of Dorothy Day: Love in Action .

In addition to his work writing for and editing for the popular press, Pat also contributed to academic journals, where his personal relationship with Dorothy and his extensive knowledge of her writing helped a new generation of scholars understand this unique figure in the history of the American Church. Writing on liturgical aesthetics for the Yale ISM Review in 2018, Pat noted that Dorothy:

“had a highly attuned aesthetic sense, one that included an appreciation of both physical and natural beauty. This sense extended to the arts and music, particularly to orchestral works and opera. In the liturgy, she appreciated the sung psalms of Joseph Gelineau and invited the composer Mary Lou Williams to present her jazz Mass at a Catholic Worker peace conference. She loved the 10:30 Puerto Rican Mass at her local parish, she wrote in 1979, the year before she died, because ‘the entire congregation sings so heartily.’ She was particularly appreciative that the Vatican Council had ‘broken down barriers between the clergy and the laity.’”

In the decades after Dorothy’s death, Pat continued to offer his gifts as a writer and editor to her cause for canonization. Together with Robert Ellsberg, Pat wrote the official biography of Dorothy which was included in the materials sent to Rome in 2021 at the close of the diocesan phase of her cause – “the jewel of [the cause’s] historical commission,” according to our vice-postulator, George Horton, a close friend of Pat’s. Remarking on the importance of Dorothy’s canonization cause for the global Church in 2016 , Pat said,

“The serious issues of the times themselves — refugees, poverty and inequality, racism, massive spending on wars and developing military technologies for future wars, capital punishment, torture, and prolonged incarcerations, etc. — are all issues on which Dorothy Day wrote forcefully and sought to ameliorate. That her canonization process has now reached this significant stage indicates Dorothy’s life will increasingly be given the recognition it deserves, first in the United States, then in Rome, and finally throughout the world.”

Pat served as a member of the Guild’s advisory board for many years, and gave frequent talks on Dorothy’s life and legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty.

At the Maryknoll Lay Missioners’ 2019 Dorothy Day Symposium , he shared a stage with his wife Kathleen, Robert Ellsberg, Kate Hennessy, and several others, and offered the following remarks:

“We have all met holiness in our lives. Over the years I've known and worked with a number of, if not saints, certainly saintly people, yet for me Dorothy stands in a league of her own. Not only was hers a singular holiness, but it was a radical holiness not only in terms of its mission and outreach, but in terms of its challenge to her times and place, and to ours.”

In recent years, Pat also assisted Dorothy’s canonization cause in other ways, attending events such as the commissioning of the Dorothy Day Staten Island ferry in 2022 , where he greeted the ferry at St. George Terminal with Kathleen and other supporters.

George Horton remembers Pat not only as a gifted writer, activist, and visionary–one of the original driving forces who first recognized Dorothy as a saint among us–but also as a friend. George noted that in conversation, Pat “always affirmed. Time with him was always fruitful. He was incredibly smart. But you always felt that something was coming to fruition.” Even in moments of disagreement over the years, George said, “I never felt the loss of his love…. He could keep his integrity while loving you. When I think of Pat, I think of living personalism. He embodied it, both he and Kathleen. He embodied personalism.”

George also spoke of Pat as a man of deep faith. “I remember standing next to him at Mass at the cathedral; I felt the depth of his prayer, the prayer of the mass. It affected me,” said George. “I loved standing next to him.” He continued,

“On a visit up to our house, he read “Ode to the Watermelon” [by Pablo Neruda] with such joy and embodiment. When I think of Pat, I think of that divine moment in the cathedral, and his humanity as he read that Neruda poem.”

That sense of the sacramental nature of our lives, the points at which the material world becomes a site of divine activity, is what Pat himself noticed in Dorothy as a young volunteer at St. Joseph’s House. Looking back on the Staten Island beach years later, Pat reflected,

“I got my life through Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. Got my life. We so very often think about her. Our son Justin just loves to go down and fish and catch eels. I think of Dorothy telling us about being right out in back of our cottage with her brother John in a boat full of eels and it tipping over. And she writes in The Long Loneliness about the fellow who did the beach combing right below where we live…. She taught me how to see the beauty in this beach, and in everything. All these gifts . . . well, obviously the gift of our own family. We came from different parts of the country and happened to meet at the Catholic Worker. And now we happen to know these children [Hannah and Justin]. It's thanks to Dorothy and the Catholic Worker that any of these good things happened in our lives” (from Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her , page 127-128).

Deo gratias , for the good gift of Pat’s life! We pray that God grant him eternal rest, and ask through Dorothy’s intercession that God would bring comfort to Kathleen, Hannah, Justin, and the many friends Pat leaves behind. A funeral mass for Pat will be celebrated at 11:00 AM on Saturday, October 18th , at Maryhouse (55 East 3rd Street, New York, New York 10003).

Yours sincerely,

The Dorothy Day Guild

Peace, Art, and Philosophy of Work: September with the Dorothy Day Guild

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:57:27 GMT

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Hello! We hope that as always, this missive finds each of you well in these final days of summer. After a slightly slower-paced August, the Guild is now gearing up for an exciting autumn season as we approach the 45th anniversary of Dorothy’s death this November 29th, the day that we hope will very soon be celebrated as her feast day.

In anticipation of this milestone anniversary, we are very pleased to announce that we are moving forward with a new, completely free membership structure for the Guild! Our Dorothy Day Guild Chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, included the following note for each of you here in our September missive:

Dear Friends,

Thank you for supporting our cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization. The Dorothy Day Guild is excited to announce that membership is now dues-free. As subscribers to our missive and supporters of Dorothy’s cause, we are happy to welcome you as members!

Membership in the Guild is a simple, direct way for us to acknowledge the significance of Dorothy Day’s life and to get involved in her cause for sainthood. We invite you to pray for miracles garnered through Dorothy, to financially support our cause to the extent that you are able, to learn more about her life, and to share her Gospel witness in the world through words and social actions.

To opt out of membership and stop receiving our monthly newsletter, please use the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of this email or message us at ddg@archny.org.

To learn more about what it means to be a member of our Guild, check out our membership page on the website.

In gratitude for all the support,

Kevin Ahern,

Chair of the Guild

We recognize that even if you never filled out a membership form or have been in a position to make regular financial contributions to the work of the Guild, Dorothy’s cause for canonization is close to each of your hearts. We are so grateful for your ongoing support and are very excited to offer universal, free membership to the Dorothy Day Guild for all of our subscribers from this point forward.

We’re excited to share some other news items and updates, and we have some great fall programs planned for the coming weeks, so keep reading to find out how you can continue being part of Dorothy’s canonization cause as members of the Guild!

Guild News and Updates:

Several members of the Guild’s board of directors had the opportunity to represent Dorothy’s cause for canonization at two events on the East Coast earlier this month. At the 2025 Labor Day Parade on September 6th, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees brought out their Dorothy Day Ferry float, and a few of our friends were able to snag a quick picture!

The NYC Parade, organized by the New York City Central Labor Council AFL-CIO is the oldest Labor Day parade in the country, with tens of thousands of working people participating. With Dorothy, we give thanks for all of those who labor and those who have given their time, their talent, and in some cases their very lives to help workers organize for just wages, safe conditions, and for the recognition of their inherent dignity as co-creators with God .

We also were honored to receive an invitation to participate in the “Saints on Their Way Village” on September 14th, 2025 at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland, alongside representatives from nearly two dozen other Guilds for American sainthood causes like ours. This event marked the fiftieth anniversary of the canonization of St. Elizabeth Seton, the first officially-recognized saint to be born in the United States. The event organizers from the St. Elizabeth Seton shrine saw the canonization anniversary as a chance to promote the many ways of living out the universal call to holiness in a distinctively American context.

Our national community and global church needs these exemplars, now more than ever, and we were so grateful that the folks at the St. Elizabeth Seton Shrine reached out to the Guild with this invitation. As our board member Carolyn Zablotny told a reporter from Catholic News Agency , “[Dorothy’s] a radical alternative to militarism, racism, and the selfishness that we’re all suffering from. I think she’s a real model for a different kind of holiness.”

Upcoming Events:

You may have seen that we sent out a quick events blast last week, but in case you missed it, we have several in-person and virtual events coming up , including one this weekend!

First, this Sunday, September 21st , St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan is dedicating a brand-new, 12-panel mural that features Dorothy alongside other holy figures from New York’s past and present. The Guild will be hosting an informal “Meet-up at the Mural” for any of our members who would like to attend the Mass and dedication together.

“What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding,” by artist Adam Cvijanovic, recognizes the past and present immigrants of New York City as well as holy men and women such as Servant of God Dorothy Day, St. Frances Cabrini and Venerable Pierre de Toussaint, who cared for the immigrant poor of New York. Cvijanovic’s also featured St. Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin and Mohawk Catholic who was born in Central New York in 1656 and who was canonized in 2012, as part of the great crowd of witnesses pictured in the mural to remind the faithful that “you’ve got to represent the people who were here [prior to the arrival of European immigrants] because the land wasn’t empty.”

His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan will preside at the 10:15 Mass and the dedication on Sunday morning.

There is no fee or registration needed for the Mass-- feel free to just show up! If you would like to sit with the Dorothy Day Guild group, meet us at the front entrance to the Cathedral at 9:30 AM on Sunday, September 21st . Look for the teal Dorothy Day Guild banner! We'll be sure to take a group picture in front of the murals after Mass as well.

To learn more about the murals, Cvijanovic’s artistic process, and how the various men and women he painted were chosen, check out the recent New York Times article, “St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Unveil Mural Celebrating City’s Immigrants.” You can also watch a few short clips and interviews from the unveiling, which took place on Thursday morning, over at The Good News Room .

We are also looking forward to co-sponsoring a virtual event the following weekend, on Saturday, September 27th at 2:00 PM Eastern/1:00 PM Central , organized by our friends at the Dorothy Day Canonization Prayer Network, “Dorothy Day: Benedictine Oblate and Candidate for Canonization.” This one-hour webinar will feature Robert Ellsberg, Emanuele Spedicato, Martha Hennessy, Joseph Sclafani, Stephen Drees, and David Mueller.

Our panelists will speak about Dorothy’s life of sanctity, her religious devotion as a Benedictine Oblate, and her strong commitment to prayer and will additionally discuss the current state of her cause for canonization. We will be livestreaming this event on our Dorothy Day Guild YouTube channel , so if you or someone you know is interested in learning more about Dorothy’s life, her cause, or how canonization works more generally in the Church, please be sure to register ! This is a fantastic educational opportunity and we are so excited to invite you to take part.

We are continuing to offer Sunday afternoon walking pilgrimages in Manhattan this month and next from 2:00-4:30 PM on September 28th, October 12th, and October 19th , so please join us if you’re in town! These pilgrimages are a wonderful way to “pray with your feet” and immerse yourself in the churches, neighborhoods, and houses of hospitality where Dorothy spent so many decades living out her vocation of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty.

Looking a little further ahead, we have a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share with you for Dorothy’s anniversary this November. You are warmly invited to participate in our first-ever official Dorothy Day Guild event in Rome! Alongside partners from Pontifical Gregorian University, University of Notre Dame Rome, the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University, and the Lay Center, the Dorothy Day Guild is co-sponsoring “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day” on Wednesday, November 26th, 2025 from 15:30-19:00 local time (9:30 AM-1:00 PM Eastern). This symposium will be free and open to the public and will be offered in English with translation provided in Italian.

While the symposium organizers haven’t finalized every detail, we do have a preliminary schedule to share with you. The speakers listed here are a mix of scholars, clergy, writers, and members of the Catholic Worker movement, each of whom will bring his or her particular expertise in the emerging field of Dorothy Day studies into conversation with the wider disciplines of moral theology and Catholic social teaching. If you aren’t able to come to Rome, don’t worry– the Guild plans to livestream the event to enable participation from all over the world!

As soon as a registration link from our academic sponsors at the Gregorian is ready, we will share it with you. In the meantime, keep an eye on our Guild “Upcoming Events” page to see additional updates!

Finally, we also wanted to share one additional event which our friends at St. Bakhita Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, WI are organizing for the fall and winter. The St. Bakhita community has hosted a number of book studies on Dorothy, and this year is sponsoring “Dorothy Day: Patron Saint of Both/And- A Seven-Month Study,” which begins next month on October 15th. Over the course of the October-April monthly meetings, study group members will have the opportunity to view the documentary Dorothy Day: Don’t Call Me A Saint , read and discuss William Miller’s early biography of Dorothy, participate in an Advent retreat at the Catholic Worker house, and visit the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University. If you are in the greater Milwaukee area and are interested in deepening your knowledge of Dorothy’s life in community with other learners and seekers, consider signing up for the study!

Dorothy in the Media:

Dorothy has been mentioned in a few additional Catholic news outlets and publications over the course of the past month, which we’ll mention briefly. First, on a recent episode of Godsplaining , the podcast of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, guest speaker Fr. Donald Haggerty brought up St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata’s visit to New York City in 1979. Fr. Haggerty recalls that on this visit,

“the first person Mother Mother Teresa wanted to meet in New York was Dorothy Day. And she did go down really to the Bowery and walked with her in the streets. And at one point she turned to Dorothy Day….and said, 'How is it that in your country you have so many people dying in the streets?' and Dorothy Day answered her and said, 'Mother, they're not dying. Not just yet. These are our poor people.'"

Many of us know and love the story of this encounter and of Mother Teresa’s visit to Maryhouse, but what is most interesting in Fr. Haggerty’s interview is that he actually credits Dorothy’s work in the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality with giving a new direction to the Missionaries of Charity and putting “a serious spark and a seed in Mother Teresa because she then eventually opened up hundreds of houses in Europe, in the United States, in South America where that kind of inner city poor is present.” If you’re on Instagram, you check out the brief clip where Fr. Haggerty discusses the friendship between Dorothy and St. Mother Teresa on this reel.

Jason Adkins also wrote about Dorothy as an exemplar of faithful citizenship and deep participation in the life of the political community for The Good News Room . In this brief reflection, Jason identifies Dorothy’s life and legacy as a model of incarnational political activity, in which “she didn’t waste time waiting for the system to fix itself. She built a new way of living right in its shadow. She practiced a kind of politics rooted in community, compassion, and daily commitment, one that looked askance at events in Washington without pretending politics didn’t matter.” Here, Jason encourages us to take action to “build the kingdom of God in ways that are faithful, effective, and lasting.”

Dorothy’s concerns were always both local, personal, and addressed to the person immediately in front of her, and simultaneously concerned with justice for suffering members of Christ’s Body across the world. Drawing from Dorothy’s example, Jason reminds us that “local politics is not beneath us. It is one arena in which our faith can take flesh and where faithful citizenship becomes a lived reality. It is not only a political act, it is an act of hope, charity, and obedience to the call of Christ.”

Next week marks the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, where addressed a joint session of the US Congress and named Dorothy as one of four great American exemplars. Noting this anniversary and the increasing interest in American canonization causes, EWTN News Nightly’s Tara Mergener included a brief spotlight on Dorothy in her September 1st broadcast.

This month also marks the 80th anniversary of Dorothy’s prophetic statement, “We Go on Record: The CW Response to Hiroshima,” in which Dorothy lamented the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed 318,000 people in the initial blast and “scattered, men, women and babies, to the four winds, over the seven seas.”

In her own September 16th column for L’Osservatore Romano , "La pace si costruisce con la pace" (“Peace is built with peace,”) our friend Giulia Galeotti offers a gloss of Dorothy’s response to this horrific violence, noting (in translation here),

“The surprising thing is that Day's anger toward the military-industrial complex, the arrogance of the scientists who created the bomb, and the United States as killers of their brothers and sisters in Christ, finds a counterpoint in her faith, which is equally infinite.”

The Italian edition of L’Osservatore requires a paid subscription, but if anyone has a copy of this article, we’d love to read it! It’s been really neat to see the diverse range of voices within the Church who are drawing from Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality to consider how we might respond to the Gospel in our own time.

Prayer Requests:

The Guild has received several urgent requests for intercessory prayer in the past several weeks. Please remember the following individuals in your prayers this month, and ask Dorothy to join you in interceding on their behalf:

First, three of our Guild members wrote to us concerning loved ones who are suffering from cancer. Emily in California has asked us to pray for a miraculous healing from advanced-stage cancer for her cousin, a young mother to a baby girl. Emily tells us that like Dorothy, her cousin has devoted her life to helping low-income workers, particularly domestic laborers. We also ask you to continue praying for Kenzie, the young mother in Indiana who is struggling with cancer while expecting her second child. In addition to these two young women, Nancy from Chicago also reached out to us on behalf of a five-year-old relative who is beginning a third round of chemotherapy to treat tumors in her lungs and kidneys. As you pray, please ask Dorothy to intercede for these beloved children of God that they might be restored to full health and flourishing.

The recent canonizations of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati and St. Carlo Acutis, each of whose presence in heaven was confirmed by otherwise inexplicable healings, tells us that the time of miracles has not passed. In God’s time, we trust that prayer through Dorothy’s intercession will yield the same incontrovertible results. We have heard from several of you who believe that you may have already experienced healing through Dorothy’s prayers. Earlier this month, Stephen Drees wrote to us to share that on June 24th of this year, he was rushed to the hospital with a severe internal bleed that he was not expected to survive. Stephen has allowed us to share the following account with you all:

“Prior to emergency surgery the doctor advised me that my condition and situation was dire as people with a hemoglobin level this low typically die before they can be operated on or do not survive even with surgery. During the surgery, I was conscious and personally asked Servant of God Dorothy Day to intercede on my behalf, as did many others in the Las Vegas Catholic Worker community.

Praying to Dorothy was natural for me as I am a Catholic Worker (volunteer) and a Benedictine Oblate of Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Because Dorothy had been an Oblate of Saint Procopius Abbey she has been an inspiration to my Oblate vocation for years and a frequent recipient of my prayer requests.

The procedure which typically lasts slightly over an hour lasted three hours. Ultimately the bleeding was identified and mitigated… As I recovered over the next several weeks, doctors commented on the fact that I had no permanent damage of any kind as a result of the bleed – something that was also described as "miraculous". Sixty days after my health crisis, I was hiking in the mountains of Utah - completely healed – as if nothing had ever happened. I believe Servant of God Dorothy Day interceded on my behalf to help save my life.”

Thanks be to God for this recovery! The process of identifying and investigating miraculous healings in a modern canonization process is long and involves a thorough review of medical information, so while we don’t yet know whether what Stephen experienced meets the criteria for a miracle, we are honored to share his testimony of faith in God and in Dorothy’s powerful intercession with you. We hope that what Stephen has told us encourages you to ask Dorothy to pray with you for your own needs and those of your loved ones, and reminds you that God is still active and at work in our world today. If you or someone you know is in need of prayer, or has experienced any form of restoration through your prayers to Dorothy, please reach out and let us know .

Narratives of contemporary canonization causes often focus on these medical miracles because they are in a sense quantifiable: the best of our medical science cannot attribute these healings to any other cause. However, God works through the communion of saints in ways that are perhaps less dramatic, but equally significant in the lives of the faithful, granting us strength and grace in challenging circumstances of our lives. We received the following request from a young woman in Illinois, who has asked us to pray that Dorothy will help her find her vocation:

“Since receiving my bachelor's in 2015, I have struggled to find my place in the world, moving through low-wage, dead-end jobs. For the past five years, I’ve worked as a receptionist at a senior living community. I initially saw this role as a way to bring God’s love to the residents, especially during COVID, but as life returned to normal, internal opportunities I applied for were repeatedly given to others. I live paycheck to paycheck, even with occasional help from my parents, while my siblings seem to have found their paths.

I pray that Dorothy Day’s urgent intercession will guide me toward a vocation that fulfills God’s will for me, and that I may one day share good news that comes through her prayers. Thank you for your intercession.”

During her lifetime, Dorothy helped hundreds of young women and men discover the good work that God intended for them, and in the years since her death, she has done the same for the thousands of people who have encountered her through her writing and through the Catholic Worker movement. Please ask Dorothy to intercede on behalf of this young woman who has placed her trust in Dorothy’s prayers, and in ours.

A few words from Dorothy:

This fall, I have the privilege of teaching a course on Dorothy for graduate students in theology. My students have just finished reading The Long Loneliness , and one of the primary themes they drew from this text is the connection between wholeness and holiness, and the significance of work for the flourishing of the human person. In our class on Tuesday, we spent time discussing how Peter Maurin’s ideas on cult, culture, and cultivation had informed Dorothy’s own theology of labor and read through this passage from the chapter “Community,” in Dorothy’s spiritual autobiography:

“The word philosophy is bandied around a great deal today. John Cogley, who formerly headed our house of hospitality in Chicago and is now an editor of The Commonweal , told us about one of his professors at Fribourg who lectured on Russian philosophy. ‘In all their schools, whether of law, medicine, art, engineering or agriculture, philosophy is required study,’ he said. And that is right, because in order to achieve integration, the whole man, there must be an underlying philosophy that directs and lends meaning to his life…

Peter’s Christian philosophy of work was this. God is our creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators. He gave us a garden to till and cultivate. We become co-creators by our responsible acts, whether in bringing forth children, or producing food, furniture, or clothing. The joy of creativeness should be ours.”

For Dorothy, responsible acts are those we undertake with intention, in order to build up the common good, and in the full knowledge that we are participating in God’s ongoing work of creation and restoration. Dorothy’s understanding of labor is sacramental: through our work, the material world can become a site of divine activity and grace. Our capitalist economic system encourages us to more often think about work in terms of consumption, profits, and shareholder value; this month, as we honor organized labor and working people, let’s pray and act with Dorothy to build a world in which work is joyful, creative, and in service to the Kingdom of God.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Monica Cornell, 1942-2025: A Worker for the Lay Apostolate and Friend of Dorothy Day

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 15:49:18 GMT

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.

Born on January 16th, 1942 to a Catholic Worker family in Ohio, she joined the New York Catholic Worker community at twenty-one and met and married her husband, Thomas Charles Cornell, shortly after.

In her memoir, A Priceless View: My Spiritual Homecoming , Monica and Tom’s daughter, Deirdre, shared some memories of her parents’ early formation at the Worker and how the context of the community that Dorothy founded shaped her family’s life and practice of faith over many decades:

"Throughout those years, my parents used to take us on visits to see Dorothy Day. They had met, literally, over a soup pot at the Catholic Worker; their love came into being in the shelters, clothing rooms, and soup kitchens of New York's Lower East side. Once in a while, on days they knew she would be home at the hospitality house, we would drive down to see the woman who had founded the Catholic Worker.

My mother arrived at the community in New York City after a childhood of reading the movement's newspaper, The Catholic Worker. My parents courted under Dorothy's watchful eye. She probably felt particularly responsible since she knew my mother's parents, who had helped her start a hospitality house in Cleveland before my mother was born… My parents laugh about how one night she accosted my father, coming out of the women's apartment where my mother stayed. Confronting him with a glare as she blocked his path in the hallway, she demanded, ‘Young man, are your intentions honorable?’" (46-47)

Dorothy needn’t have worried: Tom Cornell and Monica Ribar were married on July 16th, 1964. In a 1988 interview with Rosalie Riegle, Monica said that they spent $96 on their wedding, including $17 on a dress. A wedding dress had been donated to the Catholic Worker, and Monica tried it on, but it did not fit, she recalled.

The Cornells often referred to Dorothy as their matchmaker, and she reported on their wedding for her July/August 1964 “On Pilgrimage” column, noting with pride that this was “the second second-generation wedding to take place this summer,” as “Monica Ribar’s mother was one of two sisters, Monica Durkin and Carlotta Ribar, who helped Jack English start and keep going one of the two Cleveland Houses of Hospitality.”

Monica and Tom moved into an apartment on Prince Street, just a short walk from the current home of the New York Catholic Worker community, and continued to assist with the work of hospitality, peace activism, and publishing the newspaper. Together, they opened a house of hospitality in Waterbury, Connecticut and then raised their children in Newburgh, NY. During this time, while Tom worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace organization, Monica maintained their home as a little beachhead of hospitality on the Hudson River. Tom and Monica’s Christ-room became the place where dozens of guests, including a foster child, exchange students, a political refugee from Pinochet’s Chile, peace movement friends, and Catholic Workers found safety, welcome, and belonging during those years.

Later, the Cornells took on the responsibility of running the Peter Maurin Catholic Worker farm in Marlboro, NY, where they lived together for thirty years. After Tom’s death in 2022, Monica stayed on at the farm, caring for formerly homeless guests and continuing to open her home to additional visitors even in her final years. Her warmth and hospitality were legendary. Deirdre writes,

"Growing up, my parents' belonging in the Catholic Worker movement provided a backdrop as constant as the mountains and river beyond the limits of the Bluff. In the same way my brother and I took in the panorama that gave place to our days, our parents' commitment formed the context of our lives... My father's gregarious personality and my mother's gourmet cooking attracted visitors to our house overlooking the Bluff. On weekends my father was home, he often brought guests from his international peace organization with him. People from various parts of the country, or from different countries, found respite at this corner of the Hudson. Sometimes Catholic Workers exchanged a few days of their hectic work at soup kitchens or shelters for my parents' genteel hospitality. Housed in the extra attic bedroom, they would spend a day or two enjoying the panorama, eating homemade bread and salad nicoise prepared by my mother and talking endlessly about matters related to the peace movement. To this day I run across people who remember meals and conversations on our front porch." (48-49)

Dorothy took great pride in the fact that Monica was a second-generation Catholic Worker, who had been shaped by her parents’ experiences in Cleveland, and her connection to the larger movement through the newspaper and had then gone on to take up the work of hospitality and peacemaking as an adult.

Throughout the many decades of raising her family, running Catholic Worker houses and farms, tending her garden, and offering the works of mercy, Monica was a true disciple of the lay apostolate. She embodied the spirit of Catholic Action, enacting her Christian vocation “in the world,” teaching those around her to become peacemakers and to “live lightly on the land,” as she said to her friend Jane Sammon in a 2001 interview for The Catholic Worker .

Monica and Tom lived out the values of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty every day of their lives. “I continue to think that Peter and Dorothy’s vision could save the world,” she told Rosalie Riegle in the 1988 interview. “It still makes sense. It’s over 50 years old and we still ask people to be ‘ go-givers instead of go-getters ,’ we can still say, as Peter says, we’re sitting on the dynamite ; cooperation instead of competition: all that makes sense.”

Through God’s grace and the power of this witness, they passed their vocation on to a third generation: their son, Tommy, now manages the Peter Maurin Farm, and their daughter, Deirdre, serves as vice-chair of the Dorothy Day Guild and with her husband Kenney works in solidarity with migrant families in the Hudson Valley.

Monica Cornell was a woman of valor, whose life was shaped by and oriented towards the promise of the resurrection and our common membership in Christ’s body. We are deeply grateful for her decades of service to the peace movement and the poor, and for the wisdom and energy she lent to Dorothy’s cause for canonization. All of us miss her terribly, but as her friend Joanne Kennedy of the New York Catholic Worker community noted last week, we now have a powerful intercessor in heaven. Monica Cornell, pray for us!

Visitation for Monica took place on Friday, August 15, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at DiDonato Funeral Home, 1290 Route 9W in Marlboro. A funeral Mass was offered on Saturday, August 16, at 11:00 a.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 1209 Route 9W, also in Marlboro, followed by interment at St. Mary’s Cemetery.

Please keep Monica and the Cornell family in your prayers as we commend her to Christ and thank God for the witness of her life. Condolences may be sent to the Peter Maurin Farm 41 Cemetery Road, Marlboro, NY.

-The Dorothy Day Guild

Summer News and Updates from the Guild!

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 14:20:58 GMT

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.

In 1971, Tom appeared beside Dorothy in an interview for Christopher Closeup , speaking with their hosts on overcoming fear, living out the Gospel of peace, and how we can prepare ourselves and our communities for the risks of discipleship.

In this conversation, Dorothy reminds us that “The last words of Jesus were to– the last command– was to lay down our lives for our brother, not to take life. And that would mean certainly taking what comes without looking for our help in weapons or the arms race.” To honor Tom’s anniversary and the upcoming 80th anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945, the Christophers graciously allowed us to share the full interview on our YouTube channel .

We are especially excited to share this video with you since the Guild maintains a strong relationship with the Catholic Peace Fellowship and will again be co-sponsoring the Peace Dinner at the USCCB meeting in Baltimore this November.

Dorothy and Tom’s reflections on discipleship and following Jesus are as fresh and necessary today as they were decades ago; both spent their lives putting these teachings into practice in great and small ways. In response to a question on practical approaches to nonviolence as a way of life, Dorothy suggests we should “always begin with [ourselves], I think. And it’s a question of thought, word, and deed, not to be thinking resentful or violent or antagonistic thoughts… We have to remember that we are all members one of another.”

We are constantly seeking to make our Guild educational resources and materials more accessible to a wider audience, and we are very pleased to offer full closed-captioning/subtitles for this interview in both English and Spanish. For those who would prefer to listen to this conversation as a podcast, there is also a recording available on SoundCloud .

Music!

I had another chance last month to catch up with singer Sally Rogers, who wrote “No Time to Feel Hopeless” after a quote by Dorothy and mentioned that the Guild had been keeping track of these musical tributes and that we were looking for any more information about Hugh Blumenfeld’s “The Ballad of Dorothy Day,” which he wrote and performed at the “Theology of Work and the Dignity of Workers” conference in 2011. Sally reached out to Hugh on our behalf– he wrote,

“I did indeed write a song about Dorothy Day!

My cousin was a legal scholar who wrote a brilliant biography in a law review journal and when he invited me to play at the annual Labor Law conference he used to organize, I had to write something to honor her. It may be relevant that the audience I played it for included a lot of priests, nuns and bishops - maybe even a cardinal (who knows what those hats mean?)

Here are the lyrics. Fortunately it’s to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ” who appropriately chose the melody of the outlaw ballad of Jesse James, all of which I thought was a) incredibly appropriate for this saint and b) well-known and/or easy to learn.”

Hugh’s lyrics encompass Dorothy’s expansive vision of peace and her conviction that nonviolence and a just economy which honored the dignity of labor were two sides of the same coin:

“For fifty years and more she spoke out against each war

No matter the reason or the cause

'Cause when all was said and done, no matter which side won,

The worker was the one who took the loss

At 80 years of age she still fought for a living wage

Nothing could turn her from the path

She marched with Cesar Chavez and got booked in California

For trampling out the grapes of wrath”

For the musically inclined among you, we assembled a printable song sheet with the full lyrics– break this one out at your next summer campfire and teach it to your friends!

Act for Peace and Justice:

This month, we are excited to share two opportunities for you to live out Gospel nonviolence for yourself. First, the Community of Sant’Egidio is hosting a Vigil for Peace this weekend at The Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Manhattan to mark the anniversaries of the nuclear bombings of Japan and asked the Dorothy Day Guild to take on and host an hour of prayer. We have chosen the 10:00-11:00 AM timeslot on Friday, August 8th.

Dr. Kevin Ahern and others from the Guild will be present in the chapel, located at 325 E 33rd St, New York, NY 10016, for that hour. If you are in the area, please feel free to join for some or all of the hour and join us in praying for an end to our world’s reliance on nuclear weapons, the possession of which, Pope Francis reminded us, is immoral.

If you are not local to New York, you are invited to participate virtually! The 75-hour vigil begins on August 6th at 6:00 AM Eastern and will be livestreamed here . Your prayers for peace in our world are necessary and powerful; please join us in asking Dorothy to spiritually accompany us during this three-day period of intercession and repentance.

We also recently learned of a new lay Catholic organization called The Dorothea Project ,

“a growing group of Catholic women on a mission to educate on Catholic Social Teaching so our communities are empowered to speak truth and act in defense of vulnerable people whenever human rights and human dignity are violated.”

Named for their patrons, Sister Thea Bowman and Dorothy, members of the Dorothea Project have been reaching out to their bishops, “urging them to speak out publicly and advocate politically for mercy in the treatment of migrants.” A profile by Heidi Schlumpf for National Catholic Reporter notes that “The project is reaching younger women especially — most in their 20s and 30s — who have a common yearning for a community committed to both faith and social justice, something many say is lacking in their own parishes.”

The next action item that the Dorothea Project undertakes will focus directly on outreach to parish priests, many of whom already speak openly with their congregations on immigration issues and take a strong interest in promoting the dignity of migrants. If you are interested in participating in this work and joining a community of Catholic women who are living out the faith of Dorothy and Sister Thea today, sign up for more information using this form !

Lectures and Podcasts:

Last September, many of our friends gathered in Chicago for the Peter Maurin conference organized by Canterbury House and St. Gregory’s Hall. Several of the keynotes and roundtable discussions from this event are now available on YouTube , and they’re all excellent. Dr. Jon Sozek offered a keynote address on the lived personalism of the Catholic Worker movement, and how Peter and Dorothy adapted the European philosophical movement into a working concept of discipleship for an activist, American context.

The whole keynote is available as part of that playlist, but for a brief teaser, check out this three-minute clip on Dorothy’s personalist influences, where Jon provides a helpful gloss of what personalism looks like in practice within the Catholic Worker context. He says,

“I think that what Maurin and Day did together is take this abstract, heady twenty-something philosophy grad student movement in France and make it into something that number one, was recognizably Christian, and was rooted in real human circumstance. It made it into the personalism that I think all of us in the room would want to see celebrated.”

Thank you, Jon, for this clarifying discussion on an important and complex topic which is so foundational to understanding the Catholic Worker!

Our friend James Murphy, one of the organizers of the Peter Maurin conference and currently helps run the Harrisburg Catholic Worker community, also appeared on a recent episode of Dustbowl Diatribes , a podcast produced by The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies . James spoke with hosts Laurie M. Johnson and Spencer Hess on learning to become a cooperator and the freedom offered by voluntary poverty. In this discussion, Laurie asks about the relationship between the Catholic Worker movement and politics, and whether we should characterize the Worker “as primarily a political movement, social movement, or an alternative to politics.” In his response, James points to Dorothy and Peter’s emphasis on the primacy of the spiritual, and their interest in radical reconstruction of the social order rather than simply reforming our current systems. He says,

“I don't think they saw politics as a way of reconstructing the social order, which I think is a major part of why the Catholic Worker was started: to create a new society in the shell of the old. And I don't think politics had much to do with it. I think they looked at it more from the bottom up, more of a grassroots based on the Green Revolution. And the Green Revolution, for Peter and Dorothy, was more about the sixth, seventh century Irish monks who had reconstructed the social order, after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions… [Peter and Dorothy] changed, I think, the hearts and minds of the people, and I think politics is more of a top-down effort.”

This episode of Dustbowl Diatribes touches on a wide range of philosophical and practical topics, so if you’re interested in how Dorothy’s approach to Catholic Action and the Gospel is still influencing Catholic Worker communities in the present, be sure to listen to the whole conversation!

Articles:

We have two articles to share with you for this edition of the Guild’s monthly missive. First, many thanks to Renée Roden for her recent Roundtable article, “Catholic Worker Archivists Keep 90 Years of History Alive.” For this piece, Renée spoke with Bill Fliss at Marquette University, who took over managing the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker archives after Phil Runkel’s retirement, and Dr. Kevin Ahern, our Guild chair, who also directs the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University. Among many other projects, the Dorothy Day Center is working “to preserve the material collections the Guild received during the canonization process.”

This article is an especially useful resource for any students or teachers interested in doing original research on various aspects of Dorothy’s life and legacy, or for anyone who has Dorothy-related material to contribute. Renée distinguishes the particular focus of each of these two collections. As she explains,

“Marquette University's archives are focused on preserving the historical records: papers, letters, and newspapers, William Fliss said, while the Dorothy Day Center is focused on preserving material culture and objects of Day's and on extending her legacy through active dialogue with student groups.

The Dorothy Day Center and Marquette University have collaborated to determine the scope of each's collections and ensured that items find the right home.”

If you are interested in visiting or contributing to either of these collections, or learning more about other centers for related archival research, find out how on the Catholic Worker movement website .

Second, for all the sci-fi fans out there, Jeannine Pitas recently published “A guide for resistance, from Octavia Butler and Dorothy Day,” for U.S. Catholic , finding connections between Butler’s Earthseed novels, The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents, and the founding of the Catholic Worker movement. Pitas writes,

“Throughout the two-part story, protagonist Lauren Olamina… remains true to the vision she calls Earthseed, ultimately establishing a network of small communities of people who share it.

Much like Earthseed, the Catholic Worker Movement began as an inspired vision amid bleakness of the Great Depression. When radical journalist and Catholic convert Dorothy Day met French anarchist and former [religious brother] Peter Maurin, their conversations led them to found The Catholic Worker, a radical newspaper still published today.

But, like Butler’s heroine, Day and Maurin found that good ideas were not enough. They soon gathered the marginalized and vulnerable of society in small, autonomous communities with the desire ‘to create a new society within the shell of the old.’”

The Earthseed novels may appear dystopian, and spookily prescient, featuring a fictional far-right president who campaigns under the slogan “Make America Great Again” while society collapses, but ultimately, like Dorothy’s own story, they reveal the significance of love found in community, and the necessity of a shared vision of flourishing beyond the immediate horizon of the present crisis.

Volunteer Opportunities:

Our friends at Catholicworker.org have two active projects underway, and are currently looking for more help. This year, Jerry Windley-Daoust and several others have undertaken a major website overhaul to update the international directory of Catholic Worker communities, and of particular interest to the Guild, to review and correct the online library of Dorothy Day’s writings. The Catholic Worker movement website has been used by over 300,000 people in the past two years alone and is the most comprehensive online collection of Dorothy’s columns and the full texts of several of her books. Volunteers who want to help update the Dorothy Day library online will compare the website text against scanned images of the original articles from the Catholic Worker newspaper (via the Catholic News Archive), make corrections where needed, improve article summaries, and suggest content tags.

Both of these volunteer opportunities are fully remote– you can help keep Dorothy’s writing free, accurate, and accessible, as well as connect others to service opportunities and new friendships in Catholic Worker communities from anywhere! If you would like to help, please be in touch using this form .

Events:

We have been having a great summer of online and in-person events! Our two book clubs both wrap up this week– it’s been a fantastic experience reading The Long Loneliness and Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma ( From Union Square to Rome ) with our Spanish-language group. Enormous thanks to Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic and Graceann Beckett, our Dorothy Day Guild Graduate Research Fellows, for guiding us through Dorothy’s autobiographical works over the past several weeks. We hope to offer another book club during the fall semester, so if there is a book by or about Dorothy that’s been on your list for a while, please let us know!

As a reminder, we are offering two more walking pilgrimages in Manhattan this month, as well as one in September. Please join us on Sunday afternoons, from 2:00-4:30 PM on August 10th, August 24th, or September 28th by registering here .

We also heard back from several of the participants who attended the Dorothy Day Retreat at Pyramid Life Center last month– it looks like it was a wonderful experience! We are so glad this group had the opportunity to engage in such fruitful conversation and prayer in this restful and beautiful setting.

Prayer requests:

In the past month, we have received several pressing requests for intercessory prayer, as well as news of graces and favors received– which call for prayers of thanksgiving! Asking Dorothy’s spiritual accompaniment and intercession on behalf of those in our lives who are injured or sick is perhaps the single most significant thing each of us can do to further her cause for canonization. Out of these prayers, we trust that not only will our afflicted loved ones receive relief from their suffering, but that eventually, in God’s own time, the miracle which will confirm Dorothy’s presence in heaven will arise. With that in mind, please join us this month in lifting up the following needs to God:

First, Geoffrey from Massachusetts has asked for prayer on behalf of his friend Jennifer, who is currently suffering from cardiac issues and is receiving hospice care. Please ask that Jennifer’s heart be restored to full functioning, and that she and her husband and their two grown children receive solace and comfort during this difficult time.

Please also pray for Kenzie, a young mother in Indiana who has cancer and is expecting her second child. Kenzie is truly in need of a miraculous healing of her illness to give this baby enough time to grow and develop while in the womb, and so that she can see this baby and her older daughter grow up. Kenzie is a dear friend of the South Bend Catholic Worker community; please ask for Dorothy’s intercession on her behalf and that of her family.

Many of the prayer requests we receive come from friends and members of the Guild whose loved ones are facing incredibly distressing circumstances, but we are comforted to know that these prayers are sometimes answered in the form of graces or favors– while these might not rise to the level of a true “miracle,” we understand them as persistent signs of God’s loving presence enacted in our relationships or through the skill of doctors and nurses. Geoffrey also wrote to us with the good news that his neighbor Gary, a mechanic who is often exposed to toxic chemicals in his line of work, received healing from a painful skin condition that had bothered him every summer. A friend of the Guild, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote to us from Australia to say that he had received a frightening result on a pathology test which indicated warning signs for cancer. After praying to Dorothy and others, he received good news at the four-month follow-up visit and seems to be in the clear. For both of these graces and favors, Deo gratias!

Finally, the Dorothy Day Café in Baton Rouge opens this Thursday, August 7th! In this Instagram video , Fr. Josh Johnson, the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and founder of the Dorothy Day Café, explains how Dorothy is an exemplar of the kind of Holy Spirit-inspired faith which compels Christians to take God’s love out into the world, beyond the walls of the church building, one act of love at a time. As the Sacred Heart Parish community undertakes this new work of relationship and accompaniment, please ask Dorothy to be with them and the guests they will welcome.

A few words from Dorothy:

Dorothy was in her own lifetime a great believer in the power and necessity of intercessory prayer. In the summer of 1974, she wrote from the farm at Tivoli , intending to offer some exegesis on Jesus’ command to “Resist not evil,” but instead ending her column with a reflection on the life and witness of her friend Ammon Hennacy, an ardent pacifist and opponent of nuclear war,

“who every August commemorated the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and did his part expiating our national crime by a fast which grew longer every year since that fatal August.

He was not one of these non-cooperators, or resisters when he went to jail for civil disobedience–I cannot count the number of times. He treated all men as brothers, even those who arrested him or sneered at him for his lifetime opposition to war. He was always ready to help or serve anyone, friend or foe, police or jailor. I went to greet him once when he was being released from the Federal Prison at Sandstone, Minnesota. The warden came out with him, as he was being released, to shake his hand, and mine too, telling me he had never met a finer man.

He asked nothing for himself (like Peter Maurin) but took the jobs assigned him, indoors or out. He rejoiced in helping build up a library at Sandstone. He liked to share the meat and fish served (he was vegetarian), and the men sitting next to him benefited by his portions.

He was as friendly as a puppy, I used to say, never abashed or resentful at any brushoff. He respected courage and honest conviction–even when it meant acceptance of war. I should admit that he was at times highly critical of the clergy for their luxury, their drinking (an expensive habit) and conformities to patriotism. He had a strong faith that men could change, and a fearlessness, a courage, unmatched by anyone I have ever met. He literally talked himself out of bodily danger on numerous occasions–a crazed welfare recipient with a knife, a brutal cellmate intent on rape, a mob in Arizona coming to his isolated cabin to “get him.” Moral jiujutsu, he called it.

Dear Ammon, pray for us that we too grow in courage, “Love casts out fear,” and we are living in fearful times.”

Ammon Hennacy, “Non-Church” Christian, was an exemplar of the sort of nonviolent love which truly understands every single human being as a son or daughter of God. This is the love which God invites us into through the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. Dorothy asked Ammon, who had died in 1970, to pray for those who were trying to imitate this active, nonviolent love in fearful times.

More than fifty years after Dorothy published this column, we are still living in fearful times. This month, as we pray and take action to protect the dignity of migrants, to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and to repent of the sin of nuclear war and the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, let’s join Dorothy in praying for growth in courage and an increase in the love which casts out fear.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

"The Best Revolutionary Technique:" Dorothy on the Works of Mercy, the Mystical Body of Christ, and more

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 18:13:05 GMT

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!

This group, which is led by Graceann Beckett, our 2024 Dorothy Day Guild Graduate Research Fellow, meets on Sunday evenings over Zoom, from 8:00-9:00 PM Eastern/ 7:00-8:00 PM Central. The group will meet four more times, on July 13th, 20th, 27th, and August 3rd , so even if you missed the opening sessions, you are warmly invited to join us for the upcoming weeks by registering here .

We are also very excited to begin our first-ever Spanish-language book club, which starts TONIGHT, July 8th, from 7:00-8:00 PM Eastern . This group is led by our 2025 Dorothy Day Graduate Research Fellow, Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic, and will be reading Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma ( From Union Square to Rome ), Dorothy’s first spiritual memoir, and the only one of her books currently available in Spanish.

Although Magdalena’s presentation and the discussion will take place in Spanish, this group is open to language-learners as well as fluent Spanish speakers.

The full text of From Union Square to Rome (in English) is available for free online, so if you’re interested in improving your language skills, we highly encourage you to sign up, follow along, and enjoy the friendly, conversational, and intellectually stimulating atmosphere that Magdalena cultivates. Our Spanish-language club de lectura will meet four times over Zoom, on T uesday July 8th, 15th, 29th, and August 5th from 7:00-8:00 PM Eastern/6:00-7:00 PM Central. You can register by using this link .

In Manhattan, we are also continuing to offer twice-monthly walking pilgrimages on Sunday afternoons. These free pilgrimages visit important sites from Dorothy’s lifetime, including the New York Catholic Worker community’s two houses of hospitality. The pilgrimages take place on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 2:00 PM, and last two and a half hours. This summer, we invite you to join us for a pilgrimage on Sunday July 13th, July 20th, August 10th, and August 24th, from 2:00-4:30 PM Eastern. Whether you are visiting New York for the first time or you’ve lived there your entire life, you’ll discover something new on these wonderful opportunities for learning and prayer. Sign up to participate in a pilgrimage here– and for a really special experience, head down to Whitehall afterwards and ride the Dorothy Day ferry to Staten Island!

Finally, we would like to remind you that the Dorothy Day Retreat at Pyramid Life Center , in Paradox, NY, is taking place this month, from July 21st-23rd . Led by Catholic Workers Martha Hennessy (of Maryhouse) and Fred Boehrer (of Emmaus House), this retreat will use Robert Ellsberg’s Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings as a guide to explore how we are being called to live as Catholics and disciples of Christ in the United States in this moment. Several members of our St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community had the chance to visit Fred at Emmaus House last month– he and Martha have some wonderful programming planned, and you don’t want to miss this retreat!

News and Updates from our friends:

Last month, Martha Hennessy traveled to France to speak at Le Dorothy Café in Paris, an event sponsored by the Le Dorothy community in conjunction with a month-long exhibition of paintings entitled “Dorothy Day: changer l’ordre social,” by artist François Rieux. Le Dorothy offers hospitality and cultural programs in their neighborhood, where many of the residents are recent immigrants.

You can view additional photos of Martha’s visit on François’ Instagram and read the interview by Baudouin de Guillebon, “Martha Hennessy : un pacifisme chrétien pour le XXIe siècle,” (“Martha Hennessy: A Christian Pacifism for the 21st Century”) about her trip, her grandmother, and her own nonviolent, Gospel-centered activism. We’re also very pleased to share an English-language version of this interview, thanks to the translation efforts of Barbara Kentish.

We also recently learned of an exciting and similar effort in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the brand-new Dorothy Day Café at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish. Our office manager, Jodee Fink, wrote to the pastor of Sacred Heart, Fr. Josh Johnson, who said,

“Inspired by Dorothy’s radical fidelity to the Gospel and her love for the poor, we opened the café across the street from our parish to create a space of welcome, encounter, and dignity for our neighbors, especially those experiencing poverty and homelessness in our Mid City community… We will offer free coffee, conversation, and a spirit of community to anyone who walks through our doors. We hope it will become not only a place for physical nourishment but a spiritual one, where many of our guests will be invited to join small group bible studies, visit our Adoration chapel, participate in our ACTS retreats and encounter Christ in the Sacraments.

We’re also grateful to have the café physically connected to our new St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry. Together, they form a hub of hospitality and mercy, where people can receive both nourishment and care in body and soul.”

Fr. Josh wrote a longer explanation of why the community chose to name this new hospitality space for Dorothy in the Sacred Heart parish bulletin, which you can read here .

The Dorothy Day Café will open its doors for the first guests on Thursday, August 7th, so please keep this work of hospitality in your prayers (and if you’re near Baton Rouge, sign up to volunteer! )

Reading Recommendations:

We have a few short articles to share with you for a little bit of additional summer reading! One of the best things about Dorothy’s legacy in journalism, Catholic media, and the Church at large is the diversity of voices who are inspired by different aspects of her life. This month, we’re excited to share articles from Roundtable , National Catholic Register , and America .

First, a very short piece by David Mills in National Catholic Register examines “What Dorothy Day and G.K. Chesterton Teach Us About Gratitude.” Gratitude, for both these 20th-century Catholic writers and converts, was what ultimately led them to faith. The realization that they had been given great gifts in the context of their ordinary lives led them each to seek out the Giver of all good gifts and turn to Him with love and thanksgiving.

For this week’s edition of Roundtable , Renée Roden interviewed Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic on the South American reception of Dorothy’s writing and legacy, translating Dorothy’s columns into Spanish, and Magdalena’s own experience in her first year as a Catholic Worker after graduating with a masters’ degree in moral theology. Here in the United States, we sometimes forget that the global Church may have different priorities in other parts of the world; in this interview, Magdalena states that from her perspective, the Catholic Church in the US feels very conservative in comparison with her native Chile. She anticipates that South American Catholics encountering Dorothy for the first time “will be surprised on discovering a saint, a woman that was so radical and progressive in a society where we are not used to seeing these kind of figures coming from... I think that will be very surprising and very encouraging.” She goes on to note that due to the history of the United States’ involvement in Central and South American politics in the latter half of the twentieth century,

“There is a negative perception [in South America]… of the colonial power to the north. ‘U.S. intervention affected basically all the Latin American countries and basically promoted all the dictatorships,’ Muñoz said, referring to U.S.-backed coups in Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile during the 1960s and 1970s. Muñoz said it was encouraging to read a voice like Dorothy Day’s from the United States that was contemporary with these coups and yet ‘was supporting revolution, was supporting the people, was against these dictatorships that were sponsored by the U.S.’

‘Especially now that the whole world situation is very fragile, I think that her voice and her message and commitment to peace is extremely relevant,’”

Check out the entire interview, “A Voice for the Revolution: Translating Dorothy Day,” and consider subscribing to Roundtable for more great stories on how the nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty that Dorothy practiced is shaping the Catholic Worker movement in the present day.

Finally, Kevin Ahern published a recent article for America , “On hearing Trump invoke God after bombing Iran on the feast of Corpus Christi.” In this piece, Kevin looks to Dorothy’s understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ and her Eucharistic Christology to ask,

“what, if anything, the feast of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, might have to say to us as the United States entered another unjust, and possibly illegal, war in the region.

This celebration offers a counterpoint to the god of war, power and vengeance invoked by so many today. In celebrating the feast day with processions and solemn veneration, however, this deeper expansive reality can often get lost; we might forget the radical social implications of proclaiming the real presence of the Eucharist.”

Dorothy knew that the sacramental unity we participate in through our baptism and through partaking in the Eucharist obligates us to one another. Dorothy took this line of thinking to an even more radical conclusion: because Christ took on human flesh, becoming one of us, those obligations extend beyond the boundaries of the Church to all of humanity– members and potential members of the Mystical Body alike. As we continue to reflect on the nature of the Church, the Body of Christ on earth, during this season of Ordinary Time, we encourage you to reflect on what Kevin has offered us here, and as always, continue to pray for an end to all war and for a just and lasting peace in the Holy Land and elsewhere.

Watching and Listening:

Last month, we shared Lisa Marr and her band, Los Gatitos, brand-new single, “The Ballad of Dorothy Day.” Phil Runkel, former archivist for the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker collection at Marquette University, wrote to us remembering an earlier song by the same title, written and performed by folk musician and medical doctor, Hugh Blumenfeld. If anyone knows where to find a recording of Hugh’s ballad, please let us know!

In her own lifetime, Dorothy was much more of an opera and classical music devotee than an active participant in the nearby Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s, but given her social justice commitments and connections to the labor movement, it’s no surprise that her life and witness have been an inspiration to a number of folk and indie musicians over the years.

At the Old Songs Festival in Altamont, NY last month, some friends and I had the chance to hear Sally Rogers perform a song based on Dorothy’s own words, from her album “Old Friends I’ve Never Met.” Sally’s “No Time to Feel Hopeless” is based on a quote from Dorothy: “There’s no time to feel hopeless when there is so much work to do.”

We were so excited to hear Dorothy’s words on the main stage of the festival, and Sally was kind enough to meet with us afterwards (we gave her a Dorothy Day Guild sticker for her guitar case!).

Be sure to check out her album and keep an eye out for her upcoming shows! It’s such a joy to see how Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty is continuing to spark creativity in music as well as the visual arts.

We’re also very happy to share that the recording of our Easter-season online roundtable, “Dorothy Day and Pope Francis,” is now available on our YouTube channel. In this conversation, panelist Robert Ellsberg describes Francis as Dorothy's "dream pope." Dorothy and Pope Francis both left our Church, and our world, with a shared legacy of peacemaking, voluntary poverty, love for creation, and care for the poor. In short, they left us with the gift of hope.

This webinar, which featured panelists Robert Ellsberg, Dr. Margaret Pfeil, Deirdre Cornell, and Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic, and moderator Dr. Kevin Ahern, took place just days after we welcomed Pope Leo XIV as the new shepherd for our Church. Our panelists’ discussion touches on not just points of convergence between Dorothy and Francis, but on what Pope Leo’s election could mean for our global Church and for the future of Dorothy’s canonization cause. What might the election of the first Pope from the United States mean for this future (we hope!) American saint? Others, including Michelle La Rosa over at The Pillar , are asking the same question , and we’re excited to find out!

Honors and Awards:

On June 27th, the Catholic Media Association announced their 2025 Book Award winners , and we are very pleased and proud to share that two of our friends received honors for books about Dorothy! Colin Miller’s, We are Only Saved Together: Living the Revolutionary Vision of Dorothy Day won First Place in the Catholic Social Teaching category, and Robert Ellsberg’s Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings took Second Place in the Spirituality category. Robert was also awarded Author of the Year, on the basis of having published five prize-winning books in the past five years—three of them editions of Dorothy's writings. Congratulations to Robert and Colin!

Pax Christi Metro New York also honored Brian Terrell, alongside several others, including our friend Tom Dobbins of Catholic Charities NY and the Sisters of St. Joseph who lead the Long Island Immigration Clinic, at their annual Peacemaker Awards Celebration last month. Brian was honored at this event for his life-long work for nuclear disarmament.

In his acceptance speech , Brian reflected on his early formation in the New York Catholic Worker community, where he lived and worked alongside Dorothy.

“I’m convinced that if the world survives these dangerous times it will be because of tens of millions of small things. [Pete Seeger] said ‘Perhaps the best, most effective contribution we can make to save the planet will be for each of us to accomplish one or two of the tens of millions of small things that need to be done.’ ‘The only solution is love,’ said Dorothy Day, echoing Jesus and the prophets. She also called nonviolent resistance the only sane solution, and I’m growing to think that those are two ways of saying the same thing. With the world the way it is, we cannot dismiss loving our neighbor, even loving our enemies as ourselves, as what Catholics call the council of perfection or as a utopian, impractical, unreachable, maybe even dangerously sentimental ideal. Love today is the only pragmatic option.”

Please join us in congratulating Brian and all the heroic peacemakers who have contributed their small acts of courage, faith, and kindness to the work of ridding our world of the scourge of nuclear weapons and ending our unceasing preparation for war.

Prayer Requests:

Prayer, both for Dorothy’s canonization, and for the needs of the world through Dorothy’s intercession, is a significant work of the Dorothy Day Guild and a shared responsibility for all of our members. If you or a loved one has a specific intention you would like us to share with our membership, or if you would like to share a concern in the wider community so that we can all pray together, please let us know .

The Guild receives and shares prayer requests every month, some personal and specific, and some more general. We trust that God sees and holds all of our needs, large or small. This month, we ask that you offer a special intention for the safety of all immigrants and refugees in the United States who may be at risk of deportation. During the Lenten season, the USCCB’s The Department of Migration and Refugee Services, collaborated with evangelical Christian leaders and colleagues to research and publish a report entitled “ One Part of the Body: The Potential Impact of Deportations on American Christian Families .” This report, which is signed by Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, who serves as the chair of the Chairman, USCCB’s’ Committee on Migration, states,

“Our prayer with this report is that American Christians will recognize that these proposed deportations… are not just a policy issue, but a dynamic that will impact us, disciples of Jesus who are knit together in unity under Christ. Love for one another, Jesus said, is a sign to those outside of the Church that we indeed are Christ’s disciples (John 13:35), but such love must go beyond vague expressions of sympathy that do not actively care for the tangible needs of our brothers and sisters (James 2:14-16). As you read this report, we hope that you will prayerfully ask the Lord what part you should play at a time when so many of your brothers and sisters are fearful of the impacts of deportation.”

Please ask Dorothy to join you, our Catholic bishops, and our brothers and sisters from other Christian denominations in prayer as we intercede for these vulnerable members of all of our communities and those who assist them.

We would also like to ask your prayers for the repose of the soul of Marguerite Cackley, of Voorheesville, NY, who died last month at the age of 101 . In her obituary, her family named Dorothy as a figure for whom Marguerite held life-long admiration. I had the privilege of meeting Marguerite several times as a teenager and remember her as lively and kind, eager to share her French language and culture and interested in the doings of young people in her community. Marguerite leaves behind a large and loving family; please ask Dorothy to pray for their consolation as they grieve their beloved mother and grandmother.

Finally, please join us in praying for Deborah Sucich (pictured below), a member of the Dorothy Day Guild and former Staten Island Catholic Worker, who recently entered the Poor Clares in Wappingers Falls, NY. When I called the monastery to offer our congratulations and prayers on behalf of the Guild, Sister Regina assured me that the nuns would also be praying for Dorothy’s canonization, and for the Catholic Worker movement.

It is an incredible gift to be united through prayer to our brothers and sisters as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, and we are so grateful to the Poor Clares for their centuries of fidelity to this spiritual work of mercy.

As Debbie embarks upon this new journey as a bride of Christ, the Staten Island Catholic Worker is now shepherded by Anne-Louise DePalo, who has offered some reflections on the community’s website. We were particularly struck by the contemplative spirit she encountered at Maryhouse, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily hospitality:

“I was blessed to be able to visit and spend time alone in the very room that Dorothy Day lived and died at Mary House. As I entered the room, the first thing I noticed was all the books surrounding the bed, table, and sitting room. Books were everywhere, neatly placed on bookshelves.The books surrounded Dorothy wherever she was in the room.

The room had a charming simplicity. I felt peaceful, yet alive and inspired. Dorothy’s hairbrush, personal items, her glasses, and coffee mug were placed just as if she would return the next morning. A cup of coffee and a Psalms was a daily ritual, which Dorothy practiced and loved; it grounded her. Dorothy also attended daily Mass. The Eucharist was her nourishment and food for the soul. I felt as if Dorothy would walk in at any moment, telling me to go downstairs to help make the soup and serve, as the line formed outside Mary House. Dorothy’s Spirit fills Mary House.

In every Catholic Worker community where there is soup served with love Dorothy is there and her legacy lives on.”

This month, please join us in holding all of these intentions in prayer, asking Dorothy’s loving intercession for those in need, and all who are carrying out the works of mercy and the works of peace in our world today.

A few words from Dorothy:

Journalist and political commentator Bill Moyers died last month in New York at the age of 91, prompting many tributes and retrospectives on his long career. For us, the highlight of that long lifetime of research, interviews, and writing was his 1973 episode of the Bill Moyers Journal, “Dorothy Day: Still a Rebel,” where he interviewed Dorothy and several other members of the New York Catholic Worker community at St. Joseph House and the farm in Tivoli, NY.

In this interview, Moyers asks Dorothy about her claim that if the chancery ordered her to stop publishing The Catholic Worker, she would cease immediately. Moyers asked her how she squares this claim with her convictions on human freedom and the necessity of fidelity to conscience. Dorothy responds,

“When I say I would obey Cardinal Spellman or...there's many times a great weariness in work of this kind and you think to yourself how pleasant it would be if I could just drop all responsibilities and all authority, the authority which comes you know, from the fact you've taken it upon yourself to do something...and you have to do it. And somebody saying 'stop' and my conscience, I think, in looking around me and seeing the tremendous growth of the Catholic Worker around the country in all these small ways, these very small ways, made me realize that I could immediately obey the Cardinal and nothing could stop the Catholic Worker. I must say that I first became a Catholic because I felt that the Catholic Church was the church of the poor and I still think it is the church of the poor….

But the Church itself misunderstood, as I say, in many many ways. There's the freedom in the Church which is something that nobody understands. I believe in miracles, of course; I believe that perhaps someday there may be mutinies large enough to bring an end to war. Who knows what will happen?”

If you haven’t yet had the chance to see this wonderful short documentary, we encourage you to watch the whole half-hour segment, which begins at minute mark 1:38 in the video. There is something incredibly powerful about truly hearing Dorothy in her own words, and perhaps even more so, to see the houses of hospitality where she lived and worked and know that the community there is still serving soup and coffee this very morning. Miracles continue in both great and small things; our prayer for each of you and for the Church this month is that we awaken to this reality and become joyful participants in God’s ongoing action in our world.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

"The Spirit Accomplished Something Extraordinary"

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:00:36 GMT

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.

The feast of Pentecost also marks the end of the Easter season and is therefore a particularly special time for the newest members of the Church all around the world, who received the sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil and those who were even more recently sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit at their confirmations. Dorothy herself was confirmed at Pentecost in the spring of 1928, a day she remembered in The Long Loneliness as “a joyous affair.”

As we re-enter the season of Ordinary Time, please join all of us at the Guild in praying for those who were received into the Church this Easter season and in asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten and guide them in their journeys of faith.

Summer Reading Opportunities:

Our online reading groups have been so popular during Lent and the fall semester that we’ve decided to offer TWO summer book clubs this year! Our summer book clubs will be led by our former and current Dorothy Day Graduate Research Fellows, Graceann Beckett and Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic.

The first book group, led by Graceann Beckett, will be reading and discussing The Long Loneliness over the course of six Sunday evenings, beginning on Sunday, June 29th from 8:00- 9:00 PM Eastern and continuing each week through Sunday, August 3rd.

Each of these sessions will begin with prayer and will include context and background material to help participants enter more deeply into the relationships, texts, and historical moments which shaped Dorothy as well as plenty of time for questions and open conversation.

The Long Loneliness is a modern spiritual classic: whether this summer is the first time you’ve picked it up, or you’ve returned to this book many times over the years, you are sure to walk away from this reading with new insights. To sign up for this book club, please register using this form.

Additionally, we are especially happy to announce that Magdalena will be leading the Guild’s first-ever Spanish language reading group this summer! This group will be gathering over the course of four sessions to read Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma ( From Union Square to Rome ), Dorothy’s first autobiography. In this book, written as a letter addressed to her brother, Dorothy narrates in depth her experience of conversion from secular left-wing activism to Catholicism, the intellectual influences that have shaped her thinking, and the permanent religious experience that lead her to continue her radical commitments while simultaneously embracing the Catholic faith.

This reading group, which will meet Tuesday evenings from 7:00- 8:00 PM Eastern on July 8th, 15th, 29th, and August 5th, will provide a space for shared reading and reflection and and opportunity for participants to learn more about Dorothy, her motivations, and what inspires her radical option in the Church, particularly in the Latin American context.

While the readings, presentations, and book discussion will all be offered in Spanish, you are not required to be a fluent speaker in order to sign up! Spanish language learners at all levels are welcome to follow along with the readings, listen, and participate in conversation as they are able. This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with activists, seekers, and members of our global Church who are interested in Dorothy’s life and legacy, and practice language skills at the same time. To register for the Spanish language book club and read Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma , please use this form.

For those in the United Kingdom, the London Jesuit Centre has also chosen The Long Loneliness as the June pick for their monthly book club. This reading group offers monthly se ssions, both in-person and online, and covers a single book in one meeting. If you’re in London, you can sign up for the in-person session , which will take place on Wednesday, June 11th, from 6:30-7:30 PM at 114 Mount Street .

The Centre is also offering an online session of the same group on Wednesday, June 25th, from 6:00-7:00 PM (1:00-2:00 PM Eastern) Both June sessions will be guided by Dr. Aidan Cottrell-Boyce and will include book discussion and faith-sharing.

Retreats, Pilgrimages, and Prayer:

We are excited to be offering SIX walking pilgrimages in Manhattan this summer, the first of which is coming up on June 29th . All of our pilgrimages will take place on Sunday afternoons from 2:00-4:30 PM. These free events are a great way to immerse yourself in the places, communities, and experiences which shaped Dorothy as a young mother and journalist in New York through the publication of the first issue of The Catholic Worker and into the present witness of the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality where Dorothy spent the last decades of her life. Sign up here to take part in one of these special pilgrimages (and invite your friends to come, too!).

There is still time to register for the Dorothy Day Retreat at Pyramid Life Center next month, which will take place from Monday, July 21st to Wednesday, July 23rd. Martha Hennessy and Fred Boehrer will be co-facilitating this retreat using Robert Ellsberg’s Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings as a guide to reflect on how Catholics in the United States can live out their baptismal vocation in the present moment. Dorothy’s spirituality grounded and enlivened her activism, her voluntary poverty, and her pacifism; perhaps the Holy Spirit is calling you to something similar. We highly encourage you to sign up for this incredible opportunity for prayer, contemplation, and conversation accompanied by two wonderful retreat leaders, each of whom is living out their vocation within the Catholic Worker movement and in their families.

Finally, we would like to share a prayer written by Cheryl Anne Maris, a member of the Order of Berrigan and Day , which was officially inaugurated last month on May 1st, the 92nd anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker movement by members of the parish of St. Mary of Bethany, an ecumenical Christian community in Nashville, TN. Members of the order, which is open to those in the Nashville area and further afield, make promises of welcoming, listening, and co-laboring as well as a financial commitment to supporting the corporal works of mercy.

The Chaplet of Berrigan and Day , which is designed to be used with Anglican prayer beads (similar to a rosary), is a contemplative prayer based on the Gospel as reflected in the lives and work of Dorothy and Fr. Dan Berrigan. It is amazing to see how Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality is inspiring our brothers and sisters from other faith traditions and denominations!

Other events!

We have two additional events/resources to share with you this month. The first is just a brief note that the recording of Robert Ellsberg’s March 31st Lenten Lecture, “The Long Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” is now available on our Youtube channel . If you haven’t gotten a chance to view this talk yet, we encourage you to check it out!

We would also like to draw your attention to another online formation opportunity, this one specifically for college students. The Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University is partnering with Pax Romana International Movement of Catholic Students to offer a five-session training, “Living the Spirituality of Action.”

This formation series includes five interactive sessions from June 23rd-July 21st (9:00 AM Eastern) , which will help participants deepen their understanding of Catholic Social Teaching, connect Gospel values with real-world justice issues, develop concrete, faith-based action plans, and build capacity to form others in a spirituality that acts. Our Dorothy Day Guild chair Dr. Kevin Ahern will serve as the resource person for this training.

If you are an undergraduate student, or you work with students who are interested in the Catholic social tradition, Dorothy’s spirituality and faith-based activism, and living out the Gospel as leaders in their communities, please sign up for or share this training opportunity with them! You can register for the “Living the Spirituality of Action” formation series using this form.

Dorothy in the News:

Back in October, we shared a notice on the publication of the latest book on American Catholic pacifism and active resistance to war, Michelle Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial . Last month, for Commonweal , Arvin Alaigh published “Resistance Revisited: Gaza and the legacy of the Catholic peace movement,” engaging that tradition, specifically the witness of the Camden 28 and other draft board raid participants from the 1960s and 1970s, to see how it shapes and forms the responses of contemporary Catholic peace activists to the genocide in Palestine.

Writing on Catholic Worker Mark Colville’s response to the Israeli military’s routine practice of home demolitions in the West Bank, Alaigh notes,

“The moral witness and action of Colville, and the Catholic activists he joined, are modern incarnations of the rich American Catholic antiwar tradition. It’s a tradition that dates back nearly a century, inaugurated, it is generally agreed, by Dorothy Day. Her pacifist resistance during World War II drew the admiration of many, but the ire of more. She spent decades writing on the interwoven evils of war-making and poverty, excoriating an American political consensus that immiserated untold millions across the country and world every day.

By the 1960s, Day had grown into a movement elder and played a critical role in mentoring the next generation of Catholic peacemakers. The new class of activists directed their attention to the Vietnam War, ultimately coalescing around the Catholic Resistance, a loosely connected political formation that carried the American Catholic antiwar tradition to its zenith.”

Part in-depth review of Spiritual Criminals , part reflection on historiography and the demands of conscience, Alaigh’s article is our must-read for the month– and we’re looking forward to the forthcoming publication of his own book, Double Crossed , which places the Catholic Resistance during the Vietnam era in the broader context of Cold War politics, the antiwar movement, and the trial of the Harrisburg Seven, told through the lives of Daniel and Philip Berrigan.

We’d also like to offer our congratulations to our friends over at US Catholic , who are celebrating their 90th anniversary of publication this year. In honor of this milestone, the June 2025 issue of the magazine features a conversation with Claretian priests Mark Brummel and John Molyneux , each of whom previously served as editor-in-chief of US Catholic. In this interview, Father Brummel and Father Molyneux touch on the first stages of Dorothy’s cause for canonization, which was originally initiated by the Claretians prior to being officially transferred to Dorothy’s home diocese in New York. Fr. Brummel remembers the immediate groundswell of support for Dorothy’s cause as fascinating and notes that the magazine sponsored two seminars, at Marquette University and at the United Nations, on Dorothy’s life of heroic virtue in those early years.

All of us at the Guild would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the Claretians for their foresight in recognizing Dorothy’s holiness and our Church’s need for her prayers and example. To everyone at US Catholic , thank you for carrying forward Dorothy’s legacy of lay Catholic journalism, and congratulations on this amazing anniversary!

Finally, we’ve seen an increasing number of short articles on Dorothy in Spanish-language media from Latin America and Europe in recent months, most recently “Los descubrimientos de Dorothy Day” (“The Discoveries of Dorothy Day”), by Antonio R. Rubio Plo and “La santa feminista: la vida ejemplar de Dorothy Day,” (“The feminist saint: the exemplary life of Dorothy Day”), by Santiago Pérez.

Writing for the Madrid-based Catholic radio network COPE, Rubio Plo notes that From Union Square to Rome is atypical of conversion narratives in that rather than being characterized by overwhelming Divine activity, Dorothy’s first autobiography is instead organized by her own discoveries: that solidarity with the poor and the oppressed finds its most profound meaning in the Gospel, that love for God can be expressed in friendship, in the love of those close to us, and in the contemplation of the natural world, and above all, that we meet Christ in the poor. For La Diaria , an independent, progressive Uruguayan news outlet, Pérez highlights Dorothy’s lifelong pacifist commitments, her total opposition to war, and her prescient warning following the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the United States was becoming an increasingly militarized society, placing its faith in nuclear weapons instead of in God.

We’re delighted that Dorothy’s life and her legacy of nonviolence and solidarity with the poor are engaging new audiences in our global Church and in society at large! As we continue the work of translating Dorothy’s work into Spanish and other languages, all of us at the Guild look forward to building relationships with other Catholic, ecumenical, and activist communities who are promoting Dorothy’s unique mode of living out the Gospel in service of the common good.

Art and Music:

For our friends in Europe, we would like to share some additional information about François Rieux’s new exhibit of expressionist paintings, entitled Dorothy Day: Changer l’Ordre Social , which opened last week and runs until the third of July at the Cloître des Billettes in Paris. In an article for Roundtable , “Exploring the ‘Incandescence’ of Dorothy Day,” Jerry Windley-Daoust notes that with these paintings,

“Rieux attempted to capture Dorothy’s essence rather than her biography. He wanted his canvases to represent “the embodiment of a commitment, in all its fragility, light, and solitude.”

That commitment is powerfully embodied in the painting La Pacifiste (The Pacifist) based on the iconic photograph of Dorothy sitting on a folding chair, framed by the thighs of two police officers, at the 1973 United Farm Workers strike organized by Cesar Chavez.

The painting depicts Dorothy as a luminous figure dwarfed by the towering police officers. In the face of the dark fencing her in, [Jean-Claude Millet, founder of the Mercurart gallery and publishing house] says Dorothy is:

‘peaceful but firm, committed but confident […] willing to trade her physical freedom for her freedom to witness to what she has understood about Jesus. She draws from this a paroxysmal capacity for detachment, consubstantial with her conviction. She drank from the source that goes back to our origin: the source of Love that springs from where Man is.’”

Rieux’s paintings are accompanied by a book by the same title, also published in English as Dorothy Day: Changing the Social Order , a collaboration between Rieux and Millet. The book pairs reproductions of the paintings with reflections by friends and relatives who knew Dorothy during her life, including Martha Hennessy and Geoffrey Gneuhs, and a biographical sketch introducing Dorothy to a French-speaking audience, emphasizing her radical commitments and their relevance to our current moment.

As part of the celebration surrounding the exhibition, Martha will be speaking at a free event in Paris at Le Dorothy, a Catholic Worker-inspired community gathering space, at the end of this month. The community at Le Dorothy Café et Atelier would like to extend a warm invitation to everyone to join them for “La Petit-Fille de Dorothy, Au Dorothy!” (“Dorothy’s Granddaughter at the Dorothy!”) on Thursday, June 26th at 8:00 PM.

If you or someone you know will be in Paris this summer, we highly encourage you to attend Martha’s talk, visit Le Dorothy , or check out Dorothy Day: Changer l’Ordre Social at the Cloître des Billettes from now until July 3rd– and, to learn more about how the radical witness of Dorothy’s life and legacy inspired a group of young French Catholics who came of age during Pope Francis’ papacy to open a community café named in her honor, check out this recent article from Le Monde , “Génération François: portrait d’une jeunesse politisée avec le pape argentin, « un phare pour assumer ma radicalité »” (“Generation Francis: A portrait of youth politicized by the Argentinian pope, ‘a beacon for embracing my radicalism’”).

In other news, we were so excited to come across a new EP by the indie-folk band Los Gatitos, “The Ballad of Dorothy Day,” which was released on June 1st with a B-side track, “Nuclear Fear.” The lyrics are GREAT, and really fun to sing:

“Fly away cardinal, my money’s on the dove.

A house of hospitality; we can rise above,

The oppressors and possessors, gatekeepers and the creeps,

Disarm the hearts, burn the flags, our passion never sleeps.

Gonna work, work, work for the workers’ revolution,

Gonna fight, fight, fight for the fishes in the sea,

Gonna help, help, help the homeless and the hungry,

Gonna build a better world for you and me.”

I wrote to Lisa Marr, the lead singer for “Los Gatitos,” asking if she could share anything further about the inspiration for this new song– Lisa says,

“I first heard about Dorothy Day from my dear friend and wonderful writer Heather King who penned this column in the Angelus News back in 2015 …

The story of this incredible woman stayed with me and I knew her life would make a terrific song... The first verse came to me in a flash and I carried it around in my head for some years before finishing it in January during a "song a day" challenge we were doing. Dorothy Day's wonderfully eventful and nuanced life of service is an endless inspiration to me and the band, especially during these tumultuous times. It's our hope to turn more people on to Dorothy's call to "disarm the heart" and get directly involved with making our communities more loving, equitable and empowered.”

Lisa also shared another one of their songs, “in the same spirit,” called "Doing It For Love." “The Ballad of Dorothy Day” is destined to become a Catholic Worker classic, but beyond that, cataloguing music like this and The Chairman Dances’ “Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin,” from their 2016 album, Time Without Measure is an important part of the Guild’s work!

As a lay association of the faithful, the Dorothy Day Guild supports the work of our postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman, and our relator, Monsignor Maurizio Tagliaferri and their team at the Vatican in part by gathering evidence of widespread devotion to Dorothy– which is another way to say that the faithful already understand her as a holy figure worthy of admiration and imitation. In fact, a CD of the song “Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin” was included in the evidence we sent to Rome at the close of the diocesan phase of Dorothy’s cause for canonization. If you are working on any kind of creative project, whether it is art, theater, music, or something else which similarly engages Dorothy’s life and her legacy, please contact us so we can share it with our colleagues at the Dicastery for Causes of the Saints and with our wider network of friends and supporters.

A few words from Dorothy:

Yesterday, our Guild social media feeds were filled with stunning images from the Pantheon in Rome, which was consecrated as the Basilica of St. Mary of the Martyrs in the year 609 AD. Each year on Pentecost, firefighters on the roof of the basilica drop thousands of red rose petals through the oculus, allowing them to rain down on the worshippers in imitation of the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the apostles as tongues of fire.

Dorothy never visited Rome during Pentecost, but she did experience a similarly beautiful liturgy during the season she spent living with her daughter Tamar Teresa in Mexico City. Dorothy and Tamar lived in Mexico City for six months in the winter and spring of 1930, while Dorothy worked as a freelance journalist for Catholic publications in the United States.

The lively mix of cultures, languages, and styles of Catholic worship in Mexico strongly affected Dorothy, who herself had been previously shaped by the Anglo-Protestant habits of her upbringing. Dorothy was deeply moved by the ardent faith and exuberant celebrations of the Indigenous Christians at the parish she attended, who centered their lives around acknowledging and giving thanks for God’s ongoing providence. For the July 1930 issue of Commonweal , Dorothy wrote that she and Tamar,

“had spent three hours on Good Friday in a sad gloomy church, and Easter Sunday we had attended the high Mass, which as I had expected, was nowhere near as glorious as that of Palm Sunday. And now it was Monday and the cobbled roads and paths across fields to the church were filled with gayly dressed Indians, children in pink and blue satin, the men in white cotton and linen colored blouses. All the seats in the church were taken and we had to find a place for ourselves on the floor as usual. In a few minutes, to gay and joyful music, the three priests came out in their white and gold robes, and showers of blossoms of all kinds began to float down through the church in steadily increasing density. The Mass was being said at the altar of the black Christ, blacker by far than any of the Indians in the congregation. During the Gloria in Excelsis little Indian boys appeared at windows high up above the altars, looking like cherubs painted there, and came to life to hurl down handfuls of roses and poppies which fell softly before the altar. The steady storm of blossoms was coming from five other apertures in the domes of the church.

For once Teresa was perfectly happy to sit through the long service. She got directly beneath the falling blossoms at the back of the church and she and a little Indian boy swept the petals around them into piles and tossed blossoms at each other gleefully. The music was very gay. There were violins, violas and flutes beside the organ, and I strongly suspect grand opera music was being played. Through all the Mass petals of carnations, violets, roses and poppies and shreds of calla lilies came floating through the air, falling on everyone, until the flowers were so heaped up around us, that there was actually a wet sound of falling petals.”

In a moment in the United States where we are seeing increasing hostility towards immigrants and their children, particularly those from Latin America, Dorothy’s columns from Mexico City, many of which have been collected in Commonweal , remind us of the reality that we are all members of the Body of Christ, intimately connected to one another in the Spirit. As Pope Leo said in his Pentecost homily yesterday ,

“the Spirit accomplished something extraordinary in the lives of the Apostles. Following Jesus’ death, they had retreated behind closed doors, in fear and sadness…The Holy Spirit overcomes their fear, shatters their inner chains, heals their wounds, anoints them with strength and grants them the courage to go out to all and to proclaim God’s mighty works.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us that in Jerusalem at that time there was a multitude of people from various backgrounds, yet “each one heard them speaking in his own native tongue”. In a word, at Pentecost, the doors of the Upper Room were opened because the Spirit opens borders.”

The Holy Spirit, our teacher and our comforter, breaks down the barriers which divide us from one another. Pope Leo went on yesterday to remind us that,

“At Pentecost, the Apostles spoke the languages of those they met, and the confusion of Babel was finally resolved by the harmony brought about by the Spirit. Whenever God’s “breath” unites our hearts… differences no longer become an occasion for division and conflict but rather a shared patrimony from which we can all draw, and which sets us all on journey together, in fraternity.”

Dorothy never became a fluent Spanish speaker, but her time in Mexico left her with a lasting appreciation for the essential unity of the Church, a unity which was not shut away by locked doors or walled borders, but instead enlivened and enriched by the cultures, traditions, and peoples it encompassed. This month, please join us in asking Dorothy to pray alongside us for all migrants and refugees, especially those who are separated from their families and who are living in fear, and for the Holy Spirit to dwell in our Church and help us to recognize each other as brothers and sisters.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Anniversaries, Invitations, and a Prayer for the Conclave

Thu, 08 May 2025 19:26:28 GMT

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.

This year, our panel features a conversation between Robert Ellsberg, Dr. Margaret Pfeil, Deirdre Cornell, and Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic, who will each be introduced by Gus Fuller, a young Catholic Worker who was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil after being deeply immersed in and impacted by the writings and public witness of both Dorothy and Pope Francis.

Each of our panelists brings a great depth of knowledge of Dorothy and the Catholic Worker movement as well as particular expertise on the theological and pastoral priorities which characterized Francis' pontificate. This panel will be moderated by Dorothy Day Guild chair Dr. Kevin Ahern. We hope to see you Tuesday night!

Our friends at the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker community in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, are hosting a May spirituality series over the course of four weekends. Each of the talks will take place in the basement hall of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, located at 1439 Market St, Harrisburg, PA 17103 and will explore various aspects of Dorothy’s life, legacy, and ongoing relevance. The series kicked off over the weekend with a talk by Jeff Korgen on his Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion and will continue on Sunday, May 11 at 3:30 PM when Dr. Carmina Chapp of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm will speak on “Prayer and Work: The Benedictine Spirituality of Dorothy Day.”

The following Sunday, Nate Tinner-Williams, co-founder of Black Catholic Messenger , will present “The Black Catholics Who Built the American Church” on May 18 at 3:30 PM , connecting Church history with present-day prophetic witness– if you enjoyed our November webinar, “Dorothy Day and the Saintly Six,” we highly recommend you attend if you are in the area!

The series concludes on Saturday, May 24 at 9:30 AM with Martha Hennessy offering reflections on “Dorothy Day and the Works of Mercy in the Jubilee Year.” For more information on any of the talks in this series, please contact the Catholic Worker community at harrisburgcw@gmail.com or visit their website .

For our friends in Europe, Martha Hennessy will be speaking at Le Dorothy in Paris on Thursday, June 26th at 8:00 PM . Le Dorothy is a community café, workshop, and folk school in the tradition of the Catholic Worker, located at 85 bis rue de Ménilmontant, 75020 in Paris, France.

The members of this café community practice hospitality and clarification of thought by welcoming their neighbors and friends, many of whom are new immigrants, for a cup of coffee, tea (or wine!) and by offering many free cultural, educational, and artistic programs.

They’ve also recently released a podcast episode featuring their two co-founders, Foucauld Giuliani and Thérèse du Sartel, who have provided an excellent, in-depth introduction to Dorothy’s life in French. For our English-speaking friends, you can learn more about Le Dorothy from community member Henry Simonin, who spoke as part of our Easter-season webinar “Dorothy Day and the Global Church,” four years ago this month.

Martha’s talk, which will be moderated by Carmen Bouley de Santiago and Foucauld Giuliani, is one of the events surrounding the gallery exhibition of artist François Rieux’s “Dorothy Day: Changer l’Ordre Social” . As the Mercurart Gallery website states,

“Using a narrative approach, the painter evokes the [economic] crisis of 1929 and the soup lines, the working conditions of that era, faith and religion, pacifism, and the “back to the land” movement. Inspired by the life of Dorothy Day, François Rieux painted more than one hundred canvases in which he depicts every facet of the human condition.”

Some of the paintings in this series were originally part of a book, also entitled Dorothy Day: Changer l’Ordre Social , a collaboration between the artist and author Jean-Claude Millet, the founder of the Mercurart Gallery, which includes contributions by Martha and by Geoffrey Gneuhs.

Rieux’s paintings will be on display from June 3rd through July 3rd at Cloitre des Billettes, 24 rue des archives, 75004 in Paris. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday, from 9:00 AM until 6:00 PM .

Finally, registration for the July 21st-23rd Dorothy Day Retreat at Pyramid Life Center in the Adirondacks is still open! Martha Hennessy will be facilitating this retreat along with co-leader Fred Boehrer, one of the founding members of the Emmaus House Catholic Worker community in Albany, NY. This retreat will use Robert Ellsberg’s Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings as a guide to frame the question of how we are to live as Catholics in the United States today, so we especially recommend this retreat to anyone who signed up for or was interested in our Lenten book club! Fred and Martha are both wonderful retreat leaders who bring the wisdom of many years of experience as peacemakers in the Catholic Worker movement to this dedicated time of prayer, rest, and reflection. We’re so excited to share this amazing opportunity with you and hope that many of you will be able to participate!

Honors and Awards:

We recently learned of two awards named in honor of Dorothy which are being presented this spring. Last month, the New Haven-based group “Promoting Enduring Peace,” gave its inaugural Dorothy Day Award to Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student from Columbia University who has been detained without criminal charges since his arrest two months ago for participating in demonstrations for peace in Palestine last spring. Promoting Enduring Peace honored Dorothy herself with its Gandhi Peace Award in 1975 for her lifetime of advocacy and activism and had been contemplating naming a second award after her for some time. The group wanted the second award to go to a young person who was in grave danger or incarcerated due to their activism, as Dorothy herself was many times.

You can read additional coverage of this year’s Dorothy Day Award at The Roundtable . The Dorothy Day Guild would like to extend our congratulations to Mahmoud Khalil and Promoting Enduring Peace and ask that you join us in praying for Mahmoud’s release from detention and for the wellbeing of his wife and their new baby.

In Syracuse, NY, St. Lucy’s Parish will posthumously honor Sister Patricia Bergan at the Dorothy Day Award dinner tonight (May 8th) at 5:00 PM. Sister Pat, who died this past December, “lived a life of service, activism, and a little fun thrown in,” according to Eileen Clinton, who serves as the public relations director for the Dorothy Day Award committee. Sister Pat served as an elementary school teacher during her sixty-three years of religious life. During that time, she was also active in parish ministry and war resistance and was repeatedly arrested for protesting the cruise missiles stored at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY and later the First Gulf War.

The Dorothy Day Award Dinner will be held at the gymnasium at St. Lucy’s Church, 432 Gifford St. in Syracuse, from 5:00-7:00 PM on Thursday, May 8th. Everyone is welcome to attend, and attendees are invited to bring a suggested donation of $10-15 for individuals or $25-30 for a family, which will support the parish’s neighborhood ministries to the poor. The Dorothy Day Guild congratulates St. Lucy’s Parish and Sister Patricia’s Franciscan community on her lifetime of hospitality and activism!

Reading and listening recommendations:

Earlier this spring, many of our friends participated in the events surrounding the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at the United Nations, culminating in a mass celebrated by Archbishop John Wester and the distribution of ashes prior to a demonstration to urge the United States towards disarmament on the morning of Ash Wednesday. Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, of the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker Community in Worcester, Massachusetts, stayed in Dorothy’s room at Maryhouse during her visit to New York to participate in the mass, vigils, and protest. In the most recent edition of the Saints Francis and Thérèse Catholic Worker’s community newsletter, The Catholic Radical , she wrote,

"I had three confirmed commitments in New York: attending the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Forum at Riverside Church, which was the opening event for Nuclear Ban Week; participating in Archbishop John Wester’s Shrove Tuesday Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, and joining my fellow Catholic Workers for an Ash Wednesday protest at the US Mission to urge our callous government to support the TPNW.

During the unclaimed hours, I imagined making a mini-retreat in Dorothy’s room. I would read her books, write in my journal, pray to her for inspiration, and from the window watch New Yorkers carry on with daily life while the country fell apart…

For two months now, I have stayed enraged over the grotesque cruelty of our current administration. Rage of this nature affects one’s vision. When the priest speaks of the “resurrection hidden within the crucifixion,” I look at him blankly. New York brought relief. My days there took on a holy rhythm in spite of my frenzied self. Morning prayer in Dorothy’s room, a bit of news from the old radio, coffee."

Read Claire’s whole reflection in The Catholic Radical (find it under “Mason Street Musings,” on page eight), or in The Roundtable .

We also wanted to pass along two additional articles, from OSV News and The Houston Catholic Worker . For OSV, Jason Adkins recently published “Dorothy Day, Local Politics, and Faithful Citizenship,” a reflection which follows his recent interview with Dr. Michael Baxter, “Dorothy Day, Politics, and the Catholic Way Forward,” for the podcast Catholic in America. In this reflection, Jason reminds us that Dorothy’s mode of engagement with public life

"was deeply personal, but never apolitical. She lived in voluntary poverty in New York City, helping found houses of hospitality where the homeless and hungry could find food, shelter and dignity. She believed politics wasn’t just about votes and policies (she rarely voted) — it was also about how we treated one another and the systems we upheld through our choices.

She didn’t waste time waiting for the system to fix itself. She built a new way of living right in its shadow. She practiced a kind of politics rooted in community, compassion and daily commitment — one that looked askance at events in Washington without pretending politics didn’t matter."

Jason encourages us to think in terms of both subsidiarity and solidarity and to commit to the work of faithful citizenship within our own communities. Local engagement

“allows us to see the face of our neighbor, especially the suffering neighbor. That proximity teaches us empathy, sharpens our sense of justice and helps us discern the real needs of our community.. away from the abstractions and performative arguments that often dominate national discourse.”

As many of us look forward to the school year ending for ourselves or our children, this is a timely reminder to consider how we might invest more deeply in projects and relationships which bring us into the lives and worlds of our most vulnerable neighbors (perhaps by reaching out to your nearest Catholic Worker community to find out how you might be able to volunteer with them!).

In a similar vein, considering our responsibilities to and the possibilities of action within our world today, Louise Zwick recently published “Sacrifice, Creativity, Availability in Bulgakov, Mounier, Dorothy Day, and Fr. John Hugo” for The Houston Catholic Worker . In this piece, Louise considers how making ourselves radically available to the needs of the poor and joining our suffering and their own with that of Christ can allow us to become “partners with God and put in our grain of sand for good in the cosmic struggle against evil and help with a reconstruction of the social order to save our world.” Dorothy recognized this, and spoke of it often in her discussions of our shared membership in Christ’s Mystical Body. Within the context of the Catholic Worker, to be available to the poor means sacrificing our time, opportunities for “good jobs,” predictability, and privacy. These sacrifices, small as they might be, can be offered up and joined with the suffering of Christ for the redemption of the world.

Our contemporary culture tends to think of sacrifice as exclusively negative, but Louise writes that in her many years of experience at Casa Juan Diego, sacrifice has also been an act of devotion, an opportunity to be intimately engaged with another person. Dorothy understood this, and recognized that inviting others to make themselves available in this way was a way of offering them a path to greater unity with Christ through His Mystical Body. Louise remembers how years ago, Dorothy offered her late husband Mark and his mother the opportunity to share in the work of availability and sacrifice. Ed Willock, a working-class Catholic writer and artist, father of twelve, and friend of the Catholic Worker community, whom Dorothy would later eulogize in Commonweal ,

“became very ill after several strokes. Mark Zwick and his mother (before I knew them) were visiting Dorothy Day one day in New York. After visiting for a while, Dorothy asked them if they would be willing to drive four of Ed Willock’s children up to New England to Mary Reed Newland, who would care for the children for a time. Mark and his mother were available, and they drove the children, joyfully.”

That ongoing practice, that habit of availability of course went on to become the foundation of the Casa Juan Diego Catholic Worker community, who have been a sign of hope for thousands of our immigrant neighbors in the decades since Dorothy’s death in 1980. Our thanks to Louise for this article, and for her ongoing work in support of Dorothy’s cause for canonization and in re-presenting the spiritual and intellectual heritage of the Catholic Worker tradition.

We’re also very excited to share two new listening recommendations this month. The first is a new episode of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge program, entitled “On Pilgrimage with Dorothy Day. ”

In this program, journalist and producer Shannon Henry Kleiber takes us along with her on a pilgrimage to New York, visiting Maryhouse, the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University, riding the Dorothy Day Staten Island Ferry, and along the way learning about Dorothy’s life and the process by which the Church officially recognizes saints. If you’ve been part of the Guild or of our extended network of friends for a while now, you’ll recognize a lot of familiar names and voices here

Shannon’s conversations with Guild members like Joe Sclafani and Geoff Gneuhs, Catholic Workers like Jane Sammon, and clergy like Fr. James Martin, SJ are thoughtful, nuanced, and personal. She interviewed Deirdre Cornell to ask about Deirdre’s family connections with Dorothy and their longstanding participation in the Catholic Worker movement. As Deirdre said,

“My grandparents had known Dorothy because they helped to start a house of hospitality in Cleveland, Ohio. So my mother's family stayed in touch with the Catholic Worker. She [Monica Cornell] received the newspaper, and she came to New York City at the age of twenty-one to join other young people who wanted to be around, or they wanted to be near her because they were looking for ways to build a better world. My father [Tom Cornell] had read " The Long Loneliness " when he was a college student at nineteen.”

“So [Dorothy] kind of was a matchmaker,” Shannon responds.

“My father says that,” Deirdre replied. “And then when he burned his draft cards, my mother, brother and I lived at the Catholic Worker farm while he was in the Danbury prison. And that's where I took my first steps as I learned to walk.”

To call “On Pilgrimage with Dorothy Day” a radio show or podcast episode really doesn’t do it justice– this is really a rich audio documentary which includes several great conversations with people who knew Dorothy in her lifetime, and which brings together a wide range of perspectives on Dorothy’s life as a journalist, a Catholic convert, a working mother, and a future saint. If you’ve been contemplating a visit to New York for one of our walking pilgrimages or if you’ve volunteered at the Catholic Worker, we highly encourage you to give this program a listen– and if you know someone who is curious about Dorothy, share this recording with them!

Martha Hennessy also recently appeared on Fr. John Dear’s The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast for its sixteenth episode, "We are experiencing the thrashing of empire and death throes of capitalism," where she spoke on her own experiences as an activist and peacemaker as well as Dorothy’s firm pacifism and committed opposition to every occasion of war. Fr. John Dear asks Martha where she sees Dorothy as a teacher and model of nonviolence, Christian faith, and the embodiment of Jesus’ teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. Martha responded that she saw this first and foremost in Dorothy’s “willingness to give her will over to God.” Martha noted that this particular expression of holiness begins in intimate, interpersonal relationships and radiates outwards. As she said to Fr. John,

"I saw it in what happened to my mother’s parents. At the family level, this practice of nonviolence really does begin with each of us in our own hearts. And she gave up a life [with her daughter’s father, Forster] that she so dearly wanted…So Dorothy had a very personal experience, initially, which I do believe prepared her to give her will over to God. I think that my grandfather recognized something that he had to let go of, and go do the work that she needed to do. And that level of commitment and understanding and willingness to trust in God is what gave her the stamina and the foundation to continue with nearly fifty years of the Catholic Worker movement."

Thank you, Martha and Fr. John, for this thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation! We hope that you enjoy listening to this episode, and we encourage you to check out Fr. John’s interviews with other recent and upcoming guests as well. New episodes of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast are released every Monday.

Dorothy Day en Español:

Last month, Jane Sammon and Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic spoke at a bilingual online forum for Líderes Católicos, a Latin American Catholic association which focuses on lay education and formation in the Church. Ursula Lonngi provided live simultaneous interpretation for Jane’s testimony of coming to know the Catholic Worker through the newspaper as a child, of living and working with Dorothy as a young adult, and life in the New York Catholic Worker community from 1972 until the present. In the second half of the livestream, Jane and Magdalena took questions on the cultural and literary references which formed Dorothy, as well as the challenges of sustaining a “revolution of the heart” in a deeply broken society in Spanish from the audience. A recording of the program, “Testimonio de Dorothy Day,” is available on the Líderes Católicos Youtube channel.

We are so grateful to Catholic Workers like Jane and Magdalena who have worked to make Dorothy’s writing and legacy more widely available to Spanish-language audiences! Magdalena has also continued the ongoing work of translating Dorothy’s newspaper columns into Spanish, two more of which have just been posted on the Catholic Worker movement website. Just in time for Mothers’ Day, which will be celebrated in Mexico on Saturday and the United States on Sunday, check out Dorothy’s narrative of her daughter Tamar’s birth in 1926, “Tener un Bebé: Una Historia de Navidad” (“Having a Baby”). Peter Maurin’s 148th birthday is also this week, on May 9th, and the anniversary of his death in 1949 takes place next week on May 15th. To mark the occasion, Magdalena has translated Dorothy’s May 1955 column, “Programa de Peter,” (“Peter’s Program”), which Dorothy wrote to honor her late friend and mentor and to continue sharing his vision of the Gospel and the world which had so profoundly changed the course of her life. You can read all of the columns currently available in Spanish here . Thank you, Magdalena, for these translations, and thanks as well to Jerry Windley-Daoust for his heroic work in maintaining the CatholicWorker.org website as such an invaluable resource for all of us who are interested in Dorothy’s life and legacy.

Prayer requests:

First, we ask your continuing prayers for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis and for the College of Cardinals, who are now engaged in the process of choosing a new shepherd for our Church. Please join us in asking Dorothy’s intercession for this process, and for Francis’ successor to share his deep love for Christ in the poor and for peace.

We also had two personal requests for prayer from friends of the Guild. Mary, from Syracuse, NY wrote to us asking for prayers for her nephew and his family, and Domitila wrote to us asking for prayers for her son and for another relative. Over the next month, please pray for these individuals, their families, and their intentions, and ask Dorothy to pray along with you, perhaps by using the canonization prayer on our website, or in your own words. Thank you for undertaking this important spiritual work of mercy!

A few words from Dorothy:

Our friend Renée Roden, of the Harrisburg Catholic Worker community, is in Rome now, covering the papal conclave as a freelance journalist– we are eagerly anticipating her report and hoping she is able to visit with our colleagues at the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints!

Dorothy likewise traveled to Rome several times and was present during the final session of Vatican II, when Gaudium et spes, the pastoral constitution on the Church and the modern world, was being discussed.

Dorothy hoped that in the finalized texts the council would produce, that the Church would finally come out in a definitive way for nonviolence as the normative Christian response to conflict. In the months leading up to her trip, where she and an international group of Catholic women would spend their days praying and fasting for peace, she wrote ,

"Our prayer and our hope is that from the chair of Peter, from the College of Cardinals will come during this last session of the Council, a clear statement, “Put up thy sword,” with the healing touch of Jesus in such a statement to the ears of those who, hearing, do not understand.

The apostles didn’t take the sword, they cowered in fear instead and could scarcely believe that they saw Him again. They were still asking Him about when the earthly kingdom would come despite His clear statement that His kingdom was not of this world which is a testing ground, a place of trial, a school of Christ, as St. Benedict had it.But after the Holy Spirit enlightened the apostles they went to martyrdom, embraced the cross, laid down their own lives for their neighbors, in whom they were beginning to see Christ.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.”

We long with all our hearts for such a statement from the Bishops, clear, uncompromising, courageous. We know that men in their weakness, like the apostles, will still take the sword… But the teaching of Jesus has indeed been answered again and again over the ages, from the apostles to the present day and again and again these called by the Holy Spirit and touched by grace have laid down their lives for the Faith that God is our Father and all men are our brothers."

Many of us at the Guild have similar hopes for this papal conclave as those Dorothy expressed during Vatican II. We have offered our earnest prayers that the next shepherd of our Church would be a man who, like his predecessor, and like Dorothy, recognizes the unmistakable call to peace at the heart of the Gospel. Please continue to pray with us for our Church and for our world that the Holy Spirit would continue to be present with us and remind us of our essential unity as members of Christ’s Body.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Thank you, Pope Francis

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:41:08 GMT

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.”

Last fall, for US Catholic , Robert Ellsberg reflected on what he might have told the Holy Father about Dorothy prior to his 2015 visit to the United States, seeing in Dorothy the incarnation of Pope Francis’ dreams of “a poor Church for the poor,” which constantly went out to minister to Christ on the margins. But then Robert asked what he might have said if he,

“could have sat down with Dorothy Day to tell her about Pope Francis? How thrilled she would have been to learn of a pope who took his name from St. Francis. So often she criticized the ecclesial trappings of power and privilege. How she would have delighted in Francis’s gestures of humility, his call for shepherds “who have the smell of the sheep,” his washing the feet of prisoners (including women and Muslims!). With her lifetime among the poor and discarded, how she would have resonated with his words: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.” How moved she would be to learn of his deep friendship with a Jewish rabbi, his love for opera and Dostoevsky, and his exhortation to spread the “joy of the gospel.”’

As we remember and reflect on Francis’ papacy, we encourage each of you to watch or read the transcript of the Holy Father’s powerful and prophetic remarks. Pope Francis understood Dorothy as an ardent defender of the dignity of the poorest and most forgotten of our brothers and sisters. Two years ago, he wrote a new foreword to Dorothy’s memoir, From Union Square to Rome, identifying in Dorothy’s narrative of conversion a living witness to what St. James writes in his epistle: “Show me your faith without works and I by my works will show you my faith.” (2:18). Dorothy’s “whole life was devoted to social justice and human rights, particularly for the poor, the exploited workers, and the socially marginalized,” Pope Francis wrote.

Many people around the world have felt unsettled and anxious over the past few days and months. Here, too, Pope Francis has left us words of assurance from his reflections on Dorothy’s life and legacy: “Dorothy Day teaches us that God is not simply a comfort or a form of alienation to turn to amidst life’s difficulties, but that he abundantly meets our yearning for joy and fulfilment. The Lord comforts restless hearts, not bourgeois souls who are content with things as they are.”

In a time when the people of the United States are much beset by questions of what it means for America to be great, we would do well to remember what Pope Francis told us when he visited:

“A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to "dream" of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.”

In the coming days and weeks, please join us at the Dorothy Day Guild in praying for the repose of Pope Francis’ soul, for the comfort of all who mourn him, and for the college of cardinals as they prepare to elect a new shepherd for our Church. We ask all these things through Dorothy’s intercession.

Thank you, Pope Francis, for being our Holy Father: a Pope for the poor and a shepherd after Dorothy’s own heart.

In Christ’s peace,

The Dorothy Day Guild

Holy Week with Dorothy

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 17:25:16 GMT

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!

Kevin Ahern and I were honored to be invited to kick off the Symposium at the Maryhouse Friday Night Meeting, where we gave a joint talk entitled “Dorothy Day: A Pilgrim of Hope in an Age of Despair and Presumption.” In Spes non confundit, the “bull of indiction,” with which Pope Francis introduced the Jubilee Year last May, the Holy Father offered us eight signs of hope to look out for and a challenge to undertake them ourselves. Those signs are:

Work for peace
Celebrate life “a future filled with the laughter of babies and children”
Outreach and pardons for prisoners
Visiting the sick
Care for young people
Welcoming migrants
Caring for the elderly
Caring for the “billions of the poor, who often lack the essentials of life.”

We see all of these signs present in the life and work of Dorothy, and in the living legacy of the Catholic Worker movement. We know that many of your families and communities are right now experiencing challenging times of economic hardship, uncertainty about employment and immigration status, and anxieties for friends and relatives in war-torn areas of our world. These times tempt us to despair, but we also know that the Gospel is constantly being enacted in the very places which seem to be most impoverished and threatened. Dorothy reminds us of this reality, as does Pope Francis.

We invite you to check out the talk, and follow along with this handout that Kevin shared at the Friday Night Meeting, and above all, keep watch for these eight signs of hope! We are now in the week of Christ’s Passion, but the resurrection is at hand.

The following morning, we gathered at Manhattan University for bagels, pastries, and coffee to pray the liturgy of the hours together and then hear Robert Ellsberg’s opening remarks on “Dorothy Day and the Future of Theology,” with a response from Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic. The five panels which followed in the late morning and then picked up after lunch featured conversations on Dorothy as a prophet, peacemaker, worker, and lay exemplar of holiness “in the world.” Renée Roden, who moderated one of the roundtable discussions, offered a brief write-up of the Saturday events for Roundtable , noting the distinctly inter-generational and inter-faith character of the conversations, all of which

“highlighted a way in which Day’s life held a prophetic witness for the Catholic Church—and the entire globe—in tackling the pains and struggles of the twentieth century. As [Sean Domencic, of the Rechabite Catholic Worker, who presented at one of the roundtables,] noted, many of Day’s pressing concerns: peace, the universal call of all the people of God to holiness, her ecumenism, and her commitment to the robust social reform based on a life lived in the liturgy of the church, were also key concerns of the Second Vatican Council.”

For Italian-language speakers, Giulia Galeotti, one of our panelists, wrote a story for the Vatican News , “In cammino con Dorothy Day nell’anno del Giubileo” (“Walking with Dorothy Day in the Jubilee Year”), introducing Dorothy and the Catholic Worker movement in the context of the Jubilee and detailing some recent activities of the New York Catholic Worker community and the Dorothy Day Guild, including the Symposium.

After our final roundtable on Dorothy and lay vocation, featuring Martha Hennessy, Graceann Beckett, and Gráinne Malone, we closed out the Symposium by celebrating a vigil mass in Manhattan University’s Chapel of the Holy Infancy and then returning to the Dorothy Day Center for a family-friendly pizza dinner. If you weren’t able to attend the Symposium, check out the Dorothy Day Guild’s Instagram page to watch a few of the panels and roundtable discussions, including the Friday night meeting we hosted at Maryhouse. We plan to edit a few of these conversations for our Youtube channel as well, so keep an eye out– we are so excited to continue developing educational resources for you to share with your communities!

Most recently, we were so excited to host our first event in South Bend, Indiana. The Dorothy Day Guild was very proud to co-sponsor a production of Lisa Wagner-Carollo’s Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day on April 4th at Our Lady of the Road, the drop-in center run by the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community.

For this event, we welcomed a diverse audience of students from the University of Notre Dame, members of the Guild, friends of the local Catholic Worker house, and guests who frequent Our Lady for breakfast, laundry, and showers on weekend mornings.

Hosting this production in a space where the works of mercy are offered every week was a particularly moving experience, and we all enjoyed Lisa’s post-performance Q&A and the reception afterwards. Our young friend Dory ( named for Dorothy! ) was particularly excited to bring her Dorothy doll along with her to see the play and share some chocolate cake!

All of us were so impressed with the stunning, simple set design, and Lisa’s passionate portrayal of Dorothy. Much of the text of the play is drawn directly from Dorothy’s own writings, and Lisa’s engagement with the audience draws viewers right into the moments and relational encounters that shaped Dorothy’s life. If you would like to bring Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day to your school, parish, or community, we highly encourage you to reach out to Lisa at Stillpoint Theatre Collective. As we approach the forty-fifth anniversary of Dorothy’s passing from this life in November, this performance is a great way to introduce new audiences to a contemporary exemplar of holiness.

We were delighted to host a full slate of in-person and online programming during the Lenten season. We’re planning to catch our breath and take a quick break for Holy Week and the first days of Easter, but keep an eye out for some upcoming spring and summer events, beginning with our April 26th walking pilgrimage for members of Pax Christi .

Many of you were able to join our friends at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York for mass on March 30th, where Robert Ellsberg received the Loyola Medal, the parish’s highest honor, largely for his extensive work supporting Dorothy’s canonization cause and his promotion of her unique witness to the Gospel. The parish has made a livestream recording of the mass , including the award ceremony, which begins at minute marker 38:50, available on the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola Youtube channel. You can also click here to read a transcript of the award ceremony.

The following evening, Robert delivered the Laetare Lecture, “The Long Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” offering a reflection on Dorothy’s journey of faith, the trials of daily life, and the historical challenges that shaped her witness. The lecture begins at minute marker 12:37 of this video. Congratulations, Robert, and thank you so much for all you have done to share Dorothy’s legacy of Gospel nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality with the Church and with our world.

Finally, we would like to offer our prayers for the Sisters of the Little Way as they settle into their new home in the diocese of Lexington, Kentucky . The Sisters of The Little Way, who were formed as three former members of the Daughters of St. Paul discovered “a call within a call” to serve on the margins of the Church, are a new private association of the faithful who have adopted Dorothy as one of their patrons .

The Sisters were invited to establish their community in the diocese of Lexington by Bishop John Stowe, OFM, who felt that their charism of evangelization, ministry to the poor, and outreach to those who have been wounded or abused by members of the Church would support and complement the important work already being done in those apostolates in the Lexington diocese. Bishop Stowe has supported the Sisters of the Little Way in their process of becoming officially recognized as a religious institute by the Vatican and has been a great supporter of Dorothy’s canonization cause as well, last year accepting the Dorothy Day Peacemaker award on behalf of Pax Christi and attending the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner at the USCCB November meeting.

Congratulations to the Sisters of the Little Way on this exciting new transition! We wish you all the best as you continue living out your mission in Lexington!

Reading and watching recommendations:

For the Spring 2025 issue of Notre Dame Magazine , Renée Roden published an article detailing Dorothy’s connections with university students, faculty, and staff from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Dorothy visited the University of Notre Dame and the city of South Bend on a number of occasions over those decades, eventually coming to campus to receive the Laetare Medal after university president Father Theodore Hesburgh pressed her to accept the honor after she attempted to refuse it.

At the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker house, we were particularly interested to read more about Dorothy’s visit to the first Catholic Worker house in South Bend, which was founded by Julian Pleasants and Norbert Merdzinski, two Notre Dame students, in April of 1941 after visiting the Catholic Worker community in New York the previous summer. Julian had actually transferred to Notre Dame after subscribing to The Catholic Worker and finding that many of the authors quoted in the paper were priests or theologians teaching at the university. Dorothy’s first speaking engagement at Notre Dame came at Julian’s invitation, although

The administration did not want to publicize the talk, Pleasants said. The students were not allowed to put up posters advertising Day’s visit. In those days, activism on behalf of the poor and of working people could indicate Communist sympathies, and Pleasants guessed administrators wanted to keep the news from potentially squeamish donors.

Despite the event’s low profile, several hundred students turned out to listen to Day in Washington Hall.

Thirty years later, 11,000 people were present as Dorothy received the Laetare Medal at the university’s commencement ceremony, and a succession of communities have kept the Catholic Worker movement alive and active in South Bend over the past eighty years. Our current community is located less than a mile from the spot where Julian and Norbert first opened Saints John and Paul House of Hospitality. We are very proud to be part of this legacy– thank you, Renée, for sharing this history with the friends and members of the Guild!

Speaking of the University of Notre Dame, we recently learned about a new project planned for the spring of 2026, the “Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good annual symposium ,” which has been funded by the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good. We’ll let you know as soon as we have more information about this event, but we hope many of you will submit abstracts and participate in the symposium!

Earlier this year, we shared Michael Baxter’s article for the Houston Catholic Worker , “Living Beyond Politics: A Post-Election Reflection on Dorothy Day,” and last week, the OSV podcast Catholic in America released a follow-up conversation between Michael and host Jason Adkins for the episode “Dorothy Day, Politics, and the Catholic Way Forward.” In this episode, Michael and Jason discuss how Dorothy thought about political action at the national and increasingly local levels in her own time, and what this might suggest to contemporary Catholics looking for ways to engage in activity for the common good in the present moment.

Dorothy’s own example encourages us to think of ourselves and our neighbors as active moral agents who are capable of making real change in our immediate sphere of influence. This vision of politics as the project of organizing the communities where we live together pushes us towards action at the local level in cooperation with those near us– and as Michael notes, in the wake of the widespread destruction of federally-funded organizations which cared for the most vulnerable in our society, this vision of politics requires a great deal more from each of us than simply voting once every four years. Dorothy again offers us an example of personal responsibility: What can I myself do today to relieve the suffering of my neighbor, who is Christ?

We also came across an interesting and somewhat unusual piece in Current Affairs which mentions Dorothy only briefly, but offers a fascinating, in-depth, and accessible history of one of the many practices by which Dorothy offered a counter-witness to our cultural acceptance of violence and militarism: war-tax resistance. In “Could Tax Protests Defund the American War Machine?” Lauren Fadiman writes that

According to NWTRCC [the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee], the average American pays as much as 45 percent of their taxes to the military, which translates to a massive annual Department of Defense budget. The further breakdown of taxation is chilling: in 2018, the average taxpayer worked 63 days to fund the military—and 31 of those days were for the sake of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and other private military contractors alone. The financialization of war (the process by which banks, hedge funds, private equity, and private companies have tethered profit to conflict) poses a particular challenge to those seeking to resist war-making, as does the fact that recent wars have been funded almost entirely by debt—in no small part because explicit war taxes are unpopular, capable of dragging down support for a given war by as much as 15 percent.

What work for the common good could we instead accomplish with those sixty-three days of our labor? War-tax resisters offer a number of suggestions, including using what they would have otherwise paid in federal taxes to support good work in their own communities. “War tax resistance is an opportunity for things like mutual aid—the collaborative pooling of resources at the local level,” Fadiman writes, “and other programs and projects that cannot or do not receive support from the government. It is, in short, a way to put our money where our mouths are in the here and now.”

Tax Day in the United States is tomorrow, so we definitely encourage you to check this piece out, and visit the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s website for additional information and resources. This article is a fantastic companion piece to Michael Baxter’s podcast interview, as it offers an example of the kind of creative thinking that can help us reimagine working together to build a new society in the shell of the old.

Finally, we were delighted to come across this short video introduction to Dorothy’s life and witness– in French! “Dorothy Day, une anarchiste sur les autels,” (Dorothy Day, an anarchist on the altars) was produced by Portal Catholique Suisse for their “Catholiques Atypiques” series. The film opens with the story of Dorothy’s arrest for resisting militarism at the first civil defense drill protest and highlights Dorothy’s connection to French-speaking holy men and women from such as Peter Maurin and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. This is a great video for language-learners and provides a solid first introduction to Dorothy’s distinct mode of living the Gospel for a francophone audience.

We’re always happy to find little treasures like this, so if you discover or have created a resource on Dorothy in a language other than English, please let us know! When Dorothy is eventually canonized, she will be saint for our global Church, and we’re already excited to share her story with the many communities around the world who will recognize holiness in her legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty.

Upcoming opportunities from our friends:

Tomorrow evening, several of us from the South Bend Catholic Worker plan to attend the Yoder Public Affairs Lecture at Goshen College, which this year features filmmaker Martin Doblmeier, speaking on his film series “Prophetic Voices,” which chronicles the legacy of five Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faith leaders of the 20th century, including Dorothy. Martin’s lecture will take place on Tuesday, April 15th, at 7:00 PM at Goshen College’s Umble Center, located at 1700 South Main Street , in Goshen, Indiana and will be followed by a Q&A and reception.

Journey Films, the production company which Martin founded in 1983, has made the entire “Prophetic Voices” series, including Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story available to stream for free (just enter the password journey413). Whether or not you are able to join us for the lecture, we highly recommend checking out this documentary series for Holy Week and Passover!

Thinking ahead to summer, registration is open for the Dorothy Day Retreat which Martha Hennessy is hosting at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, New York from July 21st-23rd . This special mid-week retreat will consider the question of how we are called to live as Catholics in the United States, using Dorothy’s life as a model of holiness in our own time. We especially recommend this retreat for anyone who participated in (or hoped to participate in!) our Lenten book club this year, as Robert Ellsberg’s anthology, Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings , will guide retreat conversations on how Dorothy’s spirituality informed her life and public work for the Gospel.

Pyramid Life Center is located around a beautiful Adirondack lake with many quietly stunning coves and overlooks that are perfect for solo prayer and reflection. Dorothy heard God speaking to her through the natural world on the beaches of Staten Island; for many people, Pyramid Life Center has likewise been a place where the silence allows us to hear God more clearly. Please consider registering for this incredible opportunity for prayer and recollection with Dorothy this summer.

Prayer requests:

In this space, we often share requests for intercessory prayer from friends and Guild members around the world who are in need of miraculous intervention from God or the ordinary graces and assistance which sustain us in the daily challenges of our lives. We receive several of these requests every month and are grateful for your continued fidelity in holding them in prayer, asking Dorothy to pray alongside you.

We know that God hears and responds to our prayers in great and small ways. Just last week, a friend wrote to us to tell us that while she was helping distribute food at a small food pantry in the Catskills, she

“prayed to Dorothy to watch over all of the people who visited the pantry yesterday. Shortly thereafter, the local florist stopped by the pantry to donate fifteen beautiful bouquets. It was a first—she had never donated to the pantry before. We gave out the bouquets all afternoon. Many people said it made their day. Thank you Dorothy for this small favor!”

We love hearing these stories, and know that they happen more often than we might expect, so please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you’ve experienced any kind of special grace in your own life through Dorothy’s intercession.

This month, we would also like to share with you a short testimony from Laurence Pagoni, of Massachusetts, who first encountered Dorothy at age thirteen when he discovered his own vocation to serve others by reading her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. Now in his sixties, Laurence writes that he “attribute[s] Dorothy’s life and witness as foundational to my life and its unfolding, truly a miracle.” Laurence gave us permission to share this account of what he believes to have been Dorothy’s direct intercession on behalf of two men living with HIV in New York. In a letter to Pope Francis, which Laurence shared with us, he writes,

I visited Dorothy’s grave in 1992 at the Cemetery of the Resurrection in Staten Island, NY in celebration of my birthday, a time that was at the height of the HIV/AID pandemic, a time before the current protease inhibitor medications existed. It was a dark time, and I prayed to Dorothy to help us minister to all those who were infected by the HIV virus. At that time, I was working at the Upper Room AIDS Ministry, Inc. in Harlem, NY now called Harlem United: Community AIDS Center, a social ministry formed in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement.

I often prayed to Dorothy Day to intercede on behalf of the many people we worked with who lived with the HIV virus that their health be restored. One was Mr. Roger Talbot of Richmond VA, whose health was extended twice aided by prayers to Dorothy. The same is true for a homeless man living with HIV that I ministered to and visited, David of New York City, whose last name is lost to me. David also passed away from HIV, but he attributed many unbelievable recoveries to his prayers to Dorothy. Both men lived much longer than their doctors expected, and longer than most others because of their prayers to Dorothy.

In Fr. Dan Berrigan, S.J.’s book, Portraits of Those I Love, chapter five is all about Dorothy, written shortly after her death. Fr. Berrigan says, “…her place in the history of the century would seem already secured.” Fr. Berrigan also states, “…she can be understood only as a Catholic Christian.” It is a beautiful essay and fully embodies Dorothy’s gifts. I hope you will take time to read it.

Thank you, Laurence, for sharing this powerful story with us. We hope that each member of the Guild will find encouragement in this testimony and support for their own prayers through Dorothy and in support of her canonization. As we approach the days of Christ’s passion and victory over death,, let us remember that God is alive and active, that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, and that the One who went to the Cross for us will never forget the needs of our world.

Please join us in asking Dorothy’s intercession for the following individuals and families:

Robert Cox wrote to us asking for prayers for a man on death row who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas this month after being convicted of murder in 2006. Please keep this man, his victim, and both families in your prayers over the next few weeks, and join all of us at the Guild and the Holy Father in praying for an end to the practice of capital punishment in favor of a greater respect for the sanctity of human life.

Our South Bend Catholic Worker community would also like to ask for you to pray for one of our guests, who is reaching the end of his life and needs 24/7 care. He has no medical insurance and to this point, we have been able to keep him relatively clean and comfortable thanks to two generous donors who have provided funds to cover a safe and accessible hotel room for him for the time being, and the genuinely heroic charity of two members of our community, Royce and Emma, who have been providing the hands-on care that our guest needs in order to die with dignity. Please keep our guest, Royce, and Emma in your prayers, and ask Dorothy to be with them and intercede on their behalf as they undertake the works of mercy in some of the most difficult and distressing circumstances.

Lastly, I would like to request your prayers on behalf of two of my undergraduate students, each of whom is facing incredibly difficult personal and family circumstances with a great deal of grace. Dorothy understood the challenges faced by the youth of her own time and in the generations which followed her; please join me in asking her intercession for these two young adults.

A few words from Dorothy:

This month, to lead us into the Paschal Triduum, we would like to share a longer reflection from Dorothy’s April 1964 column, “The Mystery of the Poor.” From the Catholic Worker house on Chrystie Street, she wrote,

On Easter Day, on awakening late after the long midnight services in our parish church, I read over the last chapter of the four Gospels and felt that I had received great light and understanding with the reading of them. “They have taken the Lord out of His tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. How do we know we believe? How do we know we indeed have faith? Because we have seen His hands and His feet in the poor around us. He has shown Himself to us in them. We start by loving them for Him, and we soon love them for themselves, each one a unique person, most special!

In that last glorious chapter of St. Luke, Jesus told His followers, “Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones as you can see I have.” They were still unconvinced, for it seemed to good to be true. “So He asked them, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ They offered Him a piece of fish they had cooked which He took and ate before their eyes.”

How can I help but think of these things every time I sit down at Chrystie Street or Peter Maurin Farm and look around at the tables filled with the unutterably poor who are going through their long-continuing crucifixion. It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path…

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.

As we approach Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the dark hours of Holy Saturday before the Easter Vigil, please remember those who are enduring long-continuing crucifixions, in our own cities, and in places around the world including Gaza, Ukraine, and Yemen. Dorothy reminds us in this column that our brothers and sisters are given to us to increase our faith. It is by knowing them, living with them and sharing both their suffering and their joy that we come to know who Christ is. Mary Magdalene’s solidarity with Christ kept her by his side and led her to follow him to the grave, where she then received the honor of becoming the first witness to the resurrection.

Dorothy tells us here that the reality of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection is reenacted every day in the lives of our unhoused and vulnerable brothers and sisters. What we do for them, we do for Christ. This Holy Week, we pray that each of you might grow in solidarity with Christ’s poor and have the honor of witnessing his resurrection in them.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

"Lending Your Voices to This Cause of Peace"

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 16:35:05 GMT

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.

Archbishop Wester came to New York for the third meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which took place from March 3rd-7th. Neither the United States nor Russia– the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world– are signatories to the treaty. As Archbishop Wester said to The Tablet , and Crux , “The countries without nuclear weapons can sign it, and that’s good because they’re committing not to ever develop nuclear weapons, but we have to get the countries that have them to get rid of them... You have to get the nuclear states to sign this treaty for it to have any real impact.”

In his homily, Archbishop Wester quoted Dorothy’s prophetic 1945 editorial, “We Go On Record: The Catholic Worker Response to Hiroshima, ” written just days after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of men, women, and children. Reflecting on Dorothy’s words, Archbishop Wester told the gathered congregation,

“For her to write that brutally honest and countercultural article that cut to the heart of the matter took great courage. It also meant that she possessed the truth.

I believe we see the same reality in the Beatitudes that Matthew’s Gospel just proclaimed . Poverty, meekness, mourning, mercy, purity of heart, persecution were not seen really as desirable in the days of Jesus, and certainly not peacekeeping. No: power, vanquishing the enemy, military might, political influence, riches, superiority over others — these were the goals of a happy life, of a blessed life.

And yet Jesus was speaking of a higher truth. He had the courage to speak the truth…

For God is love, St. John says quite clearly, quite simply. God is love. Love disarms us. It calls us to surrender our egos, to lay aside our need to control and to be powerful and to be a military might.That was the vision of Dorothy Day, that love is the only solution to our problems today. The love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of creation. Those who know this are fortunate. And those whose mourning reminds them of it are blessed.

Love is the fundamental, absolute, solitary motivation that animates our vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”

The following morning, on Ash Wednesday, hundreds of advocates gathered for the culmination of a week of prayer, protest, and acts of civil disobedience. Activists gathered for a prayer vigil at the Isaiah Wall outside the United Nations, where Archbishop Wester distributed ashes and blessed the participants, seventeen of whom would be arrested shortly afterwards.

Before tracing the sign of the cross on each person’s forehead, Bishop Wester said to the gathered assembly,

“You’re doing something about it by lending your voices, your bodies, your presence to this very important cause of peace. So I just want you to know that we’ve been praying for all of us that are involved, whatever your organization is, and we thank you. Thank you for your witness.”

Many thanks to Hideko Otake for filming the distribution of ashes and the action , including the arrests, and for her wonderful photographs, which you can view in this article for the Catholic Worker movement website, “Catholic Workers Join Global Witness for Nuclear Abolition at U.N Conference.”

You can view an album of photos from the liturgy on our Guild Facebook page , and you can watch a full recording of the mass and read the text of Archbishop Wester’s homily and his prayer before the distribution of ashes the following morning on the Catholic Worker movement website .

Last week, Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic and Colleen McLinden visited five classes at Catholic Central high school in Detroit to speak about the Catholic Worker, their work on the housing team for the New Day Intake Center , and Dorothy’s canonization cause.

Colin Whitehead, the Catholic Central theology teacher who organized their visit, structures his courses around the Catholic social tradition as a guiding framework. The students had studied Dorothy at the beginning of the semester and learned about the Catholic Worker movement as a lived expression of Catholic social teaching.

Magdalena remarked that the students were very eager to learn and asked great practical questions. They had a strong sense of the dignity of the poor, but were also very self-aware about the degree to which their own upbringings had insulated them from exposure to homelessness and poverty– many of them asked for advice on how to approach unhoused neighbors in their city and speak with them as friends. Magdalena noted the importance of teaching the Catholic social tradition as the Church’s program for how to live in solidarity with the poor and expressed how good it was to see young educators like Colin including Dorothy in their courses as an exemplar of how Catholic social teaching might be lived out in practice.

The Dorothy Day Guild regularly provides speakers to high school or college classes and parish groups who are interested in engaging with Dorothy’s life and her legacy of hospitality, nonviolence, and voluntary poverty. If you are interested in bringing someone to talk with you group, please reach out to our speakers’ bureau .

We have now hosted the first of our spring walking pilgrimages! Enormous thanks to our friends at Maryhouse and St. Joseph House for hosting our pilgrims from St. Ignatius Parish last weekend.

Over the course of the next month and a half, we have pilgrimages scheduled for members of Holy Family Parish, St. Francis Xavier Parish, and Pax Christi.

To respect the ongoing hospitality work that goes on at Maryhouse and St. Joseph house, we have been trying to keep the pilgrimage groups on the smaller side; however, we have a few open spots on our upcoming Monday, March 31st pilgrimage! If you are interested in joining the group from Holy Family Parish on March 31st, from 2:00-4:30 PM , please register using the form on our website (just choose “March 31st” on the drop-down menu). If you are interested in arranging a pilgrimage for your school, parish, or community group, please contact us. We would love to accompany you as you and your community walk in Dorothy’s footsteps.

Upcoming Guild events:

Our online Lenten book club is underway! This year, Robert Ellsberg is leading us through a five-week guided reading of Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings , his latest anthology of Dorothy’s writing. For the past two Sunday evenings, our group has met for a brief presentation from Robert and time for discussion and reflection. Our book club has three more meetings this season, and we’d love to have you join us! Our subsequent meetings will cover the following chapters:

March 23rd : Chapter 5: “The Little Way” and Chapter 6: “The Practice of the Presence of God”

March 30th : Chapter 7: “Love is the Measure”, Chapter 8: “Spiritual Counsel,” and Chapter 9: “The Duty of Delight”

April 6th : Chapter 10: “Making Peace,” Chapter 11: “Revolution of the Heart,” and the postscript

Each meeting takes place from 7:30-8:30 PM Eastern (6:30-7:30 PM Central) over Zoom. Please register here to receive the Zoom link for our next meeting.

We are also eagerly anticipating our first-ever Dorothy Day Symposium on March 29th! We’re very excited to share the finalized schedule with you in advance– we have some wonderful roundtables planned that you definitely will not want to miss!

This event, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee” technically begins the night before, on March 28th at the Maryhouse Friday Night Meeting (8:00 PM) . Kevin Ahern and I are both looking forward to presenting on Dorothy and the Jubilee Year that Pope Francis announced last spring. Maryhouse is located at 55 East Third Street in New York; you can view the complete schedule of Friday Night Meetings on the New York Catholic Worker community’s Instagram page .

Registration for the entire Dorothy Day Symposium is still open , for both online and in-person participation, but we hope to get the catering order in by the end of the week, so please don’t delay! We would love to have you join us for this special day of conversation, clarification of thought, worship, and time together in community.

Finally, we are so excited about the upcoming performance of Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day , which we are co-sponsoring on Friday, April 4th at 7:00 PM Eastern at Our Lady of the Road in South Bend, IN. Our Lady of the Road is the drop-in and community center run by our St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community and is located at 744 South Main Street in South Bend. Enormous thanks from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild to the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community and the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame for helping bring this play to South Bend for the first time! This free event will feature a performance by artist and playwright Lisa Wagner-Carollo and a dessert reception!

For more information on any of our upcoming events, please visit our website . We’re looking forward to continuing to develop educational programming, opportunities for prayer and service, and other events which introduce newcomers to Dorothy’s life and legacy of voluntary poverty, nonviolence, and hospitality, and which help all of us continue to put those values into practice in our own lives. If you have any suggestions for events you’d like to see, please let us know! We hope to see you at one of our upcoming programs!

Other upcoming opportunities:

On March 23rd at 3:00 PM Eastern , Morehead State Public Radio is hosting a radio special on Dorothy as part of their series for Women’s History Month. For those outside of Kentucky, you can tune in to stream David Freudberg’s “Humankind: The Life of Dorothy Day” online on the station website .

We are very pleased to share that on Laetare Sunday (March 30th) , Robert Ellsberg will be awarded The Loyola Medal at the 11:00 AM Mass at St. Ignatius Loyola parish. The parish community at St. Ignatius annually awards the Loyola Medal "to a distinguished Catholic who has exemplified the characteristics of St. Ignatius Loyola in his or her profession." St. Ignatius Loyola parish is located at 980 Park Avenue in New York City. For more information on how to live stream (and to also subsequently view a recording of) that Mass, please visit the parish's website .

As a reminder, Robert will also be giving a talk for the St. Ignatius 2025 lecture series , “Pilgrims of Hope,” on Monday March 31st at 7:00 PM . Robert’s talk, “The Long Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” will reflect on Dorothy’s long life "on pilgrimage," and the way her faith was tested and refined by ordinary life in her community and family and the challenges of her own time and context. All lectures in the series are held in Wallace Hall (again, at 980 Park Avenue in New York City).

For those who are unable to attend in-person, we are hoping to record or livestream this lecture! We will keep you posted once we have more details, so stay tuned!

Last year, our Dorothy Day Guild Lenten book club read through The Long Loneliness together. If you missed out last year, or you are looking for a reflection group to revisit this classic text with in a new season of your own life, the “Dorothy Day Catholic Women” group on Instagram is hosting a read-along this Lent. This online community was started by a small group of Notre Dame alumni who were inspired by Dorothy’s witness. They’ve posted a suggested reading schedule on their Instagram page and have a Whatsapp chat that you can join for book discussion.

We love hearing about other groups who are organizing creative projects focused on Dorothy’s life and legacy, so if you or someone you know is hosting something similar, please reach out to us so we can share your event with our network!

Many of us got to experience Kristi Pfister’s incredible art installation, Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day when it was on display at the Staten Island Arts gallery or at Manhattan University’s O’Malley Library last year. We are very pleased to announce that Radical Action is currently being exhibited at Iona University’s Chapman Gallery from now until April 13th.

Kristi’s installation combines marble mosaics, suspended fabric columns, and multimedia drawings and paintings presenting different perspectives of Dorothy as activist, contemplative, and pillar of spiritual strength. Many thanks to our friends Jim Robinson and Liam Myers for working with Kristi to bring this exhibition to Iona. If you haven’t yet had a chance to spend time with Dorothy in this installation yet, we highly recommend a visit over the course of the next month.

The Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery is located on the campus of Iona University at 665 North Avenue, New Rochelle, NY 10801 . Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12:30 to 5:00 PM each day, and admission to the exhibit is free.

Next month, on Tuesday, April 15th at 7:00 PM , filmmaker Martin Doblmeier will deliver the annual Yoder Public Affairs lecture at Goshen College. Martin is the founder of Journey Films, a documentary film and television production company focused on faith and spirituality, and is the creator of the film Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story . His lecture will focus on his “Prophetic Voices” series, which chronicles the lives of five 20th-century Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant faith leaders, including Dorothy.

The Yoder Public Affairs lecture is free to attend and will take place in the Umble Center at Goshen College, which is located at 1700 S Main St, Goshen, IN .

Finally, this summer, Martha Hennessy will be offering a retreat on Dorothy at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, NY from July 21st-23rd . Registration is open for this special midweek opportunity for prayer and reflection on the question “How are we called to live life as a Catholic in America?” Pyramid Life Center is a beautiful place, and Martha is a wonderful retreat leader– you absolutely don’t want to miss this!

Reading recommendations:

We have a few new articles and books for you to check out this month! First, we have recently learned of an exciting new project coming out of St. Mary of Bethany Parish, an ecumenical Eucharistic community grounded in the Anglican tradition. Reverend Danny Bryant and members of the St. Mary of Bethany community have announced the founding of “The Order of Berrigan and Day,” a “shared way of life committed to welcoming, listening, and co-laboring as we seek creative non-violence and non-capitalistic communion for the life of the world based in the lives and work of Daniel Berrigan, SJ and Dorothy Day.” The Order will officially begin on May 1st of this year, the 92nd anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker movement. Members of the Order, which is open to all, regardless of their faith commitment or membership in a particular church or denomination, commit to spiritual practices including daily prayer and silence and the works of mercy.

We are absolutely thrilled to see how Dorothy is inspiring creative new expressions of spirituality in the wider Christian family! To learn more about the Order of Berrigan and Day, check out the St. Mary of Bethany Parish Substack, Stubborn Mercy , where you can find the announcement of the Order and information about how you can support their mission .

Earlier this winter, Stephen Adubato, who authors the Substack Cracks in Postmodernity gave a Friday Night Meeting at Maryhouse. His most recent talk, "The Duty of Seeking Delight in our Postmodern Culture," drew a great crowd, as have other events he has hosted in collaboration with the New York Catholic Worker community (as you can see below in the photograph he shared!).

In his reflections on the talk , Adubato writes about the necessity of joy for sustaining the rigorous life of activism Dorothy both before and after her conversion to Catholicism and the founding of the Catholic Worker. “Dorothy was not the kind of prophet who is overly self-serious,” he writes. “She was well aware of her flaws and was not afraid to acknowledge them…and she also recognized that her prophetic mission had to be fueled by her investment in prayer as well as in the arts and literature.”

The ability to seek joy in the midst of struggle, to labor for justice without taking oneself too seriously, is an undervalued expression of the virtue of humility. “If we don’t know how to poke fun at ourselves, we won’t know how to be humble. And if we don’t know how to be humble, we won’t be able to allow God to enter into our lives,” writes Adubato. Contemplating Dorothy’s commitment to “the duty of delight” can help us engage in some fresh clarification of thought this year during Lent– may God help all of us work with good humor and playfulness in building the new society in the shell of the old!

If you’re looking for some additional Lenten reading, James Keane’s new book from Orbis Press was recently reviewed in The Tablet .

Published last year, Reading Culture Through Catholic Eyes: 50 Writers, Thinkers, and Firebrands Who Challenge and Change Us includes a section on Dorothy. This anthology compiles fifty columns that Keane has written over the years for various publications. Keane brings a depth of theological knowledge and a longstanding engagement with spirituality to cultural and literary topics, elevating them far above the shallow, polarized discourse that often dominates these conversations, so we know this book will be an excellent edition to your reading list!

In the most recent issue of U.S. Catholic , Rebecca Randall has published a thoughtful article which contextualizes Dorothy and the Catholic Worker movement in light of societal trends impacting Christian intentional communities. In “Intentional communities are changing to meet the times,” Randall interviews members of L’Arche, Reba’s Place, and the Catholic Worker to discuss practical issues that these communities are facing in terms of membership, labor and finances, and the ongoing life of a movement after the death of its founder. Speaking with Randall on precarity at the Catholic Worker, Brian Terrell acknowledges that this reality is in the movement’s DNA, part and parcel to Dorothy’s legacy of voluntary poverty. “The reason why [the Catholic Worker movement] continues to exist is that it doesn’t try to persist,” he says. “It’s OK for us to be scrambling for money or be in debt. That’s our vocation. Dorothy talked about precarity as being a goal, not something to be concerned about or fixed on.”

Ana Gonzalez-Lane, a parishioner at St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco wrote a brief introduction to Dorothy’s life and spirituality for the members of her parish community in honor of Women’s History Month. Gonzalez-Lane notes Dorothy’s connection to Hispanic-American communities through her solidarity with the United Farm Workers and writes that

“Dorothy Day’s lifelong devotion to the oppressed aligns with the core feminist principles of pushing against the hierarchy and fighting for the rights of the marginalized. Her lifelong work in providing aid to impoverished communities and her devotion to egalitarian Catholic values makes her an ideal role model and inspiration for us in these troubled times.”

Finally, David Carlson recently published a short editorial considering Dorothy’s legacy in the Franklin, Indiana Daily Journal . In “How long does fame last?” Carlson considers narratives and cultural memory, asking what stories we tell now, and what stories from the present will persist into the future. Politicians, celebrities, and athletes might be remembered for a generation or two after their deaths, but Carlson notes, our memory of the lives of holy men and women “survives centuries and millennia, even though many of these saints were ignored by their contemporaries.” Speaking on Dorothy, he writes,

“Like Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day lived with the poor and fought for their dignity, but Day was a rabble-rouser, not a nun…Yes, she subsequently had a conversion to Christianity, but Day never deviated from her conviction that anyone following Christ’s example should work harder than the Communists for the rights of the poor and the dispossessed.”

These last two are short pieces, but we encourage you to check them out– brief reflections like Carlson’s and Gonzalez-Lane’s are important for Dorothy’s canonization cause, as they indicate how members of the Church and members of society far beyond Dorothy’s native New York are thinking and praying with her, and how her ongoing legacy informs their own ways of living in the world.

Prayer Requests:

This month we have a few urgent intercessory requests to share with you; we ask that you include each of these individuals and their intentions in your prayers.

First, for the Holy Father, Pope Francis, who has now been in the hospital for a month. We know that Pope Francis has been holding all of us in prayer during this difficult time in his own life: as his spiritual children, it’s now our turn to offer him the support of our intercession. May God grant him a full recovery and sustain and comfort those who are caring for him. Pope Francis has a deep love for Dorothy and her witness to the Gospel. He has been a great support to her cause for canonization, and so we ask Dorothy to uphold the Holy Father’s needs before God this season.

Three additional requests came in from friends and members of the Guild– please remember these individuals and their loved ones in your prayers over the coming weeks:

Colene in the Bronx is in need of gifts of wisdom, discernment, and consolation.
A woman in Philadelphia, who asked to remain anonymous, has asked for prayers for her husband’s spiritual well-being.
Finally, the niece of a long-time Guild member is struggling with brain cancer that is no longer responding to treatment. Through Dorothy’s intercession, please ask God to grant a miracle of healing for her and her family.

Thank you all so much for your commitment to undertaking the spiritual work of mercy of intercessory prayer. If you or a loved one is in need of prayer, please reach out to us to be added to the Dorothy Day Guild’s prayer intentions, and if you feel that you’ve received some response to prayers made through Dorothy’s intercession, no matter how small, let us know .

A few words from Dorothy:

In the spring of 1967, Dorothy and her community were still living scattered among several apartments close to the old Catholic Worker house on Chrystie Street, running the newspaper and soup line while dreaming of purchasing and repairing a building large enough to both offer daytime hospitality and house the entire community under one roof.

The following year, they purchased St. Joseph House on First Street in New York, one of the two houses where the New York Catholic Worker community still resides. In the 1967 March-April issue of the newspaper, Dorothy published her annual Spring Appeal , asking readers for help to continue their work of hospitality. She writes,

“I think most of us wish to be poor, to simplify our lives, to throw out the trash and make more room for the good – to put off the old man and put on the new – to be new creatures, as St. Paul said. It’s the essence of Spring that it makes all things new, though there is not much suggestion of Spring on this March snowy day that I write. But none of us wish to be destitute. And it is the destitute who come to us day after day for help. “Deal your bread to the hungry and take those without shelter into your house,” we are told at the beginning of Lent. That has meant that we have grown into a community of sorts, and somehow or other the Lord has blessed us and sent us what we needed over the years. But He told us to ask. “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” I love those words and recommend them to all… Someone said once, “You are certainly a success in your voluntary poverty. You have managed to maintain it for these many years.” But again I repeat, it is not destitution, but a sharing which the Lord Jesus enables us to do because He continues to multiply the Loaves and Fishes for us, day after day. What need of foundation funds, or government funds, to do the work we do? St. Hilary commented once, “The less we have of Caesar’s the less we will have to render to Caesar.” And Jesus Himself said, “Your Heavenly Father knows you have need of these things,” food and shelter, and the means to keep on doing the work He has given us to do, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.”

Whether or not we are engaged in the same kind of work that Dorothy was, we can all recognize the desire she expresses to simplify our lives, to clear out the clutter and become a new creation, especially now in the Lenten season. For many of us, Lent is an opportunity for some spiritual “spring cleaning,” a time when we examine what we have been holding onto and what we can let go, a time when we scrub out the dark and forgotten corners of our hearts and open the windows to let in some light and fresh air. The discipline of voluntary poverty enabled Dorothy to dispense with unnecessary distractions in favor of discipleship: It was a way of making room for Christ.

For Dorothy, voluntary poverty and hospitality were closely linked; through the embrace of economic precarity, she and her community learned to both rely on God’s unfailing provision and to welcome Christ in the poor. Dorothy trusted in Providence because every day at the Catholic Worker, she saw how God “continues to multiply the Loaves and Fishes.” God has called each of us to undertake the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in our own lives and communities, and so we can trust that He will give us the means to carry them out. The traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving nudge us towards the same embrace of voluntary poverty that Dorothy undertook in imitation of Christ. We hope that as we journey together through Lent, you will feel Dorothy’s intercession sustaining you, and that you likewise have the chance to participate in God’s ongoing miracle of provision in the Loaves and Fishes he multiplies for the poor.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Stamped With the Image of God

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:52:11 GMT

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. This attraction grew through her friendships with Fr. Virgil Michel and Ade Bethune, eventually leading Dorothy to formally enroll as an oblate of St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. The Benedictine values of peace, prayer, and labor laid a sturdy spiritual foundation for Dorothy and for the Catholic Worker movement. All of us at the Guild would like to extend our best wishes to the many members of the Benedictine family (especially Dorothy’s fellow oblates!) who have been part of Dorothy’s canonization cause over the years. We hope that St. Scholastica’s feast day brings you and your communities a chance to celebrate the charism of ora et labora in which Dorothy’s dedication to the Gospel met her commitment to the dignity of working men and women.

We wrote to you very recently, but just in the past week, an event that the Guild is thrilled to be co-sponsoring came together, and we are so excited to invite you to join us! We also have a few more program updates and newly-published recommendations to share, so keep reading to learn more.

Upcoming events:

We are thrilled to announce that Archbishop John Wester will once again be celebrating a Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on Tuesday, March 4th at 6:00 pm . Archbishop Wester is coming to New York for the third meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons , which will take place from March 3rd-7th. The mass, which will be followed by a light reception, will be held at the Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Ave in Manhattan. The Dorothy Day Guild is honored to be a co-sponsor of this event, along with several other Catholic peace groups in the Northeastern United States. If you would like to attend, please register on our website . We hope you will join us in prayer and action for a world free from nuclear weapons next month!

Next week, on Tuesday, February 18th at 7:00 pm , our Guild chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, will offer a presentation at Sacred Heart Church in Bayside, NY. Kevin’s talk, “Dorothy Day: A Pilgrim of Hope,” will offer insights into Dorothy’s journey of faith, service, and hope, highlighting her profound impact on the Catholic Church and society. This free event includes refreshments!

Sacred Heart is located at 215-35 38th Avenue, Bayside, NY 11361, and anyone who would like to attend is welcome to call the parish office at (718) 428-2200 for more information.

We would also like to remind you that registration is now open for our online Lenten book club, which begins Sunday, March 9th at 7:30 PM Eastern . Over the course of five Sunday evenings, Robert Ellsberg will host our online reading group where we will work through his newest edited volume of Dorothy's work, entitled Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings , available through Orbis Books .

At the end of next month, Robert will be offering a program for the St. Ignatius 2025 lecture series , “Pilgrims of Hope,” on Monday March 31st at 7:00 PM . Robert’s talk, “The Long Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” will reflect on Dorothy’s long life "on pilgrimage," and the way her faith was tested and refined by ordinary life in her community and family and the challenges of her own time and context. St. Ignatius Loyola parish is located at 980 Park Avenue in Manhattan; all lectures in the series are held in Wallace Hall.

Registrati on is also open for our upcoming day-long symposium, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee.” This event will take place on Saturday, March 29th from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on the campus of Manhattan University in the Bronx and online. We’ll be releasing the schedule of roundtables and other activities later this month, and we are so excited for this opportunity to engage in clarification of thought, prayer, and celebration with you. This is going to be an amazing event, and we hope to see you there!

For those in the Midwest, we would also like to invite you to a special performance of Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day on Friday, April 4th at 7:00 PM Eastern at Our Lady of the Road in South Bend, IN. Our Lady of the Road is the drop-in and community center run by our St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community and is located at 744 South Main Street in South Bend. All of us at the Guild are so pleased to be co-sponsoring this evening with the support of the South Bend Catholic Worker community and the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. This free event will feature a performance by artist and playwright Lisa Wagner-Carollo and a dessert reception!

In recognition of Dorothy’s own commitments to voluntary poverty and the knowledge that many of those who are most devoted to living out and sharing Dorothy’s legacy have very limited financial resources themselves, we are very proud to be able to offer all of our Guild events free of charge . If you are in a position to make a donation in support of our programming , we would greatly appreciate your help! We would like to offer our enormous thanks to the many people who have made contributions to the work of the Guild in recent weeks, especially our members and regular monthly supporters. Thank you– your generosity has enabled us to introduce Dorothy’s legacy of Gospel nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality to thousands of people since the Guild's foundation.

Finally, and looking ahead to the summer, Martha Hennessy will be offering a retreat on Dorothy at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, NY from July 21st-23rd . Registration is open for this special midweek opportunity for prayer and reflection on the question “How are we called to live life as a Catholic in America?” The retreat overview states,

“One of the 20th Century’s most influential Catholic thinkers, writers, and activists, Dorothy Day, spent a lifetime working to answer that…The retreat will have a special focus on Robert Ellsberg’s new book about Dorothy’s spirituality, and how her spirituality informed how she approached her life and work. This retreat will be facilitated by Martha Hennessy (Dorothy’s Granddaughter) a writer, activist, and fellow Catholic Worker.”

Pyramid Life Center is a beautiful camp located on a pristine lake in the Adirondack Mountains, halfway between Lake George and the High Peaks Wilderness. The Center, which is operated under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, offers a number of retreats and programs throughout the summer and fall. My family, along with several other families from our parish, spent most of a week every summer camping and hiking there, and the best memories from my childhood and adolescence are all set there.

I am particularly excited about this upcoming Dorothy Day retreat because it was at Pyramid Life Center that I first encountered the Catholic Worker movement. As a high school student, I worked in the kitchen there during the summer, washing dishes and cooking for retreat guests. The late, beloved retreat director, Sister Monica Murphy, hired teenagers for basic chores and hospitality work during the summers and exhibited a remarkable degree of patience with and trust in our abilities. The summer that I was seventeen, a woman wearing a tee shirt with Dorothy’s image on it handed me her plate at the dish window during lunch. I took it from her and as I went to spray it off and stack it in the rack awaiting the industrial washing machine, I remarked that I knew who Dorothy was and I liked her shirt.

“That’s great!” she told me. “My name is Liza Apper, and I’m a Catholic Worker from Fresno, California.”

I spent the rest of the week finishing work as quickly as possible each night and then bothering Liza and her daughter Francesca with all of my questions about their work and the life of their community. For me, the rest is history: I knew by the end of that week what I wanted out of my life. Seventeen years have passed since then, and I often look back and realize that I owe my entire vocation to that chance encounter in the retreat kitchen.

I cannot encourage you enough to attend the Dorothy Day retreat this summer. Pyramid Life Center is one of the places where Creation is most alive with God’s presence, and Martha’s facilitation and insight into her grandmother’s spirituality is a powerful gift. Who knows– perhaps Dorothy might speak to you as well, and you will also receive or be renewed in your vocation.

Reading and listening recommendations for February:

Last month, on my way back to South Bend from New York, I stopped very briefly at Kevin Ahern’s home right before he had to jump back inside to record a new episode of the Deacons Pod. Kevin has been a guest on the podcast before, but this time, he interviewed author Jeff Korgen and illustrator Christopher Cardinale on the new biography they published last fall, Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion . This conversation explores the collaborative process that Jeff and Christopher undertook to create the scenes depicted in the book, including visits to the Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker archives at Marquette University and research with Dorothy’s (extensive) FBI file. Later in the episode, Jeff and Christopher also talk about the possibilities for storytelling through visual media and Kevin considers how Dorothy embodies the vision of holiness Pope Francis outlined for us in Gaudate et Exultate . Thanks to the Deacons Pod for hosting this discussion, and thank you, Kevin, for providing coffee for the traveling crew of Catholic Workers mere minutes before this great interview!

Also from the end of January, Renée Roden published a piece on aesthetics and the Catholic imagination for US Catholic. Renée’s article, “Who gets to define beauty in the Catholic Church?” was occasioned by the removal of an icon of Christ from the St. Joseph’s Apache Mission parish on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico.

The icon, which has since been restored, depicts Jesus in traditional Apache clothing; however, the unilateral removal and non-response from the diocese has both saddened parishioners and prompted reflection over the role of beauty in leading us back to God, a topic which was always close to Dorothy’s heart. Renée writes, “Saints throughout history have challenged the traditional alignment of beauty with wealth or treasure. Like Christ, they found beauty in the poor, in the people society discards.”

Dorothy was fond of quoting Dostoyevsky’s famous line from The Idiot , “The world will be saved by beauty.” However, Dorothy not only saw beauty in the poor, where many only see the scars left by rough treatment and destitution; she also knew that God made beauty for the poor. Reflecting on the appropriateness of the stunning Apache Christ icon for the worshippers at a mission parish in one of the poorest regions of the United States, Renée recounts the famous story of Dorothy freely giving a donated diamond ring to a homeless woman. “It was a sign of [Dorothy’s] respect for the woman’s dignity to allow her to do what she liked with the ring: sell it—or keep and enjoy it,” Renée explains. Beauty is a sign of God’s immense love for us and desire to draw us ever closer to Him. Dorothy understood that God created the beautiful things of this world for all of us, not for the exclusive enjoyment of the wealthy.

For the most recent edition of the Houston Catholic Worker , Michael Baxter wrote “Living Beyond Politics: A Post-Election Reflection On Dorothy Day,” a timely piece that considers the current political moment in the United States “in the light of eternity.” Now, when many people in the United States and elsewhere feel anxious and helpless, Dorothy’s mode of engagement with the political order provides a counter-narrative to the common, incessant insistence that our vote in November will decide “the most important election of our time.”

Having worked as a journalist in a significantly more diverse media landscape than what exists today, Dorothy was familiar with the cycles of discourse around electoral politics. Ultimately, Dorothy took little interest in what she found to be shallow and impoverished understanding of the human person’s relation to and responsibility for the political order and the common good. “Instead,” Michael writes,

“she sided with the radicals of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW or ‘Wobblies,’ who opted for direct action to establish the revolutionary society here and now. For Dorothy, this direct-action approach was the most concrete, practical way to fight injustice and forge genuine community.

In short, Dorothy was an anarchist. And not only in her youthful pre-conversion days of the Old Left. She remained an anarchist after her conversion and entry into the Church. Not a bomb-throwing anarchist bent on tearing down society through revolutionary violence, of course. She had become enamored with the Christ of the gospels, teaching us to love our enemies, walking the way of the nonviolent cross, and bestowing on the apostles His gift of peace. She was a Christian, indeed a Catholic anarchist.”

Dorothy’s vision of a truly personalist mode of engagement with the political order, one which took seriously the dignity of the human person with both needs and agency in the context of her community, is essentially reconstructive. Continuing intellectual formation on justice and the common good through reading and discussion is important, but it should empower, rather than paralyze us. As Michael reminds us, Dorothy and Peter understood radicalism to mean more than simple opposition to the State. Radicalism also required “going down to the roots of society and taking personal responsibility for social change. This called for translating love into action, which in turn required community. The idea was to forego the politics of the nation-state in order to pursue local forms of community-based work.” We certainly have work to do in service of building a new society in the shell of the old; Dorothy’s anarchist commitments equip us with the skills and perspective needed to take up this responsibility.

For the Winter-Spring 2025 edition of The Sower , the publication of the Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker farm, Brian Terrell wrote “Permanent Dissatisfaction: Dorothy Day and Making Sense of Being Catholic in this Jubilee Year.” Here, Brian considers loving responsibility as the cornerstone of Dorothy’s self-understanding as a Catholic Christian. Dorothy loved the Church as the visible manifestation of Christ’s Mystical Body, and found her home within its embrace, yet she was critical of its institutional failures to take a firm stance for the Gospel of peace and consistently honor the face of Christ in the poor. Brian writes,

“Dorothy offers dissatisfaction not as an acceptable option for some, but as an imperative. One must be dissatisfied with it, or one does not really love the Church at all.

As with any other love—filial, romantic or patriotic—love for the Church requires honest appraisal of the loved one’s faults and sins, otherwise it is not love, but simply an unhealthy attachment disorder. It was in love that Dorothy could call out and name the “worst enemies” without expelling them from her “household” or leaving it herself.

The choice today is even clearer. We know more now. We can choose to leave the Church as Ignazio Silone did or we can stay with it, permanently dissatisfied, as Romano Guardini and Dorothy Day chose, but to remain in it happy and comfortable, complacent and blind to its many scandals, is not a moral choice at all.”

Dorothy often found herself in a similar position to the prophets of Israel, charged with calling the people back to their original vocation as God’s covenant partners. This “critique from within” is never offered in a spirit of rejection or condemnation, but always from a firm assuredness of God’s mercy and the certainty that God’s invitation to become co-creators of justice with Him is simultaneously cross and grace.

Last spring, we shared news of a group of student peace activists who were arrested on the campus of the University of Notre Dame following a request for the school to cut ties with weapons manufacturing companies who were supplying arms to the United States and Israeli militaries. Many of the student organizers cited Dorothy as an inspiration for their protest.

This is not the first time that the University of Notre Dame has been a site of significant Catholic antiwar action. In The Revealer , David Griffith recently published “Against War: The Mysterious Death of Student Protestor, Timothy MacCarry,” an extensively-researched exploration of the spiritual and intellectual formation of a young Catholic activist who organized the Notre Dame and South Bend community against the war in Vietnam and was found dead only a few months after graduation.

Timothy MacCarry, pictured here tearing up his draft card and placing it on the altar at an on-campus resistance mass in October of 1969, had ties to the Catholic Worker movement, contributing columns to the paper , spending time visiting Dorothy at the Catholic Worker farm in Tivoli, NY, and even helping found a short-lived Catholic Worker experiment in South Bend, which he and his community members named St. Francis House . Upon learning of his death, Dorothy wrote to Tim’s father to express her sadness and disbelief, saying that “no one can accept the coroner’s ruling of a ‘suicide.’”

In this piece, David connects Tim’s antiwar resistance to the development of the Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence at the University of Notre Dame during the Vietnam era and to the present work of student activists who are currently organizing against the Palestinian genocide.

David spoke with Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, founder of the Nonviolence Program and a close friend and advisor to Tim, for this piece and asked what he would tell the students who are following in the footsteps of a previous generation of Catholic war resisters. Fr. McCarthy replied,

“I would tell them your basic Christianity is correct—you are thinking in terms of the Gospel. What’s going on in Gaza deserves total condemnation, and not just because Jesus said it, but the question is how do you witness so that other people can see [the injustice], too? Witnessing such that others cannot see is no good. Unless you do serious education in Gospel informed non-violence, you’re not going to make a dent.”

David and his family likewise have ties to the Catholic Worker movement here in South Bend, where our community has been following this case closely. He and his son Alexander Day (who was named for Dorothy) helped us cook for the nonviolence retreat the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community hosted for the student activists over the summer, and his daughter Charlotte was a regular volunteer in our houses of hospitality before leaving for college last fall. We look forward to reading the next installment of David’s work on this topic and ask your continued prayers for the seventeen students who were arrested in May and who still have pending legal cases.

As Dorothy becomes a more and more familiar figure in the American Catholic Church, the global Church, and in secular circles which share her commitments to nonviolence and care for the vulnerable, it has been interesting to see the increasing frequency with which selections from her diaries, letters, and other writings spark short piece, like this one , from Lawain McNeil’s Substack, “The Call to Holiness.” Here, McNeil reflections on a quotation found in The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus , originally from one of Dorothy’s letters:

“The main thing is never to get discouraged at the slowness of people or results. People may not be articulate or active, but even so, we do not ever know the results, or the effect on souls. That is not for us to know. We can only go ahead and work with happiness at what God sends us to do.”

In her words, McNeil reads a challenge to our cultural addiction to immediate gratification and our unwillingness to wait for God’s timing. The sense of impatience that Dorothy recognized in her own time has perhaps only grown more pronounced in ours, when we are troubled by uncertainty and doubts about the future, but the response she advises remains the same: trust in God, continue to labor for the common good and a more just social order, and never cease to recognize the face of Christ in

The Guild keeps a record of the many ways people are currently drawing from Dorothy’s legacy and writing, whether that be through high school or university syllabi, books and articles, visual and performance art, homilies, and even short blog or Substack posts like the above. This is part of how the Guild can support the official work of our postulator and relator at the Vatican on Dorothy’s canonization cause– the diverse forms and sources of engagement demonstrate widespread devotion to and recognition of Dorothy as a holy figure worthy of imitation. If you come across something that we’ve missed, please reach out and let us know!

Finally, we mentioned last month that the Dorothy Day Guild is now offering regular opportunities to participate in our walking pilgrimage through lower Manhattan. Earlier this winter, journalist Valerie Stivers took us up on this invitation and wrote a piece on the pilgrimage for Our Sunday Visitor , “Living the Gospel on the streets of Dorothy Day’s New York.” Stivers notes that Dorothy’s legacy has an enduring power which has outlasted many of the physical structures mentioned in Dorothy’s early books and letters. “Most addresses on the tour,” Stivers writes, “lead to locations where the original buildings have been demolished — a situation that ironically reveals Day’s strength and spirit better than a landmark building might.”

Stivers also spoke with several Catholic Workers from the greater New York City area, including our friend Deborah Susich, who recently founded a new Catholic Worker community on Staten Island . Deborah told Stivers that bringing the Catholic Worker back to the borough where Dorothy first felt powerfully drawn to God was a way of honoring Dorothy’s legacy, which has informed her own vocation. Speaking on the call she feels to serve the poor as Dorothy did, Deborah explains in the article that she was attracted to Dorothy’s profound Catholic faith and ‘the spirituality behind the [Catholic Worker] movement… It’s really about the spiritual and corporal acts of mercy; it attempts to live out the Gospel in a more radical way.’”

It has been great to learn of the reflections and continuing invitations to discernment and service that this pilgrimage is inspiring. As we move into the Lenten season, when the whole Church goes on pilgrimage together, we hope that many of you will come walk with Dorothy , and with us.

Prayer requests:

We have a few prayer requests to share with you this month, including one new and one ongoing need for intercession. We recently learned of a new Catholic Worker community in France, Maria Skobtsova House in Calais . The members of this community offer “sanctuary and hospitality to vulnerable refugees, in the spirit of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Maria Skobtsova, ‘Saint Mary of Paris’.” The presence of the Maria Skobtsova House community among the newly-arrived migrants, many of whom are women and children fleeing unspeakable violence in Sudan, Eritrea, and Syria, was described in a recent post for the Passio Project, “Winter at the Border.” As many cities in the United States and western Europe become increasingly hostile to refugees and asylum seekers, please join us in asking Dorothy’s intercession for this vital offering of hospitality.

In Boston, Martha Hennessy reports that her granddaughter, Adelyn Tamar (Dorothy’s great-great-granddaughter!), is showing signs of improvement, but still needs to remain in the hospital. Please continue to pray for a full recovery for Adelyn and for the comfort and sustenance of her loved ones, especially her mother and grandmother.

Finally, we ask your prayers for Maria, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, who is in need of a miraculous healing. Maria’s family has strong connections to the Catholic Worker movement and a deep devotion to Dorothy. Please hold Maria and the many people who love her in prayer and ask that Dorothy bring this urgent request to God.

Asking Dorothy’s intercession for the needs of those we love is one of the most significant ways that friends and members of the Guild can support her canonization cause. We know that we do not exhaust God with these requests. God sees and anticipates our needs, and while He might have chosen to accomplish the salvation of the world by any number of means, through the establishment of the Mystical Body of Christ, God has chosen to make us partners in the redemption of creation. As members of the Mystical Body, we take up our small portion of this responsibility through the performance of the works of mercy, one of which is prayer for the living and the dead. With Dorothy, we continue to offer this spiritual work of mercy for the needs of the world.

A few words from Dorothy:

My undergraduate class this semester just finished reading Dorothy’s From Union Square to Rome , and has now moved on to a study of Fr. Dan Berrigan’s writings from No Bars to Manhood and elsewhere. Last week, when we watched the footage of the Catonsville 9 draft board raid and read their trial statement , we also examined Dorothy’s stance on conscription, war, and the imago Dei . In January of 1943, a time when up to 200,000 men were being drafted into the United States military each month and the groundwork for the Selective Service conscription program which continues to this day had already been established, Dorothy published her statement, “If Conscription Comes for Women,” on the front page of the paper. She writes,

“I will not register for conscription, if conscription comes for women, nor will I make a statement to the government on registration day as to my stand, lest this be used as involuntary registration on my part. Instead, I publish my statement here, my declaration of purpose, and if it encourages other women not to register, I shall be glad at such increase in our numbers

I shall not register because I believe modern war to be murder, incompatible with a religion of love. I shall not register because registration is the first step towards conscription, and I agree with Cardinal Gasparri, that the only way to do away with war is to do away with conscription.”

Dorothy goes on to discuss the draft through the lens of English Catholic philosopher E.I. Watkins, who asserted the practical and spiritual force of mass resistance to conscription as well as the family’s right to integrity as a higher value than the State’s need for forced labor. She cites Watkins and makes a claim from her own position as a mother and an independent moral thinker:

“‘The family,’ Watkins continues, ‘is a society prior in value to the state, on whose natural right the state may not without usurpation encroach.’ And it is as a most important part in that family, as a woman whose function it is to bring life into the world rather than to destroy life, that I make this protest…

This is total war, and that means every man, woman and child, possessed, heart and mind, body and soul, by the state.

But why object to registering? Why not register and then refuse if your number is called?”

By little and by little we must resist. Why take the first step if we do not intend to go on? Why count on exemption because of work of national importance and so lose the opportunity to testify to the truth that we feel so strongly?

‘Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to register.’ I have heard the specious argument. But it was not so that St. Joseph could be drafted into the Roman army, and so that the Blessed Mother could put the Holy Child into a day nursery and go to work in an ammunition plant.

‘Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.’ Yes, and we have heard too much of that.”

In this column, Dorothy reminds us of an essential truth of the Catholic faith: our lives, and the lives of our children, are not the coinage of the empire. We are not stamped with the image of Caesar; body and soul, the human person is stamped with the image of God.

It should not surprise us that in this issue of the paper, Dorothy chose to pair her editorial with one of Peter’s Easy Essays, “Things that are God’s.” Peter tells us that the forces of empire are never satisfied with taking the things which belong to Caesar; in their greed, they reach for the things which belong to God. “The child does not belong to the state; it belongs to the parents,” Peter tells us. “The child was given by God to the parents; he was not given by God to the state. The parents must teach the child to serve God from whom they received the child.”

He goes on to remind his listeners that passive acceptance of conscription is a dereliction of the sacred charge with which God entrusts parents when they welcome a new child into the world. “When the parents allow the state to grab the child and to act toward the child as if God did not matter, they lose their claim to the allegiance of the child,” Peter says. “The Nazi Caesar claims that there are superior races and inferior races… There are no superior races; God is not a racial God but the Father of all races and the Creator of all; Christ loved and died for all: We follow Him and we want no Caesars.”

As bearers of the divine image, we are each imbued with an inalienable dignity and interior freedom. That freedom, and the recognition of our own dignity, and the equal dignity of our brothers and sisters, should cause us to reject cooperation with and participation in any act which tarnishes God’s image. We must not kill, we must not participate in killing, and we must not allow our universities or our nation to sponsor killing on our behalf. We are members of one Body. Dorothy calls on us, over and over again, to resist any form of violence which denies our ultimate belonging to one another, and to Christ.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Warm Winter Wishes

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:38:46 GMT

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.

Carmen spo ke with my students about his participation in the Kings Bay Plowshares action and his many years offering the works of mercy and resisting war at St. Joseph House. It was an incredible gift for my class to have the chance to hear directly from someone whose life has been so strongly patterned after Dorothy’s own legacy and witness. Thank you, Carmen, for sharing your gifts with us, and thank you to the entire New York Catholic Worker community for your decades of fidelity to practices of voluntary poverty, hospitality, and Gospel nonviolence that Dorothy taught us!

Upcoming events

We are so excited to announce our upcoming spring programs , which will carry us through the remainder of Ordinary Time and the Lenten season! Gradually, the days in the Northern hemisphere are getting longer. There’s a hint of warmth in the sunlight, and this means that our walking pilgrimages are back up and running after the holiday break! Thanks to the efforts of Joe Sclafani, Alex Avitabile, and Jodee Fink, we are now welcoming parishes, schools, and other community groups to request a guided pilgrimage through sites in lower Manhattan which were significant to Dorothy from her youth in Greenwich Village to the end of her life at Maryhouse. To request a pilgrimage, or for more information, please fill out the form on our website . We especially encourage those visiting New York to reach out to our pilgrimage team– this is a beautiful way to walk in Dorothy’s footsteps, particularly as Lent approaches and we consider how we might draw closer to God through the witness of her life.

Last year, Dr. Anne Klejment led a fantastic, historically-informed, and collaborative Lenten book club where we read The Long Loneliness together.

This program was so popular that we’ve decided to offer another online Lenten book club.

Beginning on Sunday, March 9th at 7:30 PM Eastern , Dorothy Day Guild board member and editor-in-chief of Orbis Books, Robert Ellsberg, will host our online reading group over the course of five Sundays in Lent. Each meeting will last one hour. During our time together, we will work through Robert's newest edited volume of Dorothy's work, entitled Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings . This collection,

"explores the key themes that underlay [Dorothy's} spirituality, beginning with the call to see Christ in the poor. Day’s spirituality was deeply influenced by the “Little Way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which showed the path to holiness in the daily exercise of patience, charity, and forgiveness. Dorothy extended this principle to the social dimension, the significance of the little protests we make or fail to make. She believed that each act of love, each witness for peace, increases the balance of love and peace in the world."

To register for this program, please use this form . If you do not yet have your own copy of Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings , you can purchase a copy through Orbis Books. We also encourage book club members to request a copy through their local public library. We look forward to a series of wonderful conversations as we journey together with Christ, and with Dorothy, in the Lenten season.

For those in the New York City area, Robert will also be giving a talk for the St. Ignatius 2025 lecture series , “Pilgrims of Hope,” on Monday March 31st at 7:00 PM . Robert’s talk, “The Long Pilgrimage of Dorothy Day,” will reflect on Dorothy’s long life "on pilgrimage," and the way her faith was tested and refined by ordinary life in her community and family and the challenges of her own time and context. St. Ignatius Loyola parish is located at 980 Park Avenue; all lectures in the series are held in Wallace Hall.

Registration is now open for our upcoming day-long symposium, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee.” This event will take place on Saturday, March 29th from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on the campus of Manhattan University in the Bronx and online. We received a number of wonderful proposals from students, peace practitioners, Catholic Workers, and academics, and have been working on putting together a schedule of roundtable discussions, meals, and opportunities for prayer and fellowship. This is going to be an amazing event, and we hope to see you there!

Finally, I am especially looking forward to the Dorothy Day Guild’s first in-person event in South Bend– we are thrilled to be co-sponsoring a performance of Lisa Wagner-Carollo’s Haunted By God: The Life of Dorothy Day on Friday, April 4th at 7:00 PM Eastern . We are so glad to be able to host this event at Our Lady of the Road, the drop-in and community center run by the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community at 744 South Main Street in South Bend, IN– a very apt setting for an artistic depiction of Dorothy’s life!

This one-woman play follows Dorothy from her days as a 17 year-old Greenwich Village bohemian through her later years as a tireless champion of social justice. "Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day" has been touring the U.S. since May of 1990, and has also been presented internationally at the Pax Christi International Conference in Assisi, Italy in 1995, and at the 1999 Parliament of World Religions in Cape Town, South Africa.

Many thanks to the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame for their co-sponsorship of this event, and to the South Bend Catholic Worker community for welcoming us to Our Lady of the Road!

Reading Recommendations

Following the holiday season, January tends to be a slower time for new books and articles, but the ones we have to share with you this month are phenomenal. Alexander Shoplik’s recent piece for Commonweal, “The Best Type of Catholic There Was,” examines the influence of the Catholic Worker movement on 20th century Japanese-American author Hisaye Yamamoto and the close friendship between Yamamoto and Dorothy.

Like Dorothy, Yamamoto worked as a journalist, in addition to publishing essays and short fiction. While living in California, she was introduced to the Catholic Worker movement through the newspaper. Shoplik writes,

“It was in this context—after internment, her brother’s death, and the Shorts’ [a Black American family who were killed for moving into a white neighborhood] murder—that Yamamoto began reading the Catholic Worker, first for work and then out of personal interest. Yamamoto left the Tribune in 1948 and received the John Hay Whitney Foundation Opportunity Fellowship in 1950. In these years, she adopted a boy, Paul—“a baby, born in the family, that nobody was in a position to care for”—by herself. Paul was “a cradle Catholic,” but Yamamoto “wanted him to become the best type of Catholic there was—a Catholic Worker.”

Yamamoto and her son Paul lived at the Peter Maurin farm on Staten Island, where they lived for two years, and where photographer Vivian Cherry took a series of photographs of them with other members of the community.

Dorothy admired Yamamoto’s gifts for both intellectual and manual labor, praising her in an April 1954 column for The Catholic Worker and mentioning her again in several other issues of the paper , referencing Yamamoto’s reporting trips and her marriage to fellow Catholic Worker Tony De Soto. The admiration was mutual; as Shoplik tells us,

“Years later, Yamamoto remembered their first meeting at Christmas Eve Midnight Mass with the Maryknoll Sisters in Los Angeles: ‘So this was Dorothy Day, this tall woman in a worn black coat and black beret, with the splendidly chiseled, ageless face, with her white hair braided in a coronet atop her head.’”

Yamamoto contributed a number of columns to the paper throughout the early 1950’s, describing the bustle of community life on the farm, but she also drew on her time at the Worker and her relationship with Dorothy in her fiction, particularly in her short story ‘Epithalamium,’ in which a young woman falls in love with a charismatic fellow member of the Christian community in which she resides. The character “Madame Marie,” a wise, maternal figure who attempts to guide and protect the protagonist, is based on Dorothy.

We are so grateful to Alexander Shoplik for his retrieval of the influence of Dorothy’s legacy, especially her commitment to Gospel pacifism, on Yamamoto’s writing. If this article sparks your interest, we also recommend checking out Greg Robinson’s The Unknown Great: Stories of Japanese Americans at the Margins of History published last year by the University of Washington Press. Our friend Matthieu Langlois contributed to the section on Yamamoto and offers a detailed analysis of her articles on the exploitation of Japanese laborers in canning factories as well as her chronicles of domestic life on Peter Maurin Farm. Matthieu also explores to what extent Yamamoto’s time at the Worker and with Dorothy influenced her eventual self-identification with the Gospel. Although she wanted her son Paul, whom she adopted when he was only a few months old, to be raised Catholic, she herself was not Catholic, and tended towards agnosticism.

However, as Matthieu writes,

“Yamamoto was still at least open to the possibility that God existed. As she wrote in one of her columns: “My present pro-peace argument laps over into arguments for a possible God and a possible after-life.” Yamamoto’s beliefs were thereby closer to those of Day and the Catholic Worker than those of secular pacifist organizations.”

Later in life, though, Yamamoto spoke with literary scholar Dr. King- Kok Cheung and claimed a Christian identity for herself, not just her son, stating “I’m a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” She also named Dorothy as “the most important person this country has produced.” Matthieu cites this as a significant area for additional exploration, noting that “the nature of Yamamoto’s encounter with the philosophy of Dorothy Day and with Day herself, as well as the religious exploration she undertook during this period, would seem to merit much further research and discussion.”

We look forward to sharing additional scholarship and reflections on Yamamoto’s engagement with Dorothy and the Worker in the coming months! In the meantime, we hope you will check out the legacy of this too long-overlooked literary giant in her own words. You can find ‘Epithalamium,’ the story based on Yamamoto’s time at Peter Maurin Farm in Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories through Rutgers University Press or your local library.

For Plough, Dr. Laurie Johnson just published “The Catholic Worker Pushes the Limits,” a deeply thoughtful exploration of some of the tensions inherent in the thought of both Dorothy and Peter Maurin, and in the daily practice of contemporary Catholic Worker communities. Laurie is a professor of political science at Kansas State University and is a co-founder of the Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies . In this article, which is adapted from her 2024 book, The Gap in God’s Country , Laurie considers the space that the Catholic Worker occupies as an anarchist movement that frequently engages with local, state, and federal government structures through protest and direct action, and an anti-capitalist movement whose members often find themselves distributing the excess goods of a capitalist economy to those most victimized by that same system. This tension, present even in the sometimes conflicting demands of commitments to both voluntary poverty and hospitality, can be a productive and creative space which enables Catholic Workers to enact new possibilities for a more just social order. For example, Johnson notes that,

“When the US government instituted “Operation Alert” in 1954, Americans nationwide took cover for fifteen minutes at the sound of sirens: a public rehearsal of preparedness for nuclear war with the USSR. When the sirens sounded in 1955, Dorothy Day and twenty-six others protested outside as most New Yorkers hid under their desks… Day carried on protesting for a decade, resisting the conditioning of American citizens to accept the catastrophe of nuclear war – in the event of a strike, even occupants of fallout shelters, as Life magazine noted at the time, “might be barbecued.” By 1961, twenty-seven protestors had grown to 2,500. Operation Alert was scrapped.”

Now approaching its ninety-second birthday, the Catholic Worker movement “seems to have more staying power than many movements that have emerged in opposition to capitalism. Even in a world that has changed dramatically since the 1930s, Catholic Worker groups have adapted to new challenges and in response to new needs time and again.” Pope Benedict XVI tells us that the Gospel grows by attraction, not proselytizing. Johnson sees the continuing draw of the Catholic Worker movement’s radical commitments to voluntary poverty and the enactment of Catholic social teaching as evidence that Dorothy and Peter’s analysis of the social order in their own time is revelatory of the Truth for ours.

Finally, we would like to congratulate our friends Jerry Windley-Daoust and Renée Roden over at the Roundtable on their first anniversary of publication. This twice-weekly Substack has been an invaluable source of intra-movement discussion, news, and reading recommendations from around the Catholic Worker. If you’re not already subscribed to this newsletter, we highly encourage you to sign up. Our Catholic Worker community here in South Bend has so appreciated how the Roundtable has helped us connect with Workers in other parts of the world and share longer-form news with friends and supporters more frequently than our summer print newsletter allows.

As a teacher, I’ve assigned some of Jerry and Renée’s original reporting to the students in my “American Catholic Radicalism” course this semester and have personally loved the Thursday “CW Reads” edition for its curated recommendations from Catholic Worker newspapers, and other digital and print publications. My favorite this month has been Colleen Shaddox’s “Moses Bunn Goes Home,” for Notre Dame Magazine. Shaddox brings us alongside her as she works to find the family of a beloved, recently deceased resident of the Rosette Neighborhood Village at the Amistad Catholic Worker in Connecticut. In death, Moses, whom Shaddox remembers as a gentle peacemaker, a man of letters who might have had a promising career as a football running back, comes home to parents, aunts and uncles, and an entire extended family who never stopped waiting for his return. Shaddox spoke at length with Moses’ uncle Ronny Shields, who said that his nephew might have been lost to them forever in other circumstances: “He would have been a John Doe…if you people had not loved our Moses.”

“We did love him,” Shaddox concurs. “And that is why burying the dead is a work of mercy, because it involves fiercely asserting a person’s worthiness of love. As with any work of mercy, it requires seeing the person you are helping as infinitely precious in dignity.”

When a social worker once visited the Catholic Worker and asked Dorothy how long guests were permitted to stay, Dorothy replied simply , “We let them stay forever. They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. Once they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they always were members of the family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ.” Our thanks to Renée and Jerry for recommending Shaddox’s excellent writing, which we are sure will inspire significant reflection for many readers this winter. All of us at the Dorothy Day Guild would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the members of the Amistad Catholic Worker community for offering this final corporal work of mercy to our relatives and for making the reality of our kinship visible. We are sure that Dorothy herself honors this work and is interceding on behalf of all the members of the Rosette Neighborhood Village, living and dead.

Prayer requests

This month, we would like to ask each of you to keep several significant requests in prayer, asking Dorothy for her intercession on behalf of these beloved members of our extended family.

First, a woman from Chicago who requested to remain anonymous has asked for prayers for her husband, whose hand was injured. She has asked us to pray that his hand will be totally healed and that he will continue to be able to work and to drive.

Also in Chicago, we recently learned of the death of David Stein, a member of the St. Francis House Catholic Worker community for over thirty years. David was an artist, a writer, and a practitioner of the works of mercy. Originally from New York, David spent time at various Catholic Worker communities in the Midwest before becoming a permanent member of the St. Francis House community. Please join us in praying through Dorothy’s intercession for the repose of David’s soul, and for the comfort of those who knew and loved him in life. To read or share remembrances of David, please visit this page on the Catholic Worker website.

Finally, please pray for a young member of Dorothy’s family and of ours: Adelyn Tamar, Dorothy’s great-great-granddaughter, who is currently in the hospital undergoing long-term treatment. Adelyn is currently being accompanied by her mother and her grandmother, Martha Hennessy. We are sure that just as she did in life, Dorothy is still holding her family in prayer; let’s join our prayers with hers and ask God to give comfort and healing to Adelyn and those who love her, especially her mother and grandmother.

Many thanks to each of you who has submitted a prayer request for the Guild and to those who have interceded on their behalf. Prayer, both for Dorothy’s canonization and for the needs of the world through her intercession, is both a spiritual work of mercy and a significant way that you can assist our cause. If God so wills, it will be out of these prayers that a miracle eventually occurs, enabling Dorothy’s sainthood cause to continue moving forward. We know that regardless of when or how a miracle comes to pass, Christ accomplishes something for the redemption of the world through these prayers, and we encourage each of you to continue asking Dorothy’s assistance in bringing the needs of your families and communities before God.

A few words from Dorothy

In these last days of January, South Bend has just emerged from a cold snap, the kind of deep freeze that burns the lungs and refracts colorful sundogs through the ice crystals in the air in the late afternoon. Members of our Catholic Worker community spent the first three days of last week securing hotel rooms for our most vulnerable unhoused neighbors and shuttling guests to the temporary warming stations the city opened during the state of emergency. It’s been several years since we’ve experienced this type of sustained cold, although winter temperatures like this used to be more common. In The Long Loneliness, Dorothy wrote about family memories of ice boats on the Hudson, the river freezing to a depth that allowed her great-aunt to skate from Poughkeepsie to Marlboro.

These bitter winter days and nights are hardest on the poor. In December of 1937 , Dorothy wrote from the Catholic Worker house on Mott Street in an appeal to her readers for help continuing the necessary, contingent work of feeding the hungry day in and day out:

“The long line of men begins every morning at five thirty. I can hear them coughing and talking under my window as I wake up, and see the reflection of the flames cast on the walls of my room from the fire they build in the gutter to keep warm. Many of the men bring boxes and bits of wood to cast on it, and as the line moves up, the men get a chance to warm themselves. Many of the men have no overcoats or sweaters. It is good to see that fire as I go down to Transfiguration Church to Mass. The flames are brilliant against the dark street and the sky is purple in contrast. There is never so much color during the day…

Our Lord said that when you have a feast, do not invite your friends and neighbors who have plenty, but go out and bring in the destitute. If you cannot feed the hungry yourselves, give us the aid that will help us to do it for you. Our Lord will love you for it, for after all, we must remember that each of these seven hundred men or so, represents Christ to us. The dignity they still possess is theirs because Christ by sharing our human nature has dignified and ennobled it.

I do not believe for one minute that we will have to stop our line. How can we lack faith when we can say each morning after Mass, “Look on the face of Thy Christ,” – Christ presents in us in His humanity and Divinity at that moment, and is present in the least of His children.”

Dorothy, like all those who have taken up the Gospel call to voluntary poverty, understood the impossibility of fully imitating the precarious lives of the poor, who still in South Bend, and perhaps in your city too, spend the hours before dawn and after dark waiting in line, for food, for a bed at the emergency shelter, for acknowledgement. Voluntary poverty instead strips away all unnecessary details and distance, just as the frigid temperatures strip the humidity out of the air and enable us to see and hear with astounding clarity. Christ is in our midst. Christ is present in the members of His Body, most of all in the poorest of our brothers and sisters. Our prayer for each of you this month is that you meet, and recognize, and greet Him.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Feasting and Great Joy: Merry Christmas from the Dorothy Day Guild!

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 21:05:56 GMT

Merry Christmas from the Dorothy Day Guild!

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 and celebrated many happy Christmases with her Catholic Worker family and her daughter Tamar and grandchildren in Vermont, “a family where, as in all families, there are grave differences of opinion or points of view, and yet united and happy.” Perhaps one of the happiest of these Christmas celebrations for Dorothy took place in 1970, when Dorothy wrote,

“This has been a time of much feasting and great joy, the return of a grandson from Vietnam, a happy holiday in Vermont, snowed in for a week…The phone rang at nine o’clock and Hilaire got to the phone first. It was he, Eric Dominic Hennessy, Staff Sergeant, Ranger, home from the wars. It took him as long to get from Kennedy airport to Vermont as it did to fly from Vietnam to Seattle. His was the last flight to Kennedy airport in that particular storm, but the buses still ran and got him to Charleston, New Hampshire. It took two hours for his friends to get him from Charleston to Perkinsville what with skidding into snow drifts several times. But at two a.m. on the morning of December 27th, Eric was home again. God be thanked.”

We hope that you likewise are looking forward to feasting and long-desired reunions, and that what follows brings joy and light to your inbox as we await the birth of Our Savior!

Dorothy news:

Catholic Workers and friends from all over the United States and beyond celebrated Dorothy’s birthday on November 8th and anniversary of death on November 29th in ways big and small last month. The Dorothy Day Guild was very proud to co-sponsor the annual Dorothy Day lecture at Manhattan University on November 7th, which featured Jeff Korgen speaking on Dorothy’s life story, her impact on the Church and the peace movement, and her cause for canonization. This is a wonderful lecture series, featuring a variety of perspectives on Dorothy’s life and witness, and we hope to see many of you next year at what will be our tenth annual event!

In Washington, DC, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community organized a peace vigil on November 9th, where “twenty-one participants read scripture, shared quotes from Dorothy Day, and prayed for peace, with a focus on ending U.S. complicity with Israel’s attacks on the people of Gaza.” As Catholic Worker Art Laffin said, “Now more than ever we need to live and boldly proclaim God's reign of love, justice, peace, and Gospel Nonviolence as we seek to help create the Beloved Community.” Particularly as Christmas draws near, please join us, Pope Francis, and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community in praying for peace in the Holy Land and an end to the airstrikes on civilians.

Continuing with our focus on the Holy Land, the Dorothy Day Guild also co-sponsored the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner on November 12th at the USCCB meeting in Baltimore. We were so grateful for the chance to connect with friends from Friends of Sabeel North America, an ecumenical organization which promotes peace and justice in Palestine, and for the wonderful hospitality of the Benedictine Sisters of Baltimore, who welcomed us to stay with them at Emmanuel Monastery during our visit.

In previous years, our friends at the Catholic Peace Fellowship have organized this event as an opportunity for our bishops to gather for prayer and fellowship and to listen to members of the Church in places around the world which are currently experiencing the devastation of war and armed conflict. This year, we had hoped to invite Palestinian Catholic youth ministers, Mrs. Nadine Bitar and Fr. Louis Salman (pictured below with Cardinal Pizzaballa), to join the bishops for dinner; however, due to the travel restrictions resulting from the war in Gaza, Nadine and Fr. Louis were sadly unable to obtain visas in time to make it to the United States.

Nadine and Fr. Louis work with Youth of Jesus’ Homeland Palestine , an umbrella ministry of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, operating under the aegis of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In their ministry, Nadine and Fr. Louis represent all the children, youth groups, and young adults of all rites and Catholic Churches in Palestine. Given Dorothy’s life-long concern for the vulnerability of children and her respect for the ideas and contributions of young people, we are confident that she is interceding for the current work of YJHP. Although they were not able to join us in person, Fr. Louis and Nadine wrote a letter which we were able to share with Bishop John Stowe of Lexington and Bishop John Michael Botean, of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George and their brother bishops, and which we also invite you to read. Speaking of the children and youth in their care, Nadine and Fr. Louis write,

“Despite all the challenges and the brutality of the war, the youth in Gaza—particularly those connected to our churches—continue to hold onto hope. They embody a living faith, showing that even in the darkest times, the light of Christ remains with them. They inspire us with their courage, their faith, and their commitment to remain in the land of their ancestors. Through their small acts of faith, community, and solidarity, they resist the despair that the

conflict tries to impose. These young people remind us of Jesus’ words: “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).”

While we were disappointed that Nadine and Fr. Louis could not be with us in person, their words remind us of Christ’s enduring presence among his people and the great hope of the Incarnation. In spite of the wartime travel restrictions, we felt a great sense of spiritual solidarity with Nadine and Fr. Louis, and we remain hopeful that they will be able to join us in the United States this coming spring for a speaking tour in the Midwest and the East Coast. As we enter into the season of Jesus’ birth, please keep them and the children and young people they minister to in your prayers for Christmas.

On November 21st, the St. Joan of Arc Parish community in Lisle, IL organized an incredible evening program on Dorothy, which included a presentation on her life and work, sharing and praying with some of her personal effects, and a Q & A with members of different Catholic Worker communities, including St. Peter Claver in South Bend, IN, Nativity House in Lockport, IL, and the Sacred Tent community in Downers Grove, IL. It was such a joy to travel to Lisle and to connect with other Catholic Workers– we felt like we were meeting family we didn’t even know we had! Our enormous thanks go out to Mary Beth Sobolewski and Matthew Zurek for their work organizing this event, and to the entire St. Joan of Arc parish community for their warm hospitality.

In New York, our annual October walking pilgrimage has been so popular that several members of the Dorothy Day Guild board of directors and advisory committee decided to offer this event more frequently! The weekend before Thanksgiving, Joe Sclafani and Jodee Fink led several small groups of pilgrims through the sites in lower Manhattan where Dorothy picketed, prayed, and offered the works of mercy from the 1920s prior to her conversion until her death in 1980. We are so excited to be expanding our opportunities for you to literally walk in Dorothy’s footsteps, and we are so grateful to Joe, Jodee, and Alex Avitabile for their work on this project.

While the official pilgrimages are on pause for the holidays, we plan to pick back up again in February, so stay tuned for more information on how you can take part in this informative, prayerful, and immersive experience.

Finally on November 29th, our Catholic Worker community here in South Bend celebrated Dorothy’s anniversary of death/future feast day with a special dinner and a visit from her little namesake, a tiny kitten who lived with us for a month this fall before we found her a forever home with one of our friends and regular volunteers. Since this kitten showed up at our low-barrier shelter seeking hospitality, we felt like it was only right to name her after Dorothy– and we think she looks a lot like the kitten the real Dorothy is holding in this photograph from her youth!

Upcoming Dorothy Day Guild events:

Many of us who work or study at schools and universities have only just wrapped up classes and final exams this week, but the spring semester is right around the corner!

As a reminder, we are accepting submissions for our spring symposium, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee” until January 1st, 2025. We especially encourage Catholic Workers and undergraduate students with an interest in pacifism and Gospel nonviolence to submit proposals. Our symposium organizers will be in touch with everyone who submits a proposal by January 15th, and we’ll have more details on how to register for the symposium available for you in the new year.

We’re also very pleased to share that the recording of our November webinar, “Dorothy Day and the Saintly Six: Politically-Engaged Holiness in the Present Moment” is now available for viewing on our YouTube channel. This roundtable, which took place in the days following the presidential election in the United States and the closure of the Office for Black Ministry in the Archdiocese of New York, is a hopeful and practically-grounded conversation that looks to American exemplars of heroic virtue for a vision of “this-worldly” holiness. We are so grateful to our presenters, Dr. Kim Harris, Dr. Andrew Prevot, Deacon Mel Tardy, and Joanne Kennedy for their insight and commitment to the works of mercy in the classroom, the soup kitchen, the newspaper office, and the parish. If you weren’t able to attend the live panel, pull up this wonderful discussion for some inspiration on a cold night!

Article Round-up for the Month of Dorothy:

The month of November, bookended by Dorothy’s birthday and the anniversary of her death, always yields many thoughtful articles on the continuing significance of Dorothy’s life and witness in the contemporary Church. Several blogs and online magazines, including James Ford’s Monkey Mind on Patheos and The Collector included short introductions and reflections on Dorothy last month, as did a number of Catholic organizations and publications. On Dorothy’s anniversary, the National Shrine of Elizabeth Ann Seton published a piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez for their Seton Reflections series, “Dorothy Day and Elizabeth Ann Seton: New York Converts on First with the Love of Jesus,” which considers Dorothy’s daily reception of the sacraments as the fuel which enabled her decades of activism and the practice of the works of mercy. We join Lopez in her hopes that this anniversary will soon be celebrated as Dorothy’s feast day, and we give thanks for the gifts of devotion and fresh perspective that converts like Dorothy, Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, and their fellow New Yorker, Mother Rose Hawthorne Lathrop have brought to our Church!

America featured three articles on Dorothy in the past several weeks. The first, “In Entertaining Angels, Dorothy Day reminds us that after an election, the real work begins,” published on her birthday, is a review of the 1996 biopic. Writing in the days following the US presidential election, John Dougherty writes,

“Day is an interesting figure to consider during election season. Despite marching for women’s suffrage (as depicted in the film) she never voted, skeptical of how much change could be achieved through political means. Early in the film, she tells a friend, ‘The masses need food, not manifestos.’ While I disagree with her on the value of voting, I agree with her larger point: If we took more responsibility for taking care of one another, maybe we wouldn’t need to rely so much on politicians.”

While this film is now almost thirty years old, Dorothy’s particular mode of political engagement remains as fresh and challenging as ever, and we appreciated the timeliness of this review. Dorothy’s firm moral convictions, grounded in the commitments of the Gospel, resist the reductive tendencies of partisan politics. Our political and ecclesial cultures can sometimes tempt us to divorce the works of mercy from the political sphere, as if the work of feeding the hungry was separate from the work of resisting war; Dorothy’s witness reminds us of their indivisibility.

We also appreciated Conor Hartigan’s scripture reflection, “A Lesson in Radical Love from Dorothy Day,” published the following week, and a new piece from Robert Ellsberg. Robert’s essay, “Dorothy Day didn’t want to be called a saint. She wanted to be one,” is adapted from his new anthology from Orbis Books, Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings . Commenting on Dorothy’s refusal to participate in the civil defense drills during the Cold War, Robert writes,

“There were many who had initially admired her work among the poor. Among the original subscribers to her newspaper, founded in the heart of the Depression, there were also plenty who sympathized with her critique of an economic system that produced such poverty and desperation. Yet few in those early years joined Day in her conviction that the way of Jesus was incompatible with any kind of killing. On the day of that first civil defense drill, the number of Catholics in New York City who agreed that preparation for nuclear war was a crime against God and humanity could evidently fit inside a single police wagon.

And yet for Dorothy, it all went together. The Catholic Worker was an effort to live out the radical implications of the teaching of Christ: that what we do for the least of our brothers and sisters—whether feed them, shelter them or bomb them—we do directly for him.”

Dorothy’s commitment to responsible action in light of the daily demands of the world is not separate from or auxiliary to her spirituality. Her daily rosary, her Eucharistic devotion, her love for the saints, her intercession for members of her family and community, and her active resistance to war and economic violence are all of a piece. In Dorothy’s life and witness, we see the embodiment of the type of holiness she longed for prior to her conversion to the Catholic faith– a holiness which desired the hungry to be fed and an end to the social order which kept them in constant want. Dorothy didn’t want anyone to put her on a pedestal; she wanted all of us to accept the responsibility that the Gospel lays upon us. This is what it means to be holy: to integrate love for God and love for the neighbor in action that takes seriously our responsibilities to the poor and to history. It is in this that Dorothy’s spirituality is grounded, and it is through this that we hope and pray the Church will soon recognize Dorothy as one of Her saints.

We’d like to congratulate our friends at Commonweal who also celebrated an important anniversary last month– 100 years of lay leadership in publishing independent Catholic perspectives! Dorothy wrote many articles for Commonweal in her career as a journalist, and it was in fact an editor of the magazine, George Schuster, who suggested to Peter Maurin that he look Dorothy up in New York. The Catholic Worker movement owes its genesis in part to Commonweal. Patrick Jordan, a long-time advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild and former managing editor of both The Catholic Worker and Commonweal, wrote an article in honor of the anniversary detailing the continuing history of connection and collaboration between the two publications. Introducing his piece, the current editors of Commonweal note ,

“Jordan writes that Commonweal and the Catholic Worker embody distinct but interconnected approaches to faith and public life. While the Catholic Worker emphasizes works of mercy and active resistance to war, Commonweal exemplifies freedom of thought in both the Church and the world. With their distinctive approaches, the two publications, both dynamic expressions of the American Catholic laity, have found common cause over the years in … supporting the pursuit of a common good.”

While the Catholic Worker movement might be locally more recognized for the various ways in which its members offer the corporal works of mercy or visibly oppose war and preparation for war in their communities, the movement began by publishing a newspaper. Dorothy believed that writing with integrity could be a spiritual work of mercy. She remained convinced that journalism, like protest, could instruct the ignorant, admonish the sinner, and counsel the doubting. The writers and editors of The Catholic Worker have continued this work into the present. As Pat states in his overview,

“The historian Charles R. Morris (at a later point a Commonweal columnist), wrote in his fine 1997 study of twentieth-century American Catholicism, American Catholic, that the ‘glue’ behind the success of the Catholic Worker movement was its publication, The Catholic Worker. Morris described the CW as ‘a professional, imaginatively laid out production from the very start’... Day, Morris opined, ‘wrote like an angel, in spare, limpid prose, with a pointillist’s eye for detail.’ As Commonweal’s Shuster observed, Day was perhaps ‘the most talented Catholic woman writer since Kate Chopin,’ who could have been ‘one of the most brilliant and influential of Commonweal’s editors.’ But, Shuster noted, Day chose to be more directly involved in the social issues of her times.”

We’re very grateful to our friends at both Commonweal and The Catholic Worker for their enduring commitment to the truth and the common good, both works of the Gospel. Pat’s article, originally published in the October/November issue of The Catholic Worker, is available here on the Commonweal website.

We’d like to close our round-up with two short offerings from National Catholic Reporter. Last month, Jeromiah Taylor wrote a recap and reflection on the Peter Maurin conference which took place in Chicago earlier in the fall. Commenting on the discussion during and after the roundtable he co-facilitated with Brian Terrell, Jeromiah states that his “main takeaway was that Gen Z Catholics are hardly apolitical, but do, at least in part, feel tactically underequipped and are hungry for a new repertoire of resistance for the digital age.” Peter’s rejection of reformist programs in favor of radical conversion is perhaps uniquely capable of speaking to young activists’ sense of hopeful urgency and their desires for the renewal of our world.

It’s been great to take part in the ongoing dialogue that this conference has generated, and we’ve been invigorated by some of the projects that have been inspired by Peter’s legacy. We know that Dorothy would be thrilled to see another generation of young Catholics and fellow seekers seriously engaging with the challenges to contemporary society issued by her friend and mentor, Peter.

To close this section, seeing Dorothy’s name pop up in the Francis comic strip last month was a treat! We join Friar Leo and Dorothy in praying for a world free of fear and want, in which it is easy to be good, and we trust that God sees and makes use of even our smallest and most mundane efforts to bring about His kingdom of justice and peace.

Additional Reading and Listening Recommendations for Christmas:

Many of you may be traveling in the coming days, by car, by plane, or perhaps as Dorothy frequently did, by Greyhound bus! For those who will be in transit this week and have some time for podcasts, we would like to share a fantastic new interview with Fr. John Dear from the Metta Center for Nonviolence, “The Gandhian roots of the Sermon on the Mount.” Fr. John has written and edited forty books on nonviolence and has often named Dorothy as an exemplar of discipleship in her practice of Jesus’ active pacifism. This conversation, which is available as both a transcript and an audio version, walks through the core of Jesus’ teachings on pacifism and nonviolent resistance in Matthew 5-7. Fr. John frames Jesus’ words to the gathered crowd not as a long homily or didactic lecture, but as a retreat centered around a classic training in active nonviolence. For Fr. John, the nonviolence preached by Jesus,

“Means a couple of basics. We’re not allowed to kill, Christians. You’re not allowed to kill anybody. And we don’t kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong. The days of killing there are over.

And only from within the boundaries of nonviolence. Refusing to take up the gun, the sword, or build bombs or drop nuclear weapons or cultivate violence in any form, then can we practice the universal love and universal compassion and universal peace that Jesus taught.”

In the beatitudes, Jesus calls those who hunger and thirst for justice blessed, and promises that they will be fulfilled. Life-long engagement with that struggle for justice and engagement with the practices of nonviolence changes us; indeed, it is the only thing which will satisfy that hunger and slake that thirst. As Fr. John says,

“No, those who work for justice, the thousands that I have met, and if they go deep into nonviolence, you end up like Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, and Dorothy Day. A real possessing a certain dignity, a certain deep peace and contentment, even an inner joy. And this fundamental meaning that no one can take.”

We highly encourage you to read or listen to this interview, and we join Fr. John Dear in his hope that Pope Francis will offer the Church an encyclical on nonviolence as the normative Christian ethic for addressing conflict.

We would also like to share two additional articles, both of which in different ways concern truth-telling and integrity. Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, a member of the newly-formed Sisters of the Little Way, recently published a new piece, “Dorothy Day and Systemic Realities,” on her community’s Substack, along with an arresting new portrait of Dorothy by Sister Danielle Victoria.

The sisters have chosen Dorothy as one of the patrons of their new congregation. Sister Theresa Aletheia and Sister Danielle Victoria are currently studying safeguarding, or abuse prevention in the Church at the Gregorian in Rome. Speaking on their decision to place the work of their community under Dorothy’s care, Sister Theresa Aletheia writes,

“Core to [Dorothy’s] thought and spirituality was the importance of not only addressing symptoms of poverty but in also exploring the systemic reality as to why poverty exists in certain contexts. In other words, Day recognized that not all sin is individual—it also can be systemic or structural . Dorothy herself applied this way of thinking to the Church, observing that systemic changes were needed not only in broader society but within the Church. When asked why there was a vocations crisis, Dorothy responded , ‘I think it’s a result of the corruption in the institutional Church, through money and through their acceptance of this lousy, rotten system.’ Of course, Dorothy was referring to the need for different systemic changes but her general idea of the need for ecclesial structural reform makes sense applied to our work as well.”

The Sisters of the Little Way of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, are currently a private association of the faithful.

The three founding sisters were permitted by their bishop to take private vows in October of 2023, a first step in becoming officially recognized as a religious institute. The “About Us” section of their community website reads “As religious sisters and consecrated women, we live a mission of listening, healing, and reparation in solidarity with people on the fringes of the Church, especially those who have been wounded, scandalized, or abused by members of the Church.” We urge you to subscribe to the Sisters’ newsletter and to keep their community’s mission in your prayers this Christmas.

Finally, Dorothy’s deep love for the sacraments is well-documented, and those who knew her during her lifetime remember the peace and strength she drew from her daily reception of the Eucharist. In the years since her death, the memory of this devotion has evolved into hagiography, which at times distorts the details of historical events in order to gesture towards a point of theology or spirituality that the storyteller wishes to communicate through the life of the saint. One of the Dorothy-stories that has been passed around over the years is a story about what happened when a priest celebrated mass at the Catholic Worker in New York using an ordinary ceramic cup in lieu of a chalice. This process of crafting a devotional narrative is a common feature in the stories we pass on about the saints, the members of our family who have gone before us in Christ; however, one of the incredible gifts of our time is our proximity to Dorothy in history. Brian Terrell, who lived at the Catholic Worker in New York in the 1970s, remembers Dorothy’s Eucharistic devotion clearly, even though by Dorothy’s own account, she was out of town when the 1966 “Coffee Cup Mass” was celebrated and could not have therefore have disposed of the make-shift chalice afterwards.

In a recent piece for the Catholic Worker movement website, “What the Myth of the Coffee Cup Mass Gets Wrong– and Why It Matters,” Brian tells us, “When I knew Dorothy in the five years before her death, every celebration of the Mass we attended together in our houses was as informal as it was reverent.” Dorothy loved the aesthetic grandeur of the high mass, with its beautiful chants and vestments, and she also loved the modest celebrations of the Eucharist which took place in the community’s houses of hospitality. In either case, Jesus was fully present.

Dorothy is close to us in time. Some of you knew her well; many of you met her once or twice and remember and cherish those encounters. Others of us missed her by a decade or a generation, but we’ve come to know and love her through her writing, through the ongoing witness of the Catholic Worker movement, and through the living memories of those of you who knew her in life. Dorothy is a holy figure, a member of the Church universal whom we believe is now interceding for us in heaven, but she is also a real person, as are all the saints. She was a woman with her own particularities, preferences, and interests, and as a journalist and a Catholic, we know that she was dedicated to the promotion of truth. Loving Dorothy and cultivating a spiritual friendship with her means respecting her integrity. One way we can do this is by sharing true stories about Dorothy, and developing an account of her biography and spirituality which honors her deepest commitments and the historical events of her life, big and small. We thank Brian for his work to correct the record on this narrative and point us towards the heart of Dorothy’s faith: the person of Jesus, found in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and in the faces of the poor.

Books and reviews:

All of us at the Guild have enjoyed sharing the number of new books published on Dorothy in recent months, and it’s been great to see other publications taking note of them as well. If you still need one or two very last-minute Christmas gifts, keep reading!

National Catholic Register jointly reviewed Colin Miller’s We Are Only Saved Together and Jeff Korgen’s Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion last month. Rosalie Riegle also reviewed Robert Ellsberg’s anthology , Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings for CatholicWorker.org, finding it inspiring and fresh in its organization. Rosalie writes this new collection of Dorothy’s writings finally broke open for her the deep connection Dorothy felt with St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose “Little Way” helped Dorothy understand the significance of the tiny acts of love and fidelity offered in houses of hospitality, picket lines, and jail.

“Dorothy Day changed my life! In fact, she’s still changing it, many years later. Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings … changed it still further,” Rosalie says. “I was struck by [Dorothy’s] frequent references to the book she wrote about St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I confess I had never before considered it, as I didn’t see what she and Dorothy Day had in common, but this time, it hit me!” To hear Robert speak directly about the themes of the book, including Dorothy’s unique retrieval of the Little Way in the social sphere, check out Orbis Books’ m ost recent One-on-One episode .

Christianity Today recently released their annual book awards picks , and included Alex Sosler’s A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community as the winner in their Christian Living/Spiritual Formation category. Sosler names Dorothy as an exemplar in the pursuit of holiness alongside St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dorothy points us towards a vision of Gospel-centered life which extends beyond denominational boundaries, and we’re excited to see the ways in which her legacy appeals to our evangelical brothers and sisters.

Last but not least, in 1966, Dorothy wrote a series of luminous Advent reflections for Ave Maria magazine. Dorothy took this opportunity to engage the evangelical counsels in her own context, writing the first week on “Searching for Christ,” and following it with reflections on poverty, chastity, and obedience. In the final reflection for the fourth week of Advent, “Obedience,” Dorothy writes about the challenge this concept holds out to the entire Church, but especially to members of the laity. For Dorothy, obedience was inflected by the resonance of other concepts: love, freedom, and responsibility. Dorothy recalls a meeting that took place in the early days of the Catholic Worker movement, when Bishop O’Hara of Kansas City tasked Peter Maurin with “leading the way” in order that the hierarchy might follow, writing that,

“Peter knew what he meant. He meant that it was up to the laity to be in the vanguard, to live in the midst of the battle, to live in the world which God so loved that He sent His only begotten Son to us to show us how to live and to die, to meet that last great enemy, Death. We were to explore the paths of what was possible, to find concordances with our opponents, to seek for the common good, to try to work with all men of goodwill, and to trust all men too, and to believe in that goodwill, and to forgive our own failures and those of others seventy times seventy times. We could venture where priest and prelate could not or ought not, in political and economic fields. We could make mistakes without too great harm, we could retrace our steps, start over again in this attempt to build a new society within the shell of the old, as Peter and the old radicals (those who went to the roots of things) used to say.

I speak of these incidents to show the tremendous freedom there is in the Church, a freedom most cradle Catholics do not seem to know they possess.”

Obedience, for Dorothy, was first and foremost obedience to conscience, where the voice of God speaks to our hearts and invites us to follow freely. We love these reflections for the Christmas season as well as these last days of preparation and anticipation. Reflections During Advent can be read in full on the Catholic Worker movement website and has also been compiled by Ave Maria Press as an ebook available for purchase.

Dorothy in Translation:

In other news, we are so excited to share the news of two new translation projects. Alva Dahl and Joshua Armfield, members of the Mustard Seed Catholic Worker in Sweden, have assembled an introductory volume of Dorothy’s writings translated into Swedish. Alva and Joshua have offered their work in hope that Christians in Sweden will find in Dorothy an example of authentic faith in action.

Their new anthology, Vi sår kärlekens frön av Dorothy Day , is published by Silentium.

Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic, a member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend, has also begun translating a number of Dorothy’s best-known columns into Spanish. Magdalena tells us that Dorothy offers an important corrective to both individualist forms of organization which deny the reality of the common good and collectivist political structures which demote the personal subject below the masses and in doing so, makes a unique contribution to liberation theology. In her conversion, Dorothy moved away from hierarchical political structures and recovered a concept of communitarian social organization where the human person “can be cherished for all of her needs and gifts.”

Magdalena previously translated the Dorothy Day Guild website for us and is now engaged in the project of making Dorothy’s writing accessible to Spanish-speaking Christian communities and the wide network of Latin American liberation theologians and their conversation partners. The first three articles in translation, “Pobreza es el Rostro de Cristo” (“Poverty is the Face of Christ”) and “Casas de Hospitalidad,” (“Houses of Hospitality”), and “La Larga Soledad,” (“The Long Loneliness”) are available on the Catholic Worker movement website .

Keep an eye out for additional articles translated into Spanish in the weeks ahead!

As we look forward to the next stage of Dorothy’s canonization process, we remember that the Church is a global community. When Dorothy is, God willing, eventually canonized, she will not be a saint only for New York, or only for the United States, but for the Church universal. Many thanks to Alva, Joshua, and Magdalena for their generosity and skill, which have made Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality legible to more and more of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

A few words from Dorothy:

In the decade-plus that I have been a member of the Catholic Worker movement, I have had many opportunities to engage with Dorothy’s writing in both devotional and academic contexts. I am also fortunate enough to teach several graduate and undergraduate courses on Dorothy and the Worker, and each semester, I am faced with the question of which of her books and articles to assign to the class. Choosing a favorite text of Dorothy’s would be an almost impossible task, but if it really came down to it and I were forced to pick just one, it would be her 1945 Christmas column, “Room for Christ.” Speaking on the Incarnation and the cosmic significance of the works of mercy, Dorothy writes,

“It is no use to say that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.

But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.

We can do now what those who knew Him in the days of His flesh did. I’m sure that the shepherds did not adore and then go away to leave Mary and her Child in the stable, but somehow found them room, even though what they had to offer might have been primitive enough. All that the friends of Christ did in His life-time for Him we can do.”

In the epilogue to Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the three-fold coming of Christ described by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. St. Bernard explains that Christ first came “in flesh and in weakness,” as the Infant born in Bethlehem and that at the end of time, he will come again “in glory and majesty.” The season of Advent prepares us for this coming as well. But in between these two great moments, Christ also comes to us “in the spirit and in power.” This middle time, the present, is not empty, and our waiting for Christ is not passivity, but active readiness. Benedict writes,

“This ‘middle coming’ takes place in a great variety of ways… [Christ] also comes in ways that change the world. The ministry of the two great figures Francis and Dominic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was one way in which Christ entered anew into history, communicating his word and his love with fresh vigor. It was one way in which he renewed his Church and drew history toward himself. We could say much the same of the saints of the sixteenth century. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, and Francis Xavier all opened up new ways for the Lord to enter into the confused history of their century as it was pulling away from him. His mystery, his figure enters anew– and most importantly, his power to transform lives and to refashion history becomes present in a new way.”

Dorothy tells us that we are not too late to give room to Christ, and she is right. Christ is always ready to meet us in the poor, the unhoused, the victims of war and violence, and so Christ is always ready to enter into our hearts if we are willing to make room. Christ is still meeting us in flesh and in weakness, and we are privileged to offer him hospitality. But Christ also now comes to us in the spirit and in power and in ways that change the world. If Christ entered into history through the great saints of the past, like Francis and John and Teresa, in our own time he has entered through Dorothy, and through her life and her ministry has renewed the Church. Christ speaks to us through the saints: as Dorothy says in this column, “If we hadn’t got Christ’s own words for it, it would seem raving lunacy to believe that if I offer a bed and food and hospitality for Christmas…I am replaying the part of Lazarus or Martha or Mary and that my guest is Christ.”

We do have Christ’s word for it, and here again he speaks to us through Dorothy’s monthly column in The Catholic Worker. “In Christ’s human life there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd,” Dorothy reminds us.

“The shepherds did it, their hurrying to the crib atoned for the people who would flee from Christ. The wise men did it; their journey across the world made up for those who refused to stir one hand’s breadth from the routine of their lives to go to Christ… We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in everyone we come in contact with.

The Gospel is re-presented in the newspaper office and on the soup line, as real and alive today as it was in New York in 1945 and two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. As we prepare once again to welcome Jesus in the Incarnation, we pray that you will receive the Word of God in all its freshness and vigor, and that this Christmas, you too will answer a knock at the door of your home and of your heart and give room to Christ.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 05:01:53 GMT

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.

Dorothy Day Guild news:

Our Guild board of directors and advisory committee meet as a whole group annually, and last month, we were able to gather in person and virtually at Manhattan University on October 26th. It was great to have so many enthusiastic voices in the same room all discussing ideas to promote knowledge of Dorothy’s legacy and encourage in the Church a greater love for the people to whom Dorothy dedicated her life.

As part of that meeting, we presented a report of the Guild’s activities for the past year, which we would also like to share with each of you. We have all really enjoyed looking back on what we’ve accomplished together and look forward to the year ahead as we anticipate the next phase of Dorothy’s canonization cause.

Our Guild executive committee will be meeting later this month with our Roman postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman, to discuss the current status of our cause at the Vatican. We recently learned that the documentation on Dorothy’s cause, including transcriptions of all her writing and witness testimonies, that we sent to Rome in 2021 was more than three times the amount of material sent for Pope John Paul II or Mother Teresa of Kolkata’s canonization causes!

Our enormous thanks go out to Dr. Hilgeman and his colleagues working in the Dicastery for Causes of the Saints. We have really appreciated the support and enthusiasm for Dorothy’s cause that we’ve received from our friends in Rome.

The day before our Guild meeting, a group of us met in Union Square for our second annual Dorothy Day walking pilgrimage. Pilgrimage, the idea of life as a prayerful journey undertaken in communion with others, was an important spiritual for Dorothy, who wrote a column called “On Pilgrimage” in The Catholic Worker for decades. Last month, we visited sites including the park where she held sit-ins to resist the mandatory civil defense drills, the former Women’s House of Detention where she was jailed, the churches she prayed in, and St. Joseph and Maryhouse.

We are particularly grateful to the members of the New York Catholic Worker community at St. Joseph’s and Maryhouse for graciously welcoming us into their homes. This pilgrimage has become a wonderful autumn tradition, and although New York City has changed a great deal since Dorothy and Tamar and a few others went out to sell the first issue of The Catholic Worker in May of 1933, it is deeply moving to walk the streets of lower Manhattan where Dorothy prayed, protested, and performed the works of mercy for so many years.

If you would like to make the pilgrimage yourself, you can download a digital copy of the brochure , which includes a map, photographs, and contextual information for the sites you will visit, or you can print a copy at home . We hope that making this pilgrimage, either on foot, or in your heart, is spiritually fruitful and fun for you and your loved ones!

Reading recommendations for November:

A number of new creative projects on Dorothy have come out recently, but first of all, we are delighted to announce that Robert Ellsberg published a new edited volume of Dorothy’s writing at the end of October! Dorothy Day: Spiritual Writings is now available from Orbis Books. This new collection,

“explores the key themes that underlay [Dorothy’s] spirituality, beginning with the call to see Christ in the poor. Day’s spirituality was deeply influenced by the “Little Way” of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, which showed the path to holiness in the daily exercise of patience, charity, and forgiveness. Dorothy extended this principle to the social dimension, the significance of the little protests we make or fail to make. She believed that each act of love, each witness for peace, increases the balance of love and peace in the world.”

This anthology would make a perfect early Christmas gift or Advent devotional for a friend or family member (or perhaps for yourself!) who is seeking the presence of God and a path to holiness in the context of his or her ordinary life, as Dorothy did.

Robert is also the author of a recent article for U.S. Catholic, “The Common Vision of Pope Francis and Dorothy Day.” We know that Pope Francis, who referenced Dorothy in his 2015 address to the U.S. Congress, has a great respect for and devotion to her legacy and witness; however, as Robert encourages us to speculate, Dorothy very likely would feel the same way about the Holy Father.

As he writes,

"How thrilled she would have been to learn of a pope who took his name from St. Francis. So often she criticized the ecclesial trappings of power and privilege. How she would have delighted in Francis’s gestures of humility, his call for shepherds “who have the smell of the sheep,” his washing the feet of prisoners (including women and Muslims!). With her lifetime among the poor and discarded, how she would have resonated with his words: 'I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets….' How moved she would be to learn of his deep friendship with a Jewish rabbi, his love for opera and Dostoevsky, and his exhortation to spread the 'joy of the gospel.'"

It is truly in their love for the poor and in their absolute assurance of God’s mercy that Dorothy and Pope Francis are most closely united. Please join us in thanking Robert for his decades of work on Dorothy’s extensive body of public writing and private correspondence, and in praying for Pope Francis’ continued wellbeing and the intentions of the Holy Father.

The visual artist Robert Shetterly has also included Dorothy in his portrait series, Americans Who Tell the Truth . Speaking with Hyperallergic , Shetterly explains that he begins by researching the life of each portrait subject and then over the course of about a week paints a 30”x30” image of each peace activist with acrylic on wood, a process which “involves a combination of brushes, palette knives, fingers, and a dental pick, which Shetterly uses to inscribe subjects’ quotes into the works’ surfaces.”

Since 2003, Shetterly has created 270 paintings in this series. Dorothy’s is one of fifty portraits featured in his new book, Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth , which was published last month.

We’d also like to share two shorter articles of note. As part of the continuing reflection generated by the Peter Maurin conference which took place in Chicago in September, Theresa Barber of Aleteia spoke with Geoff Gneuhs on Peter’s influence on Dorothy’s thinking and the continuing significance of his legacy for the present day. As Geoff said,

“Peter's ideas continue to be important not just as ideals and inspiration but as practical ways, economically and socially, to maintain the dignity, freedom, and creativity of the individual person in our technological, self-centered world. Peter wanted a Christ-centered world.”

For The Catholic Sun, in Phoenix, AZ, Abigail Standish wrote a reflection on the importance of Dorothy and Mother Teresa of Kolkata for her own practice of the Catholic faith. “What do these two women have in common?” she asks. “A willingness to live in solidarity. Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa met the most vulnerable in their communities exactly where they were at.”

Finally, Anna Blackman recently published an academic article in Studies in Christian Ethics exploring the Catholic Worker movement’s theological understanding of pacifism based on principles held by Dorothy and Peter and how this is lived out in active, grassroots practices of nonviolence in Catholic Worker communities today. For Dorothy's birthday, we are very pleased to share a copy of "Inhabiting the Kingdom: Theologies of Nonviolence in the Catholic Worker Movement." Speaking on Dorothy’s understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ, a doctrine which grounded the uniquely Catholic and contemporary articulation of her pacifism, Anna writes,

“A commitment to the Mystical Body necessitated social responsibility for the other insisting on the inherent dignity of the human person and their communion with God, and a resistance to anything that harms them. Eileen Egan, the cofounder of Pax Christi USA, reminisced how even during World War II, Day had ‘said we should see Jesus in the enemy’. For Day, this doctrine meant that ‘When the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered’ and that any form of violence constituted a literal ‘rending of the Mystical Body of Christ’.”

Many thanks to Anna for her insightful scholarship, and especially for designating this article as open-access so that we can freely share it with all of you today. Our movement is blessed with many writers and academics; we are particularly grateful for the ways in which so many of them work to remove economic barriers to sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas for the common good, as Dorothy and Peter would have wanted.

Events and Opportunities:

This month marks both the anniversary of Dorothy’s birth and the anniversary of her death on November 29th, 1980, so there are many different opportunities to engage with various aspects of her life and witness of peace and solidarity with the poor this month. Last night, Jeff Korgen gave the ninth annual Dorothy Day Lecture at Manhattan University, and we were also very excited to learn that Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas also invited Dr. David Cloutier to give the inaugural Dorothy Day lecture in what we hope will likewise become an annual series on their campus.

Jeff Korgen will be giving the weekly Friday night lecture at Maryhouse this evening, November 8th, 2024 at 8:00 pm, where he will be joined by illustrator Christopher Cardinale, so if you’re in New York and you missed out last night, head down to the New York Catholic Worker to hear them present on their new biography, Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion , which Evan Bednarz just reviewed for The Houston Catholic Worker .

Paulist Press has also released free study guides for the book geared towards educators at various levels as well as small faith sharing groups. For those who haven't been able to attend these events in person and want to learn more about this new work, the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry recently released a video of a talk Jeff offered last month , which includes many images from the book as well as an overview of where Dorothy’s canonization cause currently stands.

The following week, on Tuesday, November 12th, at 5:30 pm Central , Colin Miller, author of We Are Only Saved Together: Living the Revolutionary Vision of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker , will give the final talk, “Being With the Poor,” in his series “Dorothy Day and the Christian Revolution.” This talk will take place in the old schoolhouse at the Church of the Assumption at 51 7th Street W in St. Paul, Minnesota. Register for free on the Center for Catholic Social Thought website .

In addition to being an important month for friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, November is also Black Catholic History month. On Thursday, November 14th at 7:00 pm Eastern , we are so excited to be hosting a free online event, “Dorothy Day and the Saintly Six: Politically-Engaged Holiness in the Present Moment.” Interest in this event has been high, and we’ve received many reservations already, but we still have a few more open spots. You can register here to receive the zoom link.

We’re looking forward to a lively conversation that will seek points of convergence and variation between Dorothy’s mode of living the Gospel in the world and the legacies of the six Black American Catholics who also have open causes for canonization. We know that many of you have a strong devotion to these holy men and women whose lives witnessed to the Holy Spirit’s persistent presence in the Black Catholic community in the United States, and we hope you will join us next Thursday.

On Saturday, November 16th, from 1:00-4:00 pm , Robert Ellsberg will host the Annual Thomas Merton Retreat at Corpus Christi Church at 529 West 121st Street in New York. This retreat, entitled “A Journey Faith: Walking with Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, & other Companions Along the Way,” marks the eighty-sixth anniversary of Thomas Merton’s baptism at Corpus Christi on November 16th, 1938.

Merton exemplifies what Pope Francis calls a “journey faith, where we find God in the process of “going, walking, doing, searching, seeing. . . . We must enter into the adventure of the quest for meeting God; we must let God search and encounter us. . . . God is encountered walking along the path.” The constant desire to go deeper in faith and in the discovery of one’s own vocation also characterizes Dorothy’s particular spirituality.

This shared understanding of life as a perpetual pilgrimage informed Dorothy’s epistolary friendship with Merton. The retreat is offered free of charge; participants are asked to register by phone at (212) 666-9350 or email at cchristinyc@gmail.com.

For those in the Chicago area, St. Joan of Arc parish in Lisle, IL is hosting a presentation and discussion on Dorothy’s life and legacy on Thursday, November 21st from 7:00-9:00 pm in the St Joan of Arc parish center at 820 Division Street . Lisle is an important place for those interested in Dorothy, particularly her connection to the Benedictine family: Dorothy became an oblate of Lisle’s St. Procopius Abbey in 1955 . She was attracted to the particular charism of this community, which at the time celebrated both the Latin-rite Mass and the Eastern-rite Divine Liturgy and worked for the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I’m delighted to be presenting at this event alongside my friend Mary Beth Sobolewski, a Benedictine oblate and graduate student in theology. Those interested in attending can RSVP at sjadorothy@gmail.com or by calling 630-963-4500.

As a reminder, we are now accepting proposals for our spring 2025 symposium, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee,” which will take place on Saturday, March 29th, 2025 in a hybrid in-person/virtual format at Manhattan University and online.

This conference will be open to all and will feature work from scholars at every level from undergraduate onward as well as peace practitioners whose activism and work has been influenced by or grounded in Dorothy’s Gospel pacifism. We welcome proposals which engage Dorothy’s legacy of voluntary poverty, nonviolence, and hospitality and its significance for the Church, the academy, and our world in the twenty-first century. All proposals are due January 1st, 2025. For more information on the Guild’s upcoming events, please visit our website .

The Dorothy Day Guild is committed to furthering Dorothy’s witness of Gospel pacifism, voluntary poverty, and hospitality in a variety of different spheres of action, particularly through educational programming and opportunities for prayer and reflection. If you have participated in any of our free events this year or have enjoyed receiving this monthly letter and our other participations, we humbly invite you to consider becoming a member of the Guild or making a donation to support our work. All of the funds we receive support the work of our postulator in Rome, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman and his team, as well as the daily operations of the Guild, and help us keep our events and our newsletter free of charge.

Finally, the Dorothy Day Guild will be co-sponsoring the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner on Tuesday evening, November 12th as the US Catholic Bishops gather for their annual plenary session. We are so honored to have been invited by our friends at the Catholic Peace Fellowship to collaborate on this event, which has taken place annually since 2013. Fr. Seóirse Murray, one of the founding organizers of the Peace Dinner, said that the original impetus for this event was the USCCB’s unanimous endorsement of Dorothy’s cause for canonization in 2012 coupled with a desire to create a space where the bishops could gather to reflect together on the commitments which arose in Dorothy’s life from her reception of the Gospel. Dorothy’s commitment to pacifism preceded her conversion to the Catholic faith, yet it was within the Church that this deeply-held conviction found fertile soil in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and flourished.

The Peace Dinner is named in honor of Joshua Casteel , a former US Army interrogator who became a conscientious objector and a pacifist during the Iraq War. During the period where he was wrestling with the conflicting demands of conscience and military service, he wrote a series of emails to his friends and family which were later published as a book, Letters from Abu Ghraib . After leaving the army, he became active in the peace movement and traveled to the Vatican in 2007 as part of a delegation invited to discuss the theory of just war and the place of conscientious objection with Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials. Like Dorothy, he was a writer and a convert to Catholicism.

Joshua died in 2012 from cancer caused by his exposure to US military burn pits in Iraq. As we remember him and all other victims of war this month, especially those currently under siege in Palestine, please pray for the success of the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner and for our bishops to embrace their vocation as peacemakers.

A few words from Dorothy:

Last month, we shared with you a section from Dorothy’s October 1968 “On Pilgrimage” column , reflecting on the trial and conviction of the members of the Catonsville 9. The nine Catholic peace activists were sentenced to a total of 18 years in jail and fined $22,000. Four of the nine, Mary Moylan, George Mische, Fr. Philip Berrigan, and Fr. Daniel Berrigan continued their resistance by failing to show up for the start of their sentences and going underground. During this time, Fr. Dan Berrigan caused considerable embarrassment to the government by showing up at various events, including the “America is Hard to Find” festival at Cornell University , to give speeches and celebrate mass.

In August of 1970, the FBI finally caught up to Dan at the home of his friend William Stringfellow and remanded him to Danbury prison in Connecticut, where he served two years before being paroled.

Dorothy was a close friend and supporter of the Berrigans and exchanged many letters with Dan until her death. While many of their letters have been collected, edited, and published, we know that some of their correspondence is still in circulation. At the end of last month, on October 30th, the feast of St. Marcellus, patron saint of conscientious objectors and patron of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, of which Fr. Dan Berrigan was a founding member, the Dorothy Day Guild received a precious gift. William Fliss, the archivist for the Dorothy Day and Catholic Worker collection at Marquette University, sent us a previously undiscovered letter written by Dorothy to Dan Berrigan while he was imprisoned, on May 31st, probably in the year 1971. If this date is correct, Dorothy wrote this letter to encourage Dan while he was serving time for his participation in the Catonsville action.

This letter, which you can read in full here , was sent to the archives by Frida Berrigan, Dan’s niece, who received it from Willa Bickham and Brendan Walsh of the Viva House Catholic Worker in Baltimore. We are enormously grateful to Willa, Brendan, Frida, and William for their stewardship of this treasure and for making it available to all of us to read and contemplate.

In her closing thoughts, Dorothy writes,

“I am hoping that you will be able to do a little writing in jail, but I know that the impact of your fellow prisoners will be such that it will be hard to think. I know that you will be receiving mail from your brother in Syracuse and that I can send you messages through him. It is the way we reach our friends among the prisoners. Yours is most truly a witness, a revolutionary act, or rather a series of revolutionary acts, and I know you have counted the cost. Certainly if a Ho Chi Minh and other revolutionaries can spend much time in prison, you also can endure the coming years. Years! It seems terrible to be saying it. But others feel your strength and do not doubt it.”

In their own time, God called Dorothy and Dan and their companions to many revolutionary acts, the sum total of which patterned their lives after the model of Jesus.

These witnesses are still with us through their writing, the legacies they have left us in the Church, and through the encouragement of their prayers, but as exemplars of holiness, they do not exist of and for themselves. They point beyond themselves to a more pressing truth: God has not ceased calling members of His family to heroic virtue. Perhaps this month you will hear God calling you. The virtues of courage, wisdom, charity, and hope which sustained Dorothy’s lifelong witness and that of the Catonsville 9 are as necessary now as they were in 1933 and 1968; we should pray and labor to cultivate them in our own lives and communities. God is still calling men and women to dedicate themselves to His Gospel of peace and solidarity. As you and your loved ones continue to discern fresh ways in which you might live out Gospel nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality in your own contexts and communities, please be assured of our prayers.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Walking on the Little Way

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 12:16:51 GMT

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.

For Dorothy, however, the communion of saints extended beyond those included in the official canon. The communion of saints embraced the poor and forgotten, like those with whom Dorothy spent over fifty years living in community, and those who labored and died in obscurity for the glory of God and the wellbeing of their brothers and sisters-- the practitioners of her beloved Little Way. It embraced likewise those who were not Catholic, like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, or not Christian, like Mahatma Gandhi, both of whom Dorothy admired deeply for their practice of nonviolence and whom she eulogized in the pages of The Catholic Worker. Of Gandhi, she wrote in 1948 , “Truly he is one of those who has added his own sufferings to those of Christ, whose sacrifice and martyrdom will forever be offered to the Eternal Father... In him we have a new intercessor with Christ; a modern Francis, a pacifist martyr.”

It is fitting then, that in contemporary works of art, Dorothy is often pictured in the company of other saints, such as in The Lives of the Saints exhibit hosted by St. Cecelia Parish in Boston, featuring the paintings of Nancy Marek Cote, or in John Nava’s tapestries at the University of San Diego and St. Francis Xavier Church in New York . The tapestries at St. Francis Xavier, which feature people of heroic virtue from across the Americas, were dedicated last month on September 15th.

The pastor and parish community of St. Francis Xavier invite us all to pray with and learn more about Dorothy and the other figures honored in the tapestries using this brochure .

As we prepare to celebrate the communion of saints on the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, we hope that you will spend time reflecting on Dorothy’s life and the lives of others in whom you have seen the Gospel re-enacted. We also invite you to ask Dorothy’s intercession on behalf of all who have died in this past year and those who will soon make the transition from this life to the next. Servant of God Dorothy Day, pray for us!

Guild News:

Speaking of the communion of saints, we would like to take a moment to thank the members of the Dorothy Day Guild’s communications committee for their work on the Fall 2024 edition of In Our Time , the official newsletter of the Dorothy Day Guild.

This edition of In Our Time is entitled “Communities of Care and Concern,” featuring original work including an interview with Charles Moore, a member of the Bruderhof community and a contributing writer and editor for Plough , reflections from Scott and Claire Schaeffer-Duffy of the Sts. Francis and Thérèse Catholic Worker, art by Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS and Brother Martin Erspramer, OSB, and more. If you missed this issue in your inbox, keep an eye out for it here on our website .

While writing this letter each month is one of my favorite parts of this job, the monthly missives don’t allow for the depth that our seasonal newsletter contains. We all benefit greatly from the gifts our editorial and website teams have offered to the digital editions of In Our Time – thank you all!

Earlier this month, two members of the Dorothy Day Guild board of directors, our co-chair Dr. Kevin Ahern and Geoff Gneuhs, traveled to Rome to participate in activities surrounding the synod– see if you can spot them both in this photo from the mass celebrating the renewal of the 1965 Pact of the Catacombs for a Church of the poor and a servant Church! While in Rome, Kevin met with several people in the curia, members of the Synod, and other officials from the Vatican who expressed a strong interest in Dorothy’s legacy and cause for canonization. Kevin also named as particularly rewarding his meeting with the archival team of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who offered a wealth of practical wisdom on canonization causes and how to care for artifacts such as those on display at the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University. This will be enormously helpful in the ongoing collaborative project undertaken by the NY Catholic Worker community and the Dorothy Day Center to catalogue and preserve the artifacts in Dorothy’s room at Maryhouse, which is today an active guestroom in a busy Catholic Worker house, not a museum! We are so heartened to hear of such enthusiasm for Dorothy’s cause in Rome, and we ask your prayers for the additional fruit we know these meetings will bear in the coming year.

Finally, as I write this letter, I am also packing and preparing to leave for New York, where the Dorothy Day Guild’s board of directors and advisory committee will meet on Saturday, October 26th at Manhattan University. Please keep this meeting in your prayers as well as we gather to discern and continue developing a vision for the work of the Guild in the next phase of Dorothy’s cause for canonization. We look forward to sharing more updates with you soon!

Upcoming Events:

In the lead-up to the anniversaries of Dorothy’s birth (November 8th) and death (November 29th) next month, there are a number of free in-person and online events that we hope to see some of you at in upcoming weeks!

First, we would like to draw your attention to an ongoing series being put on this month by our friends at the new Staten Island Catholic Worker, "The Spirituality of the Catholic Worker: The Primacy of the Spiritual." This speakers’ series features talks on the various charisms lived out by Dorothy and those who offer the spiritual and corporal works of mercy to the poor through their practice of hospitality. Previous speakers have

included long-time friends and advisors to the Dorothy Day Guild, Fr. Ray Roden, Patrick Jordan, and our Guild co-chair Deirdre Cornell. This series takes place on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 PM at Blessed Sacrament Church, (1091 Forest Ave, 10310) on Staten Island and will meet twice more this month! The next two talks, on Tuesday, October 22nd, and Tuesday, October 29th , will feature Bishop Peter Byrne and Catholic Worker Dr. Carmina Chapp, a member of the Dorothy Day Guild’s board of directors. For more information, please contact the Staten Island Catholic Worker at sicatholicworker@gmail.com .

As a reminder, former Dorothy Day Guild coordinator Jeff Korgen will be speaking on Wednesday, October 23rd at 7:30 PM as part of the Beacon Hill Friends Meeting’s MIDWEEK: Experiments in Faithfulness series. Jeff’s presentation and discussion, entitled “Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion,” after his new book, will share the story of Dorothy’s life as a journalist and peace activist and will include the important influence of two Quakers on her articulation of Gospel pacifism.

The following evening, Thursday November 7th, at 5:30 PM, Jeff Korgen will give the ninth annual Dorothy Day Lecture at Manhattan University. Jeff’s talk will introduce audience members to Dorothy’s life and her impact on the Church and Catholic and secular peace movements, as well as the contemporary process of canonization. This annual lecture series is the result of the sustaining gifts of time, talent, and treasure offered by several members of the Guild’s board of directors and has been such an important forum for bringing Dorothy’s life and legacy to a wider audience over the years. If you know someone in the New York metro area who is unfamiliar with Dorothy’s unique witness to the Gospel, we hope you will invite them to this talk!

The next night, on Friday, November 8th at 8:00 PM (Dorothy's 127th birthday!), Jeff will be joined by Christopher Cardinale, the illustrator of Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion to present the Friday night talk at Maryhouse on 3rd Street in Manhattan. For more information on the New York Catholic Worker’s Friday evening roundtable series, check out their Instagram . Lots going on this week; happy birthday, Dorothy!

In addition to being a significant month for those who have a devotion to or interest in Dorothy, November also marks Black Catholic History Month in the United States. The Dorothy Day Guild has hoped for some time to more deeply engage with the legacy of holiness present in the Black Catholic Church in this country. To that end, we are delighted to announce that we are hosting a webinar entitled “Dorothy Day and the Saintly Six” on Thursday, November 14th at 7:00 PM Eastern.

Please join us for a conversation on how Dorothy Day and the six Black American Catholics whose causes for canonization are open can offer us a vision of politically-engaged holiness in our present time. Our panelists, Dr. Kim Harris, Deacon Mel Tardy, Joanne Kennedy, and Dr. Andrew Prevot, are each living out this vision in their scholarship, journalism, teaching, and ministry. This panel will be moderated by Dorothy Day Guild co-chair Dr. Kevin Ahern; please register here to receive the zoom link.

Finally, it has been a dream of ours for some time now to host an academic symposium on Dorothy’s life and witness at the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan University, and we are so excited to announce that this gathering, “Dorothy Day: Practices of Peace in the Year of Jubilee,” will take place next spring on Saturday, March 29th, 2025 ! We are currently accepting proposals of 300-500 words to explore the significance of Dorothy’s legacy in the 21st century. This conference is open to scholars at every level and peace practitioners whose life and work have been influenced by Dorothy Day’s legacy of hospitality, Gospel nonviolence, and voluntary poverty.

This conference is open to scholars at every level and peace practitioners whose life and work have been influenced by Dorothy Day’s legacy of hospitality, Gospel nonviolence, and voluntary poverty. We particularly invite students and members of the Catholic Worker movement to submit proposals for papers, panels, and presentations of creative work by January 1st, 2025. Read the call for papers here , and stay tuned for more information on how to register for this conference and join us either in person or virtually! To learn more about this symposium and any of the Dorothy Day Guild’s upcoming events, please visit our website .

Article Round-up:

This month, we have three offerings to share with you, all of which happen to address spiritual formation in some way. First, we would like to draw your attention to another new book, historian Michelle Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial. This text is a complex portrait of the 28, a mixed group of primarily Catholic activists, including both laity and clergy, who participated in a 1971 draft board raid and whose trial was widely regarded as a referendum on the war in Vietnam.

Dorothy is a central figure in the text; her formative influence on the nonviolent direct action undertaken by the Camden 28 is outlined in Tim Lacy’s review of Spiritual Criminals for the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, “Dorothy Day’s Spiritual Leadership: Against Capitalism, Imperialism, and War.” Lacy notes that Dorothy’s “intense practice of pacifism provided a binding thread for mid-century Catholics.”

In the pages of The Catholic Worker, Dorothy began speaking out against the French occupation of Vietnam in the 1950’s, and pacifism had been a central component of her political praxis even prior to her conversion to Catholicism. Lacy identifies Dorothy’s consistency as a journalist and editor as well as in her lived practice of the faith as a major source of spiritual influence on the members of the Camden 28. We highly encourage you to read Lacy’s review and hope you will order a copy of Spiritual Criminals for yourself or request one for your local public library.

We’re also excited to share a recent interview from the Fall 2024 issue of Radix with Robert Ellsberg, former managing editor of The Catholic Worker and member of the board of directors for the Dorothy Day Guild. This interview, which is available in both text and audio format, discusses our ongoing reliance on and participation in the communion of saints and what Dorothy offers to a Church looking for fresh expressions of sanctity in the modern world.

Speaking on what draws us to narratives of the saints, Robert says,

"Dorothy Day, though, I think, did open up this new model of holiness that combined charity—the works of mercy—with work for justice. That is to say, not just addressing the victims of unemployment and the Depression, but really asking these challenging questions about a social system and the values that create so much poverty and the need for such works of mercy. She did the same thing with rediscovering the peace message of Jesus, which had been essentially lost for centuries…

So, you see this kind of chain reaction, where the example of someone—not necessarily giving their life, but simply living in a way that seems authentic, true, and attractive—compels others. It opens our minds and hearts to think in a new way: What could I do? Not necessarily to end a war or anything so grand, but what could I do if I were to take my faith as seriously as that? If I were to take my faith out of just Sunday observance and into my everyday life—maybe even into my civic life, my relationships with my community, and the world around me?"

In preparation for All Saints' Day, and in a month that includes the feast days of two of Dorothy’s favorite saints, Carmelites Thérèse of Lisieux (October 1st) and Teresa of Avila (October 15th), we hope you’ll give this refreshing conversation a listen!

Last, but not least, we were so pleased to read in The Evangelist that Dorothy’s life and witness was the focus of Catechetical Sunday in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany last month. Dorothy is an incredible guide and companion to walk with us as we contemplate this year’s catechetical theme, “Lord, when did we see you hungry.” Our friends Fr. Bob Longobucco, Sr. Betsy Van Deusen, CSJ, Catholic Workers Fred Boehrer and Diana Conroy, and others in the Office of Discipleship Formation have put together a collection of resources for catechists, liturgical ministers, and anyone who wishes to deepen their own journey of discipleship by responding to the poor as Dorothy did. We hope that this initiative from our friends in the Albany Diocese will encourage others who work in diocesan ministry to consider how Dorothy’s legacy of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty might inform the spiritual and corporal works of mercy they offer in and through their local Churches. We particularly encourage you to read the opening message from Vicar General Fr. Bob Longobucco, which includes the following reflection on Kelly Latimore’s contemporary icon, “Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets.”

“The powerful image of Dorothy Day, Servant of God, that accompanies the theme makes clear our mission. Her inviting a holy family of shivering migrants into Maryhouse in New York City reminds us that what other people might see as expendable or inconvenient is indeed Christ himself. To the excluded, to the forgotten, to the lonely, Dorothy Day found a place. She knew what to do with hungry people. She fed them.

And she fed them Christ. Not in sermons or demands for conversion (for she knew how searingly personal that decision was), but in the humility and dignity she shared. The respect she showed. As Jesus went to the anawim of his time, as he touched lepers and restored sight to the blind, he never forgot their humanity. He asked what they needed. He allowed power to flow out of himself. With a whole world to save, he never forgot any person.”

For me, reading through these thoughtful reflections on Dorothy, the works of mercy, discipleship, and formation was especially sweet: When I was a teenager and young adult at St. Kateri’s parish in the diocese of Albany, Fr. Bob, Sr. Betsy, Fred, and Diana were the people most responsible for my own formation as a member of the Church and a Catholic Worker. Each of them has offered a remarkable gift of self to the countless young people they have accompanied on journeys of discipleship. The works of catechesis and formation rely on relationships; we catch the echo of Jesus’ life as it is reflected back to us in the life of another person. For many of us, Dorothy is one of these people. We know how deeply she relied on the communion of saints, living and dead, canonized and not, to sustain her in her work for peace, and we know how generously she gave of herself during her lifetime. Many of you have written about how Dorothy’s example helped you to find a home in the Church or that through her practice of the works of mercy, you found Christ made visible. To all catechists, we thank you for your work of instruction and accompaniment, and we pray that Dorothy’s life and example might be a light to all those in your care!

A few words from Dorothy:

Last week marked the fifty-sixth anniversary of the trial of the Catonsville 9 , which took place from October 5th-9th, 1968, following an action undertaken by nine lay and religious Catholic peace activists the preceding May. Fr. Daniel Berrigan, pictured here with Dorothy and other young friends one of the many times he came to celebrate mass at the Catholic Worker, was among the nine, along with his brother Philip.

The members of the Catonsville 9 raided a draft office in Catonsville, MD and burned 378 draft files in the parking lot, effectively preventing the young men listed in those files from being sent to participate in the violence of the Vietnam War. Later that month, Dorothy wrote the following in her October 1968 “On Pilgrimage” column:

"It is mid-October and the weather is still warm. There has been no wind and the leaves are still on the trees. The maples and the oaks and the sumac are brilliant, but in general the trees are still green. There is scarcely a hint of frost in the air; only at night a chill arises, a foretaste of the cold to come…

How to be happy in this world where even nature itself, in sudden hurricane or typhoon or earthquake, suffers and groans? How to sing of the glory of God in this strange land? “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept,” living as exiles, as we are.

It is only in the light of this anguish that one can understand the attempt made by the Catonsville Nine and the Milwaukee Fourteen, amongst whom are so many of our friends, to suffer with these fellow human beings so devastated by war and famine. These men, priests and laymen, have offered themselves as a living sacrifice, as hostages. Next to life itself, man’s freedom is his most precious possession, and they have offered that, as well as the prayer and fasting they have done behind bars, for these others.

In case there are those among our readers who do not know why these men have suffered trial and imprisonment, if radio or television or press has not reached them – it is because they have destroyed draft records in Maryland and Wisconsin, the 1-A files, which meant the next men to be called in our criminal drafting and enslavement of young men for our immoral wars. Where we have not sent men, we have sent weapons, planes, bombs to do the work in other countries’ wars. There are many other actions – of refusal to work in any industry pertaining to war or to pay taxes for war – being undertaken that we cannot include here, that are too numerous to list.

We can only thank God and try to add our prayers and sacrifices."

In light of the United States’ deepening involvement in multiple devastating wars around the world through financial support, weapons development, and the arms trade, Dorothy’s words remind us of the courage of a previous generation of war resisters and practitioners of the Gospel of peace. Today, we invoke the same Holy Spirit who inspired and strengthened the Milwaukee 14, the Catonsville 9, and the Camden 28 to raise up new voices whose prophetic words and actions will bring an end to the present violence being inflicted upon the people of Gaza, Ukraine, and every place where families live in fear for their lives. Through Dorothy’s intercession, we ask God’s protection for all victims of armed conflict and genocide, and over all those who work for peace.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

IN OUR TIME : Volume 2 (digital), Issue 1

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 17:56:42 GMT

IN OUR TIME

Newsletter of the
Dorothy Day Guild

The Community Issue

Volume 2 (digital) Issue 1

Fall 2024

Brother Mickey McGrath, OSFS,
Love and Beauty Will Embrace, Justice and Peace Will Kiss

FOR MORE TO READ

and in the tradition of the Catholic Worker to help “clarify thought,” here are some other articles that explore community:

On walking with friends
“ How to Eat a Tire in a Year ”
(Our thanks to David Sedaris and the New Yorker )

On well-being and connection

“ The most important thing you can do to live longer ”

(Our thanks to Juna Gjata and the team at Food, We Need to Talk )

On being “good” and the Catholic Worker

“ The Maurin Mandate: Catholic Communitarianism in a Nutshell ”
(Our thanks to Colin Miller and Church Life Journal )

On the work of imagination

“ Dreaming as a single family: A reflection on the Pope’s Encyclical ”

(Our thanks to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Vanguard News )

On the presence of God

“Martha Hennessy addresses 10th National Eucharistic Congress”

(Our thanks to Martha Hennessy and the Catholic Worker )

On the beloved community

“Legion of Mary”

(Our thanks to Mary Gordon and Commonweal )

It's YOU who ground the cause...

Becky McIntyre , Building a New Society in the Shell of the Old

...and keep it moving!

Thank you for your continued generosity.

Support the Guild today.

DEAR READERS:

We know you care about Dorothy Day.
But do you know that we care about your
thoughts, concerns, and hopes for her Cause?
Your voice makes us the community we
aspire to be: open, engaged, committed.
Let us hear from you!

Contact: ddg@archny.org
(subject line: In Our Time)

IN OUR TIME

Editorial and Production Team
Gabriella Wilke, Guest Editor
Colleen Dulle
Mindy Indy
Vanessa Pereira
Casey Mullaney
Anthony Santella

Contributors
Writers: Colleen Dulle, Carolyn Zablotny, Casey Mullaney, Claire Schaeffer-Duffy and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, Dorothy Day, Charles E. Moore and Gabriella Wilke
Designer: Mindy Indy, www.mindyindy.com
Lettering: Linda Henry Orell

Credits
Art: Becky McIntyre ( Building a New Society in the Shell of the Old ); Bro. Martin Erspramer, OSB ( Good Talk, Breaking Bread, Sowing Seeds, and Signs of Holiness illustrations ); Artist Unknown ( Saved by Beauty illustration ); Rita Corbin (Tree of Life w. Birds, Dispatches illustration ); Bro. Mickey McGrath, OSFS (Love and Beauty Will Embrace, Peace and Justice Will Kiss); Ade Bethune (Peace Tree masthead and Vine and Branches border)

Thank you to the executive committee, Kevin Ahern, Deirdre Cornell, George Horton, James Boyle, and Alex Avitabile, for providing resources for the production of In Our Time . And thank you, dear readers and members, for your ongoing support.

And a special thanks to Toby Mommensen and the Bruderhof community, Dan Mauk, Dottie Bromich, James Hannan and the team at Commonweal, Krista Hall and St. Meinrad Archabbey, Liturgical Press, St. Catherine University’s Ade Bethune Collection, and Wikimedia Commons for their assistance.

Labor, Love, and Learning

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 14:28:02 GMT

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!

New books!

We are delighted to announce that two new books on Dorothy have been published in the last several weeks. Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion, Jeff Korgen’s graphic novel-style biography of Dorothy, which came out on Labor Day, was noted in the September issue of U.S. Catholic , and also received an excellent review from Jeromiah Taylor for the National Catholic Reporter . For those in the NYC area, Jeff will be offering a book talk at the Friday Night Meeting at Maryhouse on Third Street on November 8th, Dorothy’s 127th birthday! Stay tuned for further information about that event.

Celebrating, feasting, and worshipping together in community prepares us to offer up our lives and our work for the common good. As Colin writes on pages 61-62,

“At Mass we have to be physically together, materially in the same room, making the same bodily gestures, actually eating together, sometimes smelling the same smells, mouthing the same words. In a world of virtual everything, where you can be everywhere without every really being anywhere, what a remarkable contrast that salvation demands this in-the-flesh togetherness.

And it demands it because salvation is not just a matter of going to heaven when you die, but of beginning the life of heaven now, as Dorothy says. We are saved from isolation and for community, even in this life. It’s a thoroughly social matter, from the time we are baptized until, and including, the time we finally see God face-to-face.”

For a preview of Colin’s work, read a write-up from The Irish Catholic and an excerpt from We Are Only Saved Together here.

We also recently learned that Dorothy has been featured in a new collection of biographical profiles from Ignatius Press entitled Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights: 1800s to Present , by Matthew Daniels and Roxanne King. Placing Dorothy in the company of holy men and women including Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk, St. Katharine Drexel, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Oscar Romero, Venerable Pierre Toussaint, and Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, “this survey features men and women whose faith drove them to courageously defend the dignity of the children of God, especially the most vulnerable. In doing so, they transformed others’ lives and paved the way for a more loving and equitable society.” Read a review from Angelus News here .

Additional Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

Earlier this summer, our friend Anna Blackman from the University of Glasgow interviewed Dorothy’s granddaughters Martha and Kate Hennessy for Political Theology Network. Anna’s thoughtful questions cover Dorothy’s influence on the sisters’ early formation through the particular ways they are each living out her legacy in the present, the central role of nonviolence in Dorothy’s spirituality, and what the economic precarity of the Catholic Worker movement can offer the broader church. What follows is a short excerpt from the interview:

Anna: Both of you have also followed Dorothy’s example in practical ways; Martha with your peace activism and Kate with your writing as well as your art, which has always played a prominent role within the Worker. And I know that, like for Dorothy ,faith has also played a big role here. Could you speak a little bit about these aspects?

Martha: The Plowshares action deepened my faith. These experiences of actually applying your faith to action, living it in a very real way in the world is always clarifying and strengthening. I don’t know that I could have walked onto that base with the nuclear weapons without feeling like, “Okay, I’m here with my comrades, this is what we believe, God is not with these weapons, God is with getting rid of these weapons.” That’s what gave me strength and focus. I don’t believe Dorothy could have done what she did for nearly 50 years, the destitution, the horror, the injustice, the ﬁlthiness, the chaos, all the ways we don’t want to live right there in our faces, without some kind of faith.

Kate: I believe in a storytelling theology; that’s how we learn. That’s how we grow as individuals and as communities. Each new creative way that we tell our stories, whether it’s written word or music or art, it binds us together. I think the role of art is to help us see ourselves more clearly. To recognize ourselves, our humanity. In the Worker … Well Dorothy said, “Well, a lot of people can’t read so you give something for them to look at,” but I think she, we, just love it. We love art. How can we stop ourselves from loving art, whether it’s visual arts or music or dance or theater or storytelling? It feeds our soul. It leads us to understand ourselves better. And I think the world will be saved by beauty. I also believe that the world is being saved by beauty every day, we’re just not paying attention

While the shorter version of this interview has been available since the summer, we recently received permission to share the full version published in the academic journal Political Theology with all of you! Many thanks to Dr. Vincent Lloyd and his co-editors for making this excellent interview available to the members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild.

Kate was also interviewed this month for EWTN News Nightly. This short interview touches on a range of topics, and when asked what she believed her grandmother was still offering to the world, Kate said, “I think she’s teaching us hope. That there’s always something that we can do. I think she’s teaching us to follow our conscience, to really understand what we say we believe and live by that.” More than forty years after Dorothy’s death, the world certainly still needs those teachings! You can watch the full interview on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Political Theology Network also published a piece this month by Dr. Marty Tomszak, entitled “They Shall Not Pass! The Catholic Worker Ethos, Faithful Direct Action, and the Anti-Fa Christ” . Marty’s article looks to Dorothy’s prophetic witness as a powerful counter-praxis to the contemporary rise in fascism and anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States and Europe. Marty notes that,

“Day was aware of the ways in which the Imago Dei of workers and guests could be damaged not just by a lack of access to material resources but by the anti-human systems which created spiritual and physical poverty. This is why in addition to the “traditional” aspects of the Catholic Worker, Day found it fundamental to participate in direct action against the State.”

Dorothy’s steadfast allegiance to the Kingdom of God over and against any earthly empire offers us a necessary exemplar of faithful discipleship in the political realm. Many thanks to Marty for highlighting some of the most challenging aspects of Dorothy’s legacy in our present moment.

We would like to bring to your attention two more articles from this month’s U.S. Catholic. Reflecting on economic justice, Renée Roden asks “What did Dorothy Day say about capitalism?” Locating Dorothy’s economic philosophy in the promotion of the common good, Renée writes that,

“Day did not just want to protest the way things were: the Catholic Worker movement had a long-term vision for the reconstruction of the social order, “to take the place of both capitalism and communism,” Day wrote in 1953 . Here, too, her view aligns with traditional Catholic teaching. According to the catechism, the church “has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with ‘communism’ or ‘socialism.’ She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of ‘capitalism,’ individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor . . . Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.”

Day imagined an economic reality that honored the dignity of the human person, based on the universal brotherhood of the mystical body of Christ. This reality was incarnated through economic cooperation, rather than in competition.”

Our co-chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, was also recently interviewed by Jenn Morson for her article, “The Catholic Church has a cult of personality problem.” Responding to recent heterodox, antisemitic statements by prominent converts to the Catholic faith and attacks on Pope Francis, Kevin distinguishes between celebrity, which worships status and fame for their own sake, and exemplarity, which guides us towards holiness. Although Dorothy was well-known in both Catholic and secular circles by the end of her life, she was often uncomfortable with her own notoriety and did not like being put on a pedestal.

“We have a celebrity culture that makes people caricatures of themselves, which has caused a lot of disappointments, but the theology of sainthood is one that recognizes the humanity of the person,” Ahern says.

For Ahern, Day’s life is in direct contrast to the concept of celebrity, because her work always pointed towards others. But he does aspire to elevate her as an exemplar to follow for personal development. “Dorothy lived in community with people, cooked with them, shared living quarters with them,” Ahern says. “Perhaps the way we avoid celebrity culture is community, inviting key exemplars into our community rather than making them the center of it.”

Finally, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Brianna McGeehan just released a long-anticipated new single at the beginning of September. Entitled “Home,” this song draws on McGeehan’s lifelong fascination with Dorothy. In an interview for The AU Review, McGeehan said,

“When I was 19, I wanted to be her. I tried to read all the same books she read, I went to mass every Sunday. Dorothy Day was so cool—she lived in voluntary poverty, and she was all about community, and that’s how we heal. The people I respect most all have that same philosophy… [“Home” is] about how if we don’t make some changes, people will continue to suffer.”

In another interview , McGeehan spoke about attempting to inhabit Dorothy’s way of seeing and understanding the world in her music, stating,

“I think so much about songwriting is perspective. What am I trying to say, and from what perspective am I saying it? “Home” is absolutely a product of my studies, particularly reading those authors like Bell Hooks and Dorothy Day, who really affected me. They both cultivated their perspectives and philosophical views from an abundance of study. Their opinions are highly informed and incredibly insightful. I really try to inhabit the perspective of the people I find insightful and revolutionary, and want to read everything by them. And I want to make music that’s revolutionary and comforting at the same time. I find the perspective of both of these women to be just that—revolutionary and comforting.”

You can check out McGeehan’s Instagram and website for more of her music and upcoming shows. We continue to be so impressed by the variety of work that has grown out of Dorothy’s witness! If you are working on a creative or academic project about or inspired by Dorothy, please let us know . We’d love to help you share it with our network.

Recent Happenings:

September has already been full of excitement, and we’ve had some wonderful opportunities to gather and continue engaging with the legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty that Dorothy has conferred on us. Members of the Dorothy Day Guild had a chance to support a union action by the Maritime Masters, Mates, and Pilots , members of which crew the Staten Island Ferries, including the Dorothy Day. Joined by the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees , the two labor organizations designed a float based on the Dorothy Day ferry for the annual Labor Day parade and mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on September 7th. Longtime supporter of the Dorothy Day Guild and executive director of Catholic Charities NY Monsignor Kevin Sullivan spoke with Patrick Grady from The Good Newsroom on behalf of the day laborers who Catholic Charities is helping organize, highlighting the importance of ensuring that respect for labor– a central value of the Catholic social tradition– is enacting in the wages and working conditions of all day laborers, many of whom are recent immigrants.

Dorothy Day Guild members Joe Sclafani and Jodee Fink also spoke with The Good Newsroom to explain why the Guild felt it was so important to participate in the Labor Day mass and demonstration. Carrying a sign which read “Dorothy Day Stands with All Workers,” Joe stated, “Today we are going to be marching with workers as Dorothy would have done years ago.” George Horton, our vice postulator, elaborated, “Dorothy Day loved workers. She believed in the dignity of work and the importance of caring for people who were working and people who were unable to work.” Our thanks go out to Marianne from the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees for inviting us to participate in this wonderful event.

The parade is an opportunity both to celebrate the dignity of work and to continue organizing and agitating for labor justice, a cause to which Dorothy was deeply dedicated during her lifetime. The Maritime Masters, Mates, and Pilots union marched for a fair contract and the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees to protect the healthcare of over 250,000 retired workers. Please remember all of these workers in your prayers and ask Dorothy’s intercession on behalf of their organizing and union efforts!

That same weekend in Chicago, many of our friends gathered to participate in the first academic conference on the life and work of Peter Maurin , Dorothy’s mentor, friend, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. While Peter’s writing and philosophy hasn’t yet received the degree of recognition that Dorothy’s has, his scholarship and agricultural background provided a solid foundation for the young Catholic Worker movement in its first two decades and beyond. Conference participant Tommy Cornell, of the Peter Maurin Farm in Marlboro, NY, offered this perspective on Peter’s significance for Dorothy and for the Catholic Worker movement: “Dorothy spoke this truth. People don’t understand that she needed [Peter’s] intellectual grounding in Catholicism, his Catholic view of history.”

Hosted by St. Gregory Hall and Canterbury House, and attended by an intergenerational group of over one hundred Catholic Workers, academics, and students, the conference was an incredible opportunity to enact Peter’s dream of bringing workers and scholars together for a weekend of roundtable discussions, keynotes, prayer, and fellowship. You can view a slideshow of photos from the conference on the St. Gregory Hall website , and be sure to keep an eye out for forthcoming videos of the talks and conference sessions.

Two weeks later, Catholic Workers from as far apart as Western New York and southern Missouri came together for the annual Sugar Creek Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering near Preston, Iowa, and at the beginning of October, St. Francis House in Chicago will host the 2024 National Catholic Worker Gathering in honor of their community’s 50th anniversary of hospitality and activism. It has been so great to have all of these opportunities to gather, reflect, discern, and celebrate in this season. Our thanks go out to everyone who has helped organize these events, and we hope to see many of you in Chicago!

Upcoming Events:

We would like to invite you to join us for three more upcoming fall events, these ones in Boston and online and the New York metro area. On Wednesday, October 23rd at 7:30 pm, the Beacon Hill Friends Meeting invites you to a talk and discussion by Jeff Korgen, titled “Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion,” after his new book.

This free program is part of the Beacon Hill Friends House series MIDWEEK: Experiments in Faithfulness.

MIDWEEK is a weekly, one-hour, facilitated spiritual practice with Quaker flavor and an experimental ethos, so named after the Quaker tradition of midweek (Wednesday) worship. Jeff’s presentation and discussion will share the story of Dorothy’s life as a journalist and peace activist and will include the important influence of two Quakers on her articulation of Gospel pacifism. You are warmly invited to join at the Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston, or online from anywhere!

On Friday, October 25th at 3:00 pm, the Dorothy Day Guild is hosting another walking pilgrimage! This was so popular last year that we’ve decided to offer it again. Come with us as we journey together and visit important sites from Dorothy’s life in lower Manhattan, beginning in Union Square where she sold the first issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper and concluding at Maryhouse, her final home. This event is offered free of charge; please register using this form .

Looking ahead to November, Guild board member Martha Hennessy will be offering a talk on “Dorothy Day: Servant of God and Modern-Day Prophet” at Seton Hall University in New Jersey on Wednesday, November 6th at 2:00 pm. Martha will offer some personal memories of her grandmother and will share her own experiences as a peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker movement.

The Dorothy Day Guild board of directors and advisory committee will hold their annual meeting at Manhattan College on Saturday, October 26th to continue developing our mission and visioning our work in the next stage of Dorothy’s canonization cause. We also are excited to be co-sponsors of the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner on November 19th at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ November meeting in Baltimore with our friends from the Catholic Peace Fellowship. Please keep both of these upcoming events in your prayers. We look forward to sharing more information about these gatherings with you soon, and hope to offer a series of follow-up events to the Peace Dinner in the Midwest and on the East Coast this spring, so please watch our website and stay tuned for an invitation!

Prayer requests:

This month we would like to share two important prayer requests from folks on our mailing list and friends of Guild members. Rosalie wrote to us from New York with a prayer of thanksgiving for the healing she received from complications of previous strokes, a recovery which she credits to Dorothy’s prayers. For this healing, thanks be to God! We are always so happy when we have the chance to share this kind of news with all of you.

We also ask your prayers for Brad in Montana, who is currently undergoing cancer treatment. Please join us in asking God through Dorothy’s intercession for a miracle on Brad’s behalf, for his present comfort, and for strength and courage for his wife and two daughters. During her lifetime, Dorothy encouraged her friends and community members to be bold in asking for God’s help, and we have no doubt that she continues to do this on our behalf now that she sees God face to face.

Please hold Brad and Rosalie and their families in your prayers this month, as well as the several other people who have recently reached out to us with sensitive requests. Praying for the needs of our loved ones and of the world through Dorothy’s intercession is an important work of the Guild, and we invite you to reach out to us if you would like to be added to our prayer list. If intercessory prayer or praying with the saints is a new practice for you, we encourage you to use the prayer available on our website . Thank you all for your commitment to this spiritual work of mercy!

A few words from Dorothy:

In September of 1974, Dorothy wrote a meditative, reflective column from the Tivoli Farm, grounding herself in the abiding goodness of Creation in the face of political and economic upheaval all around her. She began:

“A beautiful calm, quiet day. How beautiful silence is. How beautiful all nature around us, as the Queen Anne’s lace in a brown vase on my window sill… I look back on my childhood and remember beauty. The smell of sweet clover in a vacant lot, a hopeful clump of grass growing up through the cracks of a city pavement. A feather dropped from some pigeon. A stalking cat. Ruskin wrote of ‘the duty of delight,’ and told us to lift up our heads and see the cloud formations in the sky. I have seen sunrises at the foot of a New York street, coming up over the East River. I have always found a strange beauty in the suffering faces which surround us in the city. Black, brown, and grey heads, bent over those bowls of food, that is so necessary food which is always there at St. Joseph’s House on First. St., prepared each morning by Ed Forand or some of the young volunteers. We all enter into the act of hospitality, one way or another. So many of those who come in to eat return to serve, to become part of the ‘family.’”

Dorothy had a remarkable gift for discharging that ‘duty of delight,’ which she honed through spiritual disciplines of prayer, protest, service, and reflective gratitude. She saw beauty in all of God’s works, but found it most persistently in the natural world and in the company of the poor. As we celebrate the fall equinox and the impulse towards recollection that the change of seasons inspires for so many of us, we hope that you, like Dorothy, are called back to such flashes of beauty in your own lives and memories.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

A Gift for All of Us

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:26:52 GMT

Dispatches is a column dedicated to notable developments from the Dorothy Day Guild. For the community issue of In Our Time, Casey Mullaney reflects on what it was like to share Dorothy Day’s Eucharistic theology with the wider Church.

In April, the Guild received some exciting, last-minute news that peace activist, Catholic Worker, and Guild Board member Martha Hennessy had been invited to speak at the National Eucharistic Congress which was held in Indianapolis this summer. This was the first Eucharistic Congress of this scale to be held in the United States since Martha’s grandmother, Dorothy Day, gave what would be her final public address at the International Eucharistic Congress in 1976. All of us were invigorated by what Dorothy’s Eucharistic theology could contribute to a Church-wide conversation on the social implications of the sacrament.

Dorothy’s devotion to the Eucharist is well-documented: she was a daily communicant who closely identified her reception of Christ’s Body in the sacrament with her membership in the Mystical Body of Christ. Although Dorothy’s pacifism and her solidarity with the poor pre-date her conversion to Catholicism, these teachings on the Eucharist gave her moral commitments a foundation in the life of the Church. As we considered how Martha’s speech might bring this message to a wider audience, my friend and fellow Catholic Worker Renée Roden offered a wise perspective on the gathering. She reminded us that every person who registered for this Congress did so as a seeker. Each of them felt a call to draw close to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and, in doing so, to gather with other pilgrims on the same journey. Whether or not the audience for Martha’s talk at the Congress was familiar with Dorothy or with the charisms of the Catholic Worker movement, we hoped that God might speak to the Church through Dorothy’s Eucharistic spirituality. Martha’s willingness to bring Dorothy’s message of Gospel nonviolence to a broad audience of participants in the National Eucharistic Congress was an incredible gift to all of us.

To consider the question of peace and the sacraments, we created an opportunity to reflect more deeply in community. Martha, Renée, and our friend James Murphy worked quickly to plan out hospitality during the Congress. Catholic Workers are good at feeding a crowd and talking about ideas, so we decided that we would offer two nights of potluck dinners and clarification of thought in Indianapolis’s Babe Denny Park following Martha’s talk. Friends of the South Bend Catholic Worker made banners and collected picnic supplies, Renée and James selected readings for discussion, and our Ignatian volunteer Jodee Fink assembled packages of materials about the Dorothy Day Guild and her cause for canonization.

On Friday morning, about 5,000 people attended Martha’s address. Our friend Jerry Windley-Daoust made a video and transcript of her convocation available on the Catholic Worker movement website. Martha used her brief time on stage to offer a few of Dorothy’s words on the significance of the Eucharist as well as her own first encounter with the Divine Presence:

As a three year old sitting in the lap of Dorothy, my Granny, I received my first awareness of the presence of God held in her voice and heartbeat while my ear was pressed to her chest. Her devotion to the Eucharist stays with us as we continue to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy as Jesus gave of Himself to us. Upon receiving the Eucharist daily, Dorothy held silence for twenty minutes to allow herself to absorb the presence of God within her before returning to her work.

Martha shared what Dorothy had said about the Eucharist in 1976. It happened to be on the thirty-first anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. When she spoke to the gathered assembly of the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia on August 6th, she alerted the participants to the hard teaching that, “Unless we do penance, we will perish. Our Creator gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain that life. But we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude.”

In honor of that hard and prophetic teaching, we chose the text of that address, “Bread for the Hungry,” for our first night of clarification of thought. That evening, a group of about twenty Catholic Workers and other pilgrims from across the country gathered together in the park to read and reflect together over pizza, salad, and surplus cookies from the food pantry. I was struck by the group’s joyful fellowship and yet serious engagement with Dorothy’s call for collective repentance for the grave sin of the bomb. Over the years, I have come to recognize this combination as characteristic of Catholic Worker gatherings.

As we explored in our conversation, Dorothy’s call for communal repentance for the violence of the atomic bomb is grounded in the understanding that each one of us is a member or potential member of the Mystical Body of Christ. This understanding granted spiritual vitality to her already deep commitment to pacifism following her reception into the Catholic Church. As members of one body, we are not only inextricably connected to one another, but we accept the responsibility for one another that this intimacy requires. For Dorothy, this was the necessary implication of participation in the sacraments. Accepting the Body of Christ in the Eucharist confirms our membership in the Mystical Body, which confers on us both the weight and the joy of our interdependence.

When I consider the sacramental unity we share, I’m reminded of what is perhaps my favorite passage from Dorothy’s writing, the closing lines to her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. Dorothy writes,

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.

The Eucharistic community, the heavenly banquet that Dorothy longed for, has in fact come. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. It happened while we sat there talking at Babe Denny park in Indianapolis. It happened in the kitchen in our Catholic Worker house as we said goodbye to our summer volunteer at dinner and sent him off to college with a packet of handwritten notes from each member of our household. It happened at your parish on Sunday morning, and it happened in the stadium when Cardinal Timothy Dolan celebrated mass for fifty thousand hungry souls at the National Eucharistic Congress. The sacrament of the Eucharist is a foretaste of the banquet of heaven, and because of this, any crust we share together in love and in companionship is in some way sacramental. What Dorothy leaves us with in this epilogue is a vision of Eucharistic community as a meal to which all of us are invited, where the violence of armed conflict and economic exclusion are crowded out by the exchange of love and friendship we share in community.

Casey Mullaney is the coordinator for the Dorothy Day Guild, a member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker Community, and an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame. And our thanks to Rita Corbin for the use of her illustration, “Tree of Life w. Birds,” as the illustration for Dispatches .

What it Takes to be a Lifelong Catholic Worker

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:19:28 GMT

Sowing Seeds is a column that examines the distinctive ways Catholic Worker communities are living out its charisms. For the community issue of In Our Time , Claire Schaeffer-Duffy and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy reflect on their decades-long journey as Catholic Workers.

A desire to know God in the poor rather than any specific quest for community led the two of us to the Mary Harris and St. Benedict Catholic Worker houses in Washington, DC in the summer and autumn of 1982. Michael Kirwan, a graduate student in sociology at George Washington University, founded both a couple years earlier. We arrived shortly after graduating from college, coming by separate paths. Claire had just finished a senior thesis on the enduring, revolutionary value of the Catholic Worker movement. And Scott was reassessing his vocation after spending most of a year as a novice with the Capuchin-Franciscans. In those days, the talk between us was all about radical poverty and solidarity with the poor.

The two small row houses Michael purchased were located on Fourth Street NW in a squalid neighborhood under the thumb of several drug-dealing families. Mary Harris house served women while St. Benedict house served men. Both were crammed with people who were mentally ill, addicted, or utterly alone in the world.

Inspired by Michael, we saw the Catholic Worker as a place where Christianity could be taken literally. Fourth Street provided ample opportunity. There, the Gospel invocations of “whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me,” “take nothing for the journey,” “take the lowest place,” “forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” and “pray unceasingly” were translated into unlimited hospitality and incredible precarity. We slept on the floor, prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, and went to daily Mass in the midst of the chaos. In early 1983, Carl Siciliano, an eighteen-year-old contemplative came to volunteer at St. Benedict’s. He too was eager for the radical path, and the three of us immersed ourselves in the tumult of life on Fourth Street with enthusiasm. As Claire would say, “We’re like the three musketeers.”

This was the era of Reaganomics, a time when thousands of unhoused Americans lived on the streets of the Capitol. The United States was arming wars in Central America and ramping up its nuclear arsenal to build weapons of incalculable destruction. Washington, DC was abuzz with protests. Despite the enormity of our daily tasks, we joined numerous anti-war demonstrations and went to jail on several occasions for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. In the autumn of 1983, we went on a peace mission to Nicaragua with Teresa Grady, who is now part of the Ithaca, NY Catholic Worker, and Carl. Following Michael’s advice, we left the care of the houses on Fourth Street in the hands of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day while we were away. The responsibility of maintaining two small houses of hospitality often conflicted with our desire to participate in a nonviolent action. The one who went off to jail or a peace campaign could only do so if someone stayed back at the house to cook the soup and break up the fights. Deciding who did what was an occasional source of tension. New community members came, but did not remain long.

Sharing life with the poor in crowded row houses in a neighborhood where crack cocaine flowed freely was not for everyone. It was eventually not for us. One night at dinner, Carl noted that every man at the table had punched him or Scott at least once. The mayhem we once found exhilarating now exhausted us.

Like many Catholic Worker couples, we fell in love while working at the houses. We got married in Washington, DC in 1984 on the feast of a married saint, Thomas More, and then moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. We found a cheap apartment and took jobs that gave us flexibility to focus on anti-nuclear activism. To keep life simple, we decided to do no hospitality.

That decision did not hold. Shortly after our first child, Justin, was born, Scott served a thirty-day jail sentence for a protest against nuclear weapons. While in jail, he met an inmate who was due to be released before Christmas. Since Kenny had nowhere to go, we took him into our apartment until he could get settled. Hosting him reminded us that we liked the Catholic Worker’s unique combination of the works of mercy with the works of peace and justice. Together with three friends, we spent several months in prayer and discussion to discern the possibility of forming an intentional community. As part of our discernment, we gradually began to incorporate Catholic Worker practices. We ate together weekly and joined a local vigil against nuclear weapons. Inspired by the journalism of Dorothy Day, we began publishing the Catholic Radical, a newsletter that continues to this day. In the summer of 1986, our family moved into a large inner-city apartment with Dan Ethier and Sarah Jeglosky and started the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker.

Dorothy Day often said that Catholic Worker houses were not good places for married couples with children. The chaos of hosting the impoverished and addicted was incompatible with the rhythms and needs of family life. But we hoped that we could juggle the dual commitments. To help us, we set aside a private living space for ourselves and the children, and established the tradition of “family night” with our kids. Six nights a week we ate a communal supper with everyone in the house, but on Fridays, our family ate separately, and we took turns planning an event, like a hike or movie. Interestingly, our children and six grandchildren, most of whom live nearby, still come over for “family night” on Fridays.

As parents, we decided to never risk arrest or go to a war zone together. One of us always stayed back with the children. Yet we never spared our kids a close view of human suffering. Far from resenting the poor or peace work, they expected us to care about both. Once, when we were talking about asking a difficult guest to move on, our daughter Grace interjected that we should give the person in question another chance. Not long after Scott returned from a peace mission in Bosnia, our son Patrick heard a news report on the radio about the genocide in Rwanda. Turning to his dad, he asked, “Well, what are you going to do about that?”

Over the past decades, we’ve lived in community with many different people, including one married couple. Some stayed for three or four years, but most stayed for just one. Two community members met their future spouses here and went on to help establish other Catholic Worker communities. Others left to pursue degrees, take up careers, or raise families. In some ways, our community affords people the opportunity to embrace Catholic Worker life without the pressure to remain forever.

We used to think the term “community” referred only to those who intentionally sought to share a common life with us. But that understanding is inaccurate. Our families, our guests, readers of the Catholic Radical , those who have joined us in prayer and protest time and again, and the many men and women religious who have prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us financially are all part of the community that sustains the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker.

In a certain sense, this movement continues to exist only by the grace of God. Unlike religious communities, Catholic Workers do not take vows or subscribe to constitutions. The integrity of our witness depends on the daily, free-will decisions of individual Catholic Workers to drop whatever they are doing and follow Christ in whatever direction the Savior takes them. At its best, our work seeks to echo Christ’s victory over human misery and point toward God’s promise to wipe away every tear at the Second Coming.

Catholic Worker houses will close, others will open. Yet the charism, with its implicit discipline, will endure. To do the works of mercy and oppose the works of war, to turn one’s heart away from fear towards love will always be the revolutionary work. And we cannot do it alone. We need community. Can people fall in love, get married, and raise happy families as Catholic Workers? Logically, they cannot. But with the creativity of the Holy Spirit, they can move mountains and unimaginable joy will rain down, overflowing in their laps. To paraphrase Dorothy Day, we cannot reach Heaven alone, for if we do, God will ask, “Where are the others?”

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy began the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker in 1986, where they continue to live and work today. And our thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his illustration as the icon for Sowing Seeds.

Artists of Hope

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:19:26 GMT

Saved by Beauty is a column about the creative entryways into Dorothy Day’s legacy. Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB and Bro. Michael (Mickey) McGrath, OSFS are both liturgical artists, widely recognized for their creative work. Meeting in the pages of the Guild’s newsletter, Carolyn Zablotny reflects on how they bring an artistry and open-heartedness long associated with Dorothy and the Catholic Worker.

From its very beginning, the Catholic Worker has been blessed by grace-filled encounters, their number suggesting more providence than coincidence. How else can the meeting between Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day be understood? He lit the match that set the new convert on fire to see what the Gospel, if lived, would look like, a match that led to a movement and even to a cause for canonization. Both still kindle our imagination with the possibility of new life, new hope.

Beauty is an entryway to our imagination. Even as a young girl, Dorothy found deep inspiration and joy in literature, nature, and music. She must have felt a kindred spirit when she met nineteen-year-old art student, Ade Bethune, in 1933. Ade had come to the Catholic Worker on East Fifteenth Street. While she was moved by the hospitality offered to the poor, she felt the fledgling Catholic Worker newspaper w asn’t sufficiently conveying the spirit behind the work. She offered her artwork. To this day, her bold images continue to animate the paper.

When the Guild was contemplating the launch of the digital version of its newsletter, In Our Time , we knew we needed some “Ades” of our own to help us. We found them and they found us: Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, and Bro. Michael (Mickey) McGrath, OSFS. Bro. Martin is a Benedictine brother while Bro. Mickey is an oblate of the Order of St. Francis de Sales. Each is an accomplished artist in his own way. Like Ade before them, both are liturgical artists who share a vocation to create beauty that sparks our imagination, bringing people closer to God and to one another.

I first met Bro. Martin through an illustration of his on the jacket of a book about the parables. Despite the proverbial warning, I confess I did get it because of its cover. I just couldn’t resist Martin’s earnest yet girlish sower: long-haired, open-eyed, and forward-stretching in spite of—or maybe because of—her pointed, mismatched slippers.

She quickly led me to other images of Bro. Martin’s, whose artistic work extends much beyond book jackets. Known to work on as many as fifteen diverse projects at a time, his art includes illustrating missals, carving tiles, firing clay pots and bowls, painting stained-glass windows, designing blueprints for churches and houses of prayer, and making liturgical furniture. Each day, he moves between art spaces around the sprawling 250-acre campus of Saint Meinrad Archabbey, located sixty-five miles west of Louisville in southern Indiana.

It was here at Saint Meinrad’s where Bro. Martin’s religious vocation came to full bloom, a vocation intertwined with the making of art. He’d always been drawn to art; even as a child, he’d “pick up junk and draw on it.” Later he would study art at Boston University before entering the Marianist order and becoming a brother. For thirty years, he continued to work as a brother and artist in what he felt to be a spiritually satisfying atmosphere.

It was a commissioned project by Saint Meinrad’s that led him to his eventual embrace of the monastic life in 2005. As Bro. Martin shares, “I worked on the renovation of the church, and the Benedictines worked on the renovation of me.” Today, Bro. Martin says he is still a work in progress, Dorothy’s own frequent self-assessment. In fact, Saint Meinrad’s was a favorite place of Dorothy’s. She often visited the Archabbey when she stayed in nearby Tell City with Joe and Alice Zarrella, two stalwart Catholic Workers going back to its early New York days. Joe had the unenviable position of serving as the CW bookkeeper. And it was often Alice’s dollar bill, posted from Tell City and faithfully sent every pay day, Depression be damned, that was the only thing he had to book.

I was reminded of Catholic Worker generosity when Bro. Martin offered his own, opening wide the door to his artwork for us. Besides his endearing sower, which serves as the icon for the new Sowing Seeds column highlighting Catholic Worker communities, this newsletter is home to three other images, used as icons for Good Talk, Breaking Bread, and Signs of Holiness.

It was the hospitality of another faithful Catholic Worker couple, Pat and Kathleen Jordan, that brought me to Bro. Mickey McGrath. Nearly two decades ago, my husband and I arrived for a festive Sunday brunch at the Jordan home in Rosebank, Staten Island, just blocks away from where Dorothy had once labored over her typewriter, perched at her kitchen table, to produce the very first edition of t he Catholic Worker. Mickey’s energy suffused all our conversations. At the time, he was completing a children’s book on Dorothy Day and spoke with the exuberance and delight of a child at play, alive to all around him.

Mickey’s joy stayed with me. So, when the Guild was looking for art to celebrate the historic send-off of 137 archival boxes of evidence attesting to Day’s holiness, gathered over years and weighing easily two tons, he came immediately to mind. Recognizing Dorothy’s passion as a young idealist, a passion that never left her, Mickey created this image below. Since then, we’ve been gifted with other pieces of his vibrant works, including the image for this season’s newsletter, Love and Beauty Will Embrace, Justice and Peace Will Kiss .

Like Bro. Martin, Bro. Mickey started drawing early. Even as a little four-year-old, safely ensconced under his mother’s ironing board, he would make picture after picture on the backs of discarded papers brought home from his father’s office in an accounting firm.

His first formal lessons were on the weekends during high school at the Moore College of Art in downtown Philadelphia, his hometown. Later, he would major in Art at Moravian College. Drawn to the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, who was known for his confidence and hope in God’s love, he became an Oblate. As a member of the community, his artistry continued to develop. He earned an MFA in Painting from the American University in Washington, DC, and taught art for eleven years at De Sales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.

Today, he works full time as an artist who leads retreats, writes books, and gives presentations. As he shares: “I paint, write, and tell stories—and then travel all over the place telling the stories behind what I paint and write.”

One such story is about his first commission. During a sabbatical from teaching in 1994, he stayed with the Visitation Sisters of Minneapolis, who had recently moved into a poor neighborhood in north Minneapolis. Dubbed, “the nuns in the hood,” they would hang a colorful windsock (a long textile tube designed for indicating wind direction and speed), outside their house on days when they offered after-school activities for local children. Inside the house, above an old mantle, there incongruously hung a colorized print of the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth by the German Renaissance artist, Albrecht Durer, complete with blonde-haired women with rosy cheeks.

This image became a catalyst for something new as the nuns urged him to create a painting that reflects the women of the neighborhood. What came forth was the Windsock Visitation. To this day the children of the neighborhood can look upon the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth with a wonder and recognition that had once eluded them.

Artists like Brothers Martin and Mickey enable us to see the life around us with fresh eyes. They open us to experience the promise of a youthful sower and the loving encounter of two dear friends. They call to memory how Dorothy loved to quote from St. Augustine, “All beauty is a revelation of God.” And how she found beauty in uncommon places, even in community among the poorest of the poor.

We are ever grateful to them for the beauty they graciously bring to In Our Time , helping us to share the grace of Dorothy’s life with others—a life, like beauty itself, that points to God.

Carolyn Zablotny is the founding editor of the Guild’s newsletter, In Our Time , and a longtime friend of the Catholic Worker. A collection of Bro. Martin’s work, The Work of Our Hands: The Art of Martin Erspamer, O.S.B. , is available online and through the Saint Meinrad Books and Gifts Shop. Bro. Mickey’s latest book is Madonnas of Color . Learn more about his artwork at bromickeymcgrath.com . Our thanks to the unknown artist for the use of their illustration as the icon for Saved by Beauty .

Charles E. Moore on How to Live in Community

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:19:22 GMT

Charles E. Moore is a member, teacher, and pastor of the Bruderhof, an international Christian movement of intentional communities founded by Eberhard Arnold in 1920. A contributing editor and author for Plough , his published works include Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People , Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard , and Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together . For our column, Good Talk , he spoke with Gabriella Wilke on how to go about community life together. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Gabriella Wilke : Dorothy Day believed that the only answer to loneliness in this life is community. You have responded to the call, living as a member of the Bruderhof. What sparked your passion for community?

Charles E. Moore : I grew up in a suburban family of eight children. My father was the town doctor, and my mother took care of us at home. We were the envy of our neighbors. All of our friends wanted to play over at our house. Yet I felt a gnawing sense of loneliness inside. Gradually, I came to realize that simply being with others did not answer my deepest need and longing. Only Christ could do this, the One who alone heals what is most broken inside us.

Ironically, it was my eventual conversion to Christ that led me to explore what it meant to forge a common life with others. I saw that when Christ called his first disciples, he called them to follow him together . There were the Twelve, and then the seventy. This is because Jesus came to inaugurate God’s supra-political kingdom: a new social order in which we could truly be human and live justly and peaceably together. So when Christ poured out his Spirit on his disciples, a radically distinct, alternative community was born. It was a shared life in which no one was without, where all belonged, and where all could give in a spirit of joy. (See Acts 2 and 4.)

What sparked my passion for community, therefore, was not so much my sense of loneliness but my passion to follow Christ fully, unconditionally. Books like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together , Gerhard Lohfink’s Jesus and Community: The Social Dimensions of Christian Faith , and Eberhard Arnold’s God’s Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom , among others, helped along the way. What I came to learn was that the eternal Word became flesh for a reason. God in person came to show us what happens when God dwells here on earth. By following Jesus, we can together be an ongoing extension of the Incarnation. We can demonstrate God’s kingdom of justice and peace right here and now.

GW : Help us understand how one can move toward a life that is shared with others.

CEM : From my experience, the move toward a shared life with others takes time and intentionality. If we can’t spend time together, how are we to grow in the virtues necessary to sustain the ins and outs of doing life together? But sharing space is just as important as time. To grow together as a community, we must live more proximately to each other. If the notion of a “commuter marriage” is an oxymoron, so is a “commuter community.” It is daily life together God wants to sanctify.

God tabernacles in what is local. When daily life is truly “set apart” for God’s holy purposes, we will naturally begin to share our lives and gifts and goods with one another. What is “mine” fades to the background and what is God’s becomes paramount. We can become free of the dictates of the market, media, and mindsets that pit us against each other. In this context, we can grow to trust each other to share our lives with one another.

GW : You’ve written that building community requires more than just structures of belonging, but also a “Spirit-filled life.” How would you describe this spirit? Must it have what Eberhard Arnold called the “religious secret”?

CEM : In one sense, we are all part of some kind of community. But the work of community that brings “common unity” is more than just getting along with one another as we pursue our own self-interest. This kind of community has to begin and end in faith. It is formed when Christ is at the center of everything. That is the “religious secret” Eberhard Arnold refers to.

Human bonds alone can only go so far and can, in fact, undermine the work of community. Who of us hasn’t hurt others or been hurt by others? That hurt is the seedbed for anger and mistrust. Without forgiveness, that hurt can divide us, and life with others becomes a sort of hell. So how is true forgiveness possible? It must be founded in a spirit that seeks the well-being of the other. Without it, selfishness, greed, lust, power, status-seeking, and envy will destroy us and our life together. Seeking common unity means I dedicate myself to being my sister’s and brother’s keeper. And centering on Christ means I must see to it that whatever separates us from God and one another is overcome.

This Holy, or sanctifying, Spirit must be alive in us and in our midst, otherwise we cannot experience the transformation promised us in Christ. Without the Spirit, community becomes but a form of life, a living arrangement in which we measure everything by how things either affect or benefit us. There is no joy in that.

GW : Dorothy described the task of community life as “sowing the seed of love, and we are not living in the harvest time.” Can you say more about the vision and reality of life together?

CEM : I love Dorothy’s way of putting things. We are living in a time of extreme isolation. Consequently, there is a corresponding longing for connection and community. But herein lies a danger. Our expectations of one another can be too unrealistic. In our culture, immediate results are everything. The seeds of love—patience, loyalty, commitment—are in short supply. This is one reason why many people become so easily disillusioned in their efforts to build community. No one wants to stick around!

My wife and I experienced this firsthand before joining the Bruderhof. Along with several others, we moved to the inner city of Denver to live in community and to reach out to the homeless. After five years of countless comings and goings, we realized that community wasn’t happening. Community wasn’t a place or a project but a people who committed themselves to each other so that Christ could perform his transforming work in the world. What we experienced then, however, was seeds blowing in the wind, falling on shallow ground. How can fruit be born when nothing ever takes root? Waiting for the harvest time is hard, but we need to be confident that the seeds we are sowing are able to grow.

GW : Perhaps one of the gifts of Dorothy’s example is how honest she is about the hard things—the difficulties and trials of community life. It’s not only our egoism that gets in the way, but also the demands of our “community in need.”

CEM : Indeed! Hard things, however, are somewhat relative. Things are often hard because we have unrealistic expectations, or as Bonhoeffer puts it, “wish dreams.” The ego is and will always be a problem. So are the wounds of the past. But community isn’t for idealists. For it is in community that we undergo the painful but liberating process of being changed. That process always involves bearing with others (and them bearing with us!). Community is God’s workshop. Some pieces are more finished than others, but all can be used and all are called to build something beautiful for God.

It’s important, however, that community never becomes an end in itself nor just a means of responding to the needs of others. Otherwise, it risks either becoming self-absorbed or burning completely out. We take for granted our weakness and brokenness, but we also commit ourselves to finding ways together, as a reconciled and reconciling community, to share God’s love. Love, however, is more than doing good deeds. Love is born from gratitude and amazement: God is in our midst and we don’t deserve it!

GW : Eberhard Arnold suggests that marriage can be a true spiritual community. Dorothy invokes the experience of mothers in learning how to love. And Pope Francis has invited us to see “brothers and sisters, all.” What do familial relationships teach us about community and being church for one another?

CEM : Throughout the New Testament, believers are referred to as brothers and sisters. This familial metaphor is important and deep. But the natural family, as important as it is, must be seen in a greater light. For Jesus himself said, referring to his own natural family, that it is those who do the will of God who are his true brothers and sisters. In other words, the family bond should, if it is based in Christ, point to a greater bond. It is the family of God constituted by the birth of the Spirit.

There is a paradox here. Family is God’s first community, but it must be part of a greater family to find fulfillment. With the breakdown of the family today, I believe that it is God’s greater family that has to become uppermost. It alone can teach and model what family in Christ is all about. To do this will take a huge commitment. But it was this kind of “being family” with one another that enabled the early Christians to turn the Roman Empire upside down.

GW : In a collection of essays you edited, Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People , you begin with an excerpt by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (who happens to be one of Dorothy’s favorite writers) and end with one by Dorothy. Can you speak to the significance of this, for both the book and for your readers?

CEM : The piece by Dostoyevsky addresses the crying need of our age: isolation. But it is a piece that is ultimately based on hope and on God’s great idea of community. The antidote to isolation is belonging in community. For Dorothy, community is not just a doctrine nor an idea. It is not a moral imperative. It is not a “lifestyle” nor a rule of life. Community, as Dorothy understands it, is born of mercy: God’s mercy toward us and the mercy we grant to one another. When we receive and give mercy, we can’t help but want to be bound together in one shared life.

GW : Anything else you’d like to add?

CEM : If we are ever to rediscover the gift of community, it will be on account of God’s Spirit moving us with Christ’s compassion. We are not created to be self-contained, self-sufficient individuals. But community in Christ doesn’t just happen either. It takes work, patience, and self-sacrifice. So in seeking community with others, we must be realistic and honest. We must allow God to prune us of the habits and values that undermine community and exploit our propensity to go it alone. When Christ’s mercy prevails, love is unleashed in the world. As the Apostle John writes, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16). Love takes risks and seeks liberation from all that separates us from one another. That is the call to community. As witnesses to Christ and his coming kingdom, this is our task in the world.

Gabriella Wilke is the marketing & audience development director at Commonweal . Our thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his illustration as the icon for Good Talk .

Reading Fratelli Tutti

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:19:15 GMT

Signs of Holiness is a column that explores some of the spiritual dimensions of the Cause. For the community issue of In Our Time, Colleen Dulle reflects on what it means to live out the pope’s call for political and social love.

In 2020, when Pope Francis published Fratelli Tutti, a Jesuit friend and I co-hosted an online reading group. Every week we would meet on Zoom, with people calling in from all over Canada and the United States. I would offer my perspective as a Vatican reporter, and my Jesuit friend would be our spiritual guide.

Discussing Fratelli Tutti with this group opened up the encyclical for me in a way I had not experienced since 2013, when this same friend guided a group of us through Evangelii Gaudium. I wish I had documented it better. I have since gone back through my notes, hoping to jog my memory. There is sadly little. I suppose I was too engrossed in our conversation.

One insight, though, remains with me. As we made our way through the document, an image of the kind of community Pope Francis described began to emerge. It was one of very different people, different opinions, different temperaments, and from very different walks of life. Together, they would gather, often in-person, bound by a belief in a higher purpose and a desire to love their neighbors, exercised through what Francis lays out as “political love” and “social love,” which is rooted in a recognition that everyone is loved by God.

As this image emerged, my friend Matthieu and I kept sharing stories in the reading group of times we had seen imperfect examples of this kind of community in action at the Catholic Worker. We were both frequent visitors to Maryhouse and St. Joseph’s in New York: I would stop in often after work and on the weekends to chat and help out, and Mathieu would stay there for days or weeks while doing research on the history of the Catholic Worker. Ours was not a romanticized image of the Worker: We knew well the way certain personalities grated against others. We knew the disagreements, the messes, the day-to-day struggle. But we recognized that Catholic Workers continue to work and live together every day because of their shared values: community, voluntary poverty, advocacy for peace, and service without any expectation of repayment.

At the Catholic Worker, we saw political love and social love in action. Here is how the pope suggests we can define political love:

For whereas individuals can help others in need, when they join together in initiating social processes of fraternity and justice for all, they enter the ‘field of charity at its most vast, namely political charity.’ This entails working for a social and political order whose soul is social charity.

In a later section on the exercise of political love, Pope Francis goes on to explain:

It is an act of charity to assist someone suffering, but it is also an act of charity, even if we do not know that person, to work to change the social conditions that caused his or her suffering.

As for social love, he writes,

‘Social Love’ makes it possible to advance towards a civilization of love, to which all of us can feel called. Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world. No mere sentiment, it is the best means of discovering effective paths of development for everyone. Social love is a ‘force capable of inspiring new ways of approaching the problems of today’s world, of profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within.’”

Matthieu and I recognized this combination of global vision and local action—both charitable and political—in the Catholic Workers we knew. There were people like Carmen Trotta and Martha Hennessy, who worked at St. Joseph House and Maryhouse, respectively, serving meals and sorting clothing donations while wearing ankle monitors as they awaited trial for breaking into a submarine base in Georgia to protest nuclear weapons.

Importantly, for those who engage or wish to engage in this type of love, is a sentiment Pope Francis and Dorothy shared. He writes,

What is important is not constantly achieving great results, since these are not always possible. In political activity, we should remember that, ‘appearances notwithstanding, every person is immensely holy and deserves our love. Consequently, if I can help at least one person to have a better life, that already justifies the offering of my life.’

This is much like Dorothy’s famous quote: “Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.”

There are plenty of people who look at the Catholic Workers holding a vigil for Yemen weekly in Union Square park and ask, “What is the point?” But it does make a difference. Vigils may not stop governments from funding a proxy war in a starving country, but it may remind the thousands of people passing through the park about people they probably never thought about. These things prick people’s consciences, maybe even spark them to action. And it reminds Yemenis in New York that someone cares. So the Catholic Workers keep showing up.

Reading Fratelli Tutti and seeing how the New York Catholic Worker communities lived out, even imperfectly, Francis’s ideal of a group brought together by political and social love, gave me hope. It’s a hope that the kind of community the pope imagined responding to the many needs of society could be actualized, and is already, in however small a way.

Colleen Dulle is an associate editor for America . Listen to her discussion with Gerard O’Connell on Fratelli Tutti here . And our thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his illustration as the icon for Signs of Holiness .

The Brother and the Rooster

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:51:16 GMT

This column, Breaking Bread , is typically a first-person reflection about the impact Dorothy Day has had in someone’s life. For the community issue of In Our Time, we tried something different. One of the joys in Dorothy’s life was fiction. While we might more immediately think of the books she read, she also toiled at the dream of writing a novel, particularly a social novel. Sometimes dismissed for its activist leanings, the social novel dramatizes a prevailing social problem, such as poverty or prejudice. As you meet Dorothy the fiction writer, perhaps there’s a critique for Catholics too. This is her debut story for Commonweal.

It was hard for old Brother Stanislaus to get used to new ways, the new rule, of the religious house in America to which he had been transferred. Every morning he arose at five and went to the chapel for half-hour of meditation.

After Mass there were fifteen minutes for thanksgiving and half an hour for spiritual reading. Then before breakfast he had time to milk one of the cows. After breakfast there were fifteen minutes in which to say the Joyful Mysteries, then there were the other cows to milk and put out in the fields, and work in the vegetable and flower gardens until twelve, when there was another half-hour for spiritual reading before dinner. It was good to sit in peace and calm and cool off a bit, and very often Brother Stanislaus napped soundly instead of reading, which was but a venial sin, since it was without due deliberation and full consent of the will.

After dinner there were the Sorrowful Mysteries to be recited, followed by three-quarters of an hour of recreation. The long afternoon was spent in the garden or fields, or in the winter at carpentering or house cleaning. There was always plenty to do.

Supper was at six-thirty and the Glorious Mysteries completed the rosary for the day. Recreation followed, but Brother Stanislaus always used his time to water the garden. There was never enough rain. Evening prayers were at nine and the bell for retiring was rung at nine-thirty.

The Polish brother soon learned to speak English as well as he spoke French or Italian, though never as well as he did his own language.

There were twenty-five novices, five lay brothers and three fathers in the House of Our Lady of the Sea. When the work was heavier than usual the fathers and novices joined in, making hay, cutting lawns and weeding the garden. For the first five years Brother Stanislaus was in America, he worked with the animals and vegetables. There were five cows, two horses, some ducks and chickens. It was hard for him to make friends with the other lay brothers who were much younger than he. But one dear friend Brother Stanislaus had among his charges and that was a young rooster, which he had raised and petted until it grew to know him and used to come and perch on his shoulder when he called. Every morning when he went to open the door of the chicken coop, it ran out to him, crowing in a friendly manner, strutting before him and showing off its fine feathers.

“God has given us a very fine morning,” Brother Stanislaus would say to his little brother, the rooster. “Now if He will only send us a good shower this afternoon so that I won’t have to water the garden tonight, I’ll be very happy. My arms ache from carrying those heavy watering cans.”

And the rooster crowed lustily as though to say, “Let us praise God at any rate. Whatever He does is very good.”

At the end of five years Brother Stanislaus was transferred to the kitchen to work as cook with the help of another brother to do dishes and set the tables. This was a time of hardship for him. He had no great love for food, and he did love the out-of-doors and his animals. There was barely time in the morning to go out and greet his rooster before he had to start breakfast. The huge pot of oatmeal had to boil for an hour and there had to be tea, coffee and chocolate. There was time for Mass and spiritual reading during the meal, but there seemed to be no time for the half -hour of meditation.

Since he believed with Saint Teresa that the devil would shun anyone who was given to this devotion, it upset him to think he had to miss his morning exercise. It was impossible for him to get up earlier than the rising hour of five. He was an old man and very tired at the end of the day. So he had to take to meditation while he waited for the breakfast to cook.

“Good Saint Joseph, don't let my oatmeal burn,” he would murmur, every now and then as he paced up and down the kitchen meditating on the Visitation, or the Four Last Things. And Saint Joseph watched over the stove and by seven the oatmeal was done to a turn and not sticking, at that—so that the pan was not hard to wash.

During the long winter it was not so hard to work in the kitchen. The big range heated up the room and it was pleasant to come into the kitchen in the morning from the icy bedrooms and the cold chapel. The singing of the tea kettle, the bubbling of the boiling potatoes and the noisy crackling of the roast in the oven were pleasant accompaniments to the peeling of vegetables and the cleaning off of closet shelves.

The worst thing about the kitchen work was that it was never finished. There was food to be prepared and cooked and the pots and pans to wash, and the kitchen to sweep and mop and the shelves and drawers to clean out and the windows to wash and the fire to keep up. Every minute of Brother Stanislaus’s day was taken up. In the winter it was easier because the kitchen was a comfortable place—and because canned goods were used, which made it unnecessary to clean and prepare so many vegetables.

But summer was a time of penance. The long hot days made the stove a torture rather than a comfort. The kitchen was like a furnace with its three windows facing east and no direct draught through. The fresh vegetables to prepare for thirty-five people made the work seem interminable, and when the work of preparing vegetables and fruits for immediate consumption was done, there was the work of canning them.

Life was hard but Brother Stanislaus endured it all cheerfully, smiling at the thought that by his present sufferings he was expiating his sins here on earth instead of in purgatory. He was glad to suffer, happy in his discomfort. And when the orchestra of cicadas made the air ring with their hot tunings, he took his vegetables out on the back porch or sat on the grass under the trees in order that he might the better hear them at their work of praising God. He was happy even in the sound of the buzzing flies. Their hot drone reminded him of Italy.

There was always time, too, for visits with his little brother the rooster. Sometimes a moment before breakfast, another visit to throw the chickens their vegetable peelings. After supper, during recreation time, Brother Stanislaus sat on an old stump under a tree smoking his pipe and conversing with his friend.

He was alone in the world, very much alone on his pilgrimage. Once in a while he thought of an early boyhood friend of his in the religious house in France. They delighted in holy conversation, and used to vie with each other in making up spiritual bouquets to give to each other and to offer up to God. They loaned each other books—they read nothing but devotional works—which took them months to read and ponder and converse about. They delighted when the work was hard, and when there was not enough work, they spent long hours on their knees, even when their souls were dry and it seemed as though only meaningless words came from their hearts. When it was a struggle to pray, they delighted in prayer the more, because it was an added hardship overcome for the love of God.

But now Brother Stanislaus was all alone in this world and very sad. It seemed to him a mournful thing to be unhappy in a world which was often so beautiful, but he accepted his unhappiness and lack of consolation with resignation.

“‘Life is but a night spent in a wretched inn,’” he said with Saint Teresa.

When he was very lonely he tried to dwell on thoughts of heaven and the companionship of the saints he would have there. When he cooked he cooked with loving care, as though for Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare, Saint Anthony and Brother Juniper. He liked to offer his food to the Holy Family, giving Mary a respite from her humble work, and when he had made a nice supper, he used to say, “There, Saint Teresa, it’s a wretched inn, I’ll agree with you—but here’s a nice supper for you to sit down to after your journeyings.”

But though he believed and practised in the communion of saints, he did not realize that his little rooster had more reality for him. His rooster became his companion, his treasure and his toy. When it came and perched on his knee, he talked to it as a little girl talks to her pet doll, he handled it lovingly as a bibliophile handles a precious volume; he exulted in the markings and shading of the bird.

Brother Gerard was a younger man than Brother Stanislaus, and had taken his place in the care of the cows, the chickens and the garden. He was a hardworking boy, but often absent-minded and careless, and when one morning Brother Stanislaus heard one of the fathers tell him to kill some roosters for Sunday dinner, he resolved to be present in the barnyard and help Brother Gerard catch the roosters.

“Be careful of my little friend out there,” he called to the other brother as he was scalding out the milk cans in the pantry. “Be sure and let me know when you want to catch them and I'll come and help you.”

But Brother Stanislaus spoke such broken English that it was hard for others to understand him, and since Brother Gerard was busily engaged while he worked in saying some extra prayers for a special intention, he scarcely listened.

“He is too holy,” Brother Stanislaus muttered to himself over the dish pan. “He is as bad as Brother Juniper.”

During the course of the morning he ran out often to the barnyard which was quite far away from the house, but always Brother Gerard was somewhere else, so that he could not see him to remind him again.

By noon, Brother Stanislaus had scorched the beans, burnt the roast and worked himself into a state of grievous irritation against life and Brother Gerard.

It was always hot and messy work, killing chickens, and Brother Gerard wanted to get it done before dinner so that he would not have that task to look forward to during the rest of the day. So while Brother Stanislaus was confined to the kitchen during the last critical half-hour before dinner, the other brother caught his chickens and killed them, saying fifty Hail Marys while he did so, to make the nauseous work easier.

Brother Stanislaus could eat nothing in his fear and uncertainty, and since the rule of silence was observed during meals he could not reassure himself.

Immediately after, ignoring the bell for prayers in the chapel, he made his way to the barnyard. His heavy cassock which he put on just before he left the kitchen, over the denim kitchen apron in his hurry, twined about his legs and impeded his hurried step. He stumbled up the little hill, and slipped on the newly cut grass which cluttered the narrow path, so that he fell to his knees. His heart was constricted and he panted as he hurried along.

When he reached the yard and called, his little brother the rooster did not answer him. He could not have escaped so Brother Stanislaus knew the worst.

Sitting down heavily on the stump of the old tree, he felt the world suddenly very empty about him. Song sparrows were singing in the trees overhead and in the fields the meadow lark trilled her piercingly sweet tune. The cicadas, the bees, the buzzing flies, even the stirring of the leaves sounded unfeelingly gay and hostile to Brother Stanislaus. The sunlight was brazen and the wind jeered among the laughing leaves. His hands trembled as he took out his old pipe, and his heart was bitter and angry within him. His little pet, his tender joyous little rooster, who alone out of all the world had a loving heart for him, was gone. Brother Stanislaus wept.

He sat there for a long time, while the numb feeling turned to anger and the anger turned to remorse. He sat there still longer to say some prayers for the brother whom he had been hating so fiercely. He said them unfeelingly, because he knew he ought to say them, and he prayed for a heart of flesh to take the place of the stone in his breast.

“It is God’s will,” he kept murmuring, and finally he knew indeed that it was God’s will, and was able to get up and go back to his pots and pans in the kitchen.

Two days later as he put his little friend in the pot on the stove for a fricassee, he said to him, “You are all I had, and I am offering you as a present to God. God alone knows what a lonely old man I am.”

And that day, in some mysterious fashion, God made himself felt to the old lay brother, and his heart, as he wrestled with pots and pans, was full of joy.

This article appeared in the September 18, 1929 issue of Commonweal and is reprinted here with the magazine’s permission. And our thanks to Bro. Martin Erspramer, OSB, for the use of his illustration for Breaking Bread .

Food for the Body, Food for the Soul

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 01:14:18 GMT

Dear friends,

Greetings from all of us here at the Dorothy Day Guild! We hope that this missive finds you well at what for many in the Northern Hemisphere is the height of garden season. Dorothy loved gardening and growing things, and in fact for a time supported herself and her daughter Tamar by writing a gardening column for the Staten Island Advance. Our friend Dr. Anne Klejment tells us that Dorothy’s column “showcased local flora and provided ‘advice to local planters.’ Accompanied by Tamar, [Dorothy] drove her secondhand Ford around the island to admire flower beds and interview home gardeners.” Here at the Catholic Worker in South Bend, we received an anonymous late-night donation of zucchini left on our porch, which has made its way into several dinners in the past week, and of course we are all eating lots of cherry tomatoes!

This part of summer always reminds me both of God’s abundant providence for us and the amount of human labor involved in growing the beautiful produce that graces our table. Dorothy never lost sight of either the goodness of Creation or of the need for just wages and working conditions for those who labor in the fields, orchards, and vineyards, cultivating the Earth and bringing forth its fruits. It was in fact this week in 1973 when Dorothy was arrested and jailed for the final time for participating in a United Farm Workers protest in California. In her notes from the strike and her subsequent incarceration, Dorothy wrote,

“August 12th: Union lawyers visiting us say we’ll be free tomorrow. A peaceful Sunday. Mass in the evening. Today the Mexican girls were singing and clapping and teaching the sisters some Mexican dancing. They reminded me of St. Teresa of Avila with her castanets at recreation. All our praying seemed to bring about some results…We really know little. We do know the power of prayer, however.”

The next day, August 13th, she wrote:

“We packed our bags last night and a first bus load, me too, left our farm labor camp this morning, reached the jail and were turned back! …In the evening we finally all were again loaded in vans and brought to Fresno where we, with a great crowd in the park in front of the courthouse, celebrated Mass.

Jan, Chris and Joan were waiting to greet me from the St. Martin de Porres House which is in San Francisco. Cesar Chavez welcomed us all and Helen Chavez and three of her daughters, young and beautiful all of them, were there.”

As we enjoy summer picnics and barbeques this month, let’s imitate Dorothy in both action and prayer on behalf of all agricultural workers, especially migrant laborers. For some great suggestions on how we can continue participating in Dorothy’s legacy of solidarity with the United Farm Workers, check out their website , Facebook , and other socials.

Upcoming Events:

We like to draw your attention to two upcoming events taking place in the next month, one in New York and one in Chicago. First is a historical program, “Powerful Women of Staten Island’s Past,” which will be held on Saturday, August 24th at 2:00 pm at the Alice Austen House Museum on Staten Island. This free event features Dorothy alongside other significant figures who made their homes on her beloved Staten Island, including photographer Alice Austen and writer Audre Lorde. Many thanks to the Friends of Olmsted-Beil House for sponsoring this program and inviting members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild!

Following this, from September 6-8, we hope to see many of you in Chicago for the Peter Maurin Conference , hosted by St. Gregory’s Hall and Canterbury House. The Conference organizers write,

“Maurin's pithy ‘Easy Essays’ have been a staple of The Catholic Worker newspaper from its inception. His essays promoted philosophical personalism and economic distributism and a program of renewal based on Catholic Social Tradition. Maurin's program called Catholics to commit to houses of hospitality, voluntary poverty, the works of mercy, agrarianism, and public roundtable discussions.

The conference will feature keynote addresses and roundtable discussions on key topics of Maurin's thought and ask how Peter's program can inspire us to "blow the dynamite" of the Gospel to create a world in which it is easier to be good.”

This free, multi-day event features time to worship, play, and celebrate together, as well as learn from roundtable discussions and keynote addresses from scholars Jonathan Sozek of Albertus Magnus College and Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria Catholic Worker. Register here and spend a beautiful weekend in Chicago learning about the philosophy that grounded and gave roots to the movement which became Dorothy’s life’s work!

New Articles and Reading Recommendations for August:

We’re excited to share some new art and insight from the forthcoming graphic novel-style biography Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion, which is the fruit of an eight-year collaboration between former Dorothy Day Guild coordinator and author Jeff Korgen, artist and illustrator Christopher Cardinale, and Friar Mike Lasky, OFM, who consulted on the project. Jeff spoke with Jerry Windley-Daoust and Joan Bromberek for their new article, “Dorothy Day…Superhero? New Graphic Novel Tells the Story of Her ‘Hero’s Journey,” and told them “The art brings the drama alive in a way that a standard biography can’t…Dorothy said the world will be saved by beauty, so I think she would appreciate the contribution of art to storytelling.”

Many thanks to Jeff, Christopher, and Friar Mike for sharing their scholarly and artistic talents with the world through their work on Dorothy’s life! This new and unique take on Dorothy’s biography and continuing legacy of activism, hospitality, and nonviolence will be released by Paulist Press on Labor Day next month. We highly encourage you to order your copy today!

The rest of our articles for this month all center on our trip to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis last month. A number of us from the Dorothy Day Guild had the opportunity to travel to the Congress to hear Martha Hennessy speak about living into her grandmother’s legacy of Gospel pacifism and resistance to war. In preparation for her address, Martha shared some brief reflections with Aleteia on her earliest spiritual formation, given to her by her grandmother. These lessons from and moments of connection with Dorothy have sustained her in her activism and hospitality work as a member of the Maryhouse Catholic Worker community and in the Plowshares movement, where Martha was arrested and served a sentence of incarceration for protesting our continuing investment in nuclear weapons manufacturing.

On Thursday morning, we joined thousands of other Catholics for a mass in the stadium celebrated by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The next day, Martha spoke to a crowd of about 5000 pilgrims on the morning of Friday, July 19th and delivered a short address that included some of Dorothy’s most challenging teachings on peace, which Jerry Windley-Daoust has made available for us in both video and text format on the Catholic Worker movement website.

Dorothy spoke in 1976 to an audience at the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia on August 6th, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and so later that evening, a group of about twenty pilgrims, friends, and Catholic Workers from four different communities gathered together in the park for a picnic dinner and to read and discuss Dorothy’s address from that earlier Congress, which was later published in The Catholic Worker as “Bread for the Hungry.”

As we continued to think about the Eucharist and its implications for how we are to live as members of One Body, we gathered again the following evening to again share fellowship and discuss “We Go On Record: the CW Response to Hiroshima.”

We had a wonderful time preparing for and participating in the Congress, cooking together, making banners, and distributing literature and holy cards and on Friday and Saturday evenings were blessed with visits from Dorothy’s fellow journalists, Nate Tinner-Williams and Brian Fraga. Last month, Nate had written a piece which we shared, “Martha Hennessy, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, will speak at National Eucharistic Congress ” for Black Catholic Messenger and National Catholic Reporter.

Following our Friday night picnic and clarification of thought, Brian published, “At Eucharistic congress, peace activist Martha Hennessy stresses ‘presence of God’” for National Catholic Reporter. To Brian and Nate: It was great to meet you both in person, and we all thank you so much for continuing Dorothy’s legacy of radical Catholic journalism! For additional reporting on the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day Guild presence at the Congress, we encourage you to check out Jerry Windley-Daoust’s “Catholic Workers Bring Messages of Peace, Repentance to National Eucharistic Congress.”

A few more notes from the National Eucharistic Congress:

I’m looking forward to sharing some further reflections on the Congress (more than can fit in this missive!) with our wider network in the upcoming issue of the Dorothy Day Guild newsletter, In Our Time, but for now, I’ll say that I admit to some initial skepticism about the entire enterprise of a National Eucharistic Congress. Could a fifty-thousand person conference, with slickly-produced brochures, stadium lights, and a $300-per-person registration fee truly confront the reality that sacramental participation in the Mystical Body of Christ is completely incompatible with the murder of other members of that Body during wartime? That the works of mercy and the works of war are eternally opposed to one another? We are called to feed the hungry, and every dollar siphoned off to defense contractors and weapons manufacturing companies is bread stolen from the mouths of the poor. Would that teaching be allowed into the convention center, given a microphone at the fifty-yard line of Lucas Oil Stadium?

For those willing to read between the lines a little, yes. In his keynote address on Saturday night, just after we finished our second session of clarification of thought and passed out our Guild prayer cards and the current issue of The Catholic Worker to pilgrims waiting outside the stadium, Bishop Robert Barron mentioned Dorothy as one of his heroes, and as an example of a layperson who rejected a two-tiered morality that reserved the highest exercise of virtue to ordained and religious members of the Church. Dorothy lived the counsels of perfection– poverty, chastity, and obedience– as a working mother in the world. “The secular order– that’s your space,” Bishop Barron told the audience. “Move into it with panache and energy and intelligence and enthusiasm, and become body given and blood poured out.” Dorothy did this in her lifetime. She gave her life over to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, caring for and living with Christ in the poor until the day she died. Citing Rerum novarum, the 1891 encyclical which opened the canon of Catholic social doctrine, Bishop Barron said that once the demands of necessity and propriety are met, everything else we own belongs to the poor.
“That will change your life if you let that sink in,” Bishop Barron said, and herein lies the challenge that Dorothy poses to the American Catholic Church. We strive to be a generous people. We try to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. But do we really see ourselves as members of One Body? Bishop Barron reminded us that we become what we consume. When we receive the Eucharist, we become Christ’s Body. When we truly let this sink in, we will understand that the heroic charity that Dorothy so embodied must be imitated not only in individual and interpersonal offerings of mercy, but collectively. A Church which understands itself this way and which allows the grace of the Eucharist to penetrate every aspect of society will refuse to accept the great theft from the poor that war entails, will refuse to accept that our brothers and sisters– fellow members of that Body– die of hunger and exposure in our own cities. The world is aching for this understanding.

Dorothy accepted the whole of the Gospel. She took responsibility for the world, and offered her fiat to a lay vocation to re-make that secular order into a community where the dignity of the poorest and most forgotten members is upheld to reflect the glory of God. All of us at the Guild are so grateful for the experience of prayer, reflection, and celebration in community that we shared at the National Eucharistic Congress. For all who traveled to Indy last month and those who joined us from afar in prayer, we hope that the deep love of Christ in the Eucharist ignites within you a fire for justice and for peace just as it did for Dorothy.

Prayer Requests:

Several people have recently reached out to us with prayer requests. One of the duties of Dorothy Day Guild members is to pray through Dorothy’s intercession for the needs of our world, and so each month, we bring these requests for healing, vocational discernment, and peace to the wider Guild network so that we can lift them up together. This month, a friend from Malta wrote to us asking for Dorothy’s intercession for their vocation, and a teacher from Ohio wrote to us on behalf of his student, who has cancer and is in need of healing, and in addition, a long-time friend of the South Bend Catholic Worker community suffered a stroke yesterday and is currently waiting for further testing and physical therapy. Please take a moment today to pray for these individuals and intentions and ask Dorothy to bring their needs before God.

We also received some wonderful news from a family in Minnesota who sought Dorothy’s intercession on behalf of one of their relatives following a major surgery. After entrusting their relative’s health to Dorothy’s prayer, they received word that their family member had seen significant improvement the following day. Please join us in thanking God for this great gift and continuing to pray with this family for complete healing!

A few words from Dorothy:

In the lead-up to last month’s National Eucharistic Congress, I’ve spent some time looking through university and diocesan archives for footage of Dorothy’s 1976 speech in Philadelphia as part of the “Women and the Eucharist” panel at the International Eucharistic Congress. In that search, I came across an incredible short documentary on Servant of God Dom Hélder Câmara, entitled Excuse Me, America which features not only a short clip of Dorothy speaking at the Congress , but a conversation between Dorothy and Dom Câmara at Maryhouse, which begins at timestamp 33:31.

In that conversation, Dorothy speaks about her admiration for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement. She tells Dom Câmara,

“As the Pope said, you have to have a leader of workers who is himself a worker…and so when you consider that Cesar had this problem on his hands, what did he do? He got forty acres for the Filipinos [farm workers] and they started gardens and they helped feed the strikers. Now if anything like that happens you begin to feel happy about your country. You begin to feel that if by nonviolent action, a thing like this can take place– it must be nonviolent in every way.”

We highly recommend watching the whole film, which, following Dorothy and Dom Câmara’s conversation, moves to Câmara’s visit to the United Farm Workers and includes footage of the mass he celebrated for the strikers. It is so moving to see the power of Gospel nonviolence at work! Dorothy’s life’s work was in service to this testimony, and we know that she is today among the great cloud of witnesses in heaven, interceding for all of you who work for justice and peace.

Take care,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

We're on Pilgrimage!

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 09:33:03 GMT

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.

Recent Guild Happenings:

Last month members of the Dorothy Day Guild were privileged to travel to Louisville, KY to present the first-ever Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award to Pax Christi USA at the summer meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. As journalist Kimberly Heatherington noted for the National Catholic Reporter , in a year which has seen such a dramatic spike in armed conflicts around the world (2023 saw the highest number of conflicts globally since the second World War), Dorothy’s witness of Gospel nonviolence is more necessary than ever. As our co-chair, Deirdre Cornell stated, Dorothy "is very well known for her service to the poor; she is very well known for living a life of voluntary simplicity, or poverty, herself. But the peace aspect is one that we do not want to see forgotten."

We were so pleased to be able to host twelve of the bishops, including Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, who graciously accepted the award on behalf of Pax Christi USA, as well as the incredible and hard-working staff of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and many members of Pax Christi at the breakfast where we presented the award– it was great to pray and share a meal with all of you! Congratulations to all members of Pax Christi USA, and our enormous thanks also to the staff of the USCCB who helped us organize this wonderful event. You can read additional coverage of the award at National Catholic Reporter and Crux and can see more photos of the event on Pax Christi USA’s Flickr album and on the Guild’s Facebook page .

Join Us in Indianapolis!

We are so excited to announce that we are heading to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in just ten short days! Will we see you there? Some of you may be already planning to attend the Congress, and if so, we hope you will attend Martha Hennessy’s breakout session on Friday, July 19th in the main stadium. Our friend Nate Tinner-Williams of the Black Catholic Messenger spoke with Martha for his recent article, “Martha Hennessy, Granddaughter to Servant of God Dorothy Day, Will Speak at National Eucharistic Congress” and discussed what she learned about the Eucharist from Dorothy and the need to implement those teachings in the life and workings of the institutional Church. Reflecting on Eucharistic theology, Martha asks, “What's the definition of the Eucharist? What’s the definition of ‘We are one another’? It’s the houses of hospitality. It's the personalism. It's the nonviolent practice of the Gospel. Condemnation of war in all of its forms.”

This is a FREE EVENT-- you do not need tickets to the Congress to participate! Find out more details on our Guild events page and invite all your friends. We’ll be under the tent wearing yellow tee shirts!

For those in the New York metro area, we also wanted to pass along another event invitation for next month. The Friends of the Olmsted-Beil House in Staten Island are hosting a free historical program and reception entitled “Powerful Women of Staten Island’s Past,” featuring Dorothy alongside Audre Lorde, Alice Austen, and other incredible female figures who made Staten Island their home. This event will take place at the Alice Austen House Museum, at 2 Hylan Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10305 on August 24th from 2:00-3:30 pm. Register here .

This Month's Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

As we get ready for the National Eucharistic Congress, we wanted to share a short reflection from Bishop Robert Barron which addresses a theme that was very close to Dorothy’s heart: the connection between the liturgy and the works of mercy. Bishop Barron writes, “what happens at the Mass in its splendor must spill out onto the streets as a devotion to the suffering members of the Mystical Body of Christ. As older Chicago priests told me when I was newly ordained, Msgr. Hillenbrand invited Dorothy Day to Mundelein Seminary to stress precisely this relationship.” The inseparability of Christ present on the altar and Christ present in the poor was something Dorothy returned to again and again in her writing and speaking and was in fact the subject of her own address to the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia forty-eight years ago this summer.

In his reflection, Bishop Barron touches on the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, something that Dorothy and other Catholic Workers, including the artist Ade Bethune, were deeply invested in living out and promoting. Earlier this year we hosted a panel of Catholic Worker artists who are carrying the creative dimension of this movement forward into the twenty-first century, and we are delighted to share that the recording of this webinar, “Art, Hospitality, and Activism,” is now available on our Youtube channel. Thanks again to Sarah Fuller, Becky McIntyre, and Rachel Mills for showing us how the pursuit of beauty joins the work of caring for the poor and advocating for justice to build a new society in the shell of the old!

Finally, our co-chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, gave a recent interview for the “Catholicism and Culture” podcast out of St. John’s Seminary in Los Angeles. His conversation with Dr. Stuart Squires is a fantastic introduction to the history of Dorothy’s sainthood process from her death to the present day, the relationship of our work at the Guild to the broader Catholic Worker context, the significance of a saint for nonviolence, and more. You can listen to “The Cause for Canonization of Dorothy Day with Dr. Kevin Ahern” and be sure to pass this episode along to any of your friends who have questions about the ins and outs of the sometimes-complex process of recognizing saints.

Prayer Requests:

This month, we would like to request your prayers through Dorothy’s intercession on behalf of two older relatives of our Guild staff who are both dealing with ongoing health concerns. Our Ignatian Volunteer and office manager, Jodee, has asked for prayer for her aunt Ann in New Jersey, and of your charity, I would like to request your prayers for my grandmother, Lucy, in New York. Dorothy in many ways is unique among the holy figures of the twentieth century, many of whom were martyrs like St. Óscar Romero, St. Edith Stein, and Blessed Franz Jägerstätter or who died at a very young age following an illness, like Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Chiara Badano. So few of the contemporary saints we venerate lived into their advanced years as Dorothy did, but there is a particular strength and grace that comes from accepting in faith the challenges of age-related disability and the slowing down of life’s activity. Here again, Dorothy can be our exemplar, and we are confident that she brings the needs of our beloved elders before God with great tenderness.

Another friend, Lorraine, wrote to us from NY with the joyful news that a friend’s cancer was completely cured, an incredible gift which she credits to Dorothy’s intercession. Wow! We join her in thanking God for this healing and ask for continuing prayer for several other friends and relatives of Guild members who are still struggling with cancer and other illnesses. If you or a loved one would like to be added to our prayer intentions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us .

A few words from Dorothy:

The upcoming National Eucharistic Congress holds a special resonance for the Dorothy Day Guild.

Dorothy’s last public speaking appearance took place at the 1976 International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, and she took this opportunity to reflect on the centrality of the Eucharist in her own conversion and to preach on the Mystical Body of Christ, the doctrine which was the foundation of her Christian pacifist convictions. The following text is excerpted from “Bread for the Hungry,” the short speech Dorothy gave at the Congress on August 6th, 1976 on the anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima. You can read the full text, which was reprinted in The Catholic Worker the following month here .

“It was also the physical aspect of the Church which attracted me. Bread and wine, water (all water is made holy since Christ was baptized in the Jordan), incense, the sound of waves and wind, all nature cried out to me. My love and gratitude to the Church have grown through the years. She was my mother and nourished me, and taught me. She taught me the crowning love of the life of the Spirit. But she also taught me that “before we bring our gifts of service, of gratitude, to the altar, — if our brother have anything against us, we must hesitate to approach the altar to receive the Eucharist.”

“Unless you do penance, you shall all perish.” Penance comes before the Eucharist. Otherwise we partake of the Sacrament unworthily.

And here we are on August 6th, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped, which ended the Second World War. There had been holocausts before — massacres, after the First World War, of the Armenians, all but forgotten now, and the holocaust of the Jews, God’s chosen people. When He came to earth as Man, He chose them. And He told us “All men are brothers,” and that it was His will that all men be saved. Japanese, Jew, Armenian.

It is a fearful thought, that unless we do penance, we will perish. Our Creator gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain our life. But we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude…

Women, who were born to nourish, to bring forth life, not to destroy it, must do more than thank God we survived it. I plead, in this short paper, that we will regard that military Mass, and all our Masses today, as an act of penance, begging God to forgive us. I am gratified for the opportunity given me at this Congress to express myself in this way. I thank God for the freedom of Holy Mother Church…Today, some of the young pacifists giving out leaflets here are fasting, as a personal act of penance for the sin of our country, which we love.”

Dorothy’s own experience of motherhood brought her into the arms of her Mother the Church, a home in which she was nurtured and fed daily by the precious body and blood of Jesus and came to a renewed and deepened appreciation for the sanctity of life. She understood that the senseless destruction of entire families in wartime was a grave sin which tore the Mystical Body of Christ and which required penance and reparation. Dorothy’s unique contribution to contemporary Eucharistic theology was in her rediscovery and re-presentation of the inseparable relationship between the Body of Christ present as the Blessed Sacrament and in the Body of Christ present in the human family. We are all brothers and sisters, and it is God’s will that all of us are saved.

As we in the United States gather for this National Eucharistic Congress, please join us in praying that this Eucharistic revival will in turn spark a revival of love for the poor and for peace. We hope that like Dorothy, we can remember that the Eucharist unites us as one Body and that the integrity of that Body requires an end to war, to the trade in weapons, and to the exclusion of the hungry poor in our own towns and cities. We are so excited to see some of you in Indianapolis next week! Whether or not you are able to be with us in person, we are so grateful to be united to you in prayer, through the Eucharist, and through the works of mercy to which so many of you have dedicated your lives.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Ordinary Time, Everyday Holiness

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 11:41:35 GMT

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.

Dorothy Day Guild news and updates:

Since Pentecost, the Dorothy Day Guild has kept busy with a number of exciting projects. On May 20th, we invited a group of Catholic educators and ministers from three different states to Manhattan College-- actually, a room where Dorothy herself spoke in 1949-- for a teachers' workshop on incorporating Dorothy’s life and witness into a curriculum geared towards teens and young adults.

We all enjoyed the lively conversations between veteran educators who shared their reflections with us and loved hearing from our two presenters, Robert Ellsberg, who spoke with us by Zoom on his time with Dorothy as managing editor of The Catholic Worker in the 1970s, and Liam Myers, who talked with us about how he integrates community-based learning into his curriculum as a college instructor and as a Catholic Worker at Maryhouse. Thank you so much to all of our participants for such a great day of learning and collaboration! We’d like to share our opening prayer from the workshop with you:

The Catholic social tradition continues to hold a deep attraction for young people within and outside of the Church, but translating the abstractions of the papal encyclicals into concrete action for the common good can be a challenge. Dorothy’s life and legacy can provide an entry point for all of us who are eager to live out these teachings “in the world”, especially as they relate to peace and care for the poor. If you’re interested in bringing this workshop to your city, please contact us !

The following week, on May 31st, our board of directors met to formally incorporate the Dorothy Day Guild and approved new bylaws as an organization committed to “supporting and advancing her Cause.” We are so grateful for the wealth of experience and dedication that our board brings to this new stage in our work, both in promoting Dorothy’s formal canonization process as well as sharing her witness with the world. If you have not formally joined the Guild yet, we invite you to take this opportunity to become a member this summer, either as an individual or a member of a family, parish, school, or Catholic Worker community. Your membership dues go directly towards the work of our team in Rome, headed by the expertise of our postulator, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman, the daily operations of the Guild, and towards hosting in-person and online events which engage Dorothy’s life and legacy in our world today. However, your prayers and the witness of your own lives are the most important gift you can offer the cause– we are always happy to waive membership dues if they present a financial burden. Members of the Dorothy Day Guild commit to praying for Dorothy’s canonization, sharing her legacy, and living out her legacy of Gospel nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty in their own communities. We’d love to have you join us!

Finally, tomorrow, June 11th, is a particularly special day for the Dorothy Day Guild. On Tuesday morning, we are overjoyed to be traveling to Louisville, KY for the annual summer meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to present the inaugural Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award which honors the “heroic witness of Servant of God Dorothy Day by celebrating an individual or group who exemplifies her lifelong commitment to peacemaking and Gospel nonviolence.” We are thrilled to be joined by several of our board members, our friends from the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and an incredible group of lay and ordained peacemakers as we present this award for the first time to Pax Christi USA . As our Dorothy Day Guild co-chair Dr. Kevin Ahern says, “For over 50 years, Pax Christi USA has been an important voice for peace, justice, and nonviolence in the Catholic community. Their recent work… has significantly deepened the conversation within the church on Gospel nonviolence. In this work, they embody in a special way the prophetic vision of Servant of God, Dorothy Day.”

Enormous thanks and congratulations to our dear friends at Pax Christi. We can’t wait to see you tomorrow morning!

Reading and watching recommendations for June:

This month in our round-up we have a few excellent pieces to share with you. First up is a wealth of articles from The Tablet, including one on Kristi Pfister’s artistic engagement with Dorothy’s legacy , a reflection on Dorothy’s Eucharistic faith by board member Geoff Gneuhs, and a piece on the Maryhouse community’s new rooftop garden , which they developed through reflection on the needs of their neighbors and on Pope Francis’ letter “Laudato Deum.”

Dorothy’s life and legacy also continue to inspire work in new forms of media! Jeff Korgen and Christopher Cardinale’s graphic biography, Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion now has a book trailer and will be available in print this September through Paulist Press. This is a great introduction to Dorothy as a journalist, pacifist, personalist, and single mother for all ages, and we particularly encourage you to check it out for graphic novel aficionados. You can pre-order the book here , and to help make this book available to a wider audience, consider requesting a copy through your public library system!

We were also delighted to see a write-up on Dorothy in Life magazine’s “100 Women Who Changed the World” feature this month! Forty-four years after her death, Dorothy continues to inspire interest and reflection in both the secular and Catholic press; this is truly an indication of her ability to bridge some of the widest chasms in a time of polarization and conflict, and for this, we give thanks.

We would like to share with you three reflections on Dorothy’s enduring legacy in our present context, all coming out of Notre Dame, IN. In preparation for this summer’s National Eucharistic Congress, Dr. Margaret Pfeil, a member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend, IN, gave a recent address on Dorothy as an exemplar of “Eucharistic abundance” in her everyday practice of the presence of God. Margie’s talk, “Eucharistic Abundance and Social Regeneration ” offers a theology of the Eucharist grounded in the liturgy and the works of mercy as responses to God’s initial act of generosity towards us.

As doctoral candidate in theology Flora Tang stated, “I am absolutely inspired by and drawing on the Catholic Worker tradition and the witness of Catholic peacebuilders such as Dorothy Day. My Ph.D. degree is in theology... [and my] faith draws significantly upon Dorothy Day, Dan Berrigan, and other Catholic anti-war protestors."

We were reminded this spring of the solidarity that Dorothy offered to young antiwar activists in her own time. In Dorothy's Nov. 1965 Union Square speech, she said:

"The word of God is the new commandment he gave us–to love our enemies...that is, to lay down our lives for our brothers throughout the world, not to take the lives of men, women, and children, young and old, by bombs and napalm and all the other instruments of war. Instead he spoke of the instruments of peace, to be practiced by all nations–to feed the hungry of the world, –not to destroy their crops, not to spend billions on defense, which means instruments of destruction. He commanded us to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, to save lives, not to destroy them, these precious lives for whom he willingly sacrificed his own. I speak today as one who is old, and who must uphold and endorse the courage of the young who themselves are willing to give up their freedom."

As these student activists prepare for a June 28th trial date, please join us in praying for peace in the Holy Land and an end to the manufacture and sale of the instruments of war around the world.

Finally, we really appreciated Rick Becker’s "Saint Wannabes: Catholic Higher Education and the Pursuit of Holiness," which was adapted from a talk he gave this spring at St. Mary’s College. In this piece, Rick places Dorothy in the company of Sister Madaleva Wolff and Venerable Rose Hawthorne as holy women who pursued God in the world, particularly through the incarnational practices of the works of mercy. As he writes, Dorothy “genuinely knew this Jesus, and the Jesus she knew was real and three-dimensional — an authentic point of contact between things temporal and eternal. If there was such a Jesus, I wanted to know him, too.”

Prayer requests:

We continue to receive requests for prayer from members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, as well as joyful news of favors and graces received through Dorothy’s intercession– Deo Gratias! As you pray this month, please remember Dotty in New York, who has asked for healing from her cancer and to grow in love for and service to the poor. Please also remember Katrina in Missouri, who has asked for prayers for a new job. Sylvia, whose teen son recently introduced her to the life and legacy of Dorothy, has asked for our prayers for her greatest need. Others have reached out to us with sensitive requests that they prefer to keep private– if this is you, please know that members of the Dorothy Day Guild are holding you in prayer. We trust that Dorothy, who accompanied many struggling friends and neighbors during her lifetime, will bring your needs before a deeply loving God.

A few words from Dorothy:

Summer has truly settled in here in the Northern Hemisphere, and we know that for many of you this means a shift into a new rhythm of life and a change of pace from the routines of the winter and spring. Dorothy likewise treasured living according to the different seasons of both the Church and the natural world. She had a particular love for water and throughout her life spent many peaceful hours walking along Lake Michigan, the Hudson River, and especially the shores of Staten Island. Even prior to her conversion, Dorothy experienced a sense of belonging and at-homeness in creation which eventually led her to love for the Creator. This month, we’d like to close with a paragraph of The Long Loneliness, from the chapter “Man is Meant for Happiness.”

“Late in the afternoon the wind dropped, the door of Lefty’s shack stood open and he sat there contemplating the sunset. The waves lapped the shore, tinkling among the shells and pebbles, and there was an acrid odor of smoke in the air. Down the beach, the Belgians were working, loading rock into a small cart which looked like a tumbril, drawn by a bony white horse. They stopped as though in prayer, outlined against the brilliant sky, and as I watched, the chapel bell at St. Joseph’s rang the Angelus. I found myself praying, praying with thanksgiving, praying with open eyes while I watched the workers on the beach and the sunset, and listened to the sound of the waves and the scream of snowy gulls.”

We hope that each of you find time this month to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation! Whether you are traveling or enjoying time in your home place this summer, all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild wish you the peace and fulfillment that Dorothy found on the beaches of her beloved Staten Island.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Happy May Day! Celebrating 91 years of the Catholic Worker Movement

Thu, 02 May 2024 01:31:06 GMT

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,

“Ah, those early days that everyone likes to think of now since we have grown so much bigger; that early zeal, that early romance, that early companionableness! And how delightful it is to think that the young ones who came into the work now find the same joy in community. It is a permanent revolution, this Catholic Worker Movement.”

For me, and perhaps for many of you as well, the Easter season has felt very full in all the best ways. Our Catholic Worker community here in South Bend always celebrates Easter Sunday with a potluck on the front lawn, an Easter egg hunt for the children, and LOTS of singing out of the Gather hymnal (plus a couple of Irish tunes in recent years). The following week, a few of us had the chance to travel and visit the Bloomington Christian Radical CW community for the Feast of the Annunciation and the total solar eclipse. Our hosts, Ross and Andrea, welcomed about twenty friends for more music, a painting and scrubbing work party at one of their houses of hospitality, and a picnic lunch. Together we watched from the front lawn of their row of community houses as the sky dimmed and all but the bright corona of light was blotted out. In those few minutes of darkness, I felt such gratitude for the gift of community and the ways that my life has been shaped by the decade I have spent with the Catholic Worker movement. To each and every member of this joyful, permanent revolution, we offer our warmest congratulations and thanks!

Latest news from the Dorothy Day Guild and friends:

Last month, we welcomed Catholic Worker artists Sarah Fuller, Rachel Mills, and Becky McIntyre for an April 9th webinar on art, hospitality, and activism. We were so moved by their comments on the creative process and art as a gift to be offered in service of the common good. Dorothy nurtured the creative talents and artistic vocations of many of the young people who came through the Catholic Worker, particularly Ade Bethune and Rita Corbin.

It has been so inspiring to see how another generation of artists has taken up the mantle of a prophetic artistic practice which counsels the doubtful, instructs the ignorant, admonishes the sinner, comforts the sorrowful, and breathes beauty into the world. If you missed the live event, don’t worry! We recorded the conversation and will be uploading it to our YouTube channel soon, so stay tuned.

The following day, our friends at the Catholic Peace Fellowship began their annual retreat and planning meeting for the Joshua Casteel Memorial Peace Dinner at the November meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Many thanks to Fr. Seóirse Murray for offering the Byzantine-rite divine liturgy in our Catholic Worker community chapel here in South Bend (and particularly for his patience with all of us who are accustomed to the Latin-rite mass!), to Marie-Claire Klassen for her presentation on Marian imagery in the Palestinian peace and justice movement, and to Maria and Jon Schommer for their generosity in hosting the retreat at their home. Dorothy was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic Peace Fellowship in the 1960s during the Vietnam war, alongside Tom Cornell, Jim Forest, Gordon Zahn, Thomas Merton, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and many other lay and religious Catholic activists of this era. The newsletter published by the Catholic Peace Fellowship during this time speaks as urgently to the heart of the Gospel today as it did in the 1960’s and 70’s; in a world increasingly disquieted by war and genocide on multiple continents, we need this prophetic voice. CPF has continued to counsel and assist Catholic and non-Catholic conscientious objectors to this day and have asked our prayers for a military CO who they are currently accompanying. We encourage all of our Guild members to learn more about the Catholic Peace Fellowship’s current work in forming the Christian conscience and in promoting the Gospel of peace through their YouTube channel .

Finally, our co-chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, along with colleagues at nine Catholic colleges and universities, organized a conference at the Center at Mariandale in Mariandale, NY on April 13th celebrating Dorothy’s spirituality. The day-long gathering featured keynote addresses by Guild advisory committee members Robert Ellsberg and Martha Hennessy as well as student-led workshops on pacifism, the cultivation of the scholar-worker, Dorothy’s message for a digital age, and the continuing legacy of the Catholic Worker movement. Many thanks to all of the presenters and organizers and our hosts at Mariandale for an inspiring and thought-provoking Saturday!

Upcoming Guild events:

Article round-up:

We’ve enjoyed seeing Dorothy’s story and witness inspire a variety of different writers this season, and there has in fact been so much news that we’re a little behind in sharing it with you! Back in March, the Boston Pilot published brief introduction to Dorothy’s legacy and canonization cause by Russell Shaw, entitled “Radically Catholic: Dorothy Day fought poverty, injustice.” The Mormon Deseret News also published a Dorothy-inspired reflection in March, this one by Jennifer Graham, called “The case for setting up a ‘Christ-room’ in your home,” which was actually a response to a February essay by Jeffrey Wald in Plough . It’s wonderful to see Dorothy’s legacy of hospitality prompting ecumenical dialogue on our responsibilities to the most vulnerable members of our local communities, and it is incredibly inspiring to hear of ordinary families adopting small practices drawn from the Catholic Worker tradition in order to better welcome Christ into their homes and the heart of their households.

We’d also like to share two recent pieces from members of our Dorothy Day Guild advisory committee. The first an article about the Catholic Worker farm run by Carmina Chapp and her husband, “Life on Farm Named for Dorothy Day Helps Catholic Couple Deepen Faith, Glorify God,” and the second is a recording of a recent talk that Martha Hennessy offered to students at Sacred Heart University, entitled “Dorothy Day and Jesus: Discipleship Today.” The Dorothy Day Guild has been so blessed by the guidance and support of the advisory committee since our founding in 2005, and we continue to be inspired by the work that each of them has undertaken in living out Dorothy’s witness of nonviolence and voluntary poverty in unique and creative ways.

Last month, many of us in the United States likely filed our federal and state taxes, perhaps disturbed by the knowledge that over a trillion dollars of that money goes straight to funding war and violence at home and abroad. We were so intrigued when Bridget Crawford, a law professor at Pace University reached out to us and sent us a copy of her article “Yesterday’s Protester May Be Tomorrow’s Saint: Reimagining the Tax System Through the Work of Dorothy Day.” Crawford and her co-author Ted Afield ask in the abstract,

"When is the nonpayment of taxes justified by conscientious objections? Legendary Catholic social activist Dorothy Day refused to pay federal income taxes, because she was an avowed pacifist who also cautioned against government overreach into the lives of citizens. This article asks whether the tax system should accommodate those who have moral objections, and if so, how to accomplish that. Through the lens of Dorothy Day, who devoted her adult life to workers’ rights, pacifism, and service to the poor, this article makes three contributions to the conversation about the administration of a fair tax system."

We were delighted to see a serious exploration of Dorothy’s moral thought in a very different discipline than what we’re accustomed to reading and we encourage you to check it out (and if you’re interested in becoming a war tax resister like Dorothy, reach out to the folks at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee )!

Finally, we have so appreciated artist Kristi Pfister’s generosity in allowing us to keep her installation “Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day” on display at the Manhattan College library through this summer. If you are unfamiliar with Kristi’s work, check out the article published in the Tablet this week, “Life and Work of Dorothy Day is Captured in an N.Y. Artist’s Work,” by Alicia Venter.

Prayer requests:

A few words from Dorothy:

Finally, we’d like to close this missive with a selection from Dorothy’s inaugural editorial for The Catholic Worker, offered to the poor and unemployed for the first time on this day in 1933:

"For those who are sitting on benches in the warm spring sunlight.

For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain.

For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work.

For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight, THE CATHOLIC WORKER is being edited. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program.

It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed. The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to radicalism and atheism.

Is it not possible to be radical without being atheistic?

Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion?

In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the popes and the program offered by the Church for the constructing of a social order, this news sheet was started.

…The price of the paper is one cent a copy, in order to place it within the reach of all. And for the unemployed it is distributed free to those who wish to read it. Next month someone may donate us an office, who knows? It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay His head. The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride at sharing the honor) that the disciples supped by the seashore and wandered through cornfields picking the ears from the stalks to make their frugal meals."

So many people today find themselves in a similar context to the first readers of The Catholic Worker ninety one years ago. Every day on the news and social media we see images of refugees and internally displaced persons from Gaza, Ukraine, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere struggling to survive another day of war and genocide. In the United States, many new immigrants arrive desperate for dignified work which can support their families and which cannot be found in their home countries. In your own town or city, you likely know neighbors who are at risk of eviction or who are already unhoused. Today, as in 1933, and as in 1900 years before that, the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. In her lifetime, Dorothy saw that the world could be different than it was. For the next fifty years, she offered her strength and her talents for the construction of the social order that she read about in scripture and the encyclicals and dreamed about in her newspaper office, in the first house of hospitality, in jail, and on the picket line. It’s a privilege to dream with her, and with all of you. From all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild, thank you for the many ways you have offered your strength, your gifts, and labor in service of this new world which is being built in the shell of the old.

Happy May Day.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dedicating the Dorothy Day Center

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:35:55 GMT

Our monthly update of Guild events, service and learning opportunities, and reading recommendations

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.

We also really appreciated a recent article by Sister Judith Best, published in Global Sisters Report , “What I Learned From My Friend Thomas Merton,” on the deep mutuality and respect at the heart of the friendship between Dorothy and Merton. Best writes that both Dorothy and Merton desired a spiritual life that was firmly grounded in the real concerns of the world, and

needed to speak and write to call companions to a deeper following of Christ, especially the poor Christ. They wrestled with tough questions, such as the self-immolation of Roger LaPorte , to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam, considering whether to remain a monk or leave to lead the peace movement or other groups, etc.

What helped them both persevere was the witness of others in a centuries-old commitment to follow the poor man of Nazareth and meet the poor of the world on their own turf and in their own words.

In reading this piece, I was again reminded of the incredible strength Dorothy’s many friendships provided for her and how through these relationships, she was sustained in her vocation of contemplative activism. We hope and pray that through Dorothy’s intercession, all of you are also sustained by friendships which challenge and encourage you in your own vocations.

Finally, America republished some of Dorothy’s writing earlier this month, as “Dorothy Day’s ‘Letter to an Agnostic.’” This letter, originally addressed to a younger friend in 1934, is written from the perspective of one who has stood in the reader’s shoes, who has felt the existential numbness and the temptation to nihilism, has rejected the notion of God’s existence, let alone concern for humanity…and has come out the other side of this exile. Dorothy writes to her friend,

I felt this despair when I lay in jail for fifteen days (after demonstrating for the rights of political prisoners), contemplating the fundamental misery of human existence, a misery which would remain even if social justice were achieved and a state of Utopia prevailed. For you cannot pace the floor of a barred cell, or lie on your back on a hard cot watching a gleam of sunlight travel slowly, oh, so slowly, across the room, without coming to the realization that until the heart and soul of man is changed, there is no hope of happiness for him.

The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 1968 Introduction to Christianity , “Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the nonbeliever is troubled by doubts about his unbelief.” Dorothy, too, understood doubt as the common table across which the agnostic and the committed Christian could sit, share a meal, and have a conversation. If you read only one thing during Holy Week, and especially on Good Friday, let it be this letter.

Recent and Upcoming Guild Events:

This Friday will mark one month since we formally dedicated the Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism at Manhattan College! The official opening of the Dorothy Day Center was the culmination of years of labor and organizing to create a space where students and other interested visitors could learn more about Dorothy’s life and her living legacy of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, activism, and hospitality.

The Good Newsroom released a video with some clips from the dedication, which includes Cardinal Dolan’s remarks and a brief interview with Dr. Kevin Ahern. As Cardinal Dolan noted, the timing of the dedication during the Lenten season was particularly significant. The three traditional pillars of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and as the Cardinal said, “Dorothy did them all in spades– a woman of intense, passionate prayer, a woman of sacrifice and self-denial, and a woman who literally poured herself out in sacrificial love and service for others.”

Be sure to also check out our Facebook page for more photos of the event! Afterwards, visitors had the opportunity to tour the exhibit of artifacts from Dorothy’s life, including her iconic sunhat, which she wore at her final arrest, her favorite books, and personal cards and letters she received and sent to friends and relatives. If you weren’t able to attend the dedication last month, you can read some reflections from Manhattan College community members who have been substantially involved in the Catholic Worker movement and Dorothy’s canonization cause in The Quadrangle , or listen to this recent episode of the JustLove podcast , featuring an conversation with Tom Dobbins and Kevin Ahern. We look forward to welcoming you to the Center the next time you are in New York!

Our Lenten book group has been having a great time reading and discussing Dorothy’s The Long Loneliness on Sunday evenings this month, guided by the historical expertise of Dr. Anne Klejment. The lively conversations have been both intellectually stimulating and spiritually rich, and Dr. Klejment and I have really appreciated the range of perspectives and insights that this multigenerational and ecumenical group has brought forward. We will meet one more time on the evening of Palm Sunday, March 24th, at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central , and we’d love to have you join us, even if it’s your first time. Sign up here to receive the discussion questions and zoom link for Sunday’s meeting.

Looking ahead to the Easter season, we’re excited to welcome you to the Dorothy Day Guild’s next online event, “Art, Hospitality, and Activism: The Next Generation of Artists in the Catholic Worker Movement.” This webinar, which takes place on Tuesday, April 9th, at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central , will feature a conversation with visual artists Sarah Fuller of Los Angeles, Becky McIntyre of Philadelphia, and Rachel Mills, of South Bend. All of these artists have contributed images to various Catholic Worker publications– many of you likely have a few of their prints hanging up in your homes or offices! To receive the zoom invitation for this event and join an exciting conversation about creativity, the works of mercy, the printmaking tradition in the Catholic Worker movement, and the intersection of art, hospitality, and activism, sign up using this form .

Finally, as we mentioned in our last missive, the Center at Mariandale in Ossining, NY, is hosting a conference entitled “Revolution of the Heart: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day,” on Saturday, April 13th from 9:30-4:00 pm. The conference will feature Guild advisory committee members Martha Hennessy and Robert Ellsberg as guest speakers and is co-sponsored by our friends at Manhattan College. Although the conference is primarily geared toward college students (and there is a special student registration rate of only $20.00 for the day, which includes lunch!), all are welcome to come and explore questions such as “How does Dorothy’s radical spirituality – grounded in volunteer poverty, non-violence, eucharistic devotion, and activism – speak to people of this day and age?” and “How might Dorothy be a wisdom figure in the contemporary world which is often deemed as secular, materialistic, and techno-centered?” Register as a student or community member here .

Service and Learning Opportunities:

Speaking of students, we know that many college and graduate students are currently making plans for the summer or for post-graduation. We wanted to alert you to a few different opportunities for those who are interested in deepening their commitment to learning about and living out Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty.

In Cincinnati, the Lydia’s House community is accepting applications for their Dorothy Day Fellowship Program . St. Lydia’s house offers hospitality and accompaniment to young, single mothers in the Cincinnati area, and their two-year fellowship program is a great introduction for those interested in activism, social work, communal living, and maternal and child health as well as those who are interested in connecting with the wider Catholic Worker and Christian social justice network in the United States. Fellows at Lydia’s House can be either women or married couples, whose work will include birth accompaniment, benefits navigation, transportation, deep listening, meal planning, food preparation, religious education and child enrichment, thus living out the corporal works of mercy in a setting of encounter and solidarity with families experiencing homelessness. Lydia’s House Fellows live a life of prayer and contemplation coupled with action and advocacy. To become either a maternal and early childhood advocacy fellow or a community ministry fellow, fill out this application .

Many Catholic Worker communities, including my own here in South Bend, are also accepting summer volunteers. If you or someone you know is between semesters, between careers, or just looking for a meaningful way to participate in the work to which Dorothy devoted her life, don’t hesitate to reach out to your local Catholic Worker house .

Here at the Dorothy Day Guild, we are also looking for undergraduate and graduate interns for the summer and/or fall semester. Dorothy Day Guild interns have the opportunity to pursue projects related to their majors or areas of interest as well as assist with the day-to-day operations of the Guild, which can include clerical duties, social media management, membership outreach, website development, event planning, and academic research focused on Dorothy’s ongoing influence and impact on contemporary Catholic social action.

Previous interns have written for our newsletter, worked on the development of a collection of new work on Dorothy for the Manhattan College library, consulted on designing our website, hosted academic panels and webinars, cataloged personal items from Dorothy’s room at the Catholic Worker for archival purposes, launched new social media campaigns, participated in board meetings, and developed educational and promotional materials to introduce members of the public to Dorothy’s legacy of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty.

If you are interested in social justice, faith-based activism, solidarity, and nonviolence as a practical response to conflict and would like to receive academic credit for your work on a contemporary canonization cause, we encourage you to contact us ! Interns will have the option to work remotely or in-person at the Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism on the campus of Manhattan College.

We also wanted to pass along a recent article by our friend Ralph Moore over at Black Catholic Messenger, “Canonization Requires Miracles: The Saintly Six Lived Them.” Ralph has been a tireless advocate for the causes of the “Saintly Six,” the Black American Catholics who currently have active canonization causes open. Ralph’s article provides a helpful explanation of what officially constitutes a miracle in a canonization process and why the Vatican requires these for a candidate’s cause to progress, but also challenges this definition, understanding the re-unification of a Church divided by anti-Black racism to be itself a miraculous process. The Saintly Six, who now include four Venerables and two Servants of God “answered to a higher calling than the American legal system and ungodly Church practices. They accepted God’s work as their own and brought healing to a once-incurable disease,” Ralph writes. “Healing the sinful sickness of racism in America is the miracle wrought by these six.”

Please continue to pray for all of those working on canonization causes for the Saintly Six, all of whose witnesses and apostolates remain at the heart of the Gospel. If you aren’t familiar with the stories of these “yet uncanonized” saints, Noel Bradley, a parishioner at St. Pius X in the diocese of Nashville, has created a series of short videos which make an excellent introduction to each candidate’s life of heroic virtue.

Prayer requests:

We have received quite a few renewed requests for prayer, and in these last days of the Lenten season, all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild invite you to bring these needs before God through Dorothy’s intercession.

Please remember in your prayers Debbi, who is dealing with ongoing and very serious health concerns. Her friend Cathie has mobilized their parish to pray for a miraculous recovery and for Debbi’s emotional and spiritual health during a time of physical illness and suffering and has reached out to the Guild to request your prayers as well. Please pray for Debbi’s well-being, for a complete resolution of her illness, and for the comfort of all of her loved ones. We have also been asked to pray for another friend of the Catholic Worker movement, S. who has requested to remain anonymous, but who is suffering from a terminal illness. Please ask Dorothy’s intercession for his healing, and for a cure for his disease to be developed.

Fr. Stephen Arabadjis, who is currently on sabbatical from his pastoral duties, has requested the Guild’s prayers during this time of rest and spiritual rejuvenation. He has particularly requested that friends and members of the Guild who have a practice of praying the rosary offer those prayers on his behalf. The rosary was one of Dorothy’s favorite devotions, and she prayed it daily whenever possible, so please consider inviting Dorothy to pray a decade alongside you and asking her to bring Fr. Stephen’s needs to God.

In New Mexico, Judy Clancy has requested prayers in support of a new endeavor to build a sewing factory which will employ and promote the work of Navajo women textile artists at the San Juan College Business Center in Farmington, which adjoins the Navajo Nation. This endeavor recently received a generous donation of sewing machines from the college, but they are in need of additional funding. Thanks to her long association with Peter Maurin, Ade Bethune, and her daughter Tamar, Dorothy developed a deep respect for and interest in craftwork and small industries and was always a staunch ally of workers in their struggle for dignified employment, so we know this project is close to her heart. Judy has committed the sewing factory to Dorothy’s care, so please continue to petition God to enable these talented artisans to preserve and pass on their cultural heritage as well as earn a living wage to support their families.

Finally, we have been overjoyed to hear of a new Catholic Worker community which was recently established on Staten Island with a particular charism to serve young people who have aged out of the foster care system. It is so exciting to hear how Dorothy’s example of courageous faith and love for the poor is still inspiring new and creative projects in a place she loved so much during her lifetime. The community’s founder, Debbie Sucich, has requested the Guild’s continued prayerful support for the growth of their house of hospitality and for the needs of their extended community. If you are in the New York City area, please visit their website to find out more about how you can participate in the wonderful work this community is undertaking together.

A few words from Dorothy:

Normally, we close this letter with a short selection from Dorothy’s writings; however, in the spirit of St. Patrick’s day (a month-long celebration in South Bend, and perhaps in your town or city as well!) and to honor the Irish monastic heritage which heavily influenced Peter Maurin’s program for “building a new society in the shell of the old,” we’d like to share a 1973 interview from Ireland’s RTÉ. In this interview with presenter Nodlaig McCarthy, Dorothy credits her conversion to her reading of St. Augustine and James Joyce, and speaks about the freedom, but also the rigor presented by the Gospels. In the last judgment, she says, God will ask if we attended to “the bodily and physical needs of those around us. And the works of war in the present day are the very opposite of this. The works of war destroy the food, destroy the homes. Everything opposite of what our Lord asks. So that makes us, of course, very ardent pacifists.”

At the time of this interview Dorothy only knew of about thirty Catholic Worker communities, although she does say that more keep springing up, and they do, to this day! Today, there are more than five times that many communities, spread across five continents. It is so wonderful to hear of the many ways you are all bringing Dorothy’s legacy of pacifism, her commitment to voluntary poverty, and her spirit and practice of hospitality to life in new ways all these years later.

We wish you a peaceful Lent, a blessed Triduum, and the joy of the resurrection at Easter.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Happy Feast of St. Joseph!

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:44:09 GMT

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Reading Recommendations for March:

We’re excited to share a few reading recommendations to take with you in these last days of our Lenten journey. First, given that today is St. Joseph’s feast day, we would like to share Dr. Anne Klejment’s article, " Dorothy Day's Socially Engaged Devotion to St. Joseph ." This is an excellent exploration of Dorothy’s relationship with one of her favorite saints, and the unique spirituality Dorothy developed, blending practices from labor activism with popular expressions of Catholic piety. In the early years of the Catholic Worker, Dorothy and other members of her community spent many hours “picketing St. Joseph,” and he never failed to provide the necessary support for the fledgling movement. Of St. Joseph, Dr. Klejment writes,

"As protector and provider, the saint cared for the poor, yes, but also for activists who were on picket lines supporting workers’ rights, creating a farming and craft-oriented community of mutual care, challenging racial injustice and Nazism, demonstrating a robust program of social justice to communists, or testifying before Congress against a military draft bill… Day elevated St. Joseph to a new role: patron of radical Christian activists."

Many thanks to Dr. Klejment and to the editors at U.S. Catholic Historian for granting permission to share this article, and happy feast day to all those whom Dorothy placed under St. Joseph’s watchful care!

"needed to speak and write to call companions to a deeper following of Christ, especially the poor Christ. They wrestled with tough questions, such as the self-immolation of Roger LaPorte , to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam, considering whether to remain a monk or leave to lead the peace movement or other groups, etc.

What helped them both persevere was the witness of others in a centuries-old commitment to follow the poor man of Nazareth and meet the poor of the world on their own turf and in their own words."

"I felt this despair when I lay in jail for fifteen days (after demonstrating for the rights of political prisoners), contemplating the fundamental misery of human existence, a misery which would remain even if social justice were achieved and a state of Utopia prevailed. For you cannot pace the floor of a barred cell, or lie on your back on a hard cot watching a gleam of sunlight travel slowly, oh, so slowly, across the room, without coming to the realization that until the heart and soul of man is changed, there is no hope of happiness for him."

Recent and Upcoming Guild Events:

The celebration on February 22nd featured a blessing by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a reading from Dorothy’s writings by her granddaughter, Guild advisory board member Martha Hennessy, and hymns by the Manhattan College music ministry. After the dedication, our co-chair Dr. Kevin Ahern moderated a panel discussion by Manhattan College current students and alumni Mark Colville ’85, founder of the Amistad Catholic Worker community in New Haven, Connecticut; Thomas Dobbins ’86, director of justice and peace at Catholic Charities New York; Alannah Boyle ’18, former intern for the Dorothy Day Guild; and Rebecca Kranich ’24, former intern for the Dorothy Day Guild, all of whom spoke on how Dorothy’s lived witness has influenced their own lives and work. We have been so moved by how each of these men and women have brought Dorothy’s values and commitments to bear on contemporary issues of armed conflict, genocide, homelessness, and global poverty. The Good Newsroom released a video with some clips from the dedication, which includes Cardinal Dolan’s remarks and a brief interview with Dr. Kevin Ahern. As Cardinal Dolan noted, the timing of the dedication during the Lenten season was particularly significant. The three traditional pillars of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and as the Cardinal said, “Dorothy did them all in spades– a woman of intense, passionate prayer, a woman of sacrifice and self-denial, and a woman who literally poured herself out in sacrificial love and service for others.”

Our Lenten book group has been having a great time reading and discussing Dorothy’s The Long Loneliness on Sunday evenings this month, guided by the historical expertise of Dr. Anne Klejment. The lively conversations have been both intellectually stimulating and spiritually rich, and Dr. Klejment and I have really appreciated the range of perspectives and insights that this multigenerational and ecumenical group has brought forward. We will meet one more time on the evening of Palm Sunday, March 24th, at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central, and we’d love to have you join us, even if it’s your first time. Sign up here to receive the discussion questions and zoom link for Sunday’s meeting.

Looking ahead to the Easter season, we’re excited to welcome you to the Dorothy Day Guild’s next online event, “Art, Hospitality, and Activism: The Next Generation of Artists in the Catholic Worker Movement.” This webinar, which takes place on Tuesday, April 9th, at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central, will feature a conversation with visual artists Sarah Fuller of Los Angeles, Becky McIntyre of Philadelphia, and Rachel Mills, of South Bend. All of these artists have contributed images to various Catholic Worker publications– many of you likely have a few of their prints hanging up in your homes or offices! To receive the zoom invitation for this event and join an exciting conversation about creativity, the works of mercy, the printmaking tradition in the Catholic Worker movement, and the intersection of art, hospitality, and activism, sign up using this form .

Service and Learning Opportunities:

Other Canonization Causes of Note:

We were so pleased to hear that a few different canonization causes took a step forward at the Vatican this month, with nineteen people cleared for beatification and seven elevated to the status of Venerable. One of those named Venerable is Mother Rose Hawthorne, Dorothy’s fellow New Yorker and convert to Catholicism, whose work operating hospices for cancer patients inspired Dorothy’s own ministry. Dorothy wrote about Hawthorne in several of her columns, and in the foreword to House of Hospitality n ames her as one of the “yet uncanonized” saints without whose witness she “probably would have listened, but continued to write rather than act” when faced with the challenge of her first encounters with Peter Maurin’s grand vision.

Hawthorne died in July of 1926, and is buried on the grounds of the motherhouse of the religious order she founded, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. Our co-chair Dr. Kevin Ahern visited her gravesite last week to lay flowers and bring some St. Patrick’s day treats for the nurses, who are still caring for patients at the hospice founded by Mother Rose. Congratulations to the Sisters and their colleagues on this next step towards sainthood!

Prayer requests:

In New Mexico, Judy Clancy has requested prayers in support of a new endeavor on the Navajo Nation to build a sewing factory which will employ and promote the work of Navajo women textile artists. This endeavor recently received a generous donation of sewing machines from San Juan College, but they are in need of additional funding. Thanks to her long association with Peter Maurin, Ade Bethune, and her daughter Tamar, Dorothy developed a deep respect for and interest in craftwork and small industries and was always a staunch ally of workers in their struggle for dignified employment, so we know this project is close to her heart. Judy has committed the sewing factory to Dorothy’s care, so please continue to petition God to enable these talented artisans to preserve and pass on their cultural heritage as well as earn a living wage to support their families.

A few words from Dorothy:

We wish you a peaceful Lent, a blessed Triduum, and the joy of the resurrection at Easter.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Winter wishes from the Dorothy Day Guild

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 19:32:55 GMT

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.

Website Updates:

For those of us who study and work at schools and universities, the spring semester is in full swing! As I write this missive from the library at the University of Notre Dame, there’s a happy buzz of activity around the circulation desk, and I know of at least two professors on campus who have assigned texts by Dorothy to their classes this term. At the Guild, we’ve received a number of requests for recommended book lists for high school and college courses as well as personal enrichment for those who desire to deepen their engagement with Dorothy’s life and legacy and those who are meeting her for the first time. This past week, we added a selected bibliography page to the Guild’s website with purchase and reading links and a few recommendations to start you off. We’ll continue to update this page with annotations and additional works, but we were too excited to wait any longer to share it with you. Happy reading!

We’re continuing to develop our website to offer additional resources that you can use for your own learning and formation as well as to share Dorothy’s witness with others. Last year, our wonderful Manhattan College interns developed a beautiful and informative brochure that gives a brief introduction to Dorothy’s life and the history and aims of the Dorothy Day Guild. You can view the brochure on our Guild History page and download and print copies to share with your home communities for free! Thank you, Rebecca and Joanna, for your creative work designing this brochure and sourcing the text. Our thanks go as well to our co-chair, Deirdre Cornell, for the editorial guidance and mentorship she provided to our student interns who have given so much time and talent to the work of the Dorothy Day Guild this past year!

Events (ours and others):

Our Lenten book club begins next month! We’ve updated our events page to include more information about the reading group that Anne Klejment will host to read Dorothy’s spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness over four Sunday evenings in March. We were so pleased to receive so much interest last month, but as some of you noticed, we forgot to mention that this book club will meet online! Join us from anywhere from 8-9 pm Eastern/7-8 pm Central on March 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th to discuss this modern spiritual classic, guided by Anne’s historical expertise, and sign up here to receive the reading schedule, Zoom link, and additional materials.

If you want to spend time reading The Long Loneliness in community with other seekers this spring, but Sunday nights don’t work for you, we also learned that the Spiritual Renewal Center in Syracuse, NY is hosting a Wednesday evening reading group from 4-5 pm Eastern time. You can join them online or in person at 1342 Lancaster Avenue, Syracuse, New York 13210. There is no need to RSVP, but you can call them at 315-472-6546 for further information. It’s great to see such widespread interest in Dorothy’s life and writing!

We also learned of two other events which we think you might be interested in checking out, both taking place on Saturday, April 13th (we hate to make you choose!). The Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago is hosting a Peter Maurin conference to examine the life and work of Dorothy’s beloved mentor and friend. The organizers write that Peter’s “program of action consisted of roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought, houses of hospitality where the works of mercy could be performed, and agronomic universities... These topics will be discussed in a roundtable, personalist way-- in the spirit of Peter Maurin.” The event is free and open to the public, so if you’re local to the Midwest, we hope you can attend!

For those in the Northeast, the Center at Mariandale is hosting a day-long conference entitled “Revolution of the Heart: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day” to explore questions such as “How does her radical spirituality – grounded in volunteer poverty, non-violence, eucharistic devotion, and activism – speak to people of this day and age?” and “How might she be a wisdom figure in the contemporary world which is often deemed as secular, materialistic, and techno-centered?” This conference will feature Guild advisory committee members Martha Hennessy and Robert Ellsberg as guest speakers and is co-sponsored by our friends at Manhattan College.

We hate to present you with such a tough decision, but we know both conferences will be fabulous spaces for fellowship, learning, and clarification of thought!

Prayer Requests:

Dorothy’s deep prayer life was the source of incredible graces and blessings for her friends and family, the wide network of Catholic Worker communities, and the poor in her neighborhood and beyond during her time on earth. That legacy of loving intercession has continued after her death, and we invite you to invoke Dorothy in your own prayers on behalf of your own communities. We have received a few prayer requests from friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild this month, including from our friend Mike Doyle in Tampa. Mike’s brother-in-law, Joe, is currently recovering from serious cardiac complications. Thankfully, his health is improving each day! Please pray for Joe’s continued healing and for his family and caregivers in this time.

We were also saddened to learn of Dr. Carol Berrigan’s death last month in Syracuse, NY. Carol was the wife of Jerry Berrigan and sister-in-law to Fr. Dan Berrigan and Philip Berrigan. A lifelong activist for peace and a just and inclusive education for students with disabilities, Carol leaves behind four children, five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and hundreds of former students and friends whose lives she touched through her decades of faithful witness to the heart of the Gospel. Through Dorothy’s intercession, please pray for the repose of Carol’s soul and the comfort of all those who miss her.

Dorothy was a close friend and ally of the extended Berrigan family and visited Jerry, Phil, and Dan’s mother Frida on her visit to Syracuse in 1971. A page from her diary in May of 1971 includes Carol and Jerry’s phone number, so perhaps they also hosted her in their home on that visit– many thanks to Alex Avitabile for finding this note. When I lived in Syracuse as a Jesuit volunteer, I attended St. Lucy’s parish with Jerry and Carol; it was humbling to be in the presence of such gentle, great-souled people, Learning of the long-standing friendships and the depth of solidarity which have undergirded Catholic anti-war activism since the first years of the Catholic Worker movement has been truly awe-inspiring, and my personal prayer is that Dorothy would now lend her strength to raising up and forming the next generation of peacemakers in the Church.

A few words from Dorothy:

As I considered Dorothy’s many long-standing friendships, the religious and activist networks she was part of, and the hundreds of stories that intersected with her own, it really struck me how significantly that web of relationship and solidarity extends into our own time and invites our participation. I have always loved this photograph of Dorothy seated with Coretta Scott King: an image of multiracial, spiritually-grounded love in service of the common good. Dorothy had an incredible gift for building relationships, understanding every person she met as a member or potential member of the Mystical Body of Christ. Dorothy likewise had a gift for identifying holiness in the people with whom she stood in solidarity, even those who were different from her and with whom she sometimes disagreed. In Dorothy's February 1971 column , she spoke about Angela Davis, who was at the time a young, incarcerated activist. In this column, Dorothy wrote:

Underneath a picture of Angela Davis which appeared in the “Daily World” a few weeks ago, there was a caption, “All generations shall call her blessed.” To continue to quote scripture, she has been “counted worthy to suffer dishonor” for justice sake. Angela Davis is a Communist, in this case and it is a name for vilification nowadays, though the early Christians, working for the common good became communists in a very literal sense. “Property, the more common it becomes, the more holy it becomes,” as St. Gertrude said in the middle ages.

That quotation from the Magnificat used by the Communist daily, reminded me of the Scottsboro case during the Depression, when we were all fighting the death sentences of nine black youths in the South. I used the headline on the front page of The Catholic Worker “The Scottsboro Boys are the Children of Mary,” which is the name of a pious association for youth in the Catholic Church. This caused great controversy among our readers although I explained in the body of the text that they should read in John’s Gospel how Jesus from the Cross, called out to Mary, his mother, “Behold thy son,” and to the apostle John, “Behold thy mother.” The Gospel account continues, “and from that time, the apostle took her for his own.” So we are all children of Mary.

Certainly in the light of this teaching, since Christ is our brother, Angela Davis is our sister, and we love and esteem her as such. We cannot and must not prejudge her case any more than we can the case against Fathers Phil and Dan Berrigan.

Angela Davis is a beautiful young woman, a graduate of Brandeis University, and at a time when jobs even in the academic field were scarce, risked her livelihood by openly stating her faith in the kind of social order which she thought would bring justice and a better life for her black brothers and sisters.

Dorothy, although not herself a communist, honored Angela’s dedication to the common good, and her willingness to put her individual good on the line for the sake of the poor. Dorothy likewise took a different view of nonviolent direct action than the Berrigans and other Plowshares activists, but she recognized in them an unshakable commitment to conscience and to active love for their most vulnerable neighbors.

Later in this same column, Dorothy tells us that Sister Donald Corcoran went to the Women’s House of Detention, where Dorothy herself had been incarcerated, to keep vigil on Angela’s behalf in the snow and sleet during the Christmas season. Sister Donald currently serves as a member of our advisory committee from her monastery in Windsor, New York, and Angela Davis, who celebrated her 8oth birthday last month, has continued her activist work from her home in California. These women and men, activists and peacemakers, are not part of the past, but the present. Their lives intersected with Dorothy’s and with each other’s, making a web of solidarity which reaches across the country and across the globe, back and forth through the generations. If you are reading this letter, you are part of that web, too. Our prayer at the Guild is that you continue to be drawn more deeply into relationships of committed love and solidarity, and that God’s grace sustains you as you live out your own vocation to care for and tend the common good.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Happy New Year!

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 02:44:19 GMT

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!

January is, of course, a time of looking both forward and backwards, at where we have been, and where we are going. This past year has been so full! Keep an eye out for our January issue of “In Our Time” for our Guild year-end report for 2023. Our steering committee also met on December 30th to plan the next year of Guild events and activities. We’re excited to share more with you soon as we announce upcoming events and opportunities to learn more about Dorothy’s life and work and to share her legacy with others!

Upcoming Events:

Is your New Year’s resolution to read more good books in 2024? We had such a good time last fall with our Thérèse reading group that we’ve decided to offer another Dorothy book club for the spring semester! Historian and longtime friend of the Guild, Anne Klejment, has graciously agreed to host a Lenten book club where we will read Dorothy’s spiritual autobiography, The Long Loneliness, (available for purchase here ) together over four sessions.

Our spring reading group will meet Sunday evenings at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central, beginning on March 3rd, and continuing March 10th, March 17th, and finishing on Palm Sunday, March 24th. Sign up using this form to receive the reading schedule and additional materials. Anne is the author of a number of academic studies on the Catholic Worker movement and on Dorothy’s influence on American Catholicism, and we’re so excited for her to bring her expertise to this classic text!

We also received news that Kristi Pfister’s installation Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day, has been extended at Manhattan College and will remain on display through March 24th, 2024!

Recommendations for January:

Dorothy continues to inspire fresh reflections on moral theology, political theory, and ecclesial history more than forty years after her death. In the enormous outpouring of articles that came out in November, we missed this piece from author Kathryn Jean Lopez linking Dorothy with her fellow New Yorker and convert to Catholicism, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton through their shared love of the sacraments and their maternity. We’re excited to share this piece with you in honor of St. Elizabeth’s feast day, which takes place this week on January 4th! Our co-chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern has said many times how badly the Church needs more saints who have changed diapers; it’s perhaps at Christmas that we are most ready to see the holiness hidden in the constant labor of tending to small children. For those of you who have spent long days and nights over the past few weeks cooking, cleaning, and making the holidays special for your families, know that there are saints who see and understand what an enormous gift you have offered. Both Dorothy and St. Elizabeth understood the challenges of parenting without a spouse, but beyond raising their own children, both these holy women extended that love and compassion to the poorest and most marginalized in New York City, Maryland, and beyond as the mothers of movements in the Sisters of Charity and the Catholic Worker.

Speaking of New Yorkers, Dorothy, Mother Seton, and Venerable Pierre Toussaint are all featured in a new graphic novel-style history of the Archdiocese of New York, entitled Building the Kingdom . The book tells the story of the Catholic Church in New York through the narratives of the holy men and women whose vocations to prayer and service began or flowered in this region. Dorothy’s story is spread across pages 36 and 37. The publisher isn’t currently selling individual copies, but if you would like to purchase a case of fourteen copies for your parish or school for classroom use or a fundraiser, you can use this form to place your order.

The season of Advent is traditionally a time of reflection and spiritual preparation, but we certainly can continue growing throughout the Christmas season and into Ordinary Time! We appreciated David Carlson’s short piece published in Indiana’s Daily Journal on Dorothy’s witness to the primacy of conscience as our guide and teacher as we persevere in the lifelong task of discerning our vocation. “The only way to become the whole person that God has in mind for us, Day taught, is to make our decisions on the basis of consciences,” David writes. “God isn’t the voice of our egos, and God is not the voice of our fears. God’s voice is heard within the conscience — if we learn how to listen to it.”

In many wealthy societies, it can be so easy for us to get caught up in the conflicting demands on our time and attention at this time of year. Newsweek published a short opinion piece by Stephen Adubato which considers Dorothy’s economic philosophy as a mode of engagement with the world that is capable of transcending the neo-liberal project and our individualistic, atomistic attitudes towards our neighbors. If we truly want to enter into the Christmas spirit, Stephen suggests that

“We can start by looking at the example set by Dorothy Day and the followers, past and present, of her Catholic Worker Movement , for whom the Christmas spirit is neither sentimental nor polemical. As their works of charity and hospitality demonstrate, the Christmas spirit is tangible, carnal—an "event" as concrete and dynamic as the first Christmas two millennia ago in Bethlehem. By entering the world as a helpless baby in a manger, surrounded by the support of a humble yet loving community, God revealed through the first Christmas that all human beings are designed to live in communion with him and with our neighbors.”

David Mills also published a seasonal reflection for National Catholic Register this weekend, "Dorothy Day on the True Joys of Christmas." David’s selections from the places in Dorothy’s diaries, books, and newspaper columns where she speaks of Christmas offers us an image of Dorothy’s devotion to the Incarnation of Jesus as a consistent touchpoint for her hospitality and activism and a theme to which she continually returned over the years in her spiritual writing.

Finally, Guild advisory committee member Martha Hennessy spoke with researcher and longtime friend of the Catholic Worker, Anna Blackman, in a joint interview exploring the Worker movement in the United States and Europe at the London Catholic Worker house on December 16th as part of their gathering celebrating the Worker’s 90th anniversary. Martha answered a few questions for Independent Catholic News in advance of the event to consider how Dorothy’s legacy can continue to challenge us in the twenty-first century. Those of you who were present for the Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on Dorothy’s anniversary of death back in November will be especially interested to hear how Martha thinks about the difference between her grandmother’s approach to nuclear abolition and the approach taken by the Berrigans and other Ploughshares activists, and what that means for the peace movement going forward. Dorothy Day, pray for us!

Prayer Requests:

In the past several weeks, a number of friends and members of the Guild have reached out to us requesting prayer through Dorothy’s intercession. Many of the needs mentioned have been for physical and psychological healing and for help discerning what God was asking of the petitioner. One of our friends, Donna from New York, has requested that we pray for her health, as she is dealing with some significant symptoms and is hoping to be able to avoid surgery. Brendan from Washington has also requested prayer for healing and support as he works to discern his vocation and serve those in need. Over the next month, please keep Donna, Brendan, and these other families and individuals close to you in prayer, perhaps taking a few minutes each evening to sit with an image of Dorothy and ask her to bring these requests for healing and for assistance living into vocations of service before God.

Prayer is one of the central purposes of our Guild. We have prayer cards available at no charge, which feature an image of Dorothy and a sample petitionary prayer that you can use to make these requests on behalf of our friends and members. If you would like to request prayer cards for yourself or a loved one, please contact us , and please reach out if there is a particular way we can be praying for you and your community.

A few words from Dorothy:

The liturgical season of Christmas continues through the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which we’ll celebrate on January 8th this year (but if you want to continue celebrating until the feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2nd, we won’t tell anyone!), so we’d like to share one of Dorothy’s most famous Christmas reflections. You can read “Room for Christ,” originally published in the December 1945 issue of The Catholic Worker in full here

It is no use to say that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.

But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ…

In Christ’s human life there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd.

The shepherds did it, their hurrying to the crib atoned for the people who would flee from Christ.

The wise men did it; their journey across the world made up for those who refused to stir one hand’s breadth from the routine of their lives to go to Christ. Even the gifts that the wise men brought have in themselves an obscure recompense and atonement for what would follow later in this Child’s life. For they brought gold, the king’s emblem, to make up for the crown of thorns that He would wear; they offered incense, the symbol of praise, to make up for the mockery and the spitting; they gave Him myrrh, to heal and soothe, and He was wounded from head to foot and no one bathed his wounds. The women at the foot of the cross did it too, making up for the crowd who stood by and sneered.

We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in everyone we come in contact with.

Every time I read this piece, I’m reminded anew of the timeliness of the Incarnation. We can make room for Christ in our homes, in our hearts, and in our world today. We are not too late, nor do we have to wait for Christ to come again to offer Him our hospitality. Please join us in praying along with Pope Francis for the many families and individuals around the world who, like Mary and Joseph and their baby, are without adequate shelter, safety, and medical care this winter. Let’s especially pray through Dorothy’s intercession for peace in Palestine, the homeland of the Holy Family. We hope that in this Christmas season, you have found new ways to welcome Christ in friends and strangers, and that in turn, someone has offered warmth and hospitality to you.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Canonization: What comes next?

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 16:18:17 GMT

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.

Anniversary of Dorothy’s death:

First, however, we had such a nice time celebrating Dorothy’s forty-third anniversary of death last week and hearing about the many commemorations large and small that took place in parishes and Catholic Worker houses around the United States. We were excited to see a reflection on Dorothy at the morning prayer service at St. Paschal Baylon school and parish in Highland Heights, Ohio on November 29th, which takes place from 12:37-18:57 in their livestream. These little moments of prayer and catechesis are amazing opportunities to share Dorothy’s legacy, especially for those of you who work with young people. If you organize a similar liturgy, service event, or use Dorothy’s story in a lesson plan for a theology, CCD, or RCIA class, please don’t hesitate to contact us and request free prayer cards and other materials you can share with your group.

The Guild co-sponsored a mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons at the Church of Our Savior in New York City on Dorothy’s anniversary. We were so grateful that Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe was able to join us and offer a homily, “The Third Way Towards Nuclear Weapons Abolition,” in conjunction with the Second Meeting of the State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. On the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Archbishop Wester visited Japan as part of a peace pilgrimage, which we wrote about over the summer .

In his remarks last week, Archbishop Wester reminded us that “In 1965, at the height of the Cold War, Dorothy Day denounced the ‘idea of arms being used as deterrents, to establish a balance of terror.’ She supported the Second Vatican Council when it taught that nuclear warfare was incompatible with the then-Catholic theory of just war.” Our understanding of that incompatibility has only grown in recent years. His Excellency continued, “I repeat, nuclear war is a crime against God, man, woman and all living things. And now Pope Francis has moved us radically even beyond that, declaring that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is deeply immoral.” Archbishop Wester’s full homily is available on YouTube and he has graciously provided us with his text and the statement signed December 1st by leaders of four dioceses in the United States and Japan in support of the abolition of nuclear weapons. Earlier this week, the National Catholic Reporter published “Nuclear disarmament a ‘critical pro-life issue,’ warns Archbishop Wester,” by Steven Schwankert, which provides a succinct timeline of Archbishop Wester’s remarks and the movement for nuclear disarmament’s history. Enormous thanks from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild go out to those who helped organize this timely and meaningful celebration and to all of you who continue this necessary work in defense of life. Please join us in continuing to ask Dorothy’s intercession as we work to rid the world of nuclear weapons!

New articles:

We have really appreciated the various articles and reflections on Dorothy that were published over the course of November and wanted to direct your attention to two that came out right on and just before her anniversary. Give Us This Day's daily reflection for November 29th featured Dorothy, as did Aleteia on November 28th, in “Dorothy’s last public appearance was at a Eucharistic Congress.” It’s been great to see the way that Dorothy’s witness has inspired new conversations about the Blessed Sacrament during the United States’ Eucharistic revival! As the article notes, the last Eucharistic Congress in the US took place in Philadelphia, and Dorothy was scheduled to speak on August 6th, the anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima. Dorothy used her remarks to remind her audience of the significance of that anniversary and point out that “Our Creator gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain our life. But we have the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude.” A military mass was scheduled for the same day, to which Dorothy remarked that those in charge of planning liturgies had neglected the overwhelming destruction of nuclear war. Dorothy suggested that the most appropriate way to approach the celebration of Eucharist on this day was to ‘regard that military Mass, and all our Masses today, as an act of penance, begging God to forgive us.'”

We know that several other good pieces were published in Catholic media last month, including a reflection on Dorothy’s birthday in Magnificat, so if you find any that we missed, please send them our way!

Steps Towards Sainthood:

Learning that Monsignor Tagliaferri had been appointed by the Dicastery to work on Dorothy’s cause last month was the best birthday and anniversary gift we could have asked for! As we move through the various stages on this journey, all of us here at the Guild are learning more and more about how the process of canonization works at the Vatican, and we’d like to share more about where we are now, and what we hope will come next in Dorothy’s process.

Briefly, canonization in the contemporary Catholic Church is a multi-stage process, which begins with the examination of the life of a candidate for sainthood, continues with that person’s beatification, and ends with the candidate’s canonization, when he or she is officially acknowledged to be a saint in heaven, praying for us. The USCCB prepared a helpful document that provides a clear, step-by-step roadmap of the process, with a number of key definitions, so if you’re confused, check it out!

Our Guild has benefited from years of guidance and support from our postulator in Rome, Dr. Waldery Hilgeman, and he graciously shared a lot of background information on this stage in the process when he met with our steering committee last month. Two years ago, on December 8th, 2021, the diocesan phase of the canonization process formally concluded when the boxes of material evidencing Dorothy’s holiness were sealed at a celebratory mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and sent to the Vatican. Over the summer, we learned that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints officials had completed the first review of the materials we sent them and had given their stamp of approval on the work completed during the diocesan phase of the canonization process– a significant hurdle to pass, indicating that the transcriptions, testimonies, and eye-witness interviews had all been conducted according to the juridical norms of the Dicastery. Since then, we have been eagerly awaiting news that the relator, the person appointed by the Dicastery to provide a thorough and objective report on the life, virtues, and reputation of holiness of the individual being considered for canonization, has been appointed.

The Role of the Relator:

The relator has a few key duties, all of which contribute to ensuring that the process of canonization is thorough, fair, and in accordance with the established procedures of the Dicastery. His primary work is in the compilation of the positio, which is a comprehensive, detailed account of Dorothy’s life, virtues and holiness. As our postulator, Dr. Hilgeman and his team will continue to work closely with Monsignor Tagliaferri in the preparation of the positio. This document serves as the basis for further discussion and evaluation with the larger body of the Dicastery. In order to put this document together, the relator is responsible for analyzing the results of the diocesan inquiry, which we concluded two years ago when we sent our boxes of evidence to Rome. Right now, this is what Monsignor Tagliaferri is working on for our cause.

During our advisory committee meeting in June, Dr. Hilgeman shared with us some of his hopes for the type of person who would be appointed as our relator for Dorothy’s process. Dr. Hilgeman told us that finding the right person for the job sometimes takes months because the saints are so diverse in their particular expressions of sanctity, their historical contexts, and their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The relator’s contribution to this stage of the canonization process is in ensuring the accuracy of the factual narrative of the candidate’s life and accuracy in the historical details of the candidate’s time and place. In our case, we needed a relator who was able to write and conduct research in English, and who was familiar with the nuances of American culture and the social, economic, and political landscape of the mid-twentieth century. In short, we needed someone who would understand Dorothy, and as you know, she is not an easy figure to categorize! We are so pleased with the selection of Monsignor Tagliaferri, who has worked on a number of other American sainthood causes that are dear to many of our members, including two of the Saintly Six Black American “Saints in Waiting,” Venerable Augustus Tolton and Servant of God Julia Greeley. All of us at the Guild feel that Dorothy’s cause is in capable and devoted hands.

Much of the relator’s work involves research, so if necessary he may request further collection of historical documents, testimonies and any other relevant evidence. Monsignor Tagliaferri will also work closely with theologians, historians, and other experts to ensure that the positio is accurate, thorough, and in accordance with the theological and canonical requirements for canonization.

As a journalist whose career spanned six decades and a lifelong diarist, Dorothy’s body of written work is extensive, and because of this, the compilation of her positio may take longer than that of a less-literary saint. Many of us who are eager for her canonization feel blessed by the level of insight that this quantity of writing provides us into her life and legacy while occasionally wishing that she had been briefer in print! Eventually, upon completion, Monsignor Tagliferri will present Dorothy’s positio to the theological and historical consultors and the members of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, and make a clear and reasoned case for her canonization.

Monsignor Tagliaferri will participate in the discussions and deliberations of the Congregation, offering insights and responses to questions raised by other members and giving his recommendation for her beatification and eventual canonization. Once the positio has been accepted by the Dicastery, Pope Francis may declare Dorothy “Venerable,” the next official stage in the canonization process.

Collaboration with our Postulator:

As the postulator for Dorothy’s cause, Dr. Hilgeman is our advocate in Rome. We’ve used the phrase “canonization process” in Guild newsletters and publications; declaring someone to be a saint is a ‘process' in the legal sense of the word. Dr. Hilgeman is a canon lawyer, and his close collaboration with Monsignor Tagliaferri ensures the entire process aligns with the established legal and canonical requirements for beatification and eventually canonization. While the relator’s role is focused on historical and factual details of the candidate’s life, Dr. Hilgeman’s task is to present a compelling case for Dorothy’s sanctity, often focusing on the theological and pastoral dimensions of her witness to the Gospel. Throughout this stage of the canonization process, Dr. Hilgeman and Monsignor Tagliaferri will collaborate on research using the evidence gathered during the diocesan phase. As our advocate, Dr. Hilgeman will also work closely with the Dorothy Day Guild, gathering accounts of the widespread devotion to Dorothy among various Catholic communities in the United States and globally, as well as any accounts of special graces and favors you may have received while praying through Dorothy’s intercession. Waldery will continue to engage with the theologians, historians, doctors, and other experts who are charged with evaluating Dorothy’s case in order to provide a well-rounded perspective on her life, virtues, and reputation for holiness and will stay in close contact with the Dicastery, offering support and clarification to those who will be in charge of making recommendations on Dorothy’s cause in the future.

What Comes Next?

While we don’t know exactly how long it will take for Monsignor Tagliaferri, Dr. Hilgeman, and their team to complete the positio, the stage of the canonization process that we are in now, from the beginning of the Roman phase of the cause to the moment where the candidate is declared Venerable, typically takes between two and five years. Since the Roman phase began when the evidence of Dorothy’s sanctity was delivered to the Vatican two years ago, we hope that this moment is coming within the next three years. Once the positio has been officially submitted to the Dicastery, it undergoes an examination by nine theologians who vote on whether or not Dorothy lived a heroic life. According to the USCCB, “If the majority of the theologians are in favor, the cause is passed on for examination by cardinals and bishops who are members of the [Dicastery].” If these cardinals and bishops vote yes, the head of the Dicastery presents the results to Pope Francis, who can then give his approval and authorize the Dicastery to draft a decree declaring Dorothy Venerable.

Here’s how you can help: keep praying! Many thanks to those who have joined us in our novena , which began on the anniversary of Dorothy’s death on November 29th, and concluded today. We need your prayers at this stage of the cause more than ever. Pray for Dorothy’s canonization, and especially pray through her intercession, asking her to bring your needs and the needs of our world to Christ. It is a HUGE help to Dr. Hilgeman, Monsignor Tagliaferri, and their team to hear about any special graces or favors you receive by praying with Dorothy. We did in fact receive a particular request from a friend of the Guild this morning, asking for prayers for Shelly, a relative who lives in Minnesota, and who deals with a debilitating chronic illness for which doctors have so far been unable to find treatment. Please join us in praying for healing and wisdom for Shelly and her family. If you have similar requests that you would like to share with our Guild network, please let us know how we can best be praying for you.

Many, many of you have reported receiving spiritual assistance and increased faith or other forms of help such as finding good employment and restoring broken relationships when you have prayed to Dorothy. You can share those stories with the Guild on our website. It is out of these reports of graces and favors received that we hope that eventually a miracle will be discovered, opening the way for Dorothy’s beatification.

A few words from Dorothy:

Today, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, marks the anniversary of the day in 1932 that Dorothy prayed to find her vocation. After covering the hunger march, a Communist-organized demonstration in support of justice for the poor and working classes during the depths of the Great Depression, Dorothy made her way to the national shrine (now the national cathedral) and asked God to help her use her gifts as an organizer and movement journalist to serve her brothers and sisters. Peter Maurin was the living answer to that prayer, and from that meeting, the Catholic Worker movement was born. In The Long Loneliness , Dorothy wrote:

“The years have passed, and most of the legislation called for by those workers is on the books now. I wonder how many realize just how much they owe the hunger marchers, who endured fast and cold, who were like the Son of Man, when He said, ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’

When the demonstration was over and I had finished writing my story, I went to the national shrine at the Catholic University on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. There I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.”

My life has been irrevocably changed as a result of Dorothy’s prayer ninety-one years ago today, and I know this is true for many of you as well. Today, let’s give thanks to God together for Dorothy’s life and witness and pray that she will continue to help us offer our gifts for the needs of the poor and to discover our own paths towards holiness!

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy's Anniversary: Mass and a BIG canonization update!

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:57:43 GMT

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Greetings in these last days of Ordinary Time! We hope that you all had a blessed Feast of Christ the King on Sunday, and for our American readers, a very happy Thanksgiving. November is a special month for the Dorothy Day Guild, marking the anniversaries of both Dorothy’s birth in 1897 and her death in 1980. On Dorothy’s birthday, November 8th, we were delighted to announce the launch of our new website , which features increased accessibility, a complete archive of the Guild’s past events and publications, and more. Thank you so much for the kind messages we’ve received in regards to the new site! If you missed the letter we sent out for Dorothy’s birthday, you can read it here as part of our new blog.

In preparation for Dorothy’s anniversary of death on Wednesday, we have a lot to share with you, including a major update on Dorothy’s canonization cause! We just couldn’t keep this under our hats for another month, so keep reading, but first, we wanted to remind you of our final in-person event for the year:

Upcoming Events and Opportunities:

Wednesday, November 29th marks the 43rd anniversary of Dorothy’s death in 1980. To mark this date, which we hope will someday be Dorothy’s feast day on the universal calendar of the Church, the Dorothy Day Guild is co-sponsoring a Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons at the Church of Our Savior (59 Park Avenue, New York, NY) at 6:00 pm. We are so excited to welcome Archbishop John Wester, of Santa Fe, who will offer the homily and concelebrate with Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, of Catholic Charities of New York. We hope that many of you will be able to join us for mass, and for the reception which will follow. Please RSVP using this form if you haven’t already done so. For those who aren’t able to attend, a number of Catholic Worker communities, including Maryhouse in New York, and St. Peter Claver House in South Bend, will also be celebrating mass that evening, so feel free to check with your local CW house and see if there are any anniversary celebrations to join. Wherever you are, let’s be united in prayer on Wednesday for a world free from nuclear weapons and safe from the threat of nuclear war!

Beginning on Wednesday, we also invite you to pray a novena with us . As Dorothy wrote in The Long Loneliness, “Every Catholic faced with a great need starts a novena.” A novena is a prayer practice which takes place over nine days, often beginning on a saint’s feast day and asking for that saint’s intercession. When we pray a novena, we might have a specific intention in mind, or we might ask for God’s assistance and blessing in a more general way. Novenas are a beautiful spiritual practice which helps us grow in persistence, consistency, and purpose in our prayer lives. This novena begins on the anniversary of Dorothy’s death and continues through the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. We will be posting the novena prayers and reflections each day on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Our world has many great needs, and over the next week and a half we invite you to offer the needs of your family and friends, your neighbors, your nation, and our world to God through Dorothy’s intercession. Know that all of us at the Guild will be praying along with you. At the close of the novena, if you feel you have received any special grace or favor, please feel free to share them with us using the form on our website . Praying through Dorothy’s intercession is a wonderful way to grow closer to God and to the poor as well as help the cause for her canonization. We’re very grateful for your support, and it’s an honor to pray alongside you!

December will also mark the final days to experience Kristi Pfister’s installation, “Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day” in the O’Malley Library at Manhattan College in the Bronx. The show closes on December 16th, so find more details on our events page and come check it out! It’s been an incredible gift to have this stunning installation on display at the Guild’s new home throughout the fall semester. Thanks again, Kristi, for your generosity in sharing your work with all of us!

Other events:

This month marked a number of other events celebrating Dorothy’s legacy across the United States. On the west coast, Fumi Tosu, of Dandelion House Catholic Worker in Portland, Oregon gave a talk at the University of Portland for Dorothy’s birthday on November 8th. You might remember Fumi from our June issue of “In Our Time,” where he wrote about finding a liturgy of hope in the weekly rhythms of the Catholic Worker house. In his address to the students, which you can view here, on the University of Portland website, Fumi introduced his audience to the narrative of Dorothy’s life and spoke about how his community works to follow her example of gentle personalism, relationship, and community building, which recognizes the dignity and presence of God’s image in each of their guests.

In the Midwest, Lisa Wagner-Corollo presented her one-woman show, “Haunted By God: The Life of Dorothy Day” on November 15th and 16th at Christ Our Light parish in Princeton, Minnesota. Lisa has brought this show to schools, parishes, and Catholic Worker houses across the United States, as well as to the Pax Christi International Conference in Assisi, Italy, and the World Parliament of Religions in Cape Town, South Africa to rave reviews. Your parish or university could be next! To find out how you can bring this wonderful show to your community, visit t he Still Point Theatre C ollective’s page and contact Lisa.

On the east coast, Guild co-chair Kevin Ahern gave a talk on November 16th at Catholic University of America entitled “A Eucharistic Pilgrimage: Dorothy Day’s Quest for Holiness and Social Action,” and members of the Communion and Liberation movement also set up a temporary exhibit celebrating Dorothy’s life and legacy. Former Guild coordinator Jeffry Korgen also spoke at Seton Hall University on November 20th and offered students an overview of Dorothy’s life and some sneak peaks of his forthcoming graphic novel-style biography of Dorothy Day, entitled Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion. We are so excited to see this book in print and look forward to sharing updates with you as the September 2024 publication date draws closer!

If your community or organization is planning an event focused on Dorothy’s life and legacy, please let us know. We would love to help you promote it!

Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

It’s been great to see the many articles in various Catholic publications that have been published this month, and we’ve enjoyed seeing the different ways that Dorothy speaks to various corners of the Church. Particularly in this time of eucharistic revival in the United States, it’s been edifying to hear how different clergy members, theologians, and Catholic Workers have understood Dorothy’s eucharistic devotion. Bishop David. M. O’Connell of the diocese of Trenton released this short video on November 16th featuring a few of Dorothy’s most profound quotations on the sacrament as part of a series of “Eucharistic Moments.” John Cavadini of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame also published a powerful article in Commonweal on November 23rd, entitled “The Eucharist and the Poor: The Real Meaning of the Real Presence.” John has written on Dorothy before (his wife is a former member of the New York Catholic Worker community!), and we loved his explanation of what he calls “eucharistic realism.” This is a wonderful, highly readable explanation of the implications of the Real Presence. If we believe that Christ is truly present in the sacrament, then we believe and live out, as Dorothy did, the necessary corollary that “the eucharist commits us to the poor.”

We also enjoyed this November 15th article in Our Sunday Visitor by David Mills, “How Dorothy Day Learned Sainthood Comes in All Sizes,” on the love and admiration Dorothy developed for St. Thérèse of Lisieux. We know that many of you, like Dorothy, have strong devotions to St. Thérèse and might know that Dorothy wrote a biography of the Little Flower that was published in 1960 (shout-out to our October Thérèse reading group!). Thanks to David for sharing how Dorothy’s ability to see holiness everywhere was honed through her appreciation of Thérèse’s “Small Statement” sanctity. If you’re interested in learning more about Dorothy’s devotion to the Little Flower, the Guild has a mini-lecture series on Dorothy’s Thérèse posted on our YouTube channel.

Speaking of YouTube, we just added two educational webinars to our channel. “Dorothy Day and the Global Church,” is a panel which features Catholic Workers from the Netherlands, the Philippines, Australia, and France in conversation on how they have adapted Dorothy’s peace witness and practices of friendship with the poor to their own cultural contexts. It has been thrilling to see how Dorothy’s legacy has spread beyond her home in the United States. This conversation, which the Guild was very proud to co-sponsor on the 72nd anniversary of Peter Maurin’s death, originally included participants from twenty different countries! I was especially touched by panelist Henry Simonin, of Le Dorothy cafe in Paris’ assertion that Dorothy has something to say to the French Church, certainly a community that Dorothy felt very close to in life through her long friendship with Peter.

“Dorothy Day and the Radical Vocation of a Journalist,” the eighth annual Dorothy Day lecture, which the Guild co-sponsored at Manhattan College in 2022, is a phenomenally insightful and timely conversation featuring journalists Eileen Markey, Melissa Cedillo, and Guild advisory committee member Colleen Dulle. Dorothy’s work outside of the Catholic Worker and the peace movement hasn’t historically received the level of intellectual attention and analysis it warrants, and yet, as Eileen points out, Dorothy’s vocation as a journalist preceded her conversion to Catholicism and deeply informed her later efforts. Particularly in a time when journalists in conflict zones like Gaza are being targeted, we are grateful to Eileen, Melissa, and Colleen for illuminating how Dorothy understood the task of witnessing to injustice and resistance in writing, and how journalism can function as a spiritual work of mercy.

Enormous thanks to Dr. Kevin Ahern for convening these two panels! Both webinars are fully subtitled, and we especially recommend them to those of you who teach in parish and school/university contexts. Over the coming months, the Guild looks forward to building out its collection of free educational materials in various formats. If you use any of our resources in your classroom or community group, please let us know, and let us know what else you would be interested in seeing from us!

Canonization Update:

We can’t wait anymore! We have an amazing update to share with you on Dorothy’s canonization! Earlier this month, our Guild steering committee met with our postulator, Waldery Hilgeman, who gave us the fantastic news that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints has appointed a relator for our cause! Monsignor Maurizio Tagliaferri, who oversees a number of American sainthood causes, including those of Venerable Augustus Tolton and Servant of God Julia Greeley, will work closely with Dr. Hilgeman in this next phase of the inquiry into Dorothy’s life of heroic virtue. As our relator, Monsignor Tagliaferri will analyze the materials that were prepared during the diocesan phase of the canonization inquiry in order to write a positio and present it to the Dicastery for review. Once the officials of the Dicastery have made their decision, the way is clear for Pope Francis to declare Dorothy ‘Venerable’.

For me, joining the Guild staff this year has been an incredible learning experience, particularly as it relates to the official Vatican process of recognizing saints! In our December issue of “In Our Time,” we look forward to providing you with a more detailed explanation of the relator’s role in the canonization process and an outline of the next steps based on what we have learned from Dr. Hilgeman. Keep your eyes out for our “Dispatches” column next month! In the meantime, we are overjoyed to have Monsignor Tagliaferri’s expertise moving Dorothy’s sainthood cause forward– what a gift to us for Dorothy’s birthday and anniversary month!

As we enter a new stage in the canonization process, we need your support in three ways. First and foremost, your prayers fuel everything we do, both here at the Guild and in Rome. Without prayer, Dorothy’s canonization cannot move forward. Please continue to pray for those who are working on Dorothy’s cause at the Vatican and ask God to guide their work, especially in the preparation of the positio. Please also continue to pray through Dorothy’s intercession, trusting that she will bring your needs and the needs of your communities before God as she did so faithfully in her lifetime. If God reaches out to you in a special way as a result of these prayers, please let us know . These testimonials and accounts of graces, favors, and potential miracles received are vital for the canonization process.

Second, we need help spreading the word about Dorothy’s life and witness! Please share our Guild materials with your friends by passing along this email and our newsletter, and share Dorothy’s writing with those who are looking to learn more about her legacy of nonviolence and voluntary poverty. You can also help by attending a Guild event, requesting a speaker on Dorothy for your organization, sharing our website on social media, or requesting prayer cards to distribute in your communities. We’re also in need of volunteers, particularly those who are able to help with fundraising, translate Guild materials into other languages, especially Spanish, and organize educational events, so please reach out to us if you are able to offer your gifts in these and other areas.

Finally, we are in need of financial support. We would like to take this opportunity to invite each of you who have not yet become members of the Dorothy Day Guild to join the Guild today. The Guild is responsible for the daily operations of our office in New York as well as costs associated with the canonization process, and we receive regular bills from the Dicastery and our postulator. Your membership dues and small, grassroots donations are an enormous help in offsetting these costs, and it is because of you that we were able to revamp our website, publish two issues of our digital newsletter, move our office to Manhattan College, and host six completely free in-person and online events this year alone. To all of our members, thank you so much for your support.

A few words from Dorothy:

In our work at the Dorothy Day Guild, we have often referred to Dorothy as first and foremost “a woman of conscience.” Dorothy lived her life in fidelity to her conscience, the place where she understood that the Holy Spirit would speak with her and guide her, and she encouraged those close to her to do the same. The recognition of conscience as a persistent and trustworthy guide is perhaps Dorothy’s greatest contribution to the moral theology of the universal Church. During the second Vatican Council, Dorothy and a group of Catholic women from around the world prayed and fasted outside the council chambers in Rome to draw attention to the dangers of nuclear weapons and the status of conscientious objectors. It is in part due to Dorothy’s advocacy that conscientious objection as a moral possibility for lay Catholics was written into Gaudium et spes during Vatican II. This marked a major shift in the Church’s social doctrine and an early step towards privileging Gospel nonviolence as the most Christ-like response to conflict, a trend which has continued in the US Bishops’ pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace” and Pope Francis’ social encyclicals. Dorothy fearlessly examined her own conscience, asking herself if she could let go of the desire to be right, if she could be more patient, if her own purchasing habits and those of her community truly supported the common good, if they might be able to do with a little less so that others might have what they needed to survive. In her December, 1948 “On Pilgrimage” column, she reminds us of the working conditions of migrant agricultural workers in Arizona and Texas and of resource extraction in the Congo, which continues to this day. The embrace of voluntary poverty frees us from participation in these cruel systems, and helps our brothers and sisters who are trapped in these exploitative workplaces to free themselves as well. “Poverty means non-participation,” she tells us. “Poverty means not riding on rubber while horrible working conditions prevail in the rubber industry.” Advent, Dorothy reminds us, is the perfect time to engage in this examination of conscience and to wait upon God’s word. Later in the same column, she writes:

ADVENT IS a time of waiting, of expectation, of silence. Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman is so happy, so content. She lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were listening to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears that stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness with which one awaits such stirring is like nothing so much as a blanket of silence.

Be still. Did I hear something?

Be still and see that I am God.

Zundel, in Our Lady of Wisdom, has some beautiful passages on silence:

Do we understand at last that action must be born in silence, and abide in silence, and issue in silence, and that its power must be an emanation and the radiation of silence, since its sole aim is to make men capable of hearing the Word that silently reverberates in their souls?

All speech and reasoning, all eloquence and science, all methods and all psychologies, all slogans and suggestions are not worth a minute of silence in which the soul, completely open, yields itself to the embrace of the Spirit…

Behold, how small a fire, how great a forest it kindles.

As we enter this holy time of year, with the anniversary of Dorothy’s death on Wednesday, and then Advent, with its feast days and antiphons in preparation for Christ’s birth into the world, please join us in praying for peace. Let us be united in prayer on November 29th for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons and an end to our relentless preparation for war, and throughout the Advent season, please join us in praying for an end to armed conflicts in the Congo, in Sudan, in Ukraine, and especially in Palestine and Israel, in the birthplace of Jesus. In the silence and stillness of Advent, may God speak to us, and may Christ be born again into our waiting world.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy Day Guild November 2023 Missive

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 14:41:45 GMT

Dear friends,

Happy birthday to Dorothy Day! Today marks the 126th anniversary of Dorothy’s birth in Brooklyn, New York to Grace and John Day. We hope you will join us in celebrating today, and for the rest of the month leading up to Dorothy’s anniversary of death on November 29th!

We have so much to share with you today, but first, we are thrilled to announce that we have revamped our Guild website! We hope that you’ll enjoy the refreshed layout and increased accessibility to our newsletter, blog, and upcoming events that the new version of the site offers. Our site now contains a full archive of the Guild’s publications, so you’ll continue to have full access to back issues of “In Our Time” and other posts. Over the coming months, we look forward to adding additional free educational content about Dorothy’s life and legacy and other resources for you to share with your communities, so stay tuned!

Mass for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons:

The Guild was so proud to co-sponsor two recent events at Manhattan College. Kristi Pfister’s artist talk on her exhibit, “Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day” and Lincoln Rice’s lecture “Peter Maurin: The Forgotten Radical” were the perfect way to bookend the All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls holiday and kick off Dorothy’s birthday month. If you haven’t seen Kristi’s show yet, it’s on display in the O’Malley Library until December. Thank you so much, Lincoln and Kristi, for sharing your artistic and academic gifts with us!

Looking ahead to the end of the month, we invite you to join us on November 29th, the 43rd anniversary of Dorothy’s death for a celebration of Eucharist for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. As we head into the Advent season, please join us in praying for peace and especially for an end to nuclear weapons development and testing. Bishop John Wester of Santa Fe will concelebrate mass with Msgr. Kevin Sullivan at 6:00 pm on Wednesday November 29th at the Church of Our Savior (59 Park Ave in Manhattan, NY). Bishop Wester is the author of a powerful pastoral letter, “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Towards Nuclear Disarmament,” which we highly recommend as spiritual reading for this season.

After mass, we hope that you’ll join us for a reception, so please RSVP using this form , and feel free to invite your friends and family. We know that Dorothy is with us when we work to end the scourge of nuclear war– let’s bring her legacy of peacebuilding forward into the new liturgical year together!

Reading Recommendations for November:

Also published on All Souls, we have been refreshed and challenged by Iowa Catholic Worker Brian Terrell’s “Dorothy Day Inspires a New Meaning of Saint, ” a reflection on Dorothy’s expansive ability to recognize sanctity beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church. Well before Vatican II, Dorothy understood the universal call to holiness, and she understood that shared vocation of our human family to be truly universal. As Brian writes,

Proclaiming that all are called to be saints, Day was not suggesting that all are called to be good Catholics or good Christians or even to believe in God. The saint-revolutionist synthesis, the personalist action that the world is even more urgently crying aloud for today, and the holiness that its example will impel in others have nothing to do with piety, religious confessions, or the sacraments… As much as Day herself found her home in the church and strength in its sacraments, such considerations are not necessarily relevant to the revolutionary sanctity that Dorothy Day said that each person is called to.

Our world needs as many saints as we can get, both within and outside the Church. We pray that many will follow in the footsteps of figures like Angela Davis, Ignazio Silone, and Mahatma Gandhi, in their own way living out the Gospel in their work for justice. Thank you to Brian for this encouragement to look for such radical holiness in the fierce witness of our brothers and sisters.

Membership in the Dorothy Day Guild:

Here at the Guild, as we approach the 43rd anniversary of Dorothy’s death on November 29th we anticipate with great hope future years in which we might eventually celebrate this day as Dorothy’s feast day, her birthday into heaven. You have helped bring this future closer by your support of and membership in the Dorothy Day Guild.

Our Guild is made up of the faithful who have been touched by some aspect of Dorothy’s life and witness. If you are reading this letter, something about Dorothy’s legacy has spoken to you and perhaps altered the course of your life in a significant way. The work of the Guild relies on the dedication of our members, who in addition to their financial support of Dorothy’s cause in Rome commit to praying for Dorothy’s canonization, sharing her story, and living out her legacy of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty in our world. Thank you so much for participating in this work! Whether you are a brand-new or founding member of the Guild, we are so grateful for all of the support and encouragement you have offered to this cause.

A few words from Dorothy:

I’d like to close with a few lines from Dorothy’s December 1978 “On Pilgrimage” column. Towards the end of her life, Dorothy was the recipient of much tenderness and admiration from her friends and family members, which she notes with gratitude in this passage taken from her diary on the eighty first anniversary of her birth:

November 8th–my birthday–I was born in 1897. Mary Lathrop Pope has just put up two, gigantic sheets of paper on my wall, a painting she did of a pink-robed, guardian angel, with orange hair, carrying an armload of huge lilies–blue sky and green earth. Wildly decorative, (Mary had made her first retreat after her conversion at Mary Reparatrix, on East 29th Street, a church of perpetual adoration, with a retreat house connected. I had made my first retreat at that convent too.)

Tamar embroidered a gorgeous, round pillowcase and stuffed it. Mike DeGregory and Michelle Timmins sent me an unusually beautiful Madonna of Czestochowa. I will pray to her for them, and our Polish Pope. People send us cups and plates of china, Spode, also Limoges–such luxury! There was a party in the dining room after Mass, and many flowers.

How wonderful, in this dark and cold month of the year, to be reminded of Dorothy’s love of beauty in art, nature, and human relationships. May this season also bring each of you many flowers.

In peace,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy Day Guild October 2023 Missive

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:48:42 GMT

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

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.

News from New York

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!

Events and Recommendations

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.”

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!

A few words from Dorothy

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

IN OUR TIME : Volume 1 (digital), Issue 2

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 14:00:00 GMT

IN OUR TIME

Newsletter of the
Dorothy Day Guild

Volume 1 (digital), Issue 2
September 2023

FOR MORE TO READ
(and in the tradition of the Catholic Worker to help "clarify thought"),
here are some engaging articles on matters miraculous:

Miracles as part of spiritual practice.
"What the Conversion of St. Ignatius can teach us 500 years later”
by Jean Luc Enyegue, S.J.
(Our thanks for viewing to America magazine)

Miracles as crucial to an understanding of Christianity.

"C.S. Lewis on Miracles: Why they are important and significant”

(Our thanks to the C.S. Lewis Institute)

Pilgrimage and prayer for miracles of change.

"Promises & Miracles:
by Claudia Avila Cosnahan
(Our thanks for viewing to Commonweal magazine)

Miracle stories found in the world’s great religions.

"Making Room for Miracles”
Introduction to The Book of Miracles
by Kenneth L. Woodward

(Our thanks to the author)

Lakota Mary and Jesus by Brother Mickey McGrath

(Likely for Dorothy Day, the Incarnation -- the wellspring
of her faith from which all her activism flowed -- was the
greatest miracle.)

YOUR SUPPORT KEEPS THE CAUSE MOVING!

Blessed and be-ribboned boxes of evidence sent to Rome in 2022,
marking the start of the final phase of the inquiry into Day’s holiness.

THANK YOU

for Joining the Dorothy Day Guild
as a New Member or a Renewing Member
and/or for Making a Donation.

HELP HERE

DEAR READERS:

We’d love to hear from you!

And learn what is
on your minds,
in your hearts,
or your prayers
about Dorothy
and the cause.

Contact: ddg@archny.org
(subject line: In Our Time)

IN OUR TIME

Editorial and Production Team
Colleen Dulle, Issue Editor
Anthony Santella
Gabriella Wilke
Carolyn Zablotny

Contributors
Writers: Jodee Fink, Isabel Frazza, Casey Mullaney, Julia Occhiogrosso
Designer: Mindy Indy, www.mindyindy.com
Lettering: Linda Henry Orell

Credits
Art: Ade Bethune, “Peace Tree,” masthead; “Vine and Branches,” border; Rita Corbin, “Tree of Life (w. birds)”

Photo: Bob Fitch, Courtesy of Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”) and to Bro. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, for the use of his illustration, “Lakota Mary and Jesus.”

Dispatches

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 03:19:00 GMT

The Guild has been busy planning a full slate of fall events in collaboration with the Dorothy Day Center and the New York Catholic Worker community, and we are excited to offer you a sneak peak at some upcoming opportunities. Artist Kristi Pfister’s installation, "Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day” is now on display at the Manhattan College O’Malley Library Gallery. Kevin Ahern and Martha Hennessy, Dorothy’s granddaughter, had a chance to check it out together last week, and it is truly stunning. We hope you will be able to join us on Thursday October 26th from 5-7pm for a reception and artist talk. Pfister will deliver some brief remarks right at five, and then we’ll enjoy the exhibit and some refreshments together. If you’re not able to attend in October, “Radical Action” will remain on display until December 16th.

Our online October book club and discussion group begins on Wednesday, October 4th! In the month of All Saints, we’re excited to begin reading and discussing Dorothy’s biography of one of her favorite saints, Thérèse. We’ll meet over Zoom on four Wednesdays, October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, from 8-9pm Eastern/7-8pm Central. We still have a few spots available, and you can sign up by using this form to receive the Zoom link. The book is available here, from Ave Maria Press .

As a supplement to our reading group, we’ve also created a twelve-part mini-lecture series on our YouTube channel. We’ve posted the first couple of videos already with more planned for the coming days, so keep an eye out for new uploads! We’re excited to offer more free educational resources about Dorothy on this channel, and we hope you are able to enjoy them with your classes, families, spiritual formation groups, and anyone you know who is interested in learning more about Dorothy’s life and legacy.

We’re also in the process of finalizing our map and tour route for our Saturday, October 21st walking pilgrimage in Manhattan. We’ll meet in Union Square at 1:00 pm and work our way southward, visiting the places where Dorothy prayed, protested, and offered the works of mercy for nearly 50 years. Our pilgrimage concludes with a vigil mass in the chapel at Maryhouse, Dorothy Day’s final home. To register and receive a map, please fill out this form.

Once again, we thank you for your support in promoting Dorothy’s legacy and cause for canonization! We hope to see you at some of our autumn events online and in-person and look forward to connecting with you soon.

GOOD TALK, Larry Cunningham on Saints and Miracles

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 04:35:00 GMT

In Our Time: Larry, we are so grateful for your studies of the saints, elucidating their importance for us today.

Often we describe Dorothy Day as being “a saint for our time.” And you write about how the style of true saintliness is relative to the problems of spiritual living of the times, because the greatest of the saints are “those who have risen above the exigencies of a particular moment to show a new way.” Could you talk a little about Dorothy’s “new way”?

Lawrence Cunningham: Well, I mean new in the sense of, you think of the canonization process, say most of the people that were canonized by John Paul II,they tended to be founders of religious orders or members of religious orders, or in a few rare cases, married couples and so on and so forth. But Dorothy was singular in the sense that she was a convert. She had a history behind her. I think she’s the only candidate for canonization who ever admitted to having an abortion when she was young, and she made this radical conversion of life and started a movement that exists to this day. So she was different from the typical of those who are candidates for canonization.

IOT : As you well know, the process of canonization is a juridical one. What we refer to as the “cause” for Dorothy Day is actually a “case” to prove her sanctity. There are very clear criteria, including the “heroic” practice of virtue, attested to in interviews with people who knew or worked with her, in writings by and about her, etc. Almost two years ago now, literally tons of documentary evidence was sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints!

Which brings us to this critical issue of miracles – the final requisite proof of holiness. Can you shed some light on the significance given to them?

LC: The miracles are expected in the process of canonization, and if she’s canonized, it’s going to be because the Roman authorities accepted a supernatural intervention through her on some person in a way that can’t be explained otherwise.

But the point is that canonization is a process. The papal process we know today is a 17th century phenomenon, but there were canonizations before there were papal canonizations going back well over a thousand years. What I’m saying is, it’s a very complicated story.

IOT: At the risk of terrible oversimplification, can you sketch it out a bit for us?

LC: Well, this whole business of the rise of the importance of miracles in canonization starts 400 years before the first papal canonization, which was in the 10th century, and it was a way of distinguishing history from fable. You had to have a historical person, and that person was a conduit through which God manifested his mercy by healing people or whatever. There’s a lot of historical development in these issues.

IOT : There has been some talk in recent years about changing the miracle verification process in some way such that it would consider other types of miracles beyond medical ones—which make up the majority because they are well-documented and thus can be “proven” more easily. This might necessarily involve a loosening of the verification procedures. Do you see any reason for a change in the process today?

LC: Oh, I’m the last one to ask that question! Supposing they do find some miraculous medical cure for Dorothy Day, would it make a difference in the story we tell about her? The answer clearly is no. So to me, it’s not an issue.

But I do think there has to be some kind of canonical process. I mean, there are people 30 or 40 years ago whom we might have thought of as really saintly, and it turned out they weren’t so saintly.

IOT: I do worry a little, though, that the importance placed on miracles in the process of canonization contributes to our associating of holiness with the “extraordinary” – and hence to an idea of saints as being other worldly, inviting of reverence perhaps but not imitation – and not with the “ordinary” daily practices of the Christian life, exemplified by Dorothy, like the very concrete works of mercy to which we are all called.

LC: Well, I would kind of agree with that. And in Dorothy’s case, her story itself is so extraordinary! The miraculous seems like some merengue on the pie.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

BREAKING BREAD, Reports of Graces and Favors Attributed to Dorothy Day

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 04:29:00 GMT

Testimony of Bill Mansfield

May 2, 2020

When my daughter was nine months old, she contracted infant botulism and became deathly ill. She went into a coma for three weeks. On the first day, her mother and I were told that she was expected to die …

The next morning was my first Father’s Day. And my child wasn’t dead! The best present I could ask for!

They informed us initially that she would still probably die; then that she might live but would certainly never come out of her coma; then that she might come out of the coma, but would likely have severe brain damage.

And then one day she woke up. And was, seemingly, fine. She’s still fine today.

The doctors were very good and had access to an experimental treatment. So that may have been the cause.

But I also prayed. Every day I prayed with her for hours. And having just finished books about Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero, I often asked for them to ask God for healing for my child …

January 23, 2023

I remember clearly that I did pray for intercession by both Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero. In my mind, these two are always linked. I see them as two sides of the same coin. They are (in my mind) the masculine and feminine of modern martyrdom. Saint Romero, after a very intense three years of standing up to the abuse of earthly power, had a violent and quick martyrdom – very masculine. But Dorothy Day had a much more interesting and feminine martyrdom (in my opinion—and I am certainly no authority). She spent years and decades doing the hard work God called her to do. It was exhausting and eventually she died – still faithfully serving God.

We understand Saint Romero’s path – it is (especially for an American) clear. But we underestimate Dorothy Day’s path. It is less cinematic, but in many ways much more difficult. It is hard to die for the Truth, but in many ways even harder to live for it.

So I always think of the two of them in tandem and love them both.

But while I asked for the intercession of both, I mainly petitioned Dorothy Day in those sad days. She was a mother and had cared for a child. She had the strength to walk a long, difficult road. I had been told that my daughter was to die, and then told she would never wake up, and then told she had brain damage. But regardless of what happened – I knew the road would be long and hard. She is who I wanted by my side. I wanted my daughter to fight – and Saint Romero was a fighter to be sure – but our struggle was more one Dorothy Day would understand (again – just in my opinion). So my petitions were probably split 90% to Dorothy and 10% to Saint Romero.

August 6, 2023

I have been putting off the request for my daughter’s medical records out of fear … I am terrified that they will show that she recovered due to clear and ordinary medical reasons. I’m afraid I will lose something that has been clear to me for two decades – the possibility that her healing was a miracle.

Regardless of how she was healed, my faith got me through a terrible time. And as is often pointed out – the Lord works in mysterious ways. He could have just as easily worked through the doctors.

The wonderful news is that she is doing so much better! She has a job, a relationship, and is acting with kindness to others.

Reflecting on her, I realize now how much I leaned on Dorothy Day regarding my daughter well past just the coma. I often spoke of Dorothy to my daughter and used her as an example of kind and long-suffering behavior to others who need help. As she grew up in her mother’s house, and her mother is left-leaning atheist, I used Dorothy Day to show a side of the Church that can be ignored by some. Even when we were estranged and she moved to Florida I told her to go find a Catholic Worker house if she needed help.

Testimony of Todd DeMitchell

October 5, 2020

I am a friend of Casa Juan Diego in Houston, and Louise Zwick and I have been petitioning Servant of God Dorothy Day through our prayers to intercede on behalf of another friend … She was diagnosed with very serious bone cancer and had been undergoing treatment in Boston. I recently received the following message from her husband that her condition improved remarkably, and she is now eligible for a bone marrow transplant.

She is in complete remission and is scheduled for her transplant October 14. She has made remarkable progress, going from a low of 98 pounds to 121 pounds (she was 126 before the cancers struck) and she is walking over a mile. She had 82% leukemia in her bone marrow originally, it is down to 0.4 … I believe Terri’s dramatically improved condition is a result of Dorothy’s intercession. I pray nightly for the canonization of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin … I am not a very good Catholic but I believe with all my heart that American Catholics desperately need the inspiration, the intercession, and the prayers of Dorothy Day and that her canonization would be a consolation and a blessing to all of us.

November 9, 2020

From the patient’s husband:

Just prior to the start of the transplant, the hospital’s minister blessed the cells and the transplant. It was really quite nice. We were very appreciative of her participation.

My wife has had a long journey to get to this point. She confronted this serious challenge with grace, strength, and resolve. Your positive thoughts and prayers have been greatly appreciated, and I am sure they have aided the journey. The destination is closer, even though there will still be twists and turns, the path is being smoothed.

With great gratitude for your prayers (we have joined you in our prayers thanking Servant of God Dorothy Day for interceding on my wife’s behalf).

November 9, 2021

Your support for my wife as she confronted her leukemia has been greatly appreciated. She recently had her one-year anniversary check-up from the date of her bone marrow transplant and her twelfth bone marrow biopsy. She is cancer free!!

Twenty months ago she had a 20% survival chance. The one year marker is important in that there is a significantly decreased chance of relapse and/or the emergence of graft versus host disease, however they could still occur. We are buoyed and optimistic for her future.

Please know how grateful my wife and I are and how much she has benefitted by your support of Servant of God Dorothy Day’s advocacy for her. Dorothy Day and you made a difference in our lives.

Testimony of Greg Walgenbach

December 5, 2021

I have had an admiration for and devotion to Dorothy Day for many years, as a fellow convert coming into the Catholic Church (in which she played part as well) and as a Director of the office of Life, Justice, and Peace for the Diocese of Orange, CA.

On October 5, 2020, I was hospitalized with what turned out to be metastatic germ cell cancer that had gone into my lymph nodes and the L-2 vertebra of my spine (making it so porous that my doctor feared my spine would break). During the Covid pandemic, I underwent spine surgery and orchiectomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

Throughout my illness I sought the intercession of Servant of God Dorothy Day and Sister Thea Bowman. These two sisters in the Lord both had their own closeness to suffering, their own and others. Not only did I ask Dorothy to intercede for my healing from cancer but also to show me how to be close to others in their suffering as well. I spent a great deal of time reading her works and reflecting on and with her.

During my hospital stays I was able to spend time ministering to nurses, doctors, and hospital staff and praying for so many people who sent me their prayer requests after I solicited them in conversation. Indeed I saw my hospital room and later my time at home with my family during the pandemic as houses of hospitality. Even when guests could not be received during the pandemic, we ourselves were recipients of the “hospitality” of so many providing meals and prayers for our family and prayed for so many others in our lives during that time.

In fact, during my recovery and treatment I was invited by my pastor to give a Lenten retreat at our parish via Zoom and I spoke on the life of Dorothy for one of those sessions. From one week to the next I was able to announce what the doctors told me: that my cancer was in full remission!

Grateful to God and to Dorothy Day for her intercession as well, I was cleared to return to work. I am now six months in remission and continue my work in the Office of Life, Justice, and Peace. I am also in formation for the priesthood through the Pastoral Provision and Dorothy has been a help and encouragement in that process as well. May God continue to lead us all and bless and challenge us through Dorothy’s example and hope in Jesus!

November 8, 2022

From early days in the hospital I asked hundreds of friends and family for prayer for healing, asking the intercession of Servants of God Thea Bowman and Dorothy Day (the latter was invoked to and with me by a friend, Leia Smith from the Isaiah House Catholic Worker in Orange County, CA). Dorothy has been significant to me throughout my life and especially as I came into the Catholic Church and in my work in the Office of Life, Justice, and Peace. Her reminders of not judging and not letting it get to us when others judge were utmost in my mind and her radical hospitality and acceptance not of injustice but of life and persons as they come to us were important to me as I underwent my ordeal. I remember her words throughout her diaries of finding strength in the Lord and dealing with her tiredness, as I sought to be a patient “patient” in the hospital, during the pandemic, in relative isolation (although modern social media and connection was truly a blessing!). Her commitment to Mass, the Hours, and Prayer were a reminder to me that in the middle of night when I could no sleep or during the long days when I was frustrated, saddened, or in pain, I could and did turn to the Lord in recitation of the Divine Office and crying out to the Lord.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

SOWING SEEDS, Finding Christ Among the Poor The Catholic Worker Presence in Las Vegas

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 04:20:00 GMT

In Las Vegas, the Catholic Worker started in 1986 by serving ice water in the heat of summer out of the back of a VW station wagon. Soon our water recipients suggested a location to serve coffee and donuts to day laborers lining the street by the freeway. The “coffee line” evolved into a hearty morning meal still served today three mornings a week in the same general area.

While the food line meals are prepared in the kitchen of our Hospitality House, we set up and serve outside on the street a few blocks away from the house. We have never been able to acquire a building in the neighborhood for inside serving. Being “buildingless” and serving outside forces us to at least briefly be exposed to the precarity of being homeless. As we approach with our vehicles full of food, we cannot help seeing the way homeless people attempt to negotiate a place of refuge. Tarps and boards attached to chain link fences make for flimsy shelter. The absence of bathrooms or trash service forces people to sleep in the squalor of debris. These harsh circumstances are worsened by the extreme weather conditions: cold, wind, heat, and even rain.

Most mornings, despite the challenges, they wait patiently in line for the Catholic Worker volunteers to arrive. In contrast to their dreary and difficult circumstances, we are met by resilience and grace. We are humbled by the smiles and expressions of gratitude that greet us as we hand out simple meal bags.

While I only endure these conditions for the brief time we are serving, there are days when a particular image haunts me. In the chill of winter mornings, the cold can linger in my bones even after being indoors for a while. As witnesses to the scene, our hearts cannot avoid being awakened to the human cost of disparity and injustice. If new volunteers have any judgment or hardness of heart it is softened by the morning’s end.

I remember hearing Dorothy speak during an interview with Bill Moyers recorded in the 1970s. She spoke in essence about the tragic irony of New York, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, lacking in its capacity to care for the poorest of its citizens. Desperate individuals, suffering with extreme cases of mental and medical distress would often be brought by the authorities to the door of the New York Catholic Worker.

From its beginnings the Catholic Worker has been a place of refuge for the most desperate, for the outcast of outcasts. For people of privilege, it has offered a unique opportunity to move, sometimes awkwardly, into the world of the poor. Not for the novelty of the experience but as Dorothy seemed to know, that by seeking the Christ in the outcast we would also contact the Christ within us. This contact was essential in cultivating our capacity to work towards the promise of a beloved community. We would find the source of the great love we had to share with a broken world.

In Las Vegas this sharing happens in our Houses of Hospitality, food serving and mobile shower project. People come to us, vulnerable and in need. With the model of the Gospel, we are given a way to respond. We give food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless and clean clothing to those without.

Meeting vulnerability and struggle with mercy and compassion is prompted by a faith in the power of Christ’s love. And while it is easy to grow weary and want to avoid the reality of suffering just outside my front gate, this reality ultimately takes hold of my heart, informs my decisions and actions. It motivates a desire to create a just and compassionate world. I am convinced that my desire to do so would be weak and forgotten without the gift of solidarity formed from a sustained connection to the marginalized present in my life at the Catholic Worker.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

SAVED BY BEAUTY, Named After Dorothy Day

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 04:15:00 GMT

Naming one’s child after Dorothy Day is a clear example of the faithful’s devotion to Dorothy. Due to the importance of names in Catholicism and human society as a whole, this is a particularly special act of devotion. Names—both those we are given and those we choose for ourselves—are important. Our names help us connect with others. When we meet someone for the first time, we often say something along the lines of “Hello, my name is…” and share our name and/or nickname before anything else. Through surnames, we connect with our ancestors of the past and our family members of the present. Names are incredibly important in Scripture and Church tradition too. The names of Biblical characters, like Abraham, Sarah, Peter, and Paul, are given to them by God in times of transformation. When an individual undergoes confirmation in the Church, they choose a confirmation name to signify their transition into full members of the Church. Customarily, the confirmation candidate will choose the name of a saint or blessed person whose life of faith inspires them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “Everyone’s name is sacred” (Catechism, 2158). A name is more than just a word we use to refer to someone; it represents, in part, who that person is.

Naming one’s child after Dorothy Day is a special devotional practice because of the importance of names and because of the unique power Dorothy’s namesakes hold. Those named after Dorothy Day continue to tell her story, all while writing stories of their own. Before I began my internship with the Dorothy Day Guild, I had a conversation with my aunt about Dorothy and the work of the Guild. It was through this conversation that I learned about her niece, who was a new mother to a child with the middle name Day. My aunt had no knowledge of Dorothy or the Catholic Worker movement until this little one’s parents named their child after Dorothy Day. Names tell stories, and this child’s name was able to tell my aunt the story of Dorothy Day. As these namesakes move through the world, the meaning behind their names will come up in conversation with others, and when it does, there is an opportunity for another person to learn about the more equitable world that Dorothy Day stood for. I am reminded of the little way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, something Dorothy wrote quite a bit about. Each child who is named after Dorothy helps to reaffirm her impact on the Church and the world, all while furthering that impact’s reach. Many of these children are little in age, and the name of just one child is little in the grand scheme of things, but the little act of devotion that is naming one’s child after Dorothy has a very big impact.

Dorothy’s namesakes are able to tell her story, but they are also encouraged to write stories of their own. As I connected with the parents of children named after Dorothy for this project, I found that they shared in common their admiration of Dorothy for her willingness to stand up against the status quo. Claire Fyrqvist, the mother of five-year-old Teresa Day, is proud that her daughter “has Dorothy’s spice.” Dorothy Day emphasized: “One must follow one’s own Conscience first before all authority,” and throughout her life, she did just that. She consistently challenged authority figures of both Church and state when their actions did not align with the Gospel teachings of social-justice that guided her conscience. Dorothy wrote her own story throughout her life, as she tried her very best to follow the example of Christ, even when this meant breaking societal norms. Sarah Stanley, the mother of 19-month-old Dorothy “Dottie” said: “She made me feel like there was space for me in Catholicism when the different ‘sides’ disapproved of how I live my faith for one reason or another.” Dorothy inspires people of faith to follow God and their conscience, rather than popular opinion. Dottie’s mom is hopeful that Dorothy will play a similar role in her daughter’s life, so that she may “know she is welcome and loved in the Catholic Church no matter what charism/cause/etc she feels called to.”

The name Dorothy is derived from the Greek word Dorethea (Δωροθέα), meaning “gift of God.” Day is an Anglicized version of Deagh , the Gaelic word and surname meaning “good.” Dorothy Day’s full name literally means good gift of God —how fitting is that? Dorothy certainly lived up to her name’s meaning. Nearly 43 years have passed since she departed from this earthly life and Dorothy’s spirit continues to give . Those who pray for her intercession receive comfort from Dorothy during difficult times. Some find her memory to be a gift of guidance, as they decide how best to move through the world in a way that emulates her witness. Ricky Klee, father of six-year-old Hannah Day, shared that he and his wife “would like their daughter to imitate her special holiness.” When a child is named after Dorothy Day, they are given more than just her name—they receive a role model who is never far away.

Bibliography

Campbell, Mike. “Meaning, Origin and History of the Name Dorothy.” Behind the Name , 2021. https://www.behindthename.com/name/dorothy .

Campbell, Mike. “Meaning, Origin and History of the Name Dorothea.” Behind the Name , 2022. https://www.behindthename.com/name/dorothea .

“Catechism of the Catholic Church.” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops . Accessed August 13, 2023. https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/522/ .

“Day Family History.” Day Name Meaning at Ancestry.com®, 2022. 2022. https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=Day .

Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day . New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1952.

Horan, Daniel P. “Why Catholics Should Use Preferred Gender Pronouns and Names.” National Catholic Reporter, October 13, 2021. https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/why-catholics-should-use-preferred-gender-pronouns-and-names .

“O’Dea Family History.” O’Dea Name Meaning at Ancestry.com®, 2022. https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=o%27dea .

O’Neill, Eddie. “Changing Names: Simply Catholic.” Simply Catholic , July 12, 2023. https://www.simplycatholic.com/changing-names/ .

Dorothy Marie “Dory,” 4; child of Becky and Andy Czarnecki

Lucy Day, 16; child of Stacey and Josh Noem

Dorothy Louise, 6; child of Kate Frommelt

Dorothy Emmanuelle, 19 months; child of Sarah Stanley

Dorothy Ruth Farah, 2, child of Margaret Nuzzolese Conway and Chris Conway

Brendan Day, 8 months, child of Dan Cosacchi

Teresa Day, 5; child of Claire Fyrqvist (no photo)
Hannah Day, 6; child of Ricky Klee (no photo)

SIGNS OF HOLINESS, Miracles give me faith in the sainthood process

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 03:47:00 GMT

Canonizations take money, something that grates at my anticapitalistic sentiments. It feels like this sacred process—of determining someone’s holiness and waiting for signs from God (miracles) affirming it—shouldn’t be influenced by what Pope Francis calls “the dung of the devil.” Yet, it is. It has to be. Compiling all the documents and testimonies for a canonization cause takes time and effort, and people deserve to be compensated for that work. Likewise, the few officials working in the Vatican’s overloaded Congregation for the Causes of Saints deserve compensation, as do all the Roman postulators whose job it is to help the Vatican officials move each cause along.

But this has an unfortunate downside, that sometimes tempts me to want to throw the whole process out. Because of the money and resources it takes, people from poor communities or who do not have religious orders or incredibly dedicated family members or friends who are willing to take on decades of work and expense on their behalf often don’t reach or make it past the initial stages of a canonization cause. And that skews the communion of canonized saints (not those who were never canonized but who were recognized as saints historically) toward those with resources. I don’t think that’s fair or just.

At the times that I do despair about the state of the canonization system, though, one thing never fails to give me hope: the miracles. No matter how flawed our process is, how influenced it is by who can sustain the costs and who cannot, it consoles me to know that at least in this one area, God is putting his finger on the scale in a decisive way. God is weighing in on who is canonized and who isn’t, giving his stamp of approval through a sign that no human can work. And the historic evolution of the church’s canonization process has led to the verification process for those miracles becoming incredibly strict. The church goes to great lengths to make sure that there is no uncertainty around miracles ascribed to a potential saint’s intercession.

I do think there is room for many reforms to the canonization process. But the miracles God works are his way of saying that although the process is imperfect, this person was, indeed, a saint.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

Dorothy Day Guild September 2023 Missive

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:50:54 GMT

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Hello! This summer has flown by, and we hope that September has brought cool weather and a fresh start for all of you. We’ve been busy planning a slate of fall events, which we’re excited to share with you today. We hope you are able to join us in New York or online next month! We’re also hoping for some official updates on Dorothy’s canonization process in the coming months, but in the meantime, it’s been fun to read so many articles in the Catholic press about Dorothy and the Catholic Worker. The past month has been full of stories about how Dorothy’s message of Gospel nonviolence and voluntary poverty has touched lives around the world.

Dorothy Day news round-up

In New York, we’re continuing to anticipate the official opening of the Dorothy Day Center at Manhattan College. Thanks to our new undergraduate intern, Cathy, and our Ignatian Volunteer Corps member, Jodee Fink, all of our Guild files and boxes are unpacked and we’re feeling very at home in the new Center. We are all excited to see the ways that this joint effort between undergraduate students and faculty members can introduce a new generation of young people to Dorothy’s legacy.

In Italy, the Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples in Rimini, organized last month by the Communion and Liberation movement featured a mainstage panel entitled “Inexhaustible Friendships: Dorothy Day and Social Friendship.” Guild advisory committee member Robert Ellsberg spoke on a panel with Simona Beretta, director of the social doctrine center at Sacra Cuore university in Rome, and Giulia Galeotti, Vatican journalist and author of a recent Italian language book on Day; their conversation, which is available in English on YouTube, focuses on the spiritual arc of Dorothy’s life and connects her particular way of living out the Gospel with principles proposed by Pope Francis in Fratelli tutti.

This meeting coincided with the release of Pope Francis’ new forward to Dorothy Day’s From Union Square to Rome, published in Italian as Ho Travato Dio Attraverso i Suoi Poveri (“I Found God through His Poor”). “Reading these pages of Dorothy Day and following her religious journey becomes an adventure that is good for the heart and can teach us so much to keep awakened in us a truthful image of God,” the Pope says in the new introduction. We’re looking forward to the spring release of the English-language edition, but for now, you can learn more about both the Meeting and the new forward here. Thanks to the National Catholic Register for their reporting on these updates; we also loved their recent editorial, “Dorothy Day: A witness for today,” which emphasizes the integral connection between Dorothy’s sacramental devotion and her fierce, dedicated love for the poor and calls her “a compelling witness of holiness, and hope, for our contemporary times.”

Finally, we’d like to call your attention to this profile of Maryknoll priest Father Joyalito Tajonera and his service to and advocacy for Filipino immigrant workers in Taiwan. You might remember hearing about Father Joy earlier this summer; Guild co-chairs Kevin Ahern and Deirdre Cornell had the opportunity to meet him in person a few months ago at the Maryknoll headquarters in Ossining, NY. As a young man, Father Joy immigrated to New York and was shocked by the poverty he saw. His current ministry has its genesis in the Catholic Worker tradition, which he first encountered when he volunteered at Maryhouse in the 1980’s. Now serving other immigrants as a missionary priest, he helps low-income workers advocate for themselves with exploitative bosses. He opened a center for the immigrant workers which he says runs “like a Catholic Worker house, a place where migrants could hang out, relax, eat and play games. A house that feels like home. And we’ve done that for 22 years. We don’t make too many rules except meal time and cleaning time. We’re open 24 hours a day. People know that if they walk in, they will be welcomed.” We have all been so struck by the hospitality Father Joy offers in his community and his retrieval of the Catholic Worker’s roots in the labor movement. Please keep his ministry in your prayers this season.

As many of us who study or work on school and college campuses return to the academic year, we remember how often the founders of the Catholic Worker movement spoke about education. Dorothy often spoke of the Catholic Worker as a sort of school, and certainly Peter was fond of promoting the agronomic university! To that end, we have a few invitations for all of you to our free online and in-person art and educational fall events.

In-person events in New York

First, some of you had a chance to view Kristi Pfister’s mosaics, painted scroll, and delicate fabric columns on Staten Island earlier this year. For those who missed it (or want to visit again!), we’re very pleased that Manhattan College’s O’Malley Library Gallery will host Pfister’s “Radical Action: Tracing Dorothy Day” from September 18th through December 16th. “Radical Action” is an installation of suspended fabric columns, marble mosaics, and mixed media work that explores the duality of Day's radical actions and her spiritual self. The mosaic's concrete strength contrasts with translucent columns on which Pfister has traced patterned fragments of drawings. A large-scale painted scroll presents Day as a modern-day caryatid leading a procession of activism.

You can come experience the exhibit at the O’Malley library gallery (4513 Manhattan College Parkway, Bronx, NY) daily this fall between 10 am and 6 pm. Please be especially sure to join us for a reception and artist talk on Thursday October 26th from 5-7pm. Pfister will deliver some brief remarks right at five. We hope to see you there!

In October, we will also be hosting a Manhattan walking pilgrimage of significant sites in Dorothy’s life and the early years of the Catholic Worker movement. Come with us on Saturday, October 21st, at 1:00 pm to visit the places where Dorothy prayed, protested, and offered the works of mercy for nearly 50 years. We’ll meet in Union Square and work our way southward, concluding with a vigil mass in the chapel at Maryhouse, Dorothy Day’s final home. To register and receive a map, please fill out this form .

Looking ahead to November, and back up to the Bronx, we look forward to welcoming Lincoln Rice, PhD, to Manhattan College for the annual Dorothy Day lecture, co-sponsored by the Dorothy Day Guild and the Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism. Lincoln received his doctorate in moral theology from Marquette University in 2013 and has been a member of Milwaukee's Casa Maria Catholic Worker community since 1998. He is the author of Healing the Divide: A Catholic Racial Justice Framework Inspired by Dr. Arthur Falls , and editor of The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin: Easy Essays From The Catholic Worker . Lincoln will speak to us this year on Peter Maurin’s philosophy, his significance for the Catholic Worker movement, and what we can learn from Peter today. This year’s lecture will take place on Thursday, November 2nd at 6:30 pm in the Alumni Room at Manhattan College’s O’Malley library.

Online events

We also look forward to celebrating one of Dorothy’s favorite saints this fall, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose feast day is next month. Although she was initially put off by Therese’s ‘littleness,’ Day came to see the spirituality of St. Therese as a powerful force for social change in an increasingly anxious and depersonalized world. I am thrilled to be hosting an October reading group and book club of Dorothy Day’s Thérèse which will meet over Zoom on four Wednesdays, October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, from 8-9pm Eastern/7-8pm Central. If you’re interested in learning more and discussing how Dorothy understood the social message of St. Thérèse’s Little Way, please sign up using this form. You can find a copy of Thérèse , by Dorothy Day at your local library, or get your own at Ave Maria Press We’ll also be adding a complementary lecture series on this book to our YouTube channel, so stay tuned!

A few words from Dorothy

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend time with Catholic Workers from across the Midwest at the annual Sugar Creek gathering in Iowa. It was great to see a few friends and members of the Guild there! We had a chance to hear some updates from a few of the US-based Catholic Workers who participated in the August Peace Camp in the Netherlands and Germany, protesting nuclear weapons stockpiling as well as those who are working to end the constant preparation for war here in the United States. For me, hearing about so many small, interconnected efforts to preserve life and defend human dignity and the goodness of creation is incredibly encouraging. In her time, Dorothy saw this work as an extension of the Little Way of St.Thérèse into the social sphere, writing that,

“The seeds of this teaching are being spread, being broadcast, to be watered by our blood perhaps, but with a promise of a harvest. God will give the increase. At a time when there are such grave fears because of the radioactive particles that are sprinkled all over the world by the hydrogen bomb tests, and the question is asked, what effect they are going to have on the physical life of the universe, one can state that this saint, of this day, is releasing a force, a spiritual force, upon the world to counteract that fear and that disaster. We know that one impulse of grace is of infinitely more power than a cobalt bomb. Therese has said, ‘All is grace.’”

So many of you are, in various ways, engaged in sowing the seeds of justice in your own communities. Please know that all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild are encouraged by and grateful for you! We know that this work is difficult, and that you may not be able to see the end result of your efforts now, but we trust that God will use every act of love, every protest against violence and exclusion to bring forth a fruitful harvest of peace.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy Day Guild July 2023 Missive

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 17:46:46 GMT

Dear friends,

We hope this email finds you cool and comfortable in the hot weather! Thank you all for the kind comments we’ve been receiving on the latest issue of the newsletter– it’s great to hear that the interview and articles have generated fruitful discussion in your families and communities. Our editors are already working up new pieces for the fall, so keep an eye out for another issue at the end of September. We have a few updates and recommendations for you this month:

New Social Media

We’re on YouTube and Instagram! Our Manhattan College and Yale Divinity School interns have been patient, expert guides as we’ve learned to use some new platforms this summer. You can check out our Membership Monday feature on Instagram, which will run through the end of the summer, as well as informational content about Dorothy and the Guild, which you can share with friends and family members who want to learn more. Be sure to take a look at our latest video as well, a creative reflection featuring contemporary artists’ images of Dorothy. We hope it inspires your prayer and contemplation this week!

Visit with Father Joy Tajonera

Kevin Ahern and Deirdre Cornell met with Father Joyalito Tajonera ("Father Joy") at Maryknoll headquarters in Ossining on June 28. Before joining Maryknoll, Joy had worked with people experiencing homelessness in New York City, where he met the Catholic Worker. He became particularly close to Eileen Egan, learning from her about Dorothy, her life and spirituality.

Joy was instrumental in convening the 1997 Dorothy Day Symposium to mark the 100th anniversary of Dorothy's birth. Several current advisory board members were involved as key participants in the event. Along with other noteworthy efforts leading up to the decision, the symposium helped convince Cardinal John O'Connor to open the cause for Dorothy's canonization. Father Joy gave copies of related records and correspondence to the Guild archives.

Assigned to Taiwan, Father Joy has served migrant workers in Taichung, most of whom are also Filipino, for over 20 years. The shelter he founded, named Ugnayan ("connection"), is run like a Catholic Worker House. Migrants of any nationality are welcomed there 24 hours a day. Workers who have been injured or wronged, especially, find a wide range of support there in a homelike setting; help is offered in the spirit of mutual aid. The Supply Chain Due Diligence program he started empowers workers to organize for their rights and achieve better working conditions. The lives of thousands of migrant workers -- and their families back home -- have been transformed.

Father Joy's ministry is an example of how Dorothy continues to inspire people around the world to practice the Works of Mercy together and to work for justice. To learn more, stay tuned for a new story about Father Joy and Ugnayan in the fall edition of Maryknoll Magazine.

Reading and Viewing Recommendations

Dorothy’s youngest granddaughter, Kate Hennessy, has been publishing a series for The Tablet in honor of the Catholic Worker movement’s ninetieth anniversary. Her first column opens:

“The Nine Provocations of Dorothy Day” takes a series of major teachings– the stuff of life’s big questions– and poses the question, what might Dorothy still be teaching us? How can Dorothy’s life nudge us to live more deeply into our own? We highly recommend this series to anyone who is seeking guidance and direction for discovering their own vocation and living into it with integrity and commitment. The first piece of advice? Make yourself uncomfortable. The latest? Laughter is the best balm. You can read the newest installment of “The Nine Provocations of Dorothy Day,” published July 19th, here.

Robert Ellsberg has two recent reflections on sainthood that we’d like to share. The first, “Walking the path of holiness: What I’ve learned from a lifetime of studying saintly lives,” was published in America last month. Robert’s tenure at the New York Catholic Worker coincided with the last years of Dorothy’s life, “yet there was a youthfulness about her, a spirit of adventure and an instinct for the heroic that was tremendously appealing. She made you believe it was possible to start building a better world, right here where you were. She made you believe, as St. Francis did, that the Beatitudes were for living.”

The second is “Dorothy Day: Holy Activist,” presented by the Henri Nouwen society as part of their series, “A Living Gospel: Reading God’s Story in Holy Lives.” Speaking on Dorothy’s potential canonization, Robert says, “If I’ve supported this cause, it’s because I believe that her inclusion in the list of official saints will have more effect in enlarging the Church, of moving her radical message closer to the heart of the Church, rather than diminishing her. Rather than making her smaller, it will make the Church larger.”

Living encounters with holiness and heroic virtue have the power to refract all of our past and future experiences through their prism, casting brilliant light on everything they touch. Many thanks to Robert and Kate for sharing how their lives have been shaped by knowing Dorothy. If you have additional scholarship, art, or other work featuring Dorothy’s contemporary legacy, please let us know! We’re excited to share the work of our members and supporters with you all.

Anniversaries of Nuclear War

Finally, next month marks the anniversaries of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945. Following the horrific accounts of destruction and death from Japan and the gleeful, celebratory tone of American media, Dorothy devoted her September column to a prophetic denunciation of the slaughter of innocents that had taken place with the enthusiastic support of the American government:

“Mr. Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; “jubilant” the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese…

“You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save.” He said also, “What you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto me.”

In the years that followed, even up to the summer before her death in 1980, Dorothy continued to mark the date of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in her monthly column and spent her life calling for an end to war and an end to preparation for war. Popular media suggests to us that nuclear war is inevitable; the heroic virtue of witnesses like Dorothy Day instead point us towards an eschatological hope: that God is for life and flourishing, not destruction and death. As Dorothy wrote in September 1945, “We are held in God’s hands, all of us, … He, God, holds our life and our happiness, our sanity and our health; our lives are in His hands. He is our Creator. Creator.” Here at the Dorothy Day Guild, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all those who follow in her work of disarmament and peacemaking.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

IN OUR TIME : Volume 1 (digital), Issue 1

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 20:44:00 GMT

IN OUR TIME

Newsletter of the
Dorothy Day Guild

Volume 1 (digital), Issue 1
June 2023

FOR MORE TO READ
(and in the tradition of the Catholic Worker to help "clarify thought"),
here are some engaging articles on nonviolence:

Nonviolence as a way of life.
"In a violent world, some find Gospel nonviolence a worthy alternative."
(Our thanks for viewing to the National Catholic Reporter)

More light on the full flowering of Day's pacifism.

"The Spirituality of Dorothy Day's Pacifism,"
by Anne Klejment

(Permission to view thanks to U.S. Catholic Historian )

Vivid recounting by one who was there of the
Catholic Worker's efforts to practice peace.

"The Roots of Dorothy Day's Pacifism:
Solidarity, Compassion, and a Stubborn Hold on Truth,"
by Tom Cornell
(Our thanks for viewing to the Houston Catholic Worker)

An inflection point in American Catholic history.

"We Are Still Pacifists:
Dorothy Day's Pacifism during World War II,"
by Sandra Yokum Mize

(Thanks to American Catholic Studies and JSTOR,
full access available for the month of July.
Hard copies, upon request, available from the Guild.)

Documenting the dogged protest of the air-raid drills.
"Spiritual Exercises," from the archives of In Our Time

YOUR SUPPORT KEEPS THE CAUSE MOVING!

Blessed and be-ribboned boxes of evidence sent to Rome in 2022,
marking the start of the final phase of the inquiry into Day’s holiness.

THANK YOU

for Joining the Dorothy Day Guild
as a New Member or a Renewing Member
and/or for Making a Donation.

HELP HERE

Lower East Side , Bro. Mickey McGrath
(long the home to Day, pictured lower right, writing)

DEAR READERS

We'd love to hear from you!

And learn what is
on your minds,
in your hearts,
or your prayers
about Dorothy
and the cause.

Contact: ddg@archny.org
(subject line: In Our Time)

IN OUR TIME

Editorial and Production Team
Carolyn Zablotny, Interim Editor
Colleen Dulle
Anthony Santella
Gabriella Wilke

Contributors
Writers: Mary Beth Becker, Judy Coode, Anne Klejment, Casey Mullaney,
Fumi Tosu
Designer: Mindy Indy, www.mindyindy.com
Lettering: Linda Henry Orell

Credits
Art: Ade Bethune, “Peace Tree,” masthead; “Vine and Branches,” border

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”) and to Bro. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, for the use of his illustration, “Lower East Side.”

DISPATCHES, On the Move!

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 14:43:00 GMT

Welcome back to our Dispatches column! After three months as the Guild’s new coordinator, it’s so good to have a space to take stock of the work we’ve accomplished together in the last quarter and to provide a map of the next steps on Dorothy Day’s continued journey to “official” sainthood.

In my role, the last few months have involved a lot of listening as Guild members and supporters have offered their own experience, wide and varied, in forwarding the cause, some going back to its start in 2000, and others, more recently. In this 125th anniversary year of Dorothy’s birth, their personal stories—and your own—bring home as nothing else could her living legacy. We are all, she reminds us, on pilgrimage.

Move to Manhattan College
We have a number of updates and ongoing projects to share with you, but first, the news of a quite literal pilgrimage. We’ve moved! After many years at New York’s Catholic Charities in the Manhattan-based office of the Archdiocese of New York, the Guild is now headquartered at Manhattan College, in Riverdale, New York, home of the newly opened Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism. Thanks to the organizational talents of Vanessa Pereira and Jodee Fink, we were able to accomplish the move in one minivan trip from Manhattan to the Bronx. Our new office is in a bright and cheerful suite of rooms that we share with campus ministry, and Rebecca Kranich, our undergraduate intern, has already gotten busy curating the icons, books, and other artwork that will hang in the inviting space. During her life, Dorothy was frequently asked to speak on college campuses, and we’re all excited to be surrounded by the buzz of student activity when the fall semester begins in August.

Retreat Day
Our Guild advisory board met on Friday, June 16th, the feast of the Sacred Heart, at Manhattan College for a retreat day focused on the Beatitudes. The morning began with prayer and reflection in the Chapel of the Holy Infancy—where Dorothy herself prayed upon the founding over fifty years ago of Pax Christi USA alongside dedicated pacifists and friends, Eileen Egan and Manhattan College theology professor, Joe Fahey—and concluded with a Mass celebrated by Fr. Ray Roden in the same chapel. This tiny, intimate worship space, flooded with natural light from the stained-glass windows, made it possible to include both in-person and virtual participants in our reflections on the Beatitudes. Which blessings do we find most consoling? Which ones challenge and discomfort us? For me, in my work with the Guild and in my life at the Catholic Worker in South Bend, it’s this one: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Here, Jesus promises that no effort, no love, no commitment given in support of justice and the building up of God’s kingdom will be wasted. We might not see the fruits of our labor immediately, or even in our own lifetimes, but God sees and holds our efforts, and promises that our hunger and thirst will be satisfied. Though our collective prayer remains that Dorothy be recognized as a saint “in our time,” it’s an apt Beatitude for the Guild.

Too, I see faith in that promise in the narrative of Dorothy’s life. During our retreat, some of her personal items—the sunhat, skirt, and woven purse she wore to the United Farm Workers’ solidarity rally, where she would be arrested for the final time—remained below a statue of St. Joseph by way of bringing her presence into the room with us. Dorothy’s unshakable faith in God’s providence sustained the burgeoning Catholic Worker movement through its first decades until her death in 1980. The Catholic Worker turned ninety this year. A miracle of continuance to be sure, and I believe a sign of God’s continuing fidelity to this promise of fulfillment. So many of our friends and supporters have given their lives over to the tasks of establishing justice, caring for the poor, and working for an end to war and other forms of state-sponsored violence. We can be both consoled and challenged by the Beatitudes and also trust that Dorothy continues to pray and intercede for our efforts.

Guild Governance
Our retreat also included time for a business meeting where Alex Avitabile and George Horton detailed some upcoming changes to the Guild’s governance structure. Although we will maintain a close relationship with the Archdiocese, our move to Manhattan College and the completion of the local diocesan phase of the canonization process suggested that it was time for the Guild to establish its own independent status as a 501c3 with its own bylaws. Alex has done yeoman’s work in drafting the documents which will accomplish this new legal status, and we look forward to transitioning our advisory committee to a true board of directors.

Canonization Updates
We also had the chance to meet virtually with our postulator, Waldery Hilgeman, who joined us virtually from Rome. Waldery very kindly took time out of his evening to discuss some positive changes in the cause’s status. Upon its review of the mounds of evidence sent to them, the Vatican has issued a decree stating that the cause for Dorothy Day is now formally recognized as a “valid process.” All is deemed to be in order with nothing more required. Thanks again to the more than 100 volunteers who participated in the official transcriptions of Dorothy’s writing—we would never have gotten to this point without your tireless efforts!

Now that this decree has been issued, we are waiting for the appointment shortly of the relator, the monsignor who will be in charge of overseeing Dorothy’s positio —a kind of spiritual biography that examines the distinctive and critically needed gifts she brings to the Church at this unique juncture in history as well as her “heroic” practice of the key virtues constituting holiness. The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints is charged with selecting an appropriate relator for each cause—in Dorothy’s case, someone who is an English-speaker and is familiar with American history and culture and ideally other American sainthood causes.

The Work Ahead
In the next stage of the cause—the movement of her status from “Servant of God” to “Venerable” (the latter helped by the potentiality of a miracle; much more on this in future newsletters)—my desire for the Guild is that we serve as a hub of resources for people who are interested in Dorothy’s legacy, whether for educational purposes or their own spiritual enrichment. Clearly, there is something about the way that Dorothy lived the Gospel that attracts and draws people. As a person who exemplified the hunger and thirst for righteousness, Dorothy’s witness provides us with possibilities for our own lives and suggests to us how we might deepen and ground our commitments to nonviolence, community, and solidarity with the poor. Please stay tuned, and stay in touch! Much with your faithful support has been accomplished—and how exciting is the more together we have to go!

Archived Comments

GOOD TALK, Dorothy Day’s Christian Pacifism

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 03:31:00 GMT

Anne Klejment : Dorothy’s opposition to World War I reflected the antiwar influence of the Left and Progressive reformers. Initially, she hoped that working people would not support war, that they would view it as a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. She was quickly disabused of her expectation. As a reporter for the Socialist Call , she was sent to Washington, D.C. by bus to cover an antiwar protest of progressives and radicals that attempted to prevent U.S. entry into the war. Along the route, she discovered that ordinary folks were not sympathetic to the protesters. Later she admitted that her stories depicting antiwar crowds were false: “Most of it [the swell of antiwar support while headed to D.C.] was imaginative.”

Antiwar reformers and radicals were troubled that banking and industrial interests would gain considerably from war profiteering. Workers would be risking their lives and livelihoods to advance the interests of the wealthy. Radicals aimed to eliminate capitalism. Reformers preferred to curb its excesses. And both viewed the idea of the war as repugnant. Some Progressives contended that conflicts should be ended by civilized means, not by violence. And radicals, desiring to advance the solidarity of the working class, were repelled by workers from different nations killing each other. They dreamed of a world in which the class interests of workers would prevail over those of the wealthy few.

During World War I, the term “pacifism” was fluid in meaning. Anyone who opposed the war for any reason could be labeled a pacifist, even if they advocated violence in other situations. Dorothy was antiwar, but not a pacifist as we understand it today, meaning as an opponent of all wars and violence. As she later explained, “I was pacifist in my views—pacifist in what I considered an imperialist war though not pacifist as a revolutionist.” At the time, she still supported the revolutionary violence of the common people and the political vanguard during the Russian revolution.

To raise an army, the Wilson Administration resorted to compulsory military service through the draft. It would be unsuccessfully challenged in the Supreme Court on the grounds that military conscription was a form of slavery and therefore contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment. That argument, of course, failed.

Dorothy Day, pictured between other young reporters for the Socialist paper, ‘The Call,’ protesting the United States’ entry into World War I.

Dorothy was close to men who were facing this highly charged personal and political decision. Some opposed the draft. Most registered, a few did not. She wrote compassionately about their anguish. Some found themselves in legal jeopardy, either spending time in jail or heading to Mexico to evade registration, induction, and imprisonment.

Dorothy carefully wrote about these friends in The Long Loneliness , which was published during the Cold War. She even changed someone’s name to protect a person charged but found innocent. In a related case, she mentioned an alias of another person without connecting it to his identity. It’s important to know that she did this during the height of the McCarthy anticommunism scare! She refused to risk subjecting them to further government scrutiny—even decades later. Others were ratting on alleged subversives, but she refused to stoop so low.

The wartime suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of the press deeply concerned Dorothy as did the imprisonment of World War I opponents. Remember, government suppression of freedom of expression ended her employment with The Masses in the fall of 1917. She was unemployed when she joined the women’s suffrage protests as a “Silent Sentinel.”

Dorothy understood that war resisters were political prisoners, whereas most average Americans considered resisters to be unpatriotic, even traitorous. The militant suffragists were political prisoners, too. This is one of the reasons why she joined their campaign in Washington, D.C., despite her opinion that voting was meaningless. The suffrage demonstrations, which were viewed by many as unpatriotic in wartime, made her a political prisoner, too, in solidarity with the men who opposed the draft. Dorothy’s arrests and jailings expanded her life experiences, which, she hoped, would enhance her ability to write about injustices and the costs of attempting to end them. This was material for freelance writing projects while she was unemployed.

I’d like to add a postscript. Reading the Bible was important to her back then, as was belief in God, even after she stopped attending church as an adolescent. Was her opposition to World War I completely rooted in secular radicalism? I don’t know. But her disappointment with Christians’ failure to live Jesus’s law of love does not eliminate the possibility that deep down, her opposition to war, while not disavowing all forms of violence, imperfectly honored Jesus’s radical message that Christians must care for one another. Fighting wars and engaging in violence was not what Jesus had in mind in proclaiming the “good news.”

C.Z.: Dorothy’s attraction to the poor and immigrants brought her into the Catholic Church. She could not have credited its position on matters of war and peace.

A.K.: That’s right. She loved the poor, wanted to be with them. In addition to the Bible, the socially conscious fiction that she loved from childhood nourished her identification with, compassion for, and activism on behalf of the poor. And her engagement with the poor as a radical journalist certainly intensified her commitment to work for significant social change on their behalf. It was never her aim to hobnob with bishops or with other “worthies.”

When she converted, American Catholics of the 1920s were struggling to establish themselves as loyal Americans, capable of maintaining their faith while participating in American institutions, society, and culture, as individuals, not as an ethnic religious bloc. Catholics were instructed to obey authority. The message of “pray, pay, and obey” applied to the government as well as the Church. Remember the long history of anti-Catholicism and nativism in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan was resurgent during the twenties, and even non-members shared many of its views about who was responsible for the alleged moral decline of the United States. Among its targets were immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Blacks, and urban dwellers. At this time Congress passed two draconian immigration laws aimed at drastically cutting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, the homeland of the alleged dregs of society, mainly, poor Catholics and Jews. These were the people Dorothy loved!

Catholic reformers, like the influential Rev. John A. Ryan, saw war as an opportunity for social reconstruction that could curtail injustice, ultimately eliminating some of the causes of unrest and war. He and others were involved in forming the Catholic Association for International Peace (CAIP) during the late twenties, roughly at the time that Dorothy joined the Church. It did not contribute to her conversion. She eventually learned about the organization, but CAIP adhered to just war teaching, which allowed for Catholic participation in those wars that met certain criteria. Dorothy would root her pacifism in the Gospel: love for God and neighbor. In practice, CAIP consistently deferred to U.S. authority in time of war. The organization finally collapsed under the weight of the moral issues raised by U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

At the time of her conversion, she probably hadn’t yet entirely worked out her own views on war and her pacifism would develop incrementally once the Catholic Worker was underway.

C.Z.: Like so much else, Dorothy’s pacifism seemed to widen and deepen over time.

A.K.: I agree. The seedbed of her pacifism extended back into her Protestant young adulthood. Her familiarity with the Bible remained a significant part of her spirituality and informed her pacifism. Back then, the Catholic laity was discouraged from Bible reading. It would take a convert like Dorothy to advance biblical nonviolence as an essential Catholic teaching. She placed enormous emphasis on the commandment to love God and love neighbor. She understood it as the core teaching of Jesus and pondered over it from adolescence until her death.

Her pacifism, opposition to war, or more accurately, her resistance to war, her noncooperation with it developed as she thought through the implications of love of neighbor at the Catholic Worker.

Being a Catholic pacifist during the early thirties was not as controversial as it would become later. Why not? At the time, there was widespread revulsion against war in the United States and Europe. Many Americans questioned whether, with the global depression and the rise of fascism, World War I had truly made the world “safe for democracy.” The cost in lives and dollars was troubling. And in those economically desperate years, war profiteering seemed particularly offensive. The robust isolationist movement, although in some sense a rejection of engagement in the world, provided cover for pacifism during the early thirties. But it did not define pacifism. Both stood against war—and the United States was not then involved in a full-scale conflict. What was then taking place south of the border wasn’t of much concern to citizens. Pacifism becomes more publicly controversial when a country openly plans for or goes to war. Additionally, Dorothy remained influenced by the leftist critique of war but not necessarily by the Left’s approach to addressing social, economic, and political injustice. She saw the truth in its insights, for example, in the exploitation of workers and the colonized, and she determined that the critique was valid.

The basis for her pacifism in the thirties and beyond was Jesus’s law of love. Unconditional love. How can you kill someone while unconditionally loving them? You cannot. And Dorothy was already living that unconditional love among the poor and the injured at the Catholic Worker. If ever there was a seamless garment approach to human dignity and the survival of humanity, this was it!

Dorothy’s pacifism during the Spanish Civil War launched the first indication that her pacifism would be controversial and alienate some supporters. Many of the Catholic bishops sided with Franco because he pledged to protect priests, sisters, and Church property. Her bold refusal to support the use of violence on either side was at odds with their position. Consequently, she was criticized by Catholics for not supporting Franco and by the Left for not supporting the anti-fascist Loyalists. Her stand cost the donation-dependent Catholic Worker vital support.

C.Z.: If ever I could choose an event in Catholic Worker history where I could be that fly on the wall, it would be the retreat in 1940, sparked by Dorothy’s assertion, proclaimed in a banner headline, that the movement would remain pacifist.

A.K.: Oh my, yes! The sparks must have been flying. Even during the thirties, two strands of pacifism coexisted, somewhat uneasily, I suppose, at the Catholic Worker. Dorothy advocated gospel pacifism. Some, for example, Bill Callahan, who did champion the right to conscientious objection, preferred just war pacifism. And still others concluded that World War II was a just war. Dorothy’s gospel pacifism meant absolute opposition to war. Just war criteria could lead to a pacifist conclusion if one insisted that a just war in the modern era was impossible, given the indiscriminate injury inflicted on civilians by modern weaponry, for example. But, as in the case of CAIP, it could be interpreted to conclude that the cause was so just, that the enemy was so evil, that all means could be employed to counter the threat. We know that the pacifism of the Catholic Worker resulted in certain C.W. groups ending the distribution of the New York paper. The Chicago group published its own non-pacifist version. Dorothy demanded that the New York paper be distributed. Printing a local one was acceptable, but the New York paper needed to be distributed as well. As for the draft, Dorothy and Joe Zarrella testified in Congress against its passage in 1940, more than a year before Pearl Harbor.

Let’s outline some major wartime issues that Dorothy addressed. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, she recognized that the United States was involved in an undeclared war. Aid for Britain preceded the formal war declaration. She specifically advocated gospel pacifism, a spiritually grounded practice, even prior to the declaration of war. As a defender of human rights, she had already pointed out Nazi excesses, condemned anti-Semitic falsehoods, and was one of a very few Americans to openly disagree with the incarceration of Japanese Americans in “internment camps” on the West Coast. Since she lived at the subsistence level, on donations and royalties, she would be paying few if any taxes that would support war.

She feared that the paper would be shut down, just as dissenting publications were during World War I. And she recognized that her views could send her to prison as a disloyal person. Indeed, her name appeared in an FBI list of persons who might be detained because of their alleged subversive views. Fortunately, these fears were not realized. Nonetheless, the FBI amassed a hefty file on her views and activities, some of which falsely accused her of being a communist.

When the drafting of women was rumored, she joined with others who would refuse to sign up. This potentially bold move, a large step beyond conscientious objection, meant that she planned to resist cooperating with conscription.

Observing that war industries support the war effort, she believed that such work, remunerative though it was, should be shunned. She objected to the goal of “unconditional surrender,” which hampered negotiations to end fighting. And, of course, she wrote a powerful condemnation of the use of the atom bomb. I could go on!

Ultimately, subscriptions plummeted during the war. And several C.W. houses closed, perhaps as much from the lack of available volunteers, who were drafted or employed in war industries or the conscientious objectors performing alternate service. Some of the Workers voluntarily joined the war effort. Dorothy continued to love them and published their letters from the front.

She tolerated positions at odds with hers within limits. To those who refused to distribute the N.Y. paper because of its pacifist position, she asked them whether they could call themselves Catholic Workers. The pacifist position must be shared even if they introduced positions at odds with it.

I’d like to note the significance of the pacifist writings of Dorothy and others during the war. Where else in the popular Catholic press would readers have found information on conscientious objection, the philosophical and theological basis for pacifism, and what pacifism looks like in practice?

Using the language of Fr. John Hugo, she wrote about employing the weapons of the spirit. By weapons of the spirit, she meant prayer, fasting, the works of mercy, etc., directed at trying to promote peace and justice to end violence. Pacifism, she believed, was not passivism, in which one would simply claim to be against war and do nothing. Before World War II began, she read Richard Gregg’s Power of Nonviolence , which familiarized her with ways to practice nonviolence.

Dorothy shared the task of writing about war and peace with others, too. For example, she invited two priest scholars, G. Barry O’Toole and John Hugo, to write a series of detailed articles that used traditional just war criteria to make a case for Catholic conscientious objection and opposition to war. She was a journalist, not a philosopher or theologian. Surely the paper presented a strong case for Catholic pacifism to wartime readers and, I would suggest, for posterity.

C.Z.: In frustration, Dorothy would wonder, “But where are the bands of Catholic conscientious objectors?” Some were at Camp Simon, where Catholic conscientious objectors performed work of “national” consequence. Tell us about Dorothy’s sympathy and support for these men.

A.K.: Alternate service was expected of those, who for reasons of religiously formed conscience, could not participate in the war effort during World War II. First, it was difficult for Catholic conscientious objectors to be recognized as such by the government. The Catholic Church is not one of the historic peace churches like the Brethren or the Mennonites who honor their members’ pacifism. Most Catholics serving on draft boards hadn’t even encountered just war teaching, much less a Catholic case for absolute pacifism. This was still a time when Catholics emphasized our differences with Protestants. And in the modern era, Christian pacifism was born within Protestantism. Plus highly influential Catholic prelates, like Cardinal Francis Spellman, were ardent supporters of the war.

Some of the Catholic Worker conscientious objectors joined the ambulance corps and performed noncombatant service. Others worked crushingly long hours under the most difficult conditions in hospitals and mental institutions. And then there were those segregated from society at Camp Simon, like Gordon Zahn who spent three years there as a young conscientious objector and later became a pioneering Catholic thinker and writer on nonviolence. The men were not paid for performing what was, in fact, utterly inconsequential work, mostly chopping and bundling wood to keep themselves warm, clearing debris from an earlier hurricane, and cutting down overgrown tree limbs. They were basically left to fend for themselves in this former Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camp; neither their government nor their Church wanted anything to do with them. Conditions were dire. The men suffered from boredom, isolation, and insufficient food and housing. Better run camps sponsored by the traditional peace churches tried to provide help, and though funds were scarce, Dorothy’s and the Catholic Worker’s efforts at aid were crucial. Dorothy made certain that The Catholic Worker published articles written by and about the men—that their situation would be known and perhaps encourage additional support. This was extraordinary. Previous American Catholic conscientious objectors, so few in number, had never had this level of recognition. But the camp closed before the war’s end. It just wasn’t sustainable.

‘Salt,’ a newsletter published by men in the Catholic conscientious objectors camp that the Catholic Worker struggled to help support.

C.Z.: The Catholic peace movement of the 1950s stressed noncooperation—personified by Dorothy’s annual refusal to take cover during the mandatory air-raid drills. That emphasis on noncooperation also characterized the actions of the Berrigan brothers and the draft card burning during the Vietnam War. While the mainstream press gave major coverage to these latter actions, The Catholic Worker surprisingly carried very little. Can you explain why?

A.K.: Noncooperation represented Dorothy’s personal approach to a Christian response to World War II and beyond. She knew the costs of prison, based on her World War I experience and those of friends who had defied the draft. The stakes for noncooperation with the air-raid drills involved possible jail time, and she was arrested a few times. As an opponent of war, the arms race, and weapons of mass destruction, she was paying the “cost of discipleship” by putting her body on the line. She set a demanding example.

Most of the public supported the Vietnam War for several years. Catholic Worker activists were among the earliest protesters against U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Starting small, the antiwar protests took many forms—picketing, marching, draft card burning, signing complicity statements, liturgies, and large gatherings. With its focus on issues like inequality, war, and free speech, the decade of the sixties itself was an era of wide-ranging protests and uprisings. In 1965, Dorothy supported individuals publicly burning their draft cards, a contentious issue. The men were called draft dodgers, communists, and worse. The destruction of draft cards had recently been criminalized and supporters of the war would engage in counter-protests at these events. At one such event, they called Dorothy “Moscow Mary,” and some urged the draft resisters to “burn yourselves.”

In the fall of 1965, the self-immolation of a Catholic Worker volunteer, Roger LaPorte, caught pacifists, including Dorothy and Catholic Workers, off guard. Church authorities seemed to blame pacifists. Having kept his plan to himself, LaPorte’s action and death shocked everyone. Considerable soul-searching took place at the Catholic Worker, as well as among supporters of nonviolent protest, those within the U.S. Catholic Church, and others within the general public. Had anyone at the Catholic Worker known, they would have stopped him. Still the Catholic Worker was being blamed by some for his death. It was a time of great suffering for Dorothy.

Some of the Catholic Workers who had burned their own draft cards were imprisoned. And some of the imprisoned “did hard time,” which created serious problems for themselves and their families. Imprisonment is emotionally, physically, and spiritually challenging. Dorothy felt that sometimes young people were inadequately prepared for prison. She supported resisters, but she wasn’t one to pressure others to risk imprisonment.

The Catonsville Nine draft board raid in 1968 was an action that Dorothy could not have anticipated. Mixed feelings about it surfaced at the Catholic Worker. Brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan were nourished by C.W. pacifism. After engaging in a variety of protests and in founding several peace organizations, they decided to take public protest to a different, much higher level of risk. Dorothy appreciated their spiritual depth. She never wavered in her personal support for Dan and Phil. At their federal trial, she spoke in support of the raid. Writing about them, she focused on their sacrifice as well as their prayer and fasting. It was a prophetic stand by priests in a Church that failed to advance a robust critique of the war or renounce its cozy relationship with the U.S. government. It was as though the American Church had already forgotten “Pacem in Terris” and Vatican II. But she expressed concern about young recruits in such raids and offered alternative nonviolent options. Naturally, she hoped that none would cross the line into violence against humans. The costly trial and the Berrigans’ decision to go underground, both breaking with traditional Gandhian nonviolence, were areas of disagreement that arose after the trial and with the continuation of draft board raids by others through the early 1970s. Mostly, she kept her reservations private, lest she further fracture the Catholic peace movement. She could be judgmental, as she readily admitted, but she usually preferred to criticize privately. The volatility of American society was still another consideration.

C.Z.: Can you reflect more on the character of Dorothy’s pacifism? At times it seems to carry a kind of penitential tone.

A.K.: For me, a penitential tone does not dominate Dorothy’s pacifism. I love how her pacifism responds to the signs of the time. She was so well informed about the horrors that the government has committed in our name. Dorothy was deeply disturbed by the sins of all sorts of violence—loss of human life, abuse, the deliberate denial or destruction of what humans need to survive in decency. Few can match her record in providing immediate help, charity, to those in need, combined with working toward that world in which it is easier for people to be good and just. We Catholics are probably more disposed toward charity than toward justice. Her example reminds us of the need to aim for both.

As a personalist, she felt the need to acknowledge and challenge what has taken place in the past in our name and to be prepared to address what is occurring in the present, and what is likely to take place in the future. And remarkably, as a Catholic prior to Vatican II, she was open to working with non-Catholics who shared her concerns.

C.Z.: Though there has always been a peace tradition running through the larger Catholic tradition, is it fair to say that that tradition was largely lost to the American Church? And that Dorothy Day through the Catholic Worker movement she founded with Peter Maurin played a major role in its revival? Perhaps that alone should make her a saint!

A.K.: Dorothy retrieved the Catholic peace tradition as best she could in the pages of the paper, whether it be quotations, illustrations, or reporting on the peace activities of the Catholic Worker and others. Even if Dorothy hadn’t written a word, Ade Bethune’s depictions of St. John Gualbert, St. Martin, and Jesus riding on a donkey conveyed the message of peace, forgiveness, and Jesus’s instructions for a world anchored in justice and peace. Dorothy referenced the Sermon on the Mount as the source of Catholic Worker pacifism. Could there be a more powerful claim than that? She was not a trained scripture scholar, but she faithfully grasped the radical implications of Jesus’s words and example. I think of her love for Pope John XXIII and his encyclical, “Pacem in Terris,” was a major step in the Church redefining its role in the world and its relationship to governments, nations, and peoples. And I recall her praying, fasting, and visiting bishops during Vatican II in the hope of gaining support for conscientious objection and a condemnation of indiscriminate bombing. Where would we U.S. Catholics be without the sound foundation for Catholic pacifism prepared by Dorothy and others whose writings she solicited for the paper?

C.Z.: Anything you’d like to add, Anne?

A.K.: I wish to thank you, Carolyn and the Guild, for providing this opportunity for me to share my thoughts. Everyone should keep in mind that the United States and the Catholic Church of Dorothy’s lifetime were not the same as they are today. Dorothy’s many accomplishments, including her gospel pacifism, began in an American Catholic culture that valued its conventional patriotism, not its pacifism. To some, her ideas sounded like communism. But when you read her works carefully, you find that she was offering a radical Christian alternative to communism and capitalism as we know them. It is an alternative grounded in the unconditional love that Jesus shared: a gift that all too often we fail to acknowledge, to accept for ourselves, and to share with others.

Dorothy Day, at civil defense drill protest (in front of Ammon Hennecy, who is carrying picket sign), New York, NY, ca. 1960, Photo by Mottke Weissman

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

SIGNS OF HOLINESS, Blessed are the Peacemakers

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 03:16:00 GMT

In spite of criticism, isolation, and even imprisonment, she held fast to the truth of the non-violent Jesus. Often she cited the inspiration of St. Francis of Assisi. Fr. Stephen T. Krupa, S.J., (in Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays , Marquette University Press, 2001), movingly records her testament. It reads like a litany prayed to strengthen us of more wavering convictions in the “law of love”:

Day attempted to render the law of love into countless situations of conflict.

When the nation and the Church sanctioned war, Day refused to abandon
her deep-seated pacifism.

When society and the Church ignored the lynching of black Americans in the South, Day denounced the hangings and racial violence on the front page of her newspaper.

When labor demonstrations grew violent, Day called for nonviolent tactics of resistance and fed and housed striking workers.

When the secular press neglected to report the hiring by factory owners of
scabs to incite violence at strikes, Day reported on the brute tactics used by management in industry.

When the nation and the Church overlooked the persecution of the Jews by Hitler, Day denounced the German atrocities.

When the Church ignored or disowned Catholic conscientious objectors
during and after World War II, Day helped them to organize.

When the government consigned Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II, Day was one of the few American newspaper editors to criticize the injustice in print.

When President Truman delighted in the success of the atomic missions over Japan, Day took him on in The Catholic Worker with a caustic commentary: “Mr. Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True Man. What a strange name, come to think of it. Jubilate Deo . We have killed 318,000 Japanese.”

When the American masses in large cities ran for shelter during the Civil
Defense air raid drills of the 1950s and ‘60s, Day sat down in a New York City park in protest of the government’s nuclear war propaganda and awaited arrest for civil disobedience.

When the government and the Catholic Church refused to support conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, Day backed the young Americans who burned their draft cards.

When the government and the Church disregarded the misery of non-
unionized farm workers, Day left a scheduled speaking engagement in San Francisco in the summer of 1973 to join Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers in a Fresno jail… her final jail sentence before her death in 1980.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus tells us. And blessed, we know, is Dorothy Day. Amen!

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

Archived Comments

SOWING SEEDS, Finding our “Liturgy of Hope”

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 03:06:00 GMT

What he meant, I believe, is that although we may not have the solution to the housing crisis, U.S. warmongering, or state violence, this, at least, was a way of pointing toward a hopeful, human way of living.

What I learned that summer was that in a world where people are discarded and told they do not matter, to create community around a delicious, nutritious meal is hopeful; that in a war-addicted world, to vigil for peace is human; in a culture where shallow entertainment lulls us into unthinking acquiescence, to engage in “clarification of thought” is prophetic.

I was going through a career transition when I signed up for the internship program. I had taught Ethics and Social Justice at an all-boys Catholic high school in San Jose, California for seven years. It was a meaningful and fulfilling time. Yet, inexplicably, I felt drawn to something else though I did not quite know what yet.

I spent three months visiting various Catholic Worker communities in California, including Guadalupe, San Jose, Redwood, Half Moon Bay, and San Francisco before arriving in Los Angeles. My intention was to learn what I could from the Catholic Worker movement before transitioning to whatever my next career might be.

It was during one of our silent anti-war vigils around the federal building in downtown Los Angeles when I realized I did not want to “transition” to something else. It was 2011, and the United States was mired in long, bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, by then, most people I knew had stopped thinking about the wars despite their enormous human and ecological costs.

The millions who had taken to the streets in early 2003 to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq were now mostly silent. Apart from those with loved ones fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, the Catholic Worker community was the only group of people I had met who still thought daily about these wars.

I do not write this in judgment, and I include myself among those who were only vaguely aware of the reality of the wars being waged abroad. Even when I was teaching war and peace, most days I did not think, let alone pray, about the wars, preoccupied as I was with grading, lesson planning, and other tasks of work and daily life.

That day in front of the federal building, I was struck by how important it was that here, at least, was a group of people who chose to remember. Whatever one thought of the merits of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, if our government was killing others in our name, was it not our duty to at least remember?

In the Eucharistic liturgy, the presider repeats the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “This is my body broken for you; this is my blood poured out for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” If we are called to remember the body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine at Mass, how much more are we tasked with remembering him in people whose actual flesh is broken, and whose life-sustaining blood is spilt by our hands?

The rhythm I learned at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker—chop, cook, serve, then walk, pray, protest—seemed right to me, not because it solved hunger or ended wars, but because it kept me human in the face of the absurdly inhumane. It was, indeed, hopeful.

In Japan, where I grew up, twelve years represents a full cycle of the zodiac calendar.

With each “round” or “turn” of the zodiac cycle, we enter a new fullness of life. This year of the rabbit, twelve years after my first experiment with the Catholic Worker, I find myself in Portland, Oregon, at the newly formed Dandelion House Catholic Worker.

I chose the name Dandelion House for the beautiful yellow flower that most of us think of as a weed. This plant is resilient, like the people relegated to the margins in Portland with whom we work. The entire plant—from flower, to leaves, to roots—can be taken as food and medicine, as I learned from a dear one versed in herbal medicine. And, of course, we wish upon dandelion seeds, entrusting them with our dreams. It is a flower of hope.

At this budding Catholic Worker, we house individuals and families in need, one, two, or three at a time. Our first guests are two incredibly strong young people fighting for their lives against trauma and addiction. We do our best to offer emotional and physical safety, spiritual grounding, and love. Once a week we offer a hot, nutritious meal to the local community that gathers under one of Portland’s many bridges. We pray. Little by little we experiment with what our own liturgy of hope looks like. What does hope look like today, in the heart of an empire that spends more than 800 billion dollars a year on war and preparations for war, instead of on protecting forests, restoring watersheds, or caring for the least among us? We don’t fully know, but we are trying to figure it out.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

BREAKING BREAD, The Crust of Companionship

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 13:49:18 GMT

(Of course, those who have studied Dorothy closely will know that the quote is unreliable; see Brian Terrell’s piece in the April 16, 2012 National Catholic Reporter on the story behind the distortion: “ Dorothy Day’s ‘filthy, rotten system’ likely wasn’t hers at all .” It’s a powerful saying, but it’s not on my Facebook page anymore.

For almost my entire adult life, I have worked in faith-based advocacy, mostly in Catholic circles, fighting this filthy, rotten system that we live in. It is almost impossible to do this work without realizing the effect of Dorothy Day on our mission and our message; she has permeated my life profoundly and irrevocably—images of her in photographs and as an icon are displayed in the Pax Christi USA office where I work. She was a supporter and mentor when Pax Christi USA formed fifty years ago and gave the keynote address at the first national assembly in the early 1970s. But if I had stayed put in the place where I was born and raised, it is possible I would never have heard of her at all.

“It is almost impossible to do this work without realizing the effect of Dorothy Day on our mission and our message.”

My large, Southern, Catholic family embraced our faith as an integral part of our identity. Service was understood to be an important component of life: one of my great-grandmothers spent decades as an advocate for incarcerated people, organizing Catholic Masses at the state penitentiary, teaching prisoners how to knit, and providing housing and job assistance after release. (My sister still has several of our great-grandmother’s scrapbooks from the early decades of the twentieth century, filled with birthday and Christmas cards from the men who Granny ministered to; I remember as a child realizing that almost all of the cards were signed with their inmate number, not their name.)

Other than some charitable activities, our family and wider church community were fairly conservative. My teachers from kindergarten through high school were Dominican sisters, members of a semi-cloistered community who wear full habits and receive new names at their final vows ceremony.

The women who taught me all those years were good people: they strongly believed in education, they were faith-filled, devoted to their pupils, and they instilled in their students a delight for beauty, music, and the arts. We were taught to honor the Blessed Mother, to recite the rosary, the Angelus, and the Regina Caeli. (A few years ago, a group of friends decided to say the rosary together, something we had never done before. Who was the only one who knew the Hail Holy Queen? Me. Thank you, Dominican sisters.)

However, I have no recollection from my elementary or high school years of any analysis of the power system in this country, either economic or political. We were taught to be charitable, with the strong assumption (based in reality) that we were of the privileged class. We were expected to pray for and pity those who have less, but little to no discussion was held about how fortunate lifestyles connect to lives of desperation and poverty.

My choice for college was Loyola University in New Orleans, which is where I first heard about Catholic social teaching and was taught to critically analyze the economic and political structure of the country. I attended my first political demonstration while a student there: a group from campus ministry drove to Baton Rouge to protest Louisiana’s use of the death penalty. (My father’s response when I told him: “Why?”) I can’t say for sure if it was at Loyola when I first heard of Dorothy Day, but it’s quite possible.

“No discussion was held about how fortunate lifestyles connect to lives of desperation and poverty.”

One significant experience during my college years was participating in the school newspaper. Luckily the staff was small enough that they welcomed a totally clueless and pretty much skills-free freshman. Those of us on the staff were fortunate enough to be mentored by Fr. Ray Schroth, a Jesuit priest who was a serious journalist. He guided us with a deep commitment to our development as thoughtful, clear writers. His reputation as a professor was often negative; many undergraduates abandoned his journalism and writing classes due to his considerably high academic expectations. But for those of us who got to know him while we were members of the newspaper staff, he was a generous and patient teacher, dedicated to ensuring that we respected the critical role of journalists in a free and just society, a role that Dorothy also understood.

Loyola reinforced my family’s belief that service is an essential part of Catholic life, and since I was disinclined to settle right away into a job that I might hold for forty or so years, I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (J.V.C.) and spent a year in Anchorage, Alaska living in community with eight other people.

My job was at a daycare center which provided services for children with disabilities; my housemates’ job sites ranged from a soup kitchen, a women’s shelter, a rape crisis center, a home for “thrown-away” teenage girls, an AIDS support program, and Covenant House, the program for runaway teenagers. The children I worked with were marginalized in a particular way, but my housemates were meeting and working with folks who were enduring some of the harshest experiences people can face: abuse, addiction, abandonment, hopelessness, illness, and destitution. To have a small understanding of these pains was an intense experience for all of us.

When my J.V.C stint ended, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I still live, and spent a year as an intern with Sojourners magazine, living in community with the five other interns. Though I had always lived in cities, this was my first experience residing in a high population density neighborhood, and much like my time in J.V.C, it was revelatory and humbling.

It was in Washington D.C. that I first met Catholic Workers and realized the depth and breadth of the network of faith-based activists who live in community in voluntary poverty and who practice on-going resistance to the dominant paradigm. Attending monthly Clarifications of Thought at the Dorothy Day House in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood became a regular occurrence, and eventually I participated in occasional civil disobedience actions.

Around this same time, Pax Christi became part of my life. Initially I joined a Pax Christi prayer group for young adults, which allowed for space to talk about the scriptures and other readings and to discuss public witness activities in Washington D.C. The focus on promoting peace and resisting war was and continues to be important to me, stemming from my years listening to my father’s stories about his experience in Europe during World War II. I don’t think my father ever allowed himself to think that it was wrong to serve in the military, but he certainly did it with great hesitation and would have never gone had he not been drafted. He also made it clear that he hated his years in the army and in the war; it was, he said, the worst experience of his life.

I have often wondered what he would have thought of Dorothy’s anti-conscription efforts during World War II. We never had the chance to discuss it. What difference might it have made, if her attempt had succeeded and if conscientious objection as a Catholic had been an option for him? Or for my brother who served (and survived with a Purple Heart) in Vietnam?

One of my most moving experiences with Pax Christi USA was the national assembly in 1997—Pax Christi USA’s twenty-fifth anniversary—held at Catholic University here in Washington, D.C. Mass was held in the crypt chapel of the Basilica of the National Shrine, the spot where Dorothy prayed in 1932, asking for guidance. Her presence was palpable at that Mass in 1997.

Seven years ago, I joined Pax Christi International to work with the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project which began after the April 2016 nonviolence and just peace conference held in Rome. This had been a ground-breaking gathering, bringing together Catholic theologians and peace practitioners from around the world, many from areas of terrible conflict, to discuss the Church’s role in promoting true peace and nonviolence. Priests, sisters, and lay people from the Global South said that the just war theory was irrelevant to them: How could anyone say a war is just? They repeated that it was possible to talk with enemies—“They are our neighbors,” said one sister from Iraq about ISIL.

‘How could anyone say a war is just?’

What would Dorothy have to say about that conference in 2016, or the subsequent ones in 2019 and 2022, these gatherings that have urged the Church to take a stronger position on nonviolence? I wish we could have invited her to participate—what a gift her moral clarity would have been to the conversation. Despite her fidelity and personal piety, she realized, as Robert Ellsberg wrote in 1997, “that the Church [must] be held accountable to its ideals and founding mission. ‘I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me. Romano Guardini said the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from His Cross, and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church.’”

Soon after the first nonviolence and just peace conference in Rome in 2016, Daniel Berrigan died. It felt significant—he had been aware of the gathering and had prayed for us, and once it had finished and we had published the “Appeal to the Catholic Church to recommit to Gospel nonviolence,” he let go.

It was an easy decision to travel to New York City for his funeral in early May. My travel companions—Marie Dennis with Pax Christi and Rose Berger with Sojourners—and I headed to Maryhouse, the Catholic Worker house which was the starting point for the funeral procession.

That rainy morning, we stepped inside a crowded Maryhouse, which had been Dorothy’s final home, and were able to visit Dorothy’s room, a deeply moving experience. The entire day was a gift—seeing Dorothy’s room, walking in the downpour through Manhattan with hundreds of others singing and praying, and then celebrating the Eucharist at St. Francis Xavier with a sanctuary full of Dan’s fellow Jesuits. I was buoyed by this incredible expression of love, friendship and companionship on this beautiful journey together. “What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships?” Dorothy once said. “God is love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other.” (After the ceremony, I was able to meet Fr. Schroth, my journalism professor from Loyola, for lunch; he was also a New York Jesuit and had been one of the funeral Mass concelebrants.)

Despite my admiration for her, I have not lived as radically as Dorothy did. I do not live in poverty, and I do not live in community, though I do try often to offer hospitality. Her words and her actions, her expressions of faith, stay with me, challenging and stretching my thoughts. What do I need to do to make those choices? Can I get there one day?

Today, Facebook doesn’t have a box for favorite quotes, but if I had the chance to add mine, it would be the beautiful sentences that Dorothy wrote in the postscript of her autobiography, The Long Loneliness: “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

Archived Comments

SAVED BY BEAUTY, A Bit of the Saint

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 03:10:00 GMT

We gathered around the speaker’s podium and, as requested, placed our hands on our hearts, pledging allegiance to the flag. This was followed by a genuinely rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Somewhere around the “rockets’ red glare,” I found myself drifting off and wondering what would Dorothy Day think of all this?

The commissioner said that the true recognition of Dorothy Day required more than taking the ferry: it meant standing up for immigrants and supporting the rights of workers to organize. Bishop O’Hara told us that Dorothy Day was a prophet and that God raises up prophets to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. I am reminded of the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel who once wrote that the essence of a prophet is “a person who holds God and men in one thought at one time, at all times.”

Coming full circle, Martha Hennessey read a wartime excerpt from her grandmother’s Catholic Worker column and spoke to our own divisive times. “We may disagree, but we cannot and must not forget the poor.”

It was a moving ceremony that leaves us gently subdued. At its conclusion, we are all invited aboard the Dorothy Day . I overhear someone say that the vessel can actually convey up to 4,500 people. In silence, we shuffle along—communicants walking up the aisle. Fireboats in the harbor like acolytes follow us at a respectful distance, announcing our departure by sending elegant spumes of water into the air.

The interior layout of the boat feels comfortably familiar. It is gleaming and fresh with a sleek coffee bar not yet open for business. I wonder how long it will last before it resembles the ferries of old with clouded windows, sticky floors and the smell of hot dogs. I have travelled those ferries and remember how refreshing it was to stand on deck on a hot day and how crowded it could get onboard on a blustery day. Who knows? A generation from now, someone cramped in the vestibule may idly read the once gleaming plaque about Day and wonder just a little about this Servant of God, this prophet who witnessed the world around her with tireless passion.

As the ferry gets underway, people settle down. Lost in their devices or their headsets, they nod off or look out the window as I do. The steady hum from the ferry engine churning its way through the ocean “vast and spacious and teeming with creatures beyond number” as the psalmist wrote, lends itself to contemplation. I can only imagine the comfort that this ferry ride must have provided for Dorothy who loved the sea, loved Forster when he came into bed smelling of seaweed and salt, and loved returning to Staten Island where her life began in the waters of baptism.

I too find comfort in this ferry ride. I remember one trip vividly. For more than half his life our brother Ron had struggled with serious bouts of depression and mental illness. His identity as a gay man, constricted by a homophobic and often hostile culture, only added to his burdens. My sister and I were determined to celebrate his fiftieth birthday in high spirits on Staten Island where the Philharmonic was offering a free concert at Snug Harbor. Everything was planned in great detail. The only thing we hadn’t planned for was rain. Drenched, we followed the disappointed crowd onto the ferry back to Manhattan. Ron’s labile mood had descended with the weather, muttering to no one in particular, “It always rains on my birthday.”

It felt hopeless laying out a picnic on his lap and attempting to be festive. Yet, catastrophe turned to sheer joy. Sensing our dilemma, we were surrounded by a community of well-wishers. People we just met called my brother by his name, chatting and commiserating about the rain. They applauded as my sister, Carolyn, managed to pass a birthday cake with candles still lit through the windows of the ferry and joined us in a chorus of happy birthday. Officials investigating the commotion contributed to the celebration, dimming the runner lights on the upper deck and allowing us to linger onboard as long as we wanted. Even the captain appeared, inviting my brother to visit the wheelhouse and help him steer the ferry into Manhattan. We traveled that ferry back and forth for hours. Yes, hard to believe. But it happened.

That evening my brother was saved by the kindness of strangers, like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire :

It’s a blessing to see Christ in the poor and vulnerable. It’s a blessing yet again, to recognize Christ’s love in the actions of others. As Dorothy once commented, we might as well face it—there’s a bit of the saint in all of us.

I’m swept from my reverie with the sound of horns. The ferry is approaching Manhattan. We converge to the exit doors, disembark, trudge along the massive span from ferry to terminal and disperse in all directions to our various destinations. In the merge of people coming and going, I lose sight of anyone I know. The building is a cavern of soaring windows, so different from the terminal Dorothy Day would have remembered. A plate glass view of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor reminds us to welcome the stranger. In this corner of the Manhattan terminal, I see my fellow travelers gathered. Many of them I had met years ago; others I have just met. The guitars are playing and familiar songs are sung; I muse at how many times the individuals in this small group must have borne witness in peaceful demonstration, acts of prayer and non-violent resistance to injustice. There is something so humbling about seeing people as we grow old. The work is never done, I think. Like the workers on the ferry, we are weary before the day has begun.

Yet in that moment I also feel heartened, remembering a passage from William James that Dorothy was fond of quoting:

Music gave way to prayer and I snap to attention. Carolyn has appointed me unofficial bell ringer, and St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, the same church that once provided late night comfort and solace for a youthful Dorothy Day, has kindly provided a set of “Sanctus” bells, the kind used at the Consecration. They sound the same now as when Dorothy would have heard them, not knowing what was going on at the altar but drawn to its holy mystery.

We give thanks to God for blessing us with good companions—for Peter Maurin who gave Dorothy a synthesis of faith in action that inspires us today, and workers like Joe Zarrella who was as enthusiastic when I met him in the 1980s as he was in the Depression when Dorothy Day first described their meeting. We remember the compassion and sacrifice of lifelong peacemakers like Eileen Egan, and the exuberant energy of political and labor activists like Mike Harrington and John Cort. And those unnamed, but in our hearts, the humble, unspoken saints we’ve met along the way. So many of us, myself included, understand Dorothy more fully through them. Their light continues to guide us.

And so, together and in spirit, we pledge our allegiance to the Beatitudes. With each refrain, the bells echo Christ’s blessings through the ferry terminal: to the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemaker.

Afterwards, we meander out into the sunlight.

Upon reflection, a ferry named Dorothy Day may not be so improbable after all—not a statue or a monument, but a utilitarian boat, sturdy and dependable, offering modest respite, time to reflect, and free transport for workers on their daily journey. Yes, from what I know of Dorothy, I think she would approve.

And godspeed, the Dorothy Day , on all her journeys.

Dorothy Day Guild June 2023 Missive

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 17:42:30 GMT

Dear friends,

May was a month full of celebrations and it seems hard to believe that summer is upon us already! We have a few brief updates for you this month, but be on the lookout for the first digital edition of our newsletter, “In Our Time,” coming to your inbox at the end of June. Our communications team has been hard at work on this issue, and we’re all very excited to share this collection of interviews, art, and reflections with you. We hope that this summer edition of “In Our Time” will be as intellectually engaging and spiritually nourishing for our readers as it has been for the writers and editors.

Ninetieth anniversary news

As May drew to a close, we enjoyed reading a few more tributes and reflections on the ninetieth anniversary of the Catholic Worker movement. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano published a collection of three articles in its English-language edition, by Giulia Galeotti, author of a recent Italian-language book on Dorothy, Kevin Ahern , co-chair of the Dorothy Day Guild, and Amanda Daloisio , editor of The Catholic Worker. Be sure to check these out, and also a recent piece from The Tablet, which featuring a conversation with Jane Sammon, a long-time Catholic Worker who knew and worked closely with Dorothy towards the end of Dorothy’s life. Enormous thanks to all of these authors, and to the Catholic Workers who bring a little of the peace of heaven, and a little of the presence of God to those they serve!

We also wanted to share one more ferry update, this time from the New York Times. If you ride the Dorothy Day this summer, please be sure to send a photo and tag us on social media– and say a prayer for all of the riders and the crew who will make that journey between Manhattan and Staten Island that Dorothy herself so loved!

Upcoming events (in person and online!)

Are you in NYC this weekend? Our friends at Maryhouse invite you to a performance of Lisa Wagner-Corollo’s “Haunted By God: The Life of Dorothy Day,” a free, one-woman show that follows Dorothy from her teen years in Greenwich village through the founding of the Catholic Worker with Peter Maurin and her tireless work for justice later in life. We hope to see you at Maryhouse on Saturday, June 10th, at 2:30 pm ! This play is being presented as part of New York and Chicago’s SixthFest. Learn more, and RSVP here. If you aren’t able to make it in person (or you just want a sneak peek at the show), you can watch an excerpt from the play here.

We’re also excited to let you know about an online book study hosted by our friends from Dorothy Day Tampa, who will be gathering to read The Long Loneliness together this summer. The sixth iteration of this ecumenical reading group begins at 7:00 pm, Wednesday July 5th. There are a few more spots available, so if you've never read Dorothy in her own words, or you're looking for a community to read and reflect with, check it out here!

If you’d like to get Dorothy-related news and hear about upcoming events more regularly, be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter – we love hearing from you!

Pax Christi awards

On June 4th members of the Dorothy Day Guild advisory board were honored by Pax Christi Metro New York. Martha Hennessy and other members of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 received the Father Richard McSorley award and Kevin Ahern was granted the Eileen Egan National Peacemaker award. During the ceremony, many of the awardees mentioned Dorothy and how her witness inspires them to action. Other members and friends of the Guild have previously received this award including Fr. Kevin Sullivan (1993), George Horton (2004), and Tom Cornell (2009). Congratulations to Martha, Kevin, and their colleagues on being recognized by this incredible group of peacemakers!

Pax Christi Metro New York is the regional Network of Pax Christi USA, which was founded in 1972 by a number of close collaborators of Dorothy Day, including her dear friend Eileen Egan, Gordon Zahn, Gerry Vanderhaar, Ed Guinan, Sr. Mary Evelyn Jegen, Bishop Tom Gumbleton, and Joe Fahey. Dorothy was involved in some of these early discussions and was the keynote speaker at the first Pax Christi USA’s conference in 1973. As Manhattan College professor emeritus Joseph Fahey wrote in an article on Pax Christi’s contributions to the US Bishop’s 1983 Peace Pastoral, “Pax Christi USA was strongly supported by Dorothy Day, who understood that the Catholic peace movement needed to reach the millions of Catholics who were not pacifists but who wanted to work for Christ’s peace in the world principally through their home parishes. Hence, from the beginning, Pax Christi USA has welcomed all people who were “on pilgrimage” to the Gospel of Peace.” We are so grateful to the many regional networks of Pax Christi USA for their pastoral work in bringing that Gospel of Peace closer to the heart and conscience of the Church each year. For more information on Pax Christi Metro New York, visit: https://nypaxchristi.org/

Where are we now? (Dorothy and Saintly Six)

Many people have asked us recently where the cause for Dorothy’s canonization stands now that all of our documents have been sent to the Vatican and we have entered the Roman phase of the process. Emanuele Spedicato, a colleague of our Roman postulator, Waldery Hilgeman, offered this presentation as part of a webinar on the canonization process which took place last winter. We so appreciate the clarity with which Emanuele outlined the next steps in the often-confusing path to sainthood! Thanks also go to our intern, Isabel Frazza, who prepared the transcript of the talk for those who prefer to use subtitles. Please keep an eye out for more videos on our brand-new YouTube channel! We plan to use this space to make educational resources on Dorothy more accessible to our friends and supporters.

In other canonization causes of note, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the order founded by Mother Mary Lange, celebrated a mass in honor of the tenth anniversary of the reinterment of their foundress’ remains at their motherhouse. Mother Lange’s positio has been approved and is now before the Dicastery for the Causes of saints. Please join us in praying that Pope Francis will declare Mother Lange “Venerable” very soon! To keep following Mother Lange’s cause and the other causes for the “Saintly Six,” the Black American Catholics whose causes for canonization are underway, we encourage you to sign up for the Black Catholic Messenger mailing list here.

A word from Dorothy

As always, we’d like to close with a few lines from Dorothy’s own writing. In June of 1957, Dorothy penned this reflection on the Catholic Worker movement for her column “On Pilgrimage”:

“The Catholic Worker is like an inn by the side of the road, with travelers coming and going, staying a day or a month or years, and the travelers are workers and scholars, poets, politicians, propagandists. Perhaps I should say that St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality is like that, but the fact is that people are attracted to the CW, to the publication itself, because of its ideas. Write about peace and freedom and people who want to work as pacifists and anarchists come wandering in and become part of a community. You write about the works of mercy, and people who want to perform them come to try to put into practice the things they read about in the lives of the saints. But to me, the best thing about the works of mercy is that they become mutual aid, people helping each other, cooking meals, going to market, peeling vegetables, washing clothes, or giving them out, making beds, putting people up. Love is an exchange of gifts, St. Ignatius said, so true charity, caritas, enters in and mutual aid means true justice.”

Dorothy herself was a great traveler, even as she remained the heart and anchor of her Catholic Worker community until her death. We see the fruits of those travels alive today in the Catholic Worker houses present on five continents and in international networks like Pax Christi. We also know those fruits are also ripening in secret, in the hearts of men and women who reject the accumulation of wealth and power and who live out a vocation to nonviolence and voluntary poverty in big and small ways. Dorothy’s legacy is still calling people from around the world together to work for peace: finding alternatives to war and other forms of state violence, honoring the image of God present in the poor, and building communities based on hospitality, mutual aid, and true charity.

We’re thrilled that these missives are reaching friends and supporters from California to Sweden, and if you know someone else who might be interested in hearing more about Dorothy, please forward them this email or encourage them to sign up for our mailing list in time to receive our June 2023 newsletter. As summer begins and we return to the season of Ordinary Time, please keep the cause in your prayers, and know that you remain in ours.

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy Day Guild May 2023 Missive

Tue, 09 May 2023 17:41:38 GMT

Dear friends,

Hello from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild! We are so excited to update you on recent Dorothy-related events and share some upcoming Guild news with you this month. May marks many significant anniversaries for all of us, particularly the 90th birthday of the Catholic Worker movement. Ninety years ago this month, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin published the first issue of The Catholic Worker (still available for just a penny a copy). In honor of this anniversary, Jerry Windley-Daoust has assembled a collection of articles and reflections looking back on the origins of the Catholic Worker movement and ahead to its future. Check out these writings by Dorothy and other contemporary voices here . Many blessings on this anniversary to Catholic Workers past and present, and to everyone who has worked to "build a new world in the shell of the old." As Dorothy wrote in The Long Loneliness , “It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.”

Ferry Updates

The Dorothy Day set sail for its inaugural voyage on April 28th from the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island. It was a joy to celebrate with so many of you on such a beautiful afternoon. Many thanks to everyone who contributed their labor and creative talents to the opening ceremony and prayer service bookending the ride. We were particularly moved by DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez’s (bilingual!) reflection on justice, activism, and the dignity of the poor, as well as The Dirty Rotten System band’s rousing rendition of “If I Had a Hammer (Ferry)”! If you weren’t able to join us in person, you can view the livestream of the opening ceremony here: Dorothy Day Staten Island Ferry Inaugural Ride

We’re sure Dorothy would have been proud to see many journalists present at the ferry station! Check out some of the ferry press at Our Sunday Visitor , The Irish Echo , The Tablet , and America .

We’re so happy that the Dorothy Day is now running its regular route between Staten Island and Manhattan, two locations that were the site of so many significant events and experiences throughout Dorothy’s life. To see the full album of pictures from the event, please visit our Facebook page , and if you get a chance to ride the ferry yourself, be sure to tag us on Facebook and Twitter!

Membership News and Upcoming Events

We’re moving! The Guild’s offices will officially move up to the Bronx next month to Manhattan College’s Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism. We are so grateful for the many years that Catholic Charities and the Archdiocese of New York have extended space to us at 1011, and we’re excited about the possibilities offered by a new home on a college campus. If you would like to make a contribution to support the move, or renew your annual membership with the Guild, please click here .

In June, the Guild will also meet for its annual in-person retreat to pray together as well as welcome new advisory board members and develop plans for promoting Dorothy’s cause over the course of the next year. The official Roman phase of the canonization cause has begun, but our work is certainly not over! We could not carry on this work without you. Your financial support, as well as your commitment to prayer and action carried out “in the spirit” of Dorothy is bringing her message of nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and deep love for the poor and vulnerable to a world that needs her legacy more than ever. Thank you so much for continuing to take part in and support the work of the Guild.

Other Canonization Causes of Note

Many of our Guild members are also active and interested in other American canonization causes, particularly those of the “Saintly Six,” the Black American priests, sisters, and laity whose causes are currently in process. Ralph Moore, Jr. details some of the factors at play here Although there are also active Guilds for Fr. Augustus Tolton , Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange , Mother Henriette DeLille , Ms. Julia Greeley , Mr. Pierre Toussaint , and Sister Thea Bowman , these causes have not received the financial support or attention from the wider Church merited by the heroic virtue of the Saintly Six.

Throughout her life, Dorothy was deeply concerned with racial justice, and as a believer and participant in the communion of saints, we are certain she would be eager to promote these causes! We encourage all members of the Dorothy Day Guild to pray for the canonization of each member of the Saintly Six. You can learn more about these candidates and how to become more involved in their canonization causes by visiting the website for each of their Guilds. We’ll keep you posted as we hear news from them, and stay tuned for future educational events that connect Dorothy’s legacy with those of the Saintly Six! For now, check out a new children’s book on Julia Greeley and please join us in congratulating the members of the Mother Mary Lange Guild and the Oblate Sisters of Providence on beginning the next state of her canonization cause– the Vatican recently approved her positio, opening the way for her to be declared “ Venerable ”. Mother Mary Lange, pray for us!

Peter Maurin

Today, May 9th, marks what would be the 146th birthday of Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin. Peter’s mentorship of Dorothy helped her to integrate her solidarity with the poor and commitment to nonviolence with her newfound Catholic faith. Peter’s vision of greater connection to each other and the earth in farming communes and agronomic universities prefigured the theological insights of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si ’, and is taking on new life in a new generation of Catholic Worker farming communities. In honor of Peter Maurin’s birthday, the podcast “Coffee With Catholic Workers” has just released a conversation with Lincoln Rice, Peter Maurin scholar and member of the Casa Maria Catholic Worker community in Milwaukee. In this conversation, Lincoln outlines Maurin’s thought on labor and where his ideas converged with and differed from Dorothy’s. Check it out here , and also be sure to take a look at Lincoln’s latest book, The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin: Easy Essays from the Catholic Worker , available here.

Here, we would also like to share with you a reflection from Dorothy’s column in the May 1965 issue of The Catholic Worker.

“First of all, it must be emphasized that Peter Maurin was a deeply religious man. He never missed daily Mass, and many a time I saw him sitting quietly in the church before or after Mass… He never rushed, but walked in most leisurely fashion, his hands clasped behind his back, ruminating no doubt, paying little attention to shops (except for bookshops) or to passersby or even to traffic.

Work, according to Peter was as necessary to man as bread, and he placed great importance on physical work. I can remember a discussion he had with the great scholar Dom Virgil Michel, who was the pioneer of the liturgical movement in this country.

“St. Benedict emphasized manual labor, as well as intellectual,” Peter said. “Man needs to work with his hands. He needs to work by the sweat of his brow, for bodily health’s sake. We would have far less nervous breakdowns if men worked with their hands more, instead of just their heads.”

Peter Maurin’s teaching was that just as each one of us is responsible for the ills of the world, so too each one of us has freedom to choose to work in “the little way” for our brother. It may seem to take heroic sanctity to do so go against the world, but God’s grace is sufficient, He will provide the means, will show the way if we ask Him. And the Way, of course, is Christ Himself. To follow Him.”

Many blessings and great thanks to all who are living out the Green Revolution in their homes, communities, and neighborhoods!

Please stay in touch, and keep a lookout for the next issue of our newsletter, “In Our Time,” coming to your inbox next month. “In Our Time” will be published quarterly, and you’ll also continue to receive these shorter monthly updates, so if you like what you’re reading, forward this email to a friend and encourage them to sign up for our mailing list linked here .

As always, we’re grateful to be on this journey with you!

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Dorothy Day Guild April 2023 Missive

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 15:19:10 GMT

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Dear friends,

Hello, and happy Easter from all of us at the Dorothy Day Guild! We hope that this season of new life and rebirth brings rest and joy to you and your loved ones. After a quiet Lent, the Guild is full of fresh energy. We’re delighted to share some news as Dorothy’s canonization cause moves forward, as well as several new initiatives and upcoming events with all of you.

News and Events

In March, Deirdre Cornell, George Horton, Kevin Ahern, Robert Ellsberg and I met with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Monsignor Greg Mustaciuolo to update them on what the Guild has been working on now that we have entered the Roman phase of the canonization process. We are so grateful for their warm reception and enthusiasm for Dorothy’s cause as well as that of Venerable Pierre Toussaint, another New York Catholic saint-to-be, whose cause has gone to Rome! (For more information about Pierre Toussaint’s life and cause for canonization, see here )

This year marks the 125th anniversary of Dorothy’s birth, and there are a number of upcoming events planned to celebrate her life and work over the course of the next few months– stay tuned! Most immediately, we would like to extend an (somewhat tentative still!) invitation to all of you for the inaugural ride of the Dorothy Day Staten Island Ferry on April 28th. Dorothy took the Staten Island ferry frequently to make the trip between the cottage at Spanish Camp and the Catholic Worker in Lower Manhattan. Enormous thanks go out to the New York Catholic Worker community as well as the NYC Department of Transportation for their work in helping to plan the first ride of the vessel that now bears her name!

Please join Guild members and friends from Maryhouse and St. Joseph House on the ferry for its first voyage on Friday, April 28th (weather permitting with a potential rain date of Monday, May 1st). Dorothy Day sails at 12:30pm from the St George Ferry terminal on Staten Island. (Be there early!)

The Guild is working with the NY Worker to have a celebratory moment on the voyage from Staten Island to Manhattan and possibly a small gathering just after the event. We’ll update you with more information as the day draws closer. Look out for a formal invitation with complete details soon!

The Catholic Worker Turns 90

May 1st also marks the 90th birthday of the Catholic Worker movement! Dorothy and Peter published the first issue of The Catholic Worker on this day in 1933. Many Catholic Worker communities will be celebrating this anniversary next month, so we encourage you to check out the link here and reach out to the Catholic Worker communities near you to find out more about their community life and witness and how you can be involved in their work of building “a new world in the shell of the old”.

New Faces

We’re also very pleased to welcome two new interns at the Dorothy Day Center for the Study and Promotion of Social Catholicism at Manhattan College.

Rebecca Kranich is a current junior, majoring in communications and political science with a concentration in journalism and a minor in peace and justice studies. As an intern, Rebecca has been tasked with creating a walking tour brochure of the New York City area. Her brochure highlights significant sites in Manhattan and Staten Island and further afield regarding Dorothy, her life, and the Catholic Worker.

Joanna Canigiani and is a senior majoring in political science with a minor in international studies. Originally from Long Island, Joanna was drawn to being an intern at the Dorothy Day Center through a peace studies class she took with Kevin Ahern where she learned about Dorothy’s life and legacy for the first time. Joanna has been working on a research collection at the Manhattan College library of current work that engages Dorothy’s life and work, as well as current scholarship on Peter Maurin and Catholic activism that draws inspiration from Dorothy and the Catholic Worker.

Both Rebecca and Joanna have been a huge help in updating communications material for the Guild and bringing some fresh perspective to our outreach and social media. We look forward to presenting the new Guild brochure they’ve assembled at the ferry ride this month!

Recommendations for April

There has been an outpouring of creative work on Dorothy recently, and we’d like to share a few reading, viewing, and listening recommendations for this month.

First, D.L. Mayfield’s wonderful book, Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and its Challenge for Our Times has already been out for a year this month! Mayfield brings a personal perspective from her own evangelical upbringing to Dorothy’s life of voluntary poverty and Christian anarchism, and asks what it really means to be a neighbor to those around us. You can learn more in an excellent interview by the author with Culture Study . If you haven’t had a chance to read Unruly Saint yet, snag a signed copy from Mayfield’s website here .

Second, check out visual artist Kristi Pfister’s mosaics, murals, and other work inspired by Dorothy! Pfister is a multimedia artist who explored Dorothy’s hidden life of prayer and contemplation which undergirded the visible realities of her life of radical activism. Pfister’s exhibit, “Dorothy Day Mosaics: Iconography of an Activist, has been extended through April 23rd at the Rutan-Becket House Gallery on Staten Island. If you can’t make it in person, you can view some of the mosaics and other art on her website and Instagram .

Finally, Robert Ellsberg has appeared on a recent podcast to talk about Dorothy. His conversation with Grace Ji-Sun Kim for Madang Podcast, hosted by Christian Century, is available here . You don’t want to miss this fresh and insightful chat!

Are you working on a Dorothy-related creative, academic, or social project? If so, we want to hear from you! Help us share your endeavors with our membership!

A Few Words from Dorothy

As we conclude the Octave of Easter, we’d like to share a few lines of Dorothy’s Easter reflection from the April, 1964 issue of The Catholic Worker:

“On Easter Day, on awakening late after the long midnight services in our parish church, I read over the last chapter of the four Gospels and felt that I had received great light and understanding with the reading of them. “They have taken the Lord out of His tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him,” Mary Magdalene said, and we can say this with her in times of doubt and questioning. How do we know we believe? How do we know we indeed have faith? Because we have seen His hands and His feet in the poor around us. He has shown Himself to us in them. We start by loving them for Him, and we soon love them for themselves, each one a unique person, most special!

How can I help but think of these things every time I sit down at Chrystie Street or Peter Maurin Farm and look around at the tables filled with the unutterably poor who are going through their long-continuing crucifixion. It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path.

Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across from the Catholic Worker office, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God’s continuing promise to us that He is with us always, with His comfort and joy, if we will only ask.”

Join Us!

The sap is indeed rising, and we’re so happy to continue learning from and growing into the legacy Dorothy left us with alongside each of you. Please stay in touch with us! Going forward, we plan to send out these updates towards the beginning of each month, and our regular newsletter will resume for the June issue– now digital! If you haven’t renewed your Guild membership for this year, we encourage you to do so here and invite a friend to join as well by forwarding this message to anyone who is excited about Dorothy! Above all, please continue to pray to Dorothy and ask her to bring your needs before God. Dorothy’s life of hospitality, her peace witness, and her vision of community were all sustained by her daily practices of prayer. We’re confident that great things will be accomplished through her intercession!

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild

Day 9, Community

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 04:56:00 GMT

“People, wherever they are, can make a community.”― Dorothy Day, Interview in the Catholic Agitator 1971

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness

Let us pray with gratitude for the many intentional communities that strive for holiness and radical transformation of the world. Let us pray to seek community here and now, wherever we may be. Dorothy Day, help us on our journey, for we are poor in spirit and in need of grace.

Day 10, The Path Forward

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:09:31 GMT

The Catholic Worker movement she co-founded still inspires us to take the Christian vocation to love God and neighbor seriously. In the words of lifelong movement scholar and teacher, David O’Brien, “It makes personal and political demands …. If the Gospel is true, more is required; love and justice and peace must become verbs that describe how people live.”

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the Cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’” -Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes

Day 8, Love

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 14:15:00 GMT

“When the little one was born, my joy was so great that I sat up in bed in the hospital and wrote an article for the New Masses about my child, wanting to share my joy with the world. I was glad to write this joy for a workers’ magazine because it was a joy all women knew, no matter what their grief at poverty, unemployment and class war.” –Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Day 7, Justice

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 13:39:00 GMT

“It is hard to feel that the color of our skin in a way separates us from this mass of people whom we have injured. It is with too little and too late that we are engaging ourselves. But even if it is at the eleventh hour that we are called to serve, we can respond.” –Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage,” The Catholic Worker , July-August 1963.

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

We pray for justice where it has been denied: racial minorities, indigenous peoples, workers, immigrants and refugees, the poor — even the wrongs committed to nature—everyone who and everything that has been treated unjustly. We pray to be instruments of justice by our prayers and deeds. And we pray for forgiveness for our personal and collective sins against justice — whether because of our actions and, as too often is the case, our inaction.

Day 6, Peacemaking

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:24:16 GMT

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

As we pray for peace and peacemakers, let us take to heart the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Let us pray that we, like Dorothy Day, recognize in our calling as Christians the call to be peacemakers in our most basic interactions with others and in our national and international relations.

Day 5, Labor

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 15:46:00 GMT

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

Let us pray to St Joseph, a carpenter and father, a laborer in the shadows, for the invisible working poor and for those who struggle to make a living. We pray to grow daily in conscience and compassion. Help us to cast light on the oppression of workers and to change those aspects of our own lives that diminish human dignity.

“Month by month, in every struggle, in every strike, on every picket line, we shall do our best to join with the worker in his struggle for recognition … we are all members one of another, in the Mystical Body of Christ, so let us work together for Christian solidarity.” –Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , 1936

Day 4, Works of Mercy

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:33:35 GMT

- Feed the Hungry – Instruct the Ignorant

- Give Drink to the Thirsty – Counsel the Doubtful

- Clothe the Naked – Admonish the Sinner

- Visit the Imprisoned – Comfort the Sorrowful

- Shelter the Homeless – Bear Wrongs Patiently

- Visit the Sick – Forgive All Injuries

- Bury the Dead – Pray for the Living and the Dead

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

We pray for the grace and desire to bear witness to our faith through the daily practice of the works of mercy.

“When Peter Maurin talked about the necessity of practicing the works of mercy, he meant all of them. He envisioned houses of hospitality in poor parishes in every city of the country, where these precepts of our Lord could be put into effect. He pointed out that we … no longer practice personal responsibility, but are repeating the words of the first murderer, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?” –Dorothy Day, “The Scandal of the Works of Mercy,” Commonweal, November 4, 1949

Day 3, Voluntary Poverty

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 00:37:57 GMT

The Catholic Worker life that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin espoused, a truly abundant life in Christ, continues (some say miraculously) without reliance on endowments or investments, paid staff or government subsidies, sustained in Holy Poverty by God’s love and our response.

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

Let us pray today for God’s grace and the special support of His Servant, Dorothy Day, whose holy life inspires us. Lift our hearts, challenge our complacency, help us to let go of our self-serving needs, and guide us toward a life of simplicity in loving solidarity with Christ’s poor.

“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it… We must keep on talking about voluntary poverty, and holy poverty, because it is only if we can consent to strip ourselves that we can put on Christ. It is only if we love poverty that we are going to have the means to help others.” —Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , 1945

Day 2, Personal Responsibility

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:42:12 GMT

Archived Comments

Novena Day 1, Christian Vocation

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:47:44 GMT

Archived Comments

Dorothy Day and the Benedictines II

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 15:23:00 GMT

The recording of Nov 12th’s discussion is up. https://youtu.be/Fh49mgOtDCs

There is still time to register for the third Zoom event on the 19th.

Dorothy Day and the Benedictines

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 04:37:00 GMT

The zoom discussion of Day and the Benedictine Oblates on Sat 5th is now up on Youtube: https://youtu.be/yPQfLzqWlNI

Also, there is still time to register for this Saturday’s event:

Attend and listen to our three panelists who have integrated Benedictine spirituality into their lives as members of the Catholic Worker movement. Bring your curiosity and questions to this exciting discussion!!

Day’s 125th Birthday and Upcoming Novena

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 03:13:00 GMT

On November 8, 2022, we celebrate Dorothy Day’s 125th birthday!

The Guild will mark this milestone with a year-long celebration of Dorothy Day’s birth and life and her continuing inspiration to all to live our lives governed by the Gospel, each through our own unique calling.

The celebration will include a novena. Dorothy Day Guild members and friends are invited to join in a novena of gratitude, giving thanks for Dorothy Day’s valiant response to God’s call and rejoicing in her model of holiness. Beginning on November 29 (the anniversary of her death), the novena will continue until December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the 90 ^th anniversary of Dorothy Day’s fervent “special prayer.”

Dorothy Day did not set out to become a saint, although she often quoted a famous statement that “The only tragedy in life is not to be a saint.”

She simply spent a lifetime attuning herself to hear God’s voice. The pilgrimage of her daily life was oriented by Jesus’ teachings as she pursued a call to belong fully to the Body of Christ.

In the midst of the Great Depression, while on assignment as a journalist reporting on a national Hunger March and a gathering of poor farmers, Dorothy Day prayed to discern her vocation as a Catholic. She attended Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.: “There I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.” ― from The Long Loneliness .

On her return to New York City, the answer to her prayer was waiting in the person of an itinerant Frenchman and worker-scholar named Peter Maurin. Their meeting led to the founding of the Catholic Worker movement, which to this day continues to open up ways to practice the Church’s social teachings.

Over the course of the novena, we will reflect on Dorothy’s generous, whole-hearted acceptance of God’s call by each day looking at a particular facet of her discipleship – what biographer Robert Ellsberg referred to as the “distinctive features of her holiness.”

Each one of us, too, has a unique calling; and God loves each of us as a whole person. As we give thanks for Dorothy Day’s life – and for the Church’s recognizing of her holiness – let us ask her to join us on our pilgrimages. Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

Remembering Tom Cornell

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:34:00 GMT

Blessed are the peacemakers. With deep sadness, the Guild mourns the loss of longtime Catholic Worker, Tom Cornell, who died peacefully early this morning. We also rejoice in his life! As a young man, Tom embraced the Catholic Worker vocation in its totality: from peacemaking to hospitality. He met his wife, Monica, at the CW in NYC in the 1950s. Theirs was a most faithful witness. In recent years it led to the running of Peter Maurin farm in Marlboro, New York. Not only did they embody the CW tradition, they passed it on to their children, Deirdre and Tommy, and nurtured it in countless others.

Tom and Tommy reflected on the continuing influence of Dorothy Day on their lives and family in the following piece, originally written two years ago for the Guild’s newsletter which Tom helped edit. Tom recalls how shortly after his first visiting the Worker, he became “part of the woodwork.” Though always a little loathe to challenge Tom’s fierce intelligence and forceful presence, we dare this correction. Tom became — and will always remain — part of its living roots. Deo Gratias.

BREAKING BREAD by Tom Cornell and T. Christopher Cornell

(This multi-generational reflection first appeared in the “Breaking Bread” column of the Summer/Fall 2020 issue of the Guild’s newsletter, In Our Time. )

OUR CATHOLIC WORKER FAMILY

By Tom Cornell

My very first trips to the New York Catholic Worker were to attend Friday Night Meetings for the Clarification of Thought. One night, Dorothy sat knitting while listening. I don’t remember the topic, or the speaker, but after the presentation, her silence ended: “Security! I don’t want to hear about security. There are great things that need to be done, and who will do them but the young? And how will they do them if they’re worried about security?” These – the first words I heard Dorothy Day speak – lifted me out of the trajectory I had previously set for myself. Those words, and Dorothy’s radical witness, led me to another path, which in turn led me to Monica, and the life we would lead together.

Monica’s parents, George Ribar and Carlotta Durkin Ribar, had helped to establish the Catholic Worker in Cleveland, during the late 1930s. Monica’s aunt, for whom she was named, Monica Durkin, was a friend of Dorothy Day and a member of Friendship House in Harlem. When Dorothy’s classic memoir, The Long Loneliness, was published in 1952, Monica’s parents got a copy from the library. Though they read The Catholic Worker and sent modest donations to the Worker in New York City, they did not warm to Dorothy’s criticism of the social/economic/ political system, “this filthy rotten system.” Their interest was in the Works of Mercy, and they practiced them, taking in the four children of a relative. Monica’s sister, Carlotta, spent a few months at the Catholic Worker in New York City in 1961-62,and she encouraged Monica to give it a try since Monica felt she “wasn’t doing anything” at college in Cincinnati.

I had been managing editor of The Catholic Worker for a year at the time and had been away at my mother’s home in Connecticut the day of Birmingham Sunday (when four little black girls were killed when their church was fire-bombed). When I arrived back at the CW, a dilapidated storefront at 175 Chrystie Street (the ground floor was the soup kitchen; the second floor, a day room; and the third floor, the business and editorial office), I intended to go straight upstairs to my desk when someone grabbed my arm and said, “You have to meet the new girl!” Bless his heart, I did! Monica was doling out soup at the far end of the room. She was tall, and those brown eyes! I learned which Mass she would be attending the next Sunday and made sure to sit beside her. After Mass, we went to the nearby Café Roma for cappuccino and pastry. We were married seven months later and after fifty-six years of marriage have seven descendants.

Nothing in my family background would have oriented me to the Catholic Worker Movement. My father died when I was fourteen – but had he lived, he would have disowned me. I have seventeen first cousins, all on my mother’s side. Most of them were scandalized at my doings during the Viet Nam War. I was uncomfortably visible, on the front page of The New York Times and several other major newspapers, burning my draft card. While I was doing my time, serving six months in prison, the New York Times Magazine commissioned me to write an article on that experience. It was printed to some notice, none of which soothed my relatives.

The New England Province of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, prepared me to meet and to follow Dorothy Day. I spent eight years at Fairfield Prep and Fairfield University in Connecticut (1948-56). The Jesuits were, and are, very strong on spiritual development, and as a result, I wanted to be as authentic a Christian as I could. As rich as the experience at Fairfield was, I sensed there was something missing, and that was social engagement. In fact, such involvement was considered a danger to spiritual health. When I came upon Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness , I felt that this is what I was looking for. It wasn’t long before I was hooked, visited the CW headquarters,and soon became part of the woodwork.

I knew that I wanted to marry and to raise my own family. I earned a Master’s degree as a teacher. I could support a family! I could look for a bride! And where else but at the Catholic Worker? How Monica and I practiced the aims and means of the CW as a married couple and then as a family of four, a boy and a girl, is the purpose of this writing.

Before all else, it’s hospitality. Our first apartment was three small rooms within a short walk to the CW. The rent was $65 a month, and I could make that with two days substitute teaching. After the regular CW Friday night meetings, about fifteen people jammed into that little apartment for continuing discussion and beer. When our second child was born, we moved to a bigger apartment, again within walking distance of the CW and the office of the Catholic Peace Fellowship (CPF), where I worked. We had an unexpected addition to the family when Monica’s mother called to inform us that the mother of the four children she had taken in had died, leaving another, a four-year-old boy. Monica and I raised him as our foster-child until he was eight. So, from early on Tommy and Deirdre shared their living space, their lives.

Next, we moved to a six-room apartment in Brooklyn, the rent $110 a month, a steal even then! A young friend, who also worked for the CPF, moved in with us and lived and ate with us. It worked very well, and he was a great help with the children

When we later moved to Newburgh, New York, to an aging but beautiful house on the Hudson River, a young neighbor gathered his buddies on our front porch to play cards. When the weather turned cold, we invited them in. One of those boys is living with us on the farm today.

I don’t think Tommy or Deirdre ever sat down and pondered the “Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker.” I don’t think they ever decided to be Catholic Workers. They simply came to the realization that that’s what they are. When Monica and I moved the family to Connecticut so I could take a job as a soup-kitchen director, Tommy ran a second soup kitchen under my direction. He knew how to be with people, even hurtful people, who are hard to deal with! We lived in a twenty-three-room former convent, renamed Our Lady of Guadalupe House of Hospitality. After college, Deirdre volunteered for a year in Mexico. There she met Kenney Gould, from the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, and they married. They later went on assignment to Oaxaca, Mexico, as lay missioners with Maryknoll. They left with three children and came back with five. Here in New York State, only a few miles from us, Deirdre and Kenney became deeply involved with Reaping the Harvest, a Catholic accompaniment project for farm workers. They became so enmeshed in the community that they have over thirty godchildren.

Tommy is our chief gardener at the Peter Maurin Farm, and he writes for the paper under the name T. Christopher Cornell. A Catholic Worker family? Q.ED.!

By T. Christopher Cornell

As an adult, I never “knew” Dorothy Day. But I’ve spent my lifetime dealing with her indirectly—in the third person. Yes, I met Dorothy many times as a child; our family spent a summer at the Tivoli farm, and we made multiple trips to the Worker in New York City. However, Deirdre and I were “just kids,” and there is a famous story that, to “kids,” Dorothy was “just an old lady.” Dorothy’s impact on Deirdre and me would show up later and came mostly from those around Dorothy.

My parents created their own hybrid form of a Catholic Worker family life. They met and married at the Catholic Worker in New York City and by the time I was in second grade, we left New York for a smaller city, and my father had an office job in the peace movement. They used his salary to buy a rambling house, a fixer-upper, in an integrating neighborhood. My sister and I received a Catholic education from the parochial school and a full dose of neighborhood life. But we were always different from the other kids. We had hand-me-down clothes and counted out our milk money. The peace movement was a mystery to our neighbors, most of whom had been in the military. Personal nonviolence and civil-rights issues were in genuine concern at our home. We always had a Christ room, for a guest, and we had a constant flow of visitors,whether a political prisoner from Argentina or a student from Barcelona. I really can’t remember a time that we didn’t have at least one person living with us. All the while, my parents also had an informal salon that included a mixture of my father’s rough-and-tumble working-class buddies from the neighborhood and Catholic Worker movement types. That left me with a permanent craving for the intellectual and religious foment typical of the era.

High school years found us in yet another decaying, post-industrial city. During those years, my parents started another hybrid Catholic Worker community. They ran a soup kitchen funded by an ecumenical agency and used the salary to support a house of hospitality, 24/7, for a blended community of family, soup-kitchen guests, and workers. It was there that my sister and I experienced the joys of community life. Though it was short-lived, this experience was defining. Most of all, there was the work: feeding people; seeing Christ in the stranger; the works of mercy, daily, repeated. There is no need to enumerate the love, grief, and the communion that happens with people in such circumstances. The stories are universal.

More than thirty years later, my sister and I are still being shaped by Dorothy’s impact on forming our family. We have inherited a legacy which, over time, reveals Dorothy’s lasting influence. My sister is a busy mom and involved in pastoral projects with immigrants and farm workers. My parents and I live in a community of twelve at the Catholic Worker farm in Marlboro, New York.

Although both of my parents worked directly with Dorothy at a time when she was still in her full vigor—mentally and spiritually—they were not her contemporaries. They were a generation removed, and, unlike Dorothy, were not converts. They were members of the postwar immigrant Church when it was still separate from the dominant U.S.culture, but was beginning to assimilate. My mother’s formation followed the pipeline of parochial school, Catholic high school, Catholic women’s college, and the convent. My father came from eight years of Jesuit education. Even now, both carry something of that intense, Pius XII-era devotional Catholicism. The Catholic Worker gave them a locus for their religious energies in the time of aggiornamento. A quote from my mother may illustrate what I mean. During a panel discussion, my mother was asked how she maintains tolerance for the institutional Church’s deeply imbedded hierarchical structure. She shrugged it off by saying “Oh, I don’t worry about it, we have the saints.” At the time, I was unnerved by the comment, thinking it was a refusal to engage in the much-needed work of faithful dissent that would move the Church forward. Now, I see it instead as an embrace of her identity in the lay apostolate, bringing the strength of the immigrant Church’s sensibilities and the sensus fidelium to bear on her life’s vocation, no matter the condition of the institution around her.

I asked my mother recently if it would be fair to say that Dorothy influenced everything she ever did after meeting her. “Yes,” she said, quickly and emphatically. The force of Dorothy’s personality and the way it registered with people is attested to very well, yet it is hard to describe the nature of these relationships accurately. They certainly formed my parents, and indirectly, me and my sister.

As an adult, living and working as a Catholic Worker, I have developed my own relationship to Dorothy, through my own experiences in the movement, and importantly, through reading her writing. I find her writing to be uniquely incisive and moving. Conversations and testimonies about her, even now, continue to help me understand better how a person like Dorothy—with such authenticity—left others a permanent conviction to live their own lives differently. Even those who “came to her” after her death have been convinced by it. The power of her witness is strong enough to carry over generations.

Prayer

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 03:41:00 GMT

“I was surprised that I found myself beginning to pray daily. I could not get down on my knees, but I could pray while I was walking.”
- Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

The Dorothy Day Guild invites all our FB friends and followers to join with us in becoming a community of prayer for the needs of the people of the world. Let us raise our voices together to help heal – through her intercession — the world’s wounds and our own brokenness.

One of the Guild’s primary charges, now that the written and oral evidence of Day’s “heroic virtue” has been gathered and her case formally submitted, is to document the “favors and graces” attributed to her holiness. A further sign of God’s blessing.
We would be deeply grateful for your generously sharing with us the nature and impact of your prayer request (no matter how seemingly big or small) by emailing us: gracesandfavors@gmail.com.
Pace e Bene! Peace and All Goodness!

Deo Gratias: A Novena of Gratitude: Introduction

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:19:31 GMT

“There I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.”

― from The Long Loneliness

On her return to New York City, the answer to her prayer was waiting in the person of an itinerant Frenchman and worker scholar named Peter Maurin. Their meeting led to the founding of the Catholic Worker movement, which to this day continues to open up ways to practice the Church’s social teachings.

Over the course of the novena, we will reflect on Dorothy’s acceptance of God’s call by each day looking at a particular facet of her discipleship – what biographer Robert Ellsberg referred to as the “distinctive features of her holiness.”

Day 1, Christian Vocation

Day 2, Personal Responsibility

Day 3, Voluntary Poverty

Day 4, Works of Mercy

Day 10, The Path Forward

Archived Comments

Dorothy Day for Saint: Love Matters After All

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 23:25:00 GMT

When we asked the esteemed American Catholic historian and the Guild’s good friend, David O’Brien, to write a reflection for the Winter 2021 newsletter, commemorating the historic send-off of Dorothy Day’s Cause to Rome, we received, not surprisingly, more than we ever could have hoped. But more, unfortunately, than we had space to print (the abbreviated version in the newsletter is entitled, “Dorothy Day as Saint: Hold Fast to Love”). But here, we can indulge ourselves in the entire piece!

Professor emeritus and Loyola professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, David has studied, taught, and written brilliantly and passionately about the American Catholic experience for decades. His many works include American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (Oxford University Press, 1968); Renewing the Earth: Catholic Documents on Peace, Justice, and Liberation (Doubleday, 1977); and Public Catholicism (MacMillan, 1988; Orbis Books, 1996).

By David J. O’Brien

Introduction

Dorothy Day made more than a little history. Along the way she changed a lot of lives, mine among them. Some of her history making was simply through her presence. The late John Cort when a student at Harvard in the 1930s went to hear her speak, then decided to join her movement, in part because while offering a challenging vision of Christian discipleship amid the wreckage of the great depression, “she seemed to be having fun.” Cort’s impression that Dorothy was light-hearted was rare among the many encounters with Dorothy Day’s witness and words that drew men and women to life-changing decisions. Others, including me, met her rarely but encountered her through people and communities she inspired in the Catholic Worker movement. That happened for me when I began graduate school and by chance rented a room with a Day-inspired couple, who introduced me to Christian ideas and practices I had not heard about in 15 years of Catholic education ending at the University of Notre Dame (to be fair I may not have been listening). They also introduced me to their Catholic Worker friends, many wrestling with problems of poverty and racism that had been outside my youthful experience. Advocates of Dorothy Day for Saint quite properly speak of the Catholic Worker movement itself, wider and more vigorous than ever almost 90 years after its launch, as a “miracle” — evidence of her holiness. I have always used the word “providence” for my encounters with the Worker and Dorothy Day, for the faith and friendships born of that 1960 encounter have shaped my personal and professional life ever since. ¹

History Happens
The Context of the Cause

It is now over forty years since Dorothy Day passed from us. A lot has happened. The American people, Catholics among them, have changed since she left, the American church is deeply divided, and our country’s struggles with poverty, racism and war are still with us. Far more than in 1933, when she and Peter Maurin launched their movement, and far more than 1980 when she died, everything now seems up for grabs, shared American memories seem thinner and more complicated, and many of us hunger for new aspirations for our own lives and for our country, our church and our world. Pope Francis said recently that ours is not an epoch of change but a changing epoch, and he offers us almost daily pastoral guidance as we move away from settled ways into an unknown future, drawing on our memories of God’s presence. As one of his devoted friends writes, he asks us to “remember our future.” Asking our church to join us in recognizing Dorothy Day’s exceptional holiness is a modest effort to draw on our memories of her life and work in order to move with greater faith, hope and love, into the history we are all making, remembering her and our future.

Once I fell in love with American Catholic history, courtesy of the Catholic Worker, I decided to try to clarify the meaning, and trajectory, of the history of my people, American Catholics. ² Figuring out where Dorothy Day fit into that history has been a central element of that project. As an American historian, not a church historian, I was and remain as concerned about the United States as I am about our Catholic Church. As I have in the past, ³ I would like to try one more time to set a social context for understanding the significance of Dorothy Day as we propose her for recognition as a saint. For several years, dedicated people have worked to fill out our understanding of Dorothy’s life and work. Now with that knowledge, we stand in our present moment and look forward as we choose persons to guide our own making of history.

But for our country and our Christian churches, the past and present, and therefore the future, are not what they used to be. To understand our present perhaps we get some help from the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. ⁴ Taylor is very critical of our usual ideas of secularism, a term easily weaponized in culture wars. How often we blame society for our problems, as if that society is not our own. That is a particular temptation for religious communities, who understandably wish to establish their distinctive claims in a bewildering marketplace of social, cultural and religious options. Instead of secularization as an inevitable consequence of modernization, or progress, Taylor uses the term “unbundling” to describe the decline of once integrated Christian societies (though other religions have similar experiences), fueling passions for restoration for one faction of the church. That impulse was often associated with conservative nationalism, but in the United States Catholics were a minority, with no claim to take over. Yet even here the American Catholic subculture retained many of the assumptions of exclusive and integrated Christendom. As the lay theologian Frank Sheed put it years ago: ”We are the sweet, selected few/the rest of you are damned/there isn’t room enough for you/we can’t have heaven crammed.” ⁵ Now, that “certain and set apart” piety is gone, eroded not by militant secularists, but by broad changes, among them our own hungers for freedom.

For some Catholics, here and elsewhere, what is hard to accept is that religion has become, as theologian Karl Rahner predicted years ago, “a matter of personal decision constantly renewed amid perilous surroundings.” ⁶ That reality of individualism, better called personalism, is accompanied by another: the multiplication of options in what resembles a religious marketplace. What this combination of freedom of conscience and religious pluralism means for us, Taylor suggests, is that we have entered what he calls “a new epoch.” Christians have gained new freedom — and new responsibilities — in an emerging world where the old boundaries between sacred and secular — and between settled religious traditions — have become permeable at least. Some of us see huge benefits that speak of the Holy Spirit at work: people we know, indeed whole groups of people around us, who used to accept “their place” and keep quiet, now walk with heads held high and eyes locked in on others, often with chips on their shoulders.

Religion had a hand in that process. Christianity always nurtured human dignity and sustained personal and family aspirations, as it did for so many of our immigrant families as they experienced uneven and morally complicated economic, social and political liberation. But that liberation also brought with it that unbundling, some things were lost, and freedom brought new and sometimes burdensome responsibilities, personal and public. Some families once poor achieve economic security, immigrant outsiders become respected insiders, people who had to fight for their rights win a full share of responsibility for the common life. And in that process, often, faith, and Christian discipleship, become matters of personal decision amid perilous surroundings: John Cort listening to Dorothy Day at Harvard during the depression and Dave O’Brien discovering anti-poverty and civil rights causes with Catholic Workers and left-wing graduate student colleagues in Cold War Rochester, New York.

Charles Taylor thinks that we Christians should resist restorationist impulses, yearning for Christendom or more modest ethno-religious subcultures, and do our best to separate piety and power. At times it appears that religious and moral differences have become highly politicized and, at times, power seems to swallow our old pieties, American and Christian. Thus, division, and disappointment, deepening in recent years, even to the point of wondering whether by choosing someone as a newly declared Saint, and many are proposed, we might deepen divisions or hamper our mission as Christians and Americans. Why has this happened? Perhaps a clue lies in the fact that the American Catholic subculture our forebears constructed (and is being reconstructed by the many who have not experienced liberation from poverty, discrimination and exclusion) arose from “folk memories” brought to bear on “new aspirations,” the familiar aspirations for dignity, security, and agency shaped the memories just as family and ethnic and religious memories shaped the aspirations. ⁷ For many, aspirations have been realized, though it was always a close thing.

Perhaps that is the problem now. Many think, mistakenly I believe, that many American Catholics, especially those who are of European origin, have forgotten their Catholic memories, and responsibilities, in order to realize their American, and secular, aspirations. But, if I read Taylor — and my own experiences — correctly, ours has not been a “modernization brings secularization” story where memories should trump aspirations. That is an inaccurate story of American Catholic experience, and it leads to unworthy prescriptions for American Catholic renewal. For example, some bishops and scholars suggest that our now overly Americanized Catholic community should be counter-cultural, known for our differences with other Americans and our distance from the surrounding, supposedly secular, non-religious, even anti-religious culture. ⁸ We can blame “society” even though we have had a full share of responsibility for that society: it is ours.

That this secularism story is so widely accepted suggests that it is a shared loss of aspirations, of realistic visions of a gracious future for people and their families and their world, that has eroded faith, divided churches and helped cripple democratic culture and politics. What happens when future aspirations become unbelievable, and no longer energize women and men to work together for common goods which are also their own? There were shared American dreams, our own, many far more noble than skeptics allow. They still empower those long excluded and those newly arrived. But what empowers those who have succeeded and are supposed to help make democracy work? Pope John XXIII, the second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis all offered visions of global solidarity based on human dignity and shared responsibility for the human family and the earth. ⁹ What happens if such ideas fade into fantasy? What then for the church? The “sweet selected few”? If the future is awful, or even treacherous, or if it is only personal, and family and community and shared hopes recede, then all we have are past and present, okay for now for some, disastrously shattering for others. Perhaps then freedom from fear trumps freedom from want, history and memory become battlegrounds, and fewer and fewer of us search for a usable future.

Pope Francis was right, therefore, to tell us that Catholics (i.e., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton) can help renew the American aspirations of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. For some of us, as we encountered our history, we found in Catholic social teaching and the witness of the Catholic Worker a story of past and present that might draw us together, in freedom, to assist one another to experience liberation from fear and want, and together build “a new society within the shell of the old.” The key to that vision of shared history may be the presence earlier, and the relative absence for many of us now, of other than personal aspirations. For evidence of that possibility we might pay attention to the last days and words of Martin Luther King, as he saw his people, all of us, poised between “chaos and community.” Dr. King, who always balanced human dignity and solidarity, changed hearts with his dream in 1963, still held fast to that dream of the “beloved community” on the night before he was murdered. That night, amid disruptions and disappointments, he reaffirmed his confidence that someday, somehow, we would reach that beloved kingdom at the center of his faith-filled work and witness. ¹⁰

What of Pope Francis signaling to us Americans that Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day might help? Here again, Charles Taylor offers a clue. In an informal talk, Taylor noted among the consequences for the Catholic community of disruption, displacement and ever multiplying diversities is the popularity of the image of life as a journey, where one moves forward, learning about God’s will while going along, making what history one can. Vatican II had anticipated this image with its references to a “pilgrim church,” moving through many epochs and many cultures. Taylor thinks the best image he can find of the church for this “new epoch” is the mustard seed, planting seeds here and there, some taking fruit, others not. Merton shows one way, the inner way, with prayer and meditation, and after years in the quiet monastery falling in love with the people he was once glad to leave behind. He dove as deeply as anyone could into the much heralded Catholic intellectual and spiritual tradition, and emerged not to rebuild Christendom but to seek God, and wisdom, everywhere, with everyone he met a potential companion on the journey. He’s been dead since 1968 and his words and witness still move people and perhaps point one way to renewal of our Christian and American aspirations.

And then the Pope mentioned Dorothy Day, now gone for forty-one years, but better known than ever. Her journey had its inner path, to be sure, but her vocation was not Merton’s plunge into solitude but a lifelong and deliberate plunge into the world, the world as it is, not as we would like it to be, into conflicts over human dignity and solidarity, among broken people who were Christ among us. When I was young, people thought that Day — who welcomed strangers, accompanied strikers, faced up to racism and opposed war, all war — was at the radical edge of the Church. In 1976 I was responsible for bringing her to a hearing held with two dozen American bishops. To my surprise she was extremely nervous about facing bishops, in front of television cameras. What she did not know was that the bishops on the panel were even more nervous about facing Dorothy Day, worried not that she was on the radical edge, but that she embodied the Gospel they preached and might ask them what they might do for the poor and for peace. When she died I was asked to write a long obituary for Commonweal magazine. In part because of that experience I wrote that she was not at the edge but at the center of our faith and our church, living amid chaotic change, doing God’s will and trusting in God’s ever present love.

Day, and Charles Taylor, would love my Catholic Worker friends at the Mustard Seed Catholic Worker house in Worcester (and its partners at St Francis and Therese House up the road and the rural Agape community nearby). They spend their lives scattering seeds, making space for whoever shows up, asking everyone to consider the possibilities of compassion and nonviolence, offering ideas about the common life but, even in the midst of small demonstrations and modest civil disobedience, display the same faithful and serene trust one finds in other members of the communion of saints, some of whom we may have met. Dorothy Day expected, someday, to be with us all in the Kingdom of God. Pope Francis says that should generate “the joy of the Gospel.” Dorothy found that joy sometimes in community and prayer and literature and the sacraments. But disruptions sometimes made joy a bit distant, an aspiration: she called it “the duty of delight.” ¹¹

So aspirations are important as we think about saints. What might those of us who worry a lot about our country and our church be thinking about out of all this? As for the American side of our religious experience, certainly one lesson of our public history is that the American project of democratic self-government among people who disagree, sometimes over very serious matters, is profoundly endangered when its most liberated citizens no long love it and acknowledge a full share of responsibility for its common life. In the 1890s and again in the 1980s, church leaders and many theologians and scholars deliberately rejected what they called Americanism and neo-Americanism. Nevertheless it seemed abundantly clear to those pastorally oriented leaders who held such views that they had to provide a spirituality that would meet what one of them called the “aspirations of nature” and answer “the questions of the soul” for honest and open seekers. ¹² This required making spiritual and theological sense of America, a sense that would give meaning and direction to human work, to new opportunities for public service, and to shared responsibility for an ever more complex and interconnected common life. Catholic social thought and imagination provides rich and often untapped resources for connecting faith with shared civic and social responsibilities. But genuine love for the world has been and remains a vital and missing link. America matters, and today as it was for Lincoln, at key moments, for Dr. King and for Merton and Day, that means a love that is at best agape , unconditional love that opens hearts to everyone, to the whole human family, even to the earth and our universe. Today more than ever, internationalism, love to the whole human family, must accompany Americanism, but is crippled without it. Memories matter, but aspirations, and their absence, make history.

Saints Like Us
Love as Question, Answer, Decision

I still think that Dorothy Day, now proposed for sainthood, remains “the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.” ¹³ I made that claim when she passed away in 1980 and I was not alone in my admiration. Garry Wills called her “The Saint of Mott Street,” Notre Dame theologian Lawrence Cunningham ranked Day with Thomas Merton as our most impressive American spiritual guides, a judgement later confirmed by Pope Francis. The American Catholic bishops, led first by Cardinal O’Connor of New York, now by Cardinal Dolan, think she should be canonized. Day, once considered a “radical” for her pacifism and uncompromising advocacy on behalf of the poor, now is claimed as an inspiration by Catholics of all parties, and by non-Catholics worried about American character, like New York Times guru David Brooks. ¹⁴

The movement to make Dorothy Day a saint received a major boost a decade ago from the publication of her diaries and letters. In the journals we engage her as an impressive, even saintly, journalist observer, Christian witness and spiritual guide. In the letters we meet her again, but this time as a person very much like us, struggling with relationships, worried about her family, moved by the generous faith of those who join the Catholic Worker movement. She accepts, sometimes reluctantly, responsibility for that movement and provides as best she can care for the poor and for the dedicated but disorderly communities who try to provide “food, clothing and shelter at a personal sacrifice.” If saints are people who, over a lifetime, try very hard to live out the Gospel message of love, in the first place with those they meet every day, then these texts provide a lot of evidence of Dorothy Day’s saintliness.

But, in this case at least, holiness in action might make us all a bit careful about claiming to follow in her footsteps. “All the way to heaven” may be heaven, but it is far from easy, or clear, especially when you are keenly aware of your own weaknesses, as Dorothy surely was. She was profoundly grateful for the gift of faith, she began each day with Mass, and she prayed, almost always it seems. But she did not live in a convent, or even in a settled household, but within a movement, with scattered houses and farms, each filled with people wanting her attention. She was a prayerful leader and a very practicing Catholic, an organizer and administrator of sorts, a journalist, citizen, colleague, and friend. She loved to go apart and read, and pray, but as many of her friends have said, she thrived on conversation and loved community.

Dorothy Day was a life-long letter writer. Her letters confirm much that we knew about her: that she was very smart and had thought about every question you might ask; that she truly loved to read: when she was exhausted by the needs around her or by the tensions in her local community, she would retire to her room, or take the ferry to Staten Island, and read. We are reminded of how tough-minded she could be, responding forcefully at any suggestion that she was an idealistic, sentimental woman, and equally sharply when self-appointed leaders dismissed her movement’s opposition to violence against workers, to racism and anti-Semitism, and especially to war and all it demanded from good citizens. And, as she eloquently insisted to Robert Coles a few years before she died, she and her friends were good citizens, trying to practice the democratic disciplines of shared responsibility for one another required of all good citizens.

So it was a very human Dorothy Day we met in the journals and letters. Like everyone, she changed over the years, she knew her own limitations and she freely admitted to friends her disappointments and occasional discouragement. She spoke of her joy at the gift of faith, and she seemed convinced that following Jesus should make one happy. But often it did not. John Cort had a glimpse of a light- hearted Dorothy Day, and friends later reported on her sense of humor, her joy with her grandchildren, her love of God’s creation, and belief that “the world would be saved by beauty,” the title of a wonderfully warm and honest account by one of those grandchildren. ¹⁵

She was not always delighted; the way to heaven was often hard, or unclear. Still, she never surrendered to self-pity. This was her vocation, others had theirs, and often theirs were much harder. Historian William Miller, entrusted with her papers and ready with one of the first books on Worker ideas, chose as his title A Harsh and Dreadful Love . Dorothy objected, partly because she worried people would think the phrase was hers (it comes from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov ). As early as 1959 she admitted that, as she got older, she became “more convinced that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace” and that “all we can do about people is love them,” adding in a characteristic aside, “even when they read the Daily News and spend all their time watching television.” Love was often “harsh and dreadful”, but, as she often reflected, she had resources of faith and friendship to assist her in the daily works of love.

So it is that the claim of Dorothy Day’s historical importance for American Catholics turns on at least three points. One is freedom, which she treasured. Hers was Catholic faith freely chosen, at a cost, and hers a vocation chosen with equal freedom. Voluntary poverty (not destitution) also freely chosen, could bring release from the multiple temptations of ordinary life to the freedom to live the love revealed in Jesus and prescribed in the Gospel. For Dorothy love was “the way;” that is why she was and remains at the heart of the church, not at some radical edge. And all love, from hers for her daughter Tamar and for her grandchildren to the self-giving love of the saints, all that love requires freedom. That is one reason she is so important. The “success” of poverty-stricken immigrant Euro-American Catholics meant education, economic security and political and cultural acceptance. It brought with it freedoms unimaginable in the peasant worlds from which so many families came. As we think about Dorothy Day as a saint we might ask, how are we to live, those of us who, like John Cort and me, are now Americanized Catholics, privileged women and men, who can ask such a remarkable question? And do so in truthful encounters with the suffering of so many whose hunger for dignity and freedom is denied, often by structures and ideas for which we share responsibility. Perhaps, Dorothy Day might suggest, by serving the poor, seeking justice, making peace, finding better ways to provide food, clothing, and shelter for one another, living to make “a new society within the shell of the old.”

The second point to which Dorothy Day witnessed in every period of her life was that religion is serious. As historian Robert Orsi says, religion is about “what matters.” ¹⁶ Perhaps that is what lay behind reports that Dorothy was fierce. Her Catholic Christianity was not platitudes about salvation but truths about life and history. When she met young people she talked about work and books and events and her own experiences and expectations. She knew that the working class Catholics she saw at church took religion seriously because it helped make sense of hard lives. Then and now, Christians turned to learn about the Gospel to people who actually seemed to live it, priests, nuns, exemplary lay people like Peter Maurin. Maurin, Day and their Catholic Worker friends did that: they made clear truths the rest of us often forget, that the Christian vocation to love God and neighbor is serious. It makes personal and political demands. Perhaps we are right that we must earn a living, provide costly goods for our families, even occasionally use force to defend the innocent. But, Dorothy reminds us, when we do all that we depart a bit from what the Lord expects: we are not yet in the Kingdom of God. Our temptation is posturing, offering in our anguish moral pronouncements about life and justice and peace without actions to match them. If the Gospel is true, more is required; love and justice and peace must become verbs that describe how people live. As Robert Ellsberg wrote in his introduction to the journals: “The Catholic Worker movement was not intended to resolve the problems of poverty and violence in the world, but to provide a model of what it might look like if Christians truly lived out their faith in response to the challenges of history and the needs of their neighbors.”

Finally, there are those “challenges of history.” From her start as an American radical through her “long loneliness” and life as a Catholic lay leader, Dorothy saw her life as part of a great historical drama. Its meanings were often obscured by ignorance and sin, but Christian faith reaffirmed a narrative of expectation that love was indeed the way, not just for each person to find God but for the human family, together, to reach its destiny. The duty of delight arises from the gift of God in Christ and his church, and in humanity’s long historical struggle for dignity and justice and peace. The way to heaven is heaven, and love, often harsh and dreadful, is the most basic reality of all. Dorothy Day never lost her radical sense that the “big shots” were deceived, and that the truth would be found in out-of-the-way corners where men and women in freedom practiced the works of mercy and justice. History was also made a long way from Washington, Moscow or Rome. Dorothy Day is very important for American Catholics because she bore witness to the altogether Catholic idea that history matters, and so do we.

Dorothy Day’s Legacy
Faith, Friendship, Communion of Saints

What is the legacy being passed on forty-one years after Dorothy’s went to God, and as we send all that we know about here off to Rome? I can only offer my personal answer to that question, and invite others to share theirs.

First, there is faith, what Pope Francis calls “realistic faith”, confidence, trust, that our deepest convictions are true, that men and women are of equal dignity, that we must always work for solidarity, the unity of the human family, and that love is the most important question and often the only answer, that these are not just figments of our imagination or life-saving assertions of desire but the very heart and meaning of our shared history. Dorothy Day’s witness to such faith was realistic, forged out of often painful encounters at the centers of life. That faith, our faith, is about our histories with everybody, everywhere, and, everything in this universe we share. God loves us, unconditionally, and for many of us our capacity to believe that has been enlivened by our graced connection to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.

Then, second, intimately tied to faith, is vision: Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s confidence, trust, that someday, somehow, we will reach, all of us together, what Martin Luther King called “the beloved community,” theologians call the Kingdom of God, and my wife Joanne and I imagine as the peaceable kingdom portrayed by Quaker Edward Hicks in a painting hanging over our sofa for most of our sixty years together. The Workers and Worker communities we have known, chaotic and sometimes conflicted, but in fidelity and persistence, at moments almost sacramentally, make that expected destination present, if just for moments. We Americans often speak of life as a journey, but Pope Francis gently suggests that a journey is undertaken to go somewhere — it has a destination — without it there is not a journey, but wandering. Lincoln and King, Merton and Dorothy Day, Pope Francis’ selection as American icons, all understood that vision and aspiration give constructive meaning to our histories. None have held that dream closer, resisting its betrayal, than our African-American sisters and brothers. Recall Langston Hughes’ “Hold fast to dreams/for if dreams die/Life is a broken-winger bird/that cannot fly.” ¹⁷ Dorothy Day dreamed like that.

And third, with realistic faith and visionary hope there is a third legacy, community. Dorothy ended The Long Loneliness with community, and a friend who recently interviewed Catholic Workers in my area found continued, if often amused, reference to community. Dorothy and many of the Catholic Workers I have known had “a genius for friendship” and the most inspiring Cardinal I ever met called our American Catholic church a “community of faith and friendship” (again: an aspiration). In literature and film visitors to the Catholic Worker notice an egalitarian connection of servants and served, while insiders speak of the profound gifts given them by those they meet in shelters and soup kitchens, evident in the most iconic image, Fritz Eichenberg’s Christ in the Breadline .

Pope Francis grounds so much of Christian life in relationships, “encounters,” with one another and, hardly separated, with God. In one Catholic Worker community Joanne and I love, the Hartford Catholic Worker, the life-long daily practice is simply friendship, with neighbors, with children, with volunteers, with any of us who show up. That spirit of on-the-ground solidarity inspires and informs the local Workers in their courageous visits to arenas of violent conflict across the globe. Community is a means and also an end, an experience, a vision, a faith.

Faith, vision, friendship, all words that spring out when we encounter Dorothy Day and the movement she founded. Pope Francis warns us against indifference and asks us to care. Care, he tells us, is essential to peacemaking and justice seeking. Social activists encountering social injustices continually discover that, as they say, “it’s all connected.” For Day, they were indeed all connected, the personal and the public, the sacred and the profane, the biggest questions and the most modest daily responsibilities. Dorothy Day in her work and witness, touched things we all want: to live among friends who know us and care for us, and that hope grounds our desire for a world where such communities of realistic faith and friendship are part of the fabric of everyone’s life. That’s why so many people who do not share Dorothy’s Christian faith find her story compelling. For those of us who are Christian that is the content, or at least part of the content, of our faith and trust in the God revealed and embodied in Jesus, and entrusted to all of us gifted with God’s Holy Spirit. As Pope Francis said so beautifully in a Christmas homily, we are loved, without condition, and that “we” is all of us, and those among us who are Christians have no greater responsibility than to accept that love and pass it on. Dorothy Day experienced that love, God’s love, and passed it on to everyone she encountered. And the Catholic Worker movement she founded, past, present and future, helps us believe that this creed makes sense.

One Catholic Worker “lifer,” Michael Boover, has thought a lot about Dorothy Day’s legacy and thinks she was, like so many saints, a teacher, teaching by her daily life, and, as St. Francis advised, when necessary, using words, in her case a lot of them. In her small book about Saint Therese, Dorothy wrote: “Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it.” Mike Boover says that Dorothy Day “tried to gain the knowledge of love and to receive it as a gift,” offering us “a powerful witness and a lesson regarding the future. This makes her a teacher who is a saint on those grounds. Her words and witness invite us ever to be about the project of learning the science of love.” ¹⁸ Place this “science of love” in the setting of human dignity and solidarity and we have the seriousness of the challenges posed by Dorothy Day.

Michael Boover and many thoughtful disciples of Dorothy Day have told us over the years that Dorothy’s “politics” engaged the very meaning of Catholic Christian faith. At one point Pope Francis told young people that to discover the Catholic “program” they need only read the Beatitudes and Matthew 25 “and nothing else.” Loving God and neighbor are one and the same. So far, the dramatic challenges of Dorothy Day’s vocation — “the science of love” — have been faced in the process of asking for canonization. May that continue. Her sainthood cause is serious, like the woman herself. Placing her at the center of American and Catholic self-understanding would be a genuine and timely contribution to the world, but as her less reverent followers would remind us, love in action “ain’t easy.” But it alone makes the only history worth living for.

1 The Rochester Catholic Worker community claimed to be the first one established outside New York City. My friends, Bernard and Lorna Lancer, introduced me to writings of Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker newspaper and to the local community engaged at that time with problems of poverty and race in the city. When it came time to write a dissertation I thought first of Dorothy Day, who kindly informed me that she had already made her papers available to historian William Miller, so I wrote of Catholic social thought and action in the 1930s with a chapter on “radical” Catholicism that included Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York, Oxford University Press, 1968).

2 Trajectory, with awareness of the future as history, is of pressing importance. See my “Reflections on the Trajectory of American Catholic History,” American Catholic Studies , 128 (2018) 1-27.

3 “Dorothy Day: An American Pilgrimage”, Commonweal , December 19, 1980 and “Dorothy’s Days: Letters from a Saint”, Commonweal, March 25, 2011. Portions of this reflection are drawn from these articles.

4 Taylor’s widely discussed The Secular Age has revised the understanding of secularization and secularism. My thoughts here are drawn as well from several of his lectures available on line. A series can be found at the website of the Berkeley Center at Georgetown University https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/events/global-religious-and-secular-dynamics. I have also drawn on a talk on the contemporary Catholic Church available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152NgOgYRIM. I have discussed these matters more fully in the Monsignor Hugh Crean Lecture at Elms College in the spring of 2021 which will be published in a book honoring the late Msgr. Crean edited by Fr. Mark Stelzer. The lecture is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsQR14j1K81&t=12s.

5 Frank Sheed, The Church and I (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1075)

6 Karl Rahner, SJ, “The Present Position of Christians: A Theological Interpretation of the Present Position of Christians in the Modern World” in The Christian Commitment (New York,1963)

7 For “folk memories brought to bear on new aspirations” for understanding American immigrant/ethnic religious communities, see the work of Timothy L. Smith, especially ”Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical Review , 83 (1978).

8 This position has been presented persistently and ably by the now-retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput. See, for example, Strangers in a Strange Land (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017).

9 I emphasized this in The Renewal of American Catholicism (Oxford University Press, 1972) and in many writings on U.S. Catholic life since.

10 See Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road (Norton, 2004) for those last days and Dr. King’s important last book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? (Beacon, 1968)

11 Thus.the highly appropriate titles of two edited editions of Dorothy Day’s words: Robert Ellsberg, editor, The Duty of Delight: The Dairies of Dorothy Day (Image Books, 2011); Robert Ellsberg, editor, All the Way to Heaven: Selected Letters of Dorothy Day (Image Books, 2012).

12 These were terms used by the spiritual guide of Americanism, Isaac Hecker. See my Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (Paulist Press, 1992)

13 These words were in the 1980 memorial listed above. Portions of this next section come from the second of those essays, a review of Robert Ellsberg’s edition of Dorothy Days letters noted above.

14 Wills and Cunningham quotes came at Dorothy Day’s passing. Brooks is only one of many contemporary writers fascinated by Day. See his In Search of Character (Random House, 2015), 74-104. A recent biography by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century (Simon and Schuster, 2020) received widespread literary and media attention. I have benefitted greatly from Dorothy Day: Love in Action (Liturgical press 2015) by her colleague and friend Patrick Jordan.

15 Kate Hennessy, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty (Scribner 2017)

16 Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street (Yale University Press, 1985), xvii.

17 Langston Hughes, “Dreams” from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (Knopf, 1994). See also has his “Let America Be America Again.” Similar life-informing American aspirations informed the work of almost all of the most celebrated African-American leaders.

18 Michael Boover, personal notes to me. See his Fifteen Days of Prayer with Dorothy Day (New City Press, 2013)

CAUSE FOR CANONIZATION OF DOROTHY DAY READIED FOR ROME:

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 13:56:00 GMT

MASS AT ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL TO CELEBRATE SEND-OFF

On the 89 ^th anniversary of a young Dorothy Day’s famously praying, after covering the 1932 Communist-led Hunger March in Washington, D.C., that some way would open up for her as a Catholic to serve the poor, her Cause for canonization is advancing to Rome’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. This historic juncture on her long road to official sainthood – marking the end of the Causes’s initial Diocesan phase and the start of its second and final Roman phase — will be joyfully marked with a Mass, celebrated by Timothy Cardinal Dolan at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 7:30 p.m. on December 8, 2021, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Mass will also be livestreamed at http://saintpatrickscathedral.org/live .

Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Day’s nominally religious family followed her newspaper reporter father’s career first to the San Francisco Bay area where she witnessed the devastation of the great earthquake and the generosity of neighbors helping neighbors and later to Chicago, rife with the brutal abuses of immigrant workers that characterized this country’s early industrialization. As a young girl she had been drawn to religion and was even baptized into the Episcopal Church. But she became disillusioned at what she saw as the hypocrisy of well-off Christians. “Where are the saints,” she asked, “to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?”

She spent two years on scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana where she joined the Socialist Party before following her family back to New York where her education began in earnest. Leading the hard-bitten life of a radical newspaper reporter, a rarity for a woman, Dorothy covered protests, participated in rallies, and developed close friendships with both some of the leading radicals and artists, writers, and intellectuals that flocked to Greenwich Village’s bohemia. However, she also experienced suffering and loss in these years, including a destructive relationship that led to an abortion, a rebound marriage ending in divorce, and an attempt at suicide.

It was her deep happiness with the man who later became the father of her only child — and her immense joy at learning she was pregnant — that led Dorothy to the Church. She had come to admire the predominantly immigrant Catholic Church as being the church of the poor, but her faith only took firm root with Tamar’s birth in 1926. Not without its cost. Her decision to have her daughter baptized along with her own conversion and baptism in 1927 led to the end of her common law marriage and the loss of many of her radical friends.

And she was lonely as a Catholic, knowing no Catholics who shared her social passions. She longed for a synthesis between what she called the “spiritual” and the “material.” That came in the person of Peter Maurin, an itinerant French worker/scholar, steeped in Catholic social teaching. He was literally the answer to her anguished prayer that day in 1932, appearing on the doorstep of her apartment upon her return to New York City, having been advised by the editor of a Catholic journal that he and Day shared similar ideas.

Peter had a vision of a society constructed on Gospel values. It wasn’t long before they published a newspaper called “The Catholic Worker,” in contrast to the Communist “Daily Worker” in which they argued that the Catholic Church cared about both man’s spiritual and bodily welfare. The paper led to the founding of a “house of hospitality” — where the poor were not only fed but welcomed as being brothers and sisters in Christ – that laid the basis for a lay movement espousing the lifestyle of the early Christians, distinguished by the daily practice of the works of mercy and the embrace of non-violence and voluntary poverty. Today, an estimated 167 houses and farming communes exist across the nation and another 27 abroad.

At the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day lived a life faithful to the injunctions of the Gospel. Often the newspaper quoted G.K. Chesterton’s famous observation that Christianity hadn’t really failed — it had never really been tried. Day’s life was spent trying — her actions so consistent, they were confounding. Regardless of the war, whether the great “good war” of World War II or the Vietnam War, she asserted pacifism. Always she stood by the worker, leading to her last arrest in the seventies (and in her seventies) while picketing in support of Cesar Chavez’s striking farm workers. Her long pilgrimage ended at Maryhouse in New York City on November 29, 1980, where she died among the poor in whom she always saw the face of Christ.

“In many ways,” explains George Horton, a vice-postulator of her Cause, “Dorothy Day became the saint she had been looking for since childhood. She seamlessly fused a radical politics with an orthodox faith nurtured by daily Mass and Communion.”

In the “Cause” (or “case”) for Dorothy Day, the first major steps have now been completed. After initiating meetings with people who had known and worked closely with her, John Cardinal O’Connor in February 2002 formally requested that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome consider her canonization. Upon the Congregation’s approval, Dorothy Day was officially named a “Servant of God.” In 2005, the Guild was established to support the Cause by gathering the extensive evidence attesting to her holiness, including interviews with family, friends, and associates; copies of all the writings by and about her; and transcriptions of her dairies and journals – an immense task, years in the doing, and only recently completed. Now, at this special Mass in tandem with the Archdiocese’s Youth Ministry – Dorothy always appealing to the idealism associated with the young – the Cause returns to the Congregation.

“Bells will ring out joyfully that day,” says Horton. “The canonization process is long and arduous; the Church doesn’t want to make a mistake. Hence the stress on ‘evidence’ to prove holiness. With Dorothy, however, there is no worry about evidence. The worry instead is how to transmit to Rome the over 50,000 pages in 128 archival boxes holding it!”

Benedictine monasteries across the country will, In fact, ring their bells that day, as will the Cathedral of St. Patrick chime its – an action reserved for only the highest of occasions. Not only will they call us to celebrate this historic day but they will serve to remind us of something Dorothy Day never forgot: we are all called to be saints. In the end, Dorothy Day matters – as all saints do – because she provides us a new model for our own holiness.

Archived Comments

Day’s Birthday and Upcoming Novena

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:34:00 GMT

“There I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and with anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.” ― from The Long Loneliness

We invite Dorothy Day Guild members and friends to join in a novena of gratitude, giving thanks for Dorothy Day’s valiant response to God’s call. Beginning on November 29 (the anniversary of her death), the novena will continue until December 8, when the Dorothy Day Guild of the Archdiocese of New York will mark the conclusion of the local diocesan phase of the Cause.

With a special Mass at New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (live-streamed at https://saintpatrickscathedral.org/live ) at 7:30 pm on December 8, 2021, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we will celebrate the send-off of the evidence of Dorothy Day’s holiness, amassed by the Guild, to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. We rejoice that the Church embraces her witness to God’s love as a model of holiness.

Pray the Novena with us.

Archived Comments

Remembering Dorothy Day

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 23:49:00 GMT

In anticipation of our upcoming commemoration of the the 40th anniversary of Day’s death on November 29th 2020, we remember the eulogy given by Father Geoffrey B. Gneuhs, O.P. at the funeral of Dorothy Day, Nativity Church, New York City, December 2, 1980.

Eulogy

In her book The Long Loneliness , Dorothy wrote, “All my life I have been haunted by God.” And where did this haunting God lead her? To a life of simplicity and poverty with the poor, to solidarity with the outcasts—today in this city of New York there are more and more people homeless as mental hospitals close and social services are cut back, while at the same time this country spends $170 billion a year for armaments.

This haunting God led Dorothy to jail because she spoke and acted for the rights of women and men, of laborers and workers; she was led to jail because she stood with the farm workers, and to prison because she would not tolerate the militarist posture of this country. She was led ultimately to community, to love. This being haunted by God became for her a stupendous and extraordinary pilgrimage, a pilgrimage of faith. For sure, the Sermon on the Mount sums up the entire life and spirit of Jesus, and it is an invitation which Dorothy with consummate conviction accepted. She realized that love is an exchange of gifts: the gift of faith, and she in turn offered the gift of her life lived in faith, given for us and thousands of others. The Sermon on the Mount, along with the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, the cornerstone of the Catholic Worker movement, is not some general guide or optional outline. It is the very expression of the flesh and blood of Jesus—the Incarnation of Truth.

In our country, those who have so much, too much, are apt to declare “Well, the poor you’ll always have with you”—not realizing or hearing Jesus speak the Truth in the Sermon, not hearing the Truth call out. That is precisely the point. Christ the poor one is always with us!

Dorothy, with dear Peter Maurin, of whom she wrote, “He was my master and I was his disciple, he gave me a way of life,” realized this Truth so well. She said, “What a simplification of life it would be if we saw Christ everywhere we go.” Did you give me clothes? Did you give me food? Did you give me shelter in the empty room in your home, of your rectory or priory?

To love, for her, was not a duty but a privilege. And should it not be for all of us? It begs the question: Do we want to meet Christ? Do we really believe? We do not have to go far to see Christ, to invite Christ, and to be invited by Christ. The invitation is offered for loaves and fishes, more often at our houses, soup and bread and tea. To those of us who doubt, to us Christians who waver, Dorothy showed by her love that, yes, the Gospel is possible. The Gospel is so possible it is now and cannot wait for the future. The moment is ours. Dorothy seized the moment given her. The Truth called her forth and she accepted the invitation—solidarity with those without the arrogance and dominance of wealth, power, and prestige. She lived the Truth with all its starkness and abruptness, with all its freedom and its love.

She wrote, “We cannot love God unless we love each other and to love we must know each other—and we will know Him in the breaking of the bread—and then we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.” Love is not meant to be a half measure, nor is it meant to be easy. Dorothy on her pilgrimage knew that violence and war are not the way of Christ, that love is the only measure. Thus Truth again called her forth and she accepted the invitation to speak out against war and the crucifixion of humanity by nuclear armaments.

Wouldn’t it be a tragedy for us to equivocate or to dilute the spirit of her life? She was utterly convinced of the rightness of pacifism and of nonviolent resistance to statism. And never, even at age 83, did she waver in the clarity of her vision of Truth and in her conviction. Today the romance of war and power and individualism ignores the capacity of the human imagination imaged in God to see and to live the Gospel of gentle personalism and unconditional love. And Dorothy loved life, believed in life, enjoyed life. It was the very life of a child that welled up in her the invitation to the pilgrimage. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I have come to bring life, to bring life more abundantly.”

Remember when Jesus was on trial for his actions of Truth? He said to Pilate, “Mine is not a kingdom of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought…. I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.”

And what was Pilate’s reply? “Truth,” he said, “what is truth?” In a truthless world, some have struggled to listen to His voice and to continue to speak Truth—the Truth of Christ. And one was Dorothy: in her commitment to justice, to freedom and to peace, her resistance to the kingdoms of this world, and her unflinching commitment to the belief that love will redeem the world, Dorothy had a dream of this Truth, the dream became a vision, and the vision became a light for the world. The Truth guided her pilgrimage and she admitted, “We confess to being fools and wish that we were more so.” Oh, thank God for such foolishness!

And so Dorothy, the pilgrimage is over. You’re home now. The Truth invites you to the eternal banquet.

Archived Comments

Day 9 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 14:22:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. Her conversion cost her dearly, but Dorothy always insisted that it was a great joy, occasioned by the birth of her daughter, that brought her to God.The mystery of life! Later she said she learned of God’s goodness from her love of His poor. Today, we pray for mindfulness of beauty and grace in the midst of suffering. We pray to see with the eyes of faith ‘if only through a glass darkly,” and hold fast to hope as we journey together — like those disciples on the road to Emmaus — through these hard times.

“Irene pointed out a phrase to me recently of Ruskin’s which appealed to us both. It was “the duty of delight.” To reverence and be thankful for life itself, in a time when the world holds human life so lightly there is again joy. To be grateful is to be full of grace and grace is participation in the divine life, knowing that we are sons of God and heirs of the kingdom.
Happiness too means warmth after cold, peace after pain and satisfaction after hunger. These simple joys are good to remember.… We must express it with sweetness, with tenderness. When I saw the altar boy kiss the cruet of water this morning at Mass, I felt how necessary ritual is to life.To kiss the earth, to lift the arms, to embrace the lonely.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, 1951

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Archived Comments

Day 8 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 17:31:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. As we look outward at the tragedy of illness, we can lose sight of the epidemic of violence infecting our hearts and our society. In this time of enforced quiet, may we examine our own violence both in action and indifference. May we root out the ways we commit and spread violence in all its forms. Today, we pray for peace and non-violence and a new global awareness of interconnectedness.

“The solution proposed in the Gospels is that of voluntary poverty and the works of mercy. It is the little way. It is within the power of all. Everybody can begin here and now.… We have the greatest weapons in the world, greater than any hydrogen or atom bomb, and they are the weapons of poverty and prayer, fasting and alms, the reckless spending of ourselves in God’s service and for his poor. Without poverty we will not have learned love, and love, at the end, is the measure by which we shall be judged.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , 1950

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)
God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 7 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 19:55:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. It is tempting to become immobilized by feelings of grief, of helplessness. It is tempting to roll back the stone in front of Christ’s tomb. Today, let us pray for our faith communities, that as we regather after the pandemic has abated, our faith, hope, and charity be rekindled in response to God’s enduring love.

“In the face of world events, in the face of the mystery of suffering, of evil in the world, it is a good time to read the Book of Job, and then to go on reading the Psalms, looking for comfort—that is, strength to endure. Also to remember the importunate widow, the importunate friend. Both are stories which Jesus told. Then to pray without ceasing, as Paul urged. And just as there was that interpolation in Job—that triumphant cry—‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ so we, too, can know that help will come, that even from evil, God can bring great good, that indeed the good will triumph. Bitter though it is today with ice and sleet, the sap will soon be rising in those bare trees down the street from us.”
–Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , February 1971

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 6 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 17:34:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. At the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day strived to be faithful to the injunctions of the gospel. Justice was wed to charity; protest was a form of prayer. Often the newspaper quoted G.K. Chesterton’s famous observation that Christianity hadn’t failed — it had never really been tried. Day’s life was spent trying. She was shot at while working for integration, upbraided for her pacifism, and arrested with striking farmworkers. Today, let us pray for an awareness of the inequities laid bare during the pandemic, that we commit to create a “new society within the shell of the old.”

“What we do is so little we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did He fail. He met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seed fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest. And why must we see results? Our work is to sow. Another generation will be reaping the harvest.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , February 1940

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Archived Comments

Day 5 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 14:36:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. All are affected, but the devastation of this pandemic is falling most heavily on those already at the margins of our society. We pray for the most vulnerable among us — the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, the undocumented, the discriminated against — all too easily forgotten. May God grant us the grace of hearts that yearn, and hands that work for justice.

“What we would like to do is change the world–make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute–the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words–we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

― Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , 1946

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 4 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 14:01:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. It was Dorothy’s reading of muckraking literature like Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, that first awakened her social consciousness. She never forgot its story of the lives of immigrant stockyard workers in the Chicago of her youth, a story of exploitation she heard again and again as a reporter for socialist newspapers in New York. Early on she was in love with the masses of struggling workers, she later enshrined their name in the movement she co-founded, and dedicated to them the first issue of its paper.

We pray for the repose of the loved ones we have lost during this tragic time and the consolation of their families and friends.Today, we also pray for all the essential workers who risk their lives to keep us fed and supplied with what we need. We ask that the recognition of their fundamental dignity — their true “essentialness” — extend beyond the grateful clapping of the present crisis.

“For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight…. For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight — this little paper is addressed. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program — to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual, but for their material welfare.”
– Dorothy Day, 1st issue of The Catholic Worker , May 1, 1933

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 3 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 15:32:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. Dorothy vividly remembered the California earthquake of 1906, which she lived through as a child during her family’s time in San Francisco. She was deeply influenced by seeing how that disaster brought people together. The memory stayed with her for the rest of her life, as a blueprint for true charity and hospitality.

We pray for the repose of the loved ones we have lost during this tragic time and the consolation of their families and friends. Today, we also pray for the many people who are out of work and who face want in this time of fear. We ask that they find support in our communities. Let us pray that we open our hearts, extend our arms, and act with magnanimity.

“What I remember most plainly about the earthquake was the human warmth and kindliness of everyone afterward. For days refugees poured out of burning San Francisco and camped in Idora Park and the race track in Oakland. People came in their night clothes; there were new-born babies…. everyone’s heart was enlarged by Christian charity. All the hard crust of worldly reserve and prudence was shed. Each person was a little child in friendliness and warmth. Mother and all our neighbors were busy from morning to night cooking hot meals. They gave away every extra garment they possessed. They stripped themselves to the bone in giving, forgetful of the morrow. While the crisis lasted, people loved each other … It makes one think of how people could, if they would, care for each other in time of stress, unjudgingly, with pity and with love.”

― Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 2 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:17:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, Dorothy worked for a year as a nurse in Brooklyn. Only 21, she experienced first-hand what healthcare workers today are facing. She wrote of the daily tragedies which she witnessed continuously, and which weighed upon her. Yet, she had no time to mourn, being so busy and overwhelmed with the work at hand: care for the sick and dying.

We pray for the repose of the loved ones we have lost during this tragic time and the consolation of their families and friends. Today, we also keep in our prayers healthcare workers and all those risking their lives to serve and heal in this moment of crisis. We ask that they be kept safe and their efforts be strengthened. May their work be appreciated and enabled.

“I had been a good and sympathetic nurse. I knew that I loved the work, and that if I had not had the irresistible urge to write, I would have clung to the profession of nursing as the most noble work.” – Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Day 1 Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 16:31:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. The gospel reading for today is St. Luke’s account of the road to Emmaus (24: 13-35). Two disciples, witnesses to the Crucifixion, walk with heavy hearts away from the community in Jerusalem toward the village of Emmaus. On the road, they are joined by a Stranger who listens to their fears and cruel disappointment. They hear His words, and then their hearts “burn within them.” In one of Scripture’s most hauntingly beautiful passages, in the “breaking of the bread,” they recognize Him to be the Risen Christ. We are those disciples, filled with despair, filled with longing.

We pray for the repose of the loved ones we have lost during this tragic time and the consolation of their families and friends. Today, we also pray for those suffering painful isolation, separated from their loved ones, that they find support. We ask for solidarity and the grace to walk together in suffering and in joy.

“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”
― Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Archived Comments

Hope in Hard Times: A Novena with Dorothy Day

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 16:48:00 GMT

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the world, we find ourselves confined to an endless Good Friday. Clinging to the promise of Easter is not an easy task. Dorothy Day’s life of solidarity with suffering people is a source of hope. She reminds us that no matter our circumstances, we can always love. We can always pray.

Church doors are closed, but we invite everyone to join us in prayer. As we walk through this strangely changed Holy Week together, we want to let you know we are planning a novena at the beginning of the Easter season, starting on Easter Monday, April 13. Over the course of its traditional nine days, we will “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis), invoking Dorothy’s presence and example.

Those who have read The Long Loneliness may recall that 102 years ago, during the horrific influenza epidemic of 1918, Dorothy worked for a year as a nurse in Brooklyn. She experienced first-hand what healthcare workers today are facing. She wrote:

“This was the time of the ‘flu’ epidemic and the wards were filled and the halls too. Many of the nurses became ill and we were very short-handed. Every night before going off duty there were bodies to be wrapped in sheets and wheeled away to the morgue. When we came on duty in the morning, the night nurse was performing the same grim task.(…) It was hard not to be careless at this time when every day ten or twelve new patients were carried in or walked staggeringly only to fall unconscious as soon as their clothes were taken from them.”

The pandemic calls solidarity to the fore. It moves us to pray for and care for the sick and dying. We also pray for those who — like Dorothy — practice the Works of Mercy, such as medical personnel and first responders.

Dorothy believed with her whole being in the Mystical Body of Christ. Because we are all connected, we are all vulnerable, whatever our differences and divisions. Social distancing is necessary — but this crisis also makes us reflect on the common good, and on our shared human plight (in Pope Francis’ words) in our “common home.”

Dorothy’s unflinching witness to justice demands that we consider how the most vulnerable among us fare in this crisis. How does it affect the destitute, homeless people, detained immigrants, prison inmates, low wage and unemployed workers, children left home alone, uninsured patients? The ravages of the Coronavirus will continue after the contagion is brought under control. It is normal to fear death, but we are also threatened by death of the spirit: indifference, individualism, despair.

So, plan to join us as we pray together, for these nine days following Holy Week, for healing and strength for all who suffer. Collectively, we will raise our voices in seeking the largeness of heart, the capacity for solidarity that Dorothy exemplified. And we will ask — confident in the faith she never doubted — that we will find the blessings of community and the hope that is Easter.

Posts will be available on Facebook and our blog and linked below as they are created each day.

Day 1 Solidarity

Day 2 Healthcare Workers.

Day 3 Generosity and Those Who Have Lost Work.

Day 4 Essential Workers.

Day 5 The Marginalized.

Day 6 Justice.

Day 7 Faith Communities.

Day 8 Non-violence.

Day 9 Hope and Delight.

Panel Assesses Dorothy Day’s Impact on Church and Their Own Lives

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 04:45:00 GMT

WASHINGTON — If you met Dorothy Day, you were changed, said panelists at a Jan. 27 discussion following an advance screening of a new documentary, “Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story,” which profiles the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

And if you were changed, they noted, you had the ability to make change yourself.

“Dorothy taught me to pay attention and feel the sufferings of others,” said Martha Hennessy, one of Day’s granddaughters, during the forum at Georgetown University in Washington.

“Dorothy gives us hope. Dorothy gives us courage to do what we need to do in our times to if we need want to be called disciples of Christ,” she added.

Hennessy is a member of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. They face prison terms of up to 20 years after being convicted on charges related to their faith-based nonviolent and symbolic disarming of a Trident submarine’s nuclear weapons in Georgia. She had a “curfew” of 8:30 p.m., and left following the discussion.

Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books and editor of Day’s writings, recalled, “I didn’t know I was going to spend so much time there” at Mary House, the first Catholic Worker house of hospitality in New York City, after he decided to take a year off from Harvard College. Attracted to the Catholic Worker’s peace witness, “I knew there was a kind of learning I couldn’t do in school,” he said. Day made Ellsberg, then 20, editor of the Catholic Worker, its monthly newspaper.

As Kate Hennessy, another of Day’s granddaughters, said in the documentary, “If you spend any time up close and personal with Dorothy Day, you never know what hit you.” For Ellsberg’s part, he said he’s spent the rest of his life “trying to share with the world what had hit me.”

Carolyn Zablotny, a leader of the Dorothy Day Guild and the effort to have Day canonized, spoke about the evolution of her faith.

“At my Catholic grade school, I had my faith memorized. In college I intellectualized it,” Zablotny said. “When I went to the Catholic Worker, when I saw a poor woman wrapped in layers and layers and layers of dirty clothes, I got what the Gospel was about.”

“She taught me to believe in love. She taught me to believe in God. She taught me that peace is possible,” said Hennessy, who called that process “self-disarmament.”

“She did not look back,” Ellsberg added. “She just kept going, kept going, kept going, kept going.”

Were Day to live long enough to see Pope Francis as the successor of Peter, “I think she’d be overjoyed,” said Martin Doblmeier, who made the “Revolution of the Heart” documentary.

“I think she would have been cheering about the comments about the man when he went to Japan” and denounced the threat to use nuclear weapons. Pope Francis is, “in some way, a fulfillment of what she had been championing all her life,” added Doblmeier, president and founder of Journey Films.

Martha Hennessy agreed, calling Pope Francis “a pope after her own heart. She herself talked about the necessity to do more than demonstrate and speak. There’s also the necessity to act, and to act without fear. Fear is used to control us. What do we do to overcome that challenge?”

Ellsberg called Pope Francis “the pope Dorothy dreamed up. … He reads the Gospel through a Franciscan lens, with the eye on the poor,” he said, “going out to the peripheries to touch the wounds of Christ. That’s what Dorothy did every day.”

Popes are one thing, Ellsberg added, but presidents are another. “She didn’t spend a lot of time talking about prsidents, be it (Richard) Nixon or LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson),” he said. “Dorothy was a woman of the beatitudes. She lived the beatitudes.”

Hennessy said her grandmother saw her role as “calling Christians to love God with all your heart and all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself.” But in a weapons-laden world, she added, “we have a complicity,” she added. “We cannot let ourselves off so easily, if we want to call ourselves Christians, 98% of the nuclear arsenal is in the hands of white Christians.”

But by another token, “Life is beautiful. I’ve lived a privileged life,” Hennessy said. “It was time for me to step up and do what I could do. … There’s a lot of joy in standing up to the most powerful force on earth and giving oneself over. I’m in the hands of God, and it’s OK.”

“We’re all called to be saints. Dorothy understood that before Vatican II,” Zablotny said. Advocating for Day’s sainthood “is a way of getting her story told,” she added.

But the church generally requires two authenticated miracles before it pronounces a new saint. In that instance, Ellsberg said, “God will supply a miracle if God wants to.”

Happy Feast of St Joseph

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 02:06:00 GMT

"March 19. The feast day of St. Joseph. In his reliance on God's providence, he inspires the Worker's own. When unpaid bills mounted high, his intercession was actively sought, prompting the practice of "picketing" his statue. "St Joseph never fails. He always

answers our petitions!" -Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker, May 1956

We can't think of a better day to launch a new Guild petition drive, asking that Dorothy's sainthood be recognized. Please sign on!

Upcoming Art Exhibit: A New World

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 16:20:00 GMT

A reminder that an exciting exhibit of artwork exploring Day’s legacy will be up for the holiday season in New York. We hope to see some of you at the opening reception Dec 16th.

A New World
Contemporary Art Exploring Dorothy Day’s Vision of Social Justice

December 16, 2017 – January 13, 2018
Opening Reception December 16, 5-7PM

The Gallery at the Sheen Center
18 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012
(gallery entrance on Elizabeth St.)

Artists:

Arte Fogata, Robert Aitchison, Jackie Allen, Michal Behar, Patricia Bellucci, Geoffrey Gneuhs, GRIB, Alice Hendrickson, June Hildebrand, Imo Nse Imeh, Brian Kavanagh, Matt Kirby, Julie Lonneman, Lori Merhige, Milt Ohring, Frank Sabatté, Anthony Santella, Dennis Santella

Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 02:15:00 GMT

An upcoming NY event that might be of interest

Kate Hennessy, granddaughter of Dorothy Day, will share excerpts from her book, Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother. Featuring stories of both Dorothy Day and her daughter, Tamar (Kate’s mother), The World Will Be Saved By Beauty is an intimate look at the family life and radical service to the poor of one of America’s great witnesses to the Gospel.

Monday, March 20 @7:00pm
Sheen Center
Black Box Theater
18 Bleecker Street, NYC
Tickets: Free, RSVP Required SheenCenter.org

Dorothy Day Symposium: Loyola University, Chicago February 16,17 2017

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 21:31:00 GMT

The Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University in Chicago, IL will be hosting: Revolution of the Heart: A Symposium on Dorothy Day, February 16,17 2017. Speakers will include Robert Ellsberg and Kate Hennessy.

The event is free and open to the public.

More details here: https://www.luc.edu/ccih/archive/dorothydaysymposiumfebruary16-172017.shtml

Link to program: https://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/ccih/formsdocumentsandpdfs/DorothyDaySymposium_Program.pdf

GOOD TALK, With Marie Dennis

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 04:19:00 GMT

(We thank Marie Dennis for her generously granting In Our Time this interview. Marie is co-president of Pax Christi International. A mother of six who lives in a Franciscan community in the inner city of Washington, D.C., she is the author of several books, including Diversity of Vocations (Orbis Books, 2008.) This article first appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of the Guild’s newsletter, In Our Time .

In Our Time : You’ve described the Christian vocation as an “invitation to follow Jesus”–an invitation that demands an uncompromising break with “business as usual.” Certainly that was Dorothy’s experience…

Dorothy’s response to the vocation/call she so clearly discerned is an extraordinary example of an “uncompromising break with business as usual.” I think it is especially inspiring because she was already so fully engaged in life as a young woman of her “times” and a journalist who cared deeply about the rights of women, impoverished people, and others marginalized by U.S. society in the early 20 ^th century. Her call to a deeper commitment was enriched by faith and grounded in love of God.

Dorothy longed for a path in life that was equal to her passions. “I wanted life, and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too…. And I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.” Can you talk a little about some of the “clues” she found that helped her on her way?

I think Dorothy was deeply touched by the reality she encountered in the streets of New York. The poverty she witnessed in the midst of the Depression was one clue. Another I believe was in her own active mind and spirit. She obviously reflected deeply on the life of her daughter, Tamar, and was moved to change her life in response. A third forceful clue was in her encounter and friendship with Peter Maurin, who engaged Dorothy intellectually in powerful ways.

Dorothy famously and tearfully prayed, following her reporting from the sidelines on the 1932 Communist-led Hunger March in Washington, D.C., that some way would open up for her to use what talents she possessed to serve the poor and unemployed. How has the role of the laity evolved in regard to working for social justice?

In many ways Dorothy was an inspiration and an anchor for a movement of Catholics, including many lay people, who responded to critical social issues of a given era. She was not alone in caring about the poor and unemployed–although it does seem that work was then primarily the vocation of many men and women religious. However, the rich social teaching documents of the Church before ( Rerum Novarum , Quadragesimo Anno , Mater et Magistra , and Pacem in Terris ), during (especially Gaudium et Spes ) and after ( Call to Action , Justice in the World ] the Second Vatican Council brought lay people to the heart of the Church’s work for social justice.

We tend to think of Dorothy’s “vocation” as being the Catholic Worker movement. But that involved many different kinds of activities: from writing to protesting to speaking to ladling out soup. And she was always a mother and later a grandmother. Is this what you mean by having a “diversity” of vocations?

Yes, absolutely. That is the experience of so many of us. The diversity of Dorothy’s vocations was particularly inspiring to me. As one who has lived in an intentional community (Assisi Community) for the past 30 years, including with four of my children, I was deeply moved by Dorothy’s struggles as a mother living in the Catholic Worker community. At the same time, her radical appropriation of the Gospel message, especially her commitment to the poor and homeless, as the norm for life as a lay person was deeply challenging and inspiring.

Dorothy characterized several periods of her life as times of “wandering,” notably a five year stretch following her conversion where, though she participated in the sacraments, she had no Catholic friends. Later at the Catholic Worker, the importance of community was repeatedly stressed. What role in Dorothy’s life, and in general, do you attribute to community?

I believe that community became central to Dorothy’s life once she started the Catholic Worker. Community kept her grounded at the margins of society and often helped her discern the way forward. In the book I wrote with others, St. Francis and the Foolishness of God (Orbis, revised 2015), we wrote about the evolution of community in the life of the Church to which Dorothy and the Catholic Worker made a huge contribution.

Dorothy never saw the Catholic Worker “vocation” as being for everyone. But she did see certain practices, regardless of the particular form one’s vocation took, as being fundamental to any Christian life, right?

I assume that Dorothy would see a connection to marginalized people, simplicity of lifestyle, and connection to community in some form to be essential to the Christian life. All of these speak to being “poor in spirit.” Diversity of Vocations has a section that reflects on this from my perspective:

To be poor in spirit we have to live in a manner that is conscious of the reality in which most people live; understand the systemic and structural connections between our prosperity and others’ poverty.

To be poor in spirit we have to shape our lives and futures from the standpoint and for the sake of those who are poor.

But, how does this vocation–to be poor in spirit–this privileged place of poor people–intersect with other calls we have heard, the call to parenting, for example, or the call to a single life, or the call to teaching, to mission, to medicine? Is this call of Jesus, this foundational theme in the beatitudes, reserved for a chosen few?

That only a few should care about the poor clearly was not the message of the Sermon on the Mount, but to live in solidarity with those who are poor, to be poor in spirit with all that vocation implies remains a tremendous challenge for followers of Jesus who, like the rich young man in the gospel have “many possessions” or already busy lives. (Mark 10:23 NRSV)

…Every parent, I suspect, tries to instill in one’s child an awareness that all the children in the world don’t have hundreds of choices in breakfast cereal or the latest computer or even a house to live in. I believe deeply that teaching children to live simply–modeling for them how to live with less on a daily basis in a consumer society–is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.

Choosing to live in neighborhoods and towns that are economically diverse; where people with vastly different means live side by side; where their children go to school together and play together; where employers and employees know each other as human beings; and where people commit themselves to the common good is another.

To work toward a society where such an integrated way of life is even possible may be a vocation in itself.

I think Dorothy would agree.

Dorothy liked to say, “You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you.” Can you reflect more on this?

Again, in Diversity of Vocations the whole last chapter talks about joy:

God calls us to a fundamental orientation, an option for discipleship, that sets the stage on which we dance the dance of life and promises happiness (Blessed are you …) to those who heed the call …

Increasingly, I am convinced that as adults and honest followers of Christ, we know in our souls when we are living faithfully the vocation or vocations to which we have been called. We know Jesus’ story very well. We know what and how he called all of us to be and we know when we have followed and when we have turned away in sadness like the rich young man.

If we look very carefully at the reality of the world into which we are sent–with all its hopes and fears, joys and sorrows … hopes and fears, joys and sorrows that, if we are open to them, soon become our own–then we will begin to hear the Good News. If we have the courage to ask why the brokenness we see is so pervasive, why the beauty is so rarely seen, then we will begin to hear the Good News. If we have readied ourselves to be changed, converted, to find God as we are called and respond to new vocations, then we will begin to hear the Good News. It will begin to make sense to us in ways we never thought possible; we will see it lived in three dimensions and in brilliant color.…

As we accompany the pain and celebrate the beauty wherever we are planted–as we nurture just relationships and live compassionate lives–we are, we will be, helping to build the beloved global community of all life.

And we will know joy.

Anything else, Marie, you’d like to add?

Dorothy’s commitment to nonviolence. Even beyond a commitment to nonviolence, her strict pacifism was extremely challenging, especially during the Second World War.

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

In the Cross is Joy of Spirit

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 00:03:00 GMT

Easter greetings of peace and joy!

“We are not expecting utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. “All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, ‘I am the Way.’ ” The cross is there, of course, but “in the cross is joy of spirit.” And love makes all things easy.”

-Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, Catholic Worker, 1948

I Love

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 16:26:00 GMT

“I believe, because I wish to believe, help Thou my unbelief. I love because I want to love, the deepest desire of my heart is for love, for union, for communion, for community.”
-Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, May, 1978

All Saints

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 18:26:00 GMT

Happy Feast of All Saints
Dorothy was struck with how we tend to put saints on a pedestal rendering them irrelevant. For her, saints were not only constant companions but daily guides.

“Thank God for the saints whose feast days come around and remind us that we too are called to be saints.” -Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, October 1949

Pope Francis, Address to Congress

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:47:00 GMT

“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….”
-Pope Francis, address to the U.S. Congress 9/24/2015

Archived Comments

Welcome Pope Francis!

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 01:28:00 GMT

WELCOME, POPE FRANCIS !

“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.”
– Dorothy Day

Send a Petition

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 02:06:00 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild is collecting physical petitions in support of the cause for Day’s canonization. If you can, please follow the link, print out the petition, fill it out and mail it in. Petitions will become part of the documentation forwarded to the Vatican offices that oversee the canonization process: http://dorothydayguild.org/support/sign-petition/

Archived Comments

God’s Things

Sun, 21 Dec 2014 04:36:00 GMT

“Thank God for turtles in backyards,
For smell of horses and the wagon load of celery,
For scrubbed sweet potatoes
Baking in a push cart oven,
For the smell of charcoal on a dull fall day.
For chestnuts, too, and the dry leaves of Bayard St.
For the little bird in the church yard,
Bright with the yellow breast.
For the pert grasshopper on Katie’s vegetable stand,
For babies, for kittens, for little humble things.
Teresa calls dungeons, the dark dark tenements,
But thank God for poverty which drives us from ugliness
To walk in parks, over bridges, or just among the people.
The sky is ours, the wind, the rain.
There is sun on bare branches, and sun on the housetops.
We cannot be home bound, we must look for God’s things,
So to the streets, to the parks, to the bridge, to the rivers, to the markets, to the bay¾
Everywhere, even here,
Even in the dungeons
In the ugly cities,
There we thank Thee,
Loved One, God!”

–Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker 1941

Archived Comments

Thanksgiving

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 17:53:00 GMT

‘So in this month of thanksgiving, we can be thankful for the trials of the past, the blessings of the present, and be heartily ready at the same time to embrace with joy any troubles the future may bring us.’
-Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker 1936

Life

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 20:55:00 GMT

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day. Nov 8th, 1897.

“I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too. I did not want just the few, the missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted everyone to be kind. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.” -Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Archived Comments

Why do we weep?

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 00:30:00 GMT

Lose

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:26:00 GMT

“The only way to live in any security is to live so close to the bottom that when you fall you do not have far to drop, you do not have much to lose.”
-Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker. April 1953

Her Words: Series

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 01:08:00 GMT

Her Words: Holy Thursday Published April 4, 2014

"On Holy Thursday, truly a joyful day, I was sitting at the supper table at St. Joseph's House on Chrystie Street and looking around at all the fellow workers and thinking how hopeless it was for us to try to keep up appearances."
-Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, April 1964

“The main thing is not to hold on to anything.”
-Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, May 1952

Her Words: Trace Published April 10, 2014

"I will try to trace for you the steps by which I came to accept the faith that I believe was always in my heart..."
-Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome

Her Words: Could Published April 9, 2014

"I feel that I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could."
-Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Her Words: Write Published March 22, 2014

"It would be better still to love, rather than to write about it. It would be more convincing."

-Dorothy Day, To Die for Love, The Catholic Worker, September 1948

Her Words: Seeds Published March 12, 2014

"We are sowing the seeds of love, and we are not living in the harvest time."
-Dorothy Day, Commonweal 1949

Her Words: Pruned Published March 9, 2014

"What a paradox it is, this natural life and this supernatural life. We must give up our lives to gain them, we must die to live, be pruned to bear fruit. We want to be free, and we want to be free of responsibility except for our own. Am I my brother's keeper? Or can I be free when other men are enslaved? "
-Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, January 1951

Her Words: Love Published March 7, 2014

"Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear each other's faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much."

-Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality

Her Words: Easier Published March 6, 2014

"God meant things to be much easier than we have made them."
-Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, 1948

Her Words: Hold Published April 14, 2014

Her Words: The Poor Published March 5, 2014

Words Published November 10, 2013

Report from the Conference: Dorothy Day: A Saint for Our Time

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 19:00:05 GMT

Guild Executive Committee member Geoffrey B. Gneuhs provides us with a report of his experience at the recent conference "Dorothy Day: A Saint for Our Time":

What we would like to do is change the world...by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world."
---Dorothy Day

St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, hosted a conference on "Dorothy Day: A Saint for Our Time" March 7-8. Dr. Francis Sicius, a history professor at STU and a biographer of Peter Maurin, organized the convocation. Those of us from northern climes were quite delighted with the beautiful campus, the hospitality of the students, and the wonderful warm, sunny weather.

Attended by nearly one hundred people, over the two days, from across the country, the university and the Miami area, the conference was a gathering of scholars and workers as Peter Maurin would have wished. There were 25 papers and talks delivered by college professors and a high school teacher, as well as from representatives of several Catholic Worker communities.

Discussions ranged from Dorothy's spirituality and the influence of the Fr. Lacouture/Fr. Hugo retreat, to her prayer life, to what her understanding of being a radical in the Christian sense meant, as well as to her spiritual and practical understanding of pacificism. One paper by Harry Murray of the Rochester CW confirmed that Peter Maurin was not a pacifist, as he registered for the Selective Service in 1942---and gave Dorothy Day as his contact person!

Other talks discussed Dorothy's deep faith centered on the Mass and her commitment to the Church as well as her unique way of living a life of holiness while dedicated to justice. There were also presentations about life in various Catholic Worker communities.

The conference discussed how to make Dorothy and her saintly life better known to more Catholics and others, including this new website and other social media, through teaching in schools and colleges, as well as at the parish level.

On Friday night, three students, a pianist, soprano, and tenor, gave a superb concert of arias in recognition of Dorothy's love of opera

Lance Richey announced that the University of St. Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana, will host a conference next year May 13-15, 2015, on "Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present, and Future."

The meeting concluded with a Mass in the light-filled, pastel, adobe-like chapel, with an outdoor reception afterward.

There was a great spirit, vitality, and camaraderie during the two days that reflected a renewed commitment to the inspiration and example of Dorothy, thirty-three years after her death.

- Geoffrey B. Gneuhs

Archived Comments

Website Re-launch

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:57:08 GMT

The Dorothy Day Guild is happy to announce the re-launch of its website dorothydayguild.org

This year, 2014, marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I -- "the war to end all wars." How poignant that designation in light of the last century of relentless violence and mass destruction!

Among her many gifts to us, Dorothy Day helped to recover peacemaking as an essential element of the Christian vocation. We see this 2014 re-launch of the Guild website not only as a way of furthering a call for her sainthood but also as a way of invoking a new time when peace will end all war.

Day on the Web: Jim Forest, Reflections on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 18:54:29 GMT

From back in 2008, the text of a talk by Jim Forest on the Houston Catholic Worker website:

http://cjd.org/2008/08/01/reflections-on-dorothy-day-and-the-catholic-worker-movement/

Day in the News: Peter Maurin Farm

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 18:49:06 GMT

A recent article about the Peter Maurin farm in the National Catholic Reporter.

http://ncronline.org/news/peace-justice/farmer-sees-fresh-catholic-worker-energy

Import from Neon - Honoraria - Current Live Email - Advisory Board - Mailchimp Archive Feed

Happy 100th Birthday, Tamar Day Hennessy!

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

A Saint for Our Time: February Updates from The Dorothy Day Guild

Dear friends,

Advent Greetings

Dear friends,

Signposts for the Gospel: News from the Guild for the Month of Dorothy!

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Dorothy and the Little Way: October 2025 Dorothy Day Guild Missive

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

In Memoriam: Patrick Jordan, Personalist and Friend of Dorothy Day

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Peace, Art, and Philosophy of Work: September with the Dorothy Day Guild

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Monica Cornell, 1942-2025: A Worker for the Lay Apostolate and Friend of Dorothy Day

Dear Friends,

Summer News and Updates from the Guild!

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

"The Best Revolutionary Technique:" Dorothy on the Works of Mercy, the Mystical Body of Christ, and more

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

"The Spirit Accomplished Something Extraordinary"

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Anniversaries, Invitations, and a Prayer for the Conclave

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Thank you, Pope Francis

Dear friends,

Holy Week with Dorothy

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

"Lending Your Voices to This Cause of Peace"

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Stamped With the Image of God

Warm Winter Wishes

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Feasting and Great Joy: Merry Christmas from the Dorothy Day Guild!

Merry Christmas from the Dorothy Day Guild!

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Dorothy Day Guild news:

Reading recommendations for November:

Events and Opportunities:

A few words from Dorothy:

Walking on the Little Way

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Guild News:

Upcoming Events:

Article Round-up:

A few words from Dorothy:

IN OUR TIME : Volume 2 (digital), Issue 1

IN OUR TIME

﻿ Newsletter of the Dorothy Day Guild

It's YOU who ground the cause...

...and keep it moving!

DEAR READERS:

Labor, Love, and Learning

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild,

New books!

Additional Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

Recent Happenings:

Upcoming Events:

Prayer requests:

A few words from Dorothy:

A Gift for All of Us

What it Takes to be a Lifelong Catholic Worker

Artists of Hope

Charles E. Moore on How to Live in Community

Reading Fratelli Tutti

The Brother and the Rooster

Food for the Body, Food for the Soul

Dear friends,

Upcoming Events:

New Articles and Reading Recommendations for August:

A few more notes from the National Eucharistic Congress:

Prayer Requests:

A few words from Dorothy:

We're on Pilgrimage!

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild,

Recent Guild Happenings:

Join Us in Indianapolis!

This Month's Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

Newsletter of the
Dorothy Day Guild