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.