FREE ESSAY ON DORTHY DAY

DORTHY DAY

Dorothy Day
It seems that to some people that they give more so society than others, but than there
is one woman, who gave her life to society to help others though giving and sharing and
helped people through a time of need. Yet there seems to be few there is. 
Dorothy Day, patron of the Catholic Worker movement, was born in Brooklyn, on New York,
November 8, 1897. After surviving the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the Day family
moved into a tenement flat in Chicago's South Side. It was a big step down in the world
made necessary because Dorothy's father was out of work. Day's understanding of the shame
people feel when they fail in their efforts dated from this time. It was in Chicago that
Day began to form positive impressions of Catholicism. Day recalled. when her father was
appointed sports editor of a Chicago newspaper, the Day family moved into a comfortable
house on the North Side. Here Dorothy began to read books that affected her conscience.
Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, inspired Day to take long walks in poor neighborhoods
in Chicago's South Side. It was the start of a life-long attraction to areas many people
avoid. 
Day won a scholarship that brought her to the University of Illinois campus at Urbana in
the fall of 1914. However, she was a reluctant scholar. Her reading was chiefly in a
radical social direction. She avoided campus social life and insisted on supporting
herself rather than living on money from her father. 
Dropping out of college two years later, she moved to New York where she found a job as a
reporter for The Call, the city's only socialist daily. She covered rallies and
demonstrations and interviewed people ranging from butlers to labor organizers and
revolutionaries. She next worked for The Masses, a magazine that opposed American
involvement in the European war. In September, the Post Office rescinded the magazine's
mailing permit. Federal officers seized back issues, manuscripts, subscriber lists and
correspondence. Five editors were charged with sedition. 
In November 1917 Day went to prison for being one of forty women in front of the White
House protesting women's exclusion from the electorate. Arriving at a rural workhouse,
the women were roughly handled. The women responded with a hunger strike. Finally they
were freed by presidential order. Returning to New York, Day felt that journalism was a
meager response to a world at war. In the spring of 1918, she signed up for a nurse's
training program in Brooklyn. Her conviction that the social order was unjust changed in
no substantial way from her adolescence until her death.
Her religious development was a slower process. As a child, she attended services at an
Episcopal Church. As a young journalist in New York, she would sometimes make late night
visits to St. Joseph's Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue. The Catholic climate of worship
appealed to her. While she knew little about Catholic belief, Catholic spiritual
discipline fascinated her. She saw the Catholic Church as the church of the immigrants,
the church of the poor. In 1922, while in Chicago working as a reporter, she roomed with
three young women who went to Mass every Sunday and holy day and also set aside time each
day for prayer. It was clear to her that worship, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication
... were the noblest acts of which we are capable in this life. Her next job was with a
newspaper in New Orleans. Living near St. Louis Cathedral, Day often attended evening
Benediction services. 
Back in New York in 1924, Day bought a beach cottage on Staten Island using money from
the sale of movie rights for a novel. She also began a four-year common-law marriage with
Forster Batterham, an English botanist she had met through friends in Manhattan.
Batterham was an anarchist opposed to marriage and religion. In a world of such cruelty,
he found it impossible to believe in a God. By this time Day's belief in God was
unshakable. It grieved her that Batterham didn't sense God's presence within the natural
world. How can there be no God, she asked, when there are all these beautiful things? His
irritation with her absorption in the supernatural would lead them to quarrel. 
What moved everything to a different plane for her was pregnancy. She had been pregnant
once before, years earlier, as the result of a love affair with a journalist. This
resulted in the great tragedy for her in her life, an abortion. The affair and its awful
aftermath had been the subject of her novel, The Eleventh Virgin. The abortion, Day
concluded in the years following, had left her barren. For a long time I had thought I
could not bear a child, and the longing in my heart for a baby had been growing,she
confided in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. My home, I felt, was not a home
without one. Her pregnancy with Batterham seemed to Day nothing less than a miracle. But
Batterham didn't believe in bringing children into such a violent world. On March 3,
1927, Tamar Theresa Day was born. Day could think of nothing better to do with the
gratitude that overwhelmed her than arrange Tamar's baptism in the Catholic Church. I did
not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe, and I
wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a Church would give her so inestimable a
grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was
to have her baptized a Catholic. 
After Tamar's baptism, day split from Batteram permanently. On December 28, Day was
received into the Catholic Church. A day commenced in her life as she tried to find a way
to bring together her religious faith and her radical social values. 
In the winter of 1932 Day traveled to Washington, DC, to report for Commonweal and
America magazines on the Hunger March. Day watched on December 8, the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception the protesters parade down the streets of Washington carrying signs
calling for jobs, unemployment insurance, old age pensions, relief for mothers and
children, health care and housing. What kept Day in the sidelines was that she was a
Catholic and Communists had organized the march, a party at war with not only with
capitalism but religion. After witnessing the march, Day went to the Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception where she expressed her torment in prayer: I offered up a special
prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would open up for me to
use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor. 
Back in her apartment in New York the next day, Day met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant
20 years her senior. Maurin, a former Christian Brother, had left France for Canada in
1908 and later made his way to the United States. When he met Day, he was handyman at
Catholic boys' camp in upstate New York, receiving meals, use of the chaplain's library,
living space in the barn and occasional pocket money. During his years of wandering,
Maurin had come to a Franciscan attitude, embracing poverty as a vocation. His celibate,
unencumbered life offered time for study and prayer, out of which a vision had taken form
of a social order, instilled with basic values of the Gospel in which it would be easier
for men to be good. A born teacher, he found willing listeners, among them George
Shuster, editor of Commonweal magazine, who gave him Day's address. As remarkable as the
providence of their meeting was Day's willingness to listen. It seemed to her he was an
answer to her prayers, someone who could help her discover what she was supposed to do.
What Day should do, Maurin said, was start a paper to publicize Catholic social teaching
and promote steps to bring about the peaceful transformation of society. Day readily
embraced the idea. If family past work experience and religious faith had prepared her
for anything, it was this. Day found that the Paulist Press was willing to print 2,500
copies of an eight-page tabloid paper for $57. Her kitchen was the new paper's editorial
office. She decided to sell the paper for a penny a copy, so cheap that anyone could
afford to buy it. 
On May 1, the first copies of The Catholic Worker were handed out on Union Square. 
Few publishing ventures meet with such immediate success. By December, 100,000 copies
were being printed each month. In The Catholic Workers, readers found a unique voice. It
expressed dissatisfaction with the social order and took the side of labor unions, but
its vision of the ideal future challenged both urbanization and industrialism. It wasn't
just radical but religious too. The paper didn't merely complain but called on its
readers to make personal responses. For the first half year The Catholic Worker was only
a newspaper. Maurin's essays in the paper were calling for renewal of the ancient
Christian practice of hospitality to those who were homeless. In this way followers of
Christ could respond to Jesus' words: I was a stranger and you took me in. Maurin opposed
the idea that Christians should take care only of their friends and leave care of
strangers to impersonal charitable agencies. Every home should have its Christ Room and
every parish a house of hospitality ready to receive the ambassadors of God, but as
winter approached, homeless people began to knock on the door.
Surrounded by people in need and attracting volunteers excited about ideas they
discovered in The Catholic Worker, it was certain that the editors would soon be given
the chance to put their beliefs into practice. Day's apartment was the seed of many
houses of hospitality to come. By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for
ten women, soon after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936
the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no enlargement could possibly
find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, gray men, the color of lifeless
trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the
rising sap of faith. Many people were surprised that, in contrast with most charitable
centers, no one at the Catholic Worker set about reforming them. A crucifix on the wall
was the only unmistakable evidence of the faith of those welcoming them. The staff
received only food, board and occasional pocket money. The Catholic Worker became a
national movement. By 1936 there were 33 Catholic Worker houses spread across the
country. Due to the Depression, plenty of people needed them.
The Catholic Worker attitude toward those who were welcomed wasn't always appreciated.
These weren't the deserving poor, it was sometimes objected, but drunkards and
good-for-nothings. A visiting social worker asked Day how long the clients were permitted
to stay. We let them stay forever, Day answered with a fierce look in her eye. 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. Some
justified their objections with biblical quotations. Didn't Jesus say that the poor would
be with us always?  Yes, Day once replied, but we are not content that there should be so
many of them. The class structure is our making and by our consent, not God's, and we
must do what we can to change it. We are urging revolutionary change. 
The Catholic Worker also experimented with farming communes. In 1935 a house with a
garden was rented on Staten Island. Soon after came the Mary Farm in Easton,
Pennsylvania. This a property, was eventually given up because of strife within the
community. Another farm was purchased in upstate New York near Newburgh. Called the
Maryfarm Retreat House, it was destined for a longer life. Later came the Maurin Peter
Farm on Staten Island, later moved to Tivoli and then to Marlborough, both in the Hudson
Valley. Day came to see the vocation of the Catholic Worker was not so much to found
model agricultural communities as rural houses of hospitality. 
Pacifism caused Day the most trouble. A nonviolent way of life, as she saw it, was at the
heart of the Gospel. Like the early church she too seriously the command of Jesus to
Maurin: Put away your sword, for whoever lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.
For many centuries the Catholic Church had accommodated itself to war. Popes had blessed
armies and preached Crusades. In the thirteenth century St. Francis of Assisi had revived
the pacifist way, but by the twentieth century, it was unknown for Catholics to take such
a position. The Catholic Worker's first expression of pacifism, published in 1935, was a
dialogue between a patriot and Christ, the patriot dismissing Christ's teaching as a
noble but impractical doctrine. The fascist side, led by Franco, presented itself as
defender of the Catholic faith. Nearly every Catholic bishop and publication rallied
behind Franco. The Catholic Worker, refusing to support either side in the war, lost
two-thirds of its readers. Those backing Franco, Day warned early in the war, ought to
take another look at recent events in [Nazi] Germany. She expressed anxiety for the Jews
and later was among the founders of the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism. 
Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and America's declaration of war, Dorothy
announced that the paper would maintain its pacifist stand. We will print the words of
Christ who is with us always, Day wrote. Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount.
Opposition to the war, she added, had nothing to do with sympathy for America's enemies.
We love our country.... We have been the only country in the world where men and women of
all nations have taken refuge from oppression. But the means of action the Catholic
Worker movement supported were the works of mercy rather than the works of war. She urged
our friends and associates to care for the sick and the wounded, to the growing of food
for the hungry, to the continuance of all our works of mercy in our houses and on our
farms. Not all members of Catholic Worker communities agreed. Fifteen houses of
hospitality closed in the months following the U.S. entry into the war. But Day's view
prevailed. Every issue of TheCatholic Worker reaffirmed her understanding of the
Christian life. The young men who identified with the Catholic Worker movement during the
war generally spent much of the war years either in prison, or in rural work camps. Some
did unarmed military service as medics. 
One of the rituals of life for the New York Catholic Worker community beginning in the
late 1950s was the refusal to participate in the state's annual civil defense drill. Such
preparation for attack seemed to Day part of an attempt to promote nuclear war as
survivable and winnable to justify spending billions on the military. When the sirens
sounded June 15, 1955, Day was among a small group of people sitting in front of City
Hall. In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to
pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in
God if we depend upon the Atom Bomb, a Catholic Worker leaflet explained. Day described
her civil disobedience as an act of penance for America's use of nuclear weapons on
Japanese cities. The first year the dissidents were reprimanded. The next year Day and
others were sent to jail for five days. Arrested again the next year, the judge jailed
her for thirty days. In 1958, a different judge suspended sentence. In 1959, Day was back
in prison, but only for five days. Then came 1960, when instead of a handful of people
coming to City Hall Park, 500 turned up. The police arrested only a few; Day was
conspicuously not among those singled out. In 1961 the crowd swelled to 2,000. These
times 40 were arrested, but again Day was exempted. It proved to be the last year of
dress rehearsals for nuclear war in New York. 
Another Catholic Worker stress was the civil rights movement. As usual Day wanted to
visit people who were setting an example. Therefore she went to Koinonia, a Christian
agricultural community in rural Georgia where blacks and whites lived peacefully
together. The community was under attack when Day visited in 1957. One of the community
houses had been hit by machine-gun fire and Ku Klux Klan members had burned crosses on
community land. Day insisted on taking a turn at the sentry post. Noticing an approaching
car had reduced its speed; she ducked just as a bullet struck the steering column in
front of her face. 
Concern with the Church's response to war led Day to Rome during the Second Vatican
Council, an event Pope John XXIII hoped would restore the simple and pure lines that the
face of the Church of Jesus had at its birth. In 1963, Day was one 50 Mothers for Peace
who went to Rome to thank Pope John for his encyclical Pacem in Terris. Close to death,
the pope couldn't meet them privately, but at one of his last public audiences he blessed
the pilgrims, asking them to continue their labors. 
They had reason to rejoice in December when the Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World was approved by the bishops. The Council's described as a crime against God and
humanity any act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or
vast areas with their inhabitants. The Council called on states to make legal provision
for conscientious objectors while describing as criminal those who obey commands which
condemn the innocent and defenseless. Acts of war causing the indiscriminate destruction
of ... vast areas with their inhabitants were the order of the day in regions of Vietnam
under intense U.S. bombardment in 1965 and the years following. Many young Catholic
Workers went to prison for refusing to cooperate with conscription, while others did
alternative service. Nearly everyone in Catholic Worker communities took part in
protests. Many went to prison for acts of civil disobedience. Probably there has never
been a newspaper so many of whose editors have been jailed for acts of conscience. Day
herself was last jailed in 1973 for taking part in a banned picket line in support of
farmworkers. She was 75. 
Day lived long enough to see her achievements honored. In 1967, when she made her last
visit to Rome to take part in the International Congress of the Laity, she was one of two
Americans -- the other an astronaut -- invited to receive Communion from the hands of
Pope Paul VI. On her 75th birthday the Jesuit magazine America devoted a special issue to
her, finding in her the individual whom best exemplified the aspiration and action of the
American Catholic community during the past forty years. Notre Dame University presented
her with its Laetare Medal, thanking her for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the
comfortable. Among those who came to visit her when she was no longer able to travel was
Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who had once pinned on Day's dress the cross worn only by
fully professed members of the Missionary Sisters of Charity. 
Long before her death November 29, 1980, Day found herself regarded by many as a saint.
No words of hers are better known than her abrupt response, Don't call me a saint. I
don't want to be dismissed so easily. Nonetheless, having herself treasured the memory
and witness of many saints; she is a candidate for inclusion in the calendar of saints.
The Claretians have launched an effort to have her canonized. 
If I have achieved anything in my life, she once remarked, it is because I have not been
embarrassed to talk about God. 
I think that Dorothy Day is a good example of what people are capable of doing. I was
interested in this topic because of that nice couple that came to class. I was really
interested in what they had to say. It is amazing how people can commit their life to God
and his will of charitable services to those in need. I find their devotion to there
vocation most inspiring. I only hope that I too will find my calling in life, and pursue
it with as much vigor.