Dorothy Day was one feisty lady. She managed to annoy a lot of people, particularly men affronted by her strong leadership gifts and her willingness to use it. Dorothy was a passionate follower of Jesus prepared to take him at his word in reaching out to the marginalized of her day. Read Elizabeth Dane's reflections on Dorothy's life...
Dorothy Day was co-founder of a community of activists who published a newspaper while feeding, sheltering and living with the poor of New York City. The group and its paper, both called The Catholic Worker, set forth a radical Christian vision of a world made more humane through active love, sacrifice, personal freedom, pacifism and resistance.
Dorothy first felt a call to meet the pressing needs in society after reading Upton Sinclair’s book, “The Jungle”. This book inspired Day to take long walks in poor neighborhoods in Chicago's South Side. At only 15, but she had become aware of the injustice that was occurring around her. Witnessing this sparked a life-long attraction to go to the areas many people avoid. As she walked the streets and pondered the lives of those who lived there, though materially they had nothing, she found they were rich in so many ways. It was at this time that she had a vivid sense of who she was to become. “From that time on, my life was to be linked to theirs, their interests would be mine: I had received a call, a vocation, a direction in life."
Day, from a nominally Protestant Christian family, had a recurring interest in spirituality throughout her young Bohemian years as a journalist and activist for worker's and women's rights. She knew very little about the Catholic belief, but Catholic spiritual discipline fascinated her. She viewed the Catholic church as the “church for the immigrants, the church for the poor”. At the end of 1926, she had converted to Catholicism as a 30-year-old unwed mother, beginning the period of her life where she endeavored to tie together her faith and radical social values.
What I love about the life of Dorothy Day, is that she was a woman who encountered Jesus – and dedicated her life to living out the Gospel. She didn’t just ask the question, “What Would Jesus Do?”, she lived it out.
A woman who was originally an agnostic, and wrote for socialist newspapers, covering rent strikes and the birth control and peace movements – she had now discovered that her heart for the poor and the oppressed was no longer something that could take a back seat in her life. Her view was now clearly radical—empathy wasn't enough. It wasn't enough just to report on the victims of social injustice; what was needed was for her to work to get rid of the social evils themselves - to get her hands dirty and make a change. So in 1933, Day co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which included a newspaper and a system of hospices, in hopes of transforming individuals – changing lives, rather than political and economic systems. A movement committed to a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human being, and to the ideals of non-violence, voluntary poverty & prayer, protesting injustice, war, racism and violence of all forms.
And this was no fad. The Worker movement caught on fast and continues today. The newspaper's circulation grew to 150,000 by 1936 but declined during World War II because of its pacifist stance. Catholic Worker houses of hospitality still exist all across America and in eight other countries around the world.
In 1972, when Day was 75, she said that the fact that the Catholic Worker Movement was still making a difference in the world was a miracle. When a cynical reporter asked her to elaborate, this was her answer…
“Catholic Worker houses seek an irrational and persona list way of doing things that trust in the miraculous power of God. Without government aid, salaries, grants or institutional help from the Church, and often without many volunteers, we feed and house people, deliver aid in war zones, confront local and national injustices, and still manage to have happy personal and family lives. That’s pretty miraculous to me.”
“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?”
Looking at the life of Dorothy Day, there is no doubt that she had a revolution of the heart. Day was a one-time radical Greenwich Village bohemian who underwent a radical conversion experience and became renowned as a Catholic writer and social activist. She withstood the criticism of people who said that a young unwed mother should not be permitted to represent the church in any way. She endured the vocal objections of people who said that she had no place helping & housing drunkards and other “undeserving poor”.
We can all learn something from Day embraced resistance in her life. If we take seriously what it is that God is calling us to, have a revolution of the heart, and resist the opposition that will try to hold us back, I see no reason why we too can’t revolutionize our world for Jesus Christ.
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