The Wrong Sort of Endorsement

Dorothy Day’s conversion story shows the importance of “restlessness” in seeking God, struggling for justice, and loving the poor, Pope Francis writes in the preface to a new Italian-language translation of her work.https://t.co/zGikJhaxgc

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) August 22, 2023

Terrence Wright on Dorothy Day

CWR Dispatch: Author: Dorothy Day’s personalism and faithful orthodoxy too often overlooked
“If my work on Day has one point to make,” says Dr. Terrence Wright, “it is that she was a very faithful Catholic who loved the Church.”

CWR: As you note, Day’s “program” is not a political one but is spiritual in nature. But is this not also a form of “politics” in a more expansive sense of the word “politics”? And does not the narrower sense of politics (voting, legislation, policies) depend on this broader sense of politics? Could you elaborate more on this notion of politics and how it relates to Day’s anarchism?
Wright: A lot of people have misascribed different political ideologies to Day, claiming that she was a communist or socialist. After her conversion, Day was in fact an anarchist in the sense that she embraced the Church’s teaching of subsidiarity which emphasizes the importance of acting locally. Day’s personalism emphasized the responsibility that we all have for one another.
Far from being a communist, she was very suspect of “Holy Mother the State” relieving us of this personal responsibility for the other. Christ doesn’t call for the state to take care of the poor, He calls us all to this responsibility. So her politics is spiritual in that my membership in the local community and my membership in the mystical body of Christ calls me to take care of the other. And, since we are all body and soul, this care must be on both the material and the spiritual level: thus I am called to perform the spiritual and the corporal acts of mercy.

Her suspicion of the state is correct; but does she have a political program that all should follow? Is there anyone living today who can be called her true successor or follower? With how many of her disciples would she agree today? And if there is disagreement on their political advocacy and public positions, then how well did she supervise her organization? If she didn't do a good job, then whatever credibility she may have with respect to political discussions is undermined.

A Controversial Woman

Revolution of the Heart

FPR: Christian Anarchy Come of Age: Dorothy Day and the Common Good by Myles Werntz

Trailer


PBS - MPT Presents:

Dorothy Day and the Eucharist

Kate Henessy on Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought

Ignatius Press: Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought by Terrence C. Wright

CWR: The radical and orthodox faith of Dorothy Day

Terrence Wright’s recent book demonstrates that Day was a radical in her political and social views because she was first a truly radical Catholic in her appropriation of the deepest currents in the Church’s ancient Tradition.

But Farming Is Not Enough

For there to be a group identity to be formed. The left and the aging Hippie Boomers and their followers may try to reappropriate economic fundamentals but their other values work against community-building.

NCRep: Peter Maurin's farm-rooted vision gains ground among Catholic Workers

Crisis: Is Dorothy Day Suitable for Canonization? by Fr. Brandon O'Brien

With a mention of which side in the Spanish Civil War she supported...

Crux: Dorothy Day would be ideal American saint for Pope Francis By John L. Allen Jr.

Dorothy Day is the ideal American sainthood candidate in the Francis era, and it would be both symbolically and substantively apt if he can be the pontiff to raise her to the honors of the altar.

The Dorothy Option

Not Just Another Option by Josh Brumfield

What separates the Dorothy Option from the BenOp and other “options” is, I think, the demonstrably charismatic and spirited leadership of both Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. I don’t feel like a mere admirer of Dorothy. I don’t even “like” the Dorothy Option as much as the BenOp. No, participating in Dorothy’s charism is much too challenging to be some romantic ideal. Instead, I am challenged by the Dorothy Option, called to renounce myself radically. That’s what this “option” is to me: a call to enter into a movement of the Spirit, the Spirit who is pushing, tugging, dragging me to love the Lord in the poor, who is in fact calling the entire Church back to her roots through loving the poor.

Solidarity Hall Press

Eastern Christian Books: Dorothy Day and the Church of Our Time (I)

Eastern Christian Books: Dorothy Day and the Church of Our Time (I)

Jim Forest on Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton

Few have written authoritative biographies of the 20th-century spiritual giants Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

During his speech to the joint session of the United States Congress in Washingotn DC, on Thursday 24th of September Pope Francis highlighted the figure of Thomas Merton.

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

Pope Francis addressed a meeting of both houses of the US Congress on Thursday morning – another in a string of personal...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

The full text of Pope Francis' address to the United States Congress.

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

Pope Francis visits Congress of the United States of America,where he will deliver a discourse at a joint session, on the occasion of his apostolic visit to the country. Watch LIVE now!

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

Pope Francis addressed the US Congress today, before greeting crowds outside the US Capitol building. See our story at...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Thursday, September 24, 2015

Eastern Christian Books: Comrades Stumbling Along

Eastern Christian Books: Comrades Stumbling Along

Dorothy Day and Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Related:
Converted by love, not ideology: An archbishop's reflection on Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day 2015

Another Piece on Dorothy Day

The Dorothy Day Few of Us Know by Stephen Beale

Also at Crisis: The Logic of the Court and the Prospect of Homosexual Marriage by Robert R. Reilly

More on Dorothy Day

What the New York Times Did Not Say About the Sainthood of Dorothy Day
DECEMBER 29, 2012 BY MARK AND LOUISE ZWICK

Related:
NYT: In Hero of the Catholic Left, a Conservative Cardinal Sees a Saint
Sainthood for Dorothy Day

NPR: Catholic 'Hero' Dorothy Day's Road To Sainthood

The Real Dorothy Day

Catholic World Report: Dorothy Day: A Saint to Transcend Partisan Politics

Day continues to be something of an enigma to many. One of the widespread legends about Day is that she was a Communist, a bit of “history” that simply isn’t true. Around the time of her conversion, she worked for the Anti-Imperialist League, which was a Communist front organization. According to Cornell, Day felt a lot of unease about this and talked to her confessor about it.

“He told her, ‘You have a daughter to support—until you can find something else, keep working there,’” he said.

According to Cornell, when Day wrote later in life that she was an ex-Communist, she was referring to her time working for the Anti-Imperialist League.

And her attitude towards the welfare state:

Another misconception about Day involves her relationship to government in general. Contrary to Internet combox lore, she and Peter Maurin were no devotees of the state or state-sponsored welfare.

Three Pertaining to the Lay Vocation

Begun on November 14.

Russell Shaw on the laity, again - his moneymaker: The Council and the Laity. "The teaching of the Second Vatican Council concerning the laity was an enormous and lasting achievement. But there is much work to do."

Vatican II and the forerunners to the council, various theologians and saints, attempted to restore a better understanding of the Christian vocation, re-emphasizing the universal call to holiness. But I would argue that the council was incomplete, in so far as it did not grapple with questions appropriate to politics. Would it have been possible to do so? Such a treatment should be left to the wise and learned. But with the realization that the scale of contemporary "polities" is too large, the Church could have focused more on rebuilding community at the local level, rather than engaging governments to redirect "national policy" in accordance with Catholic Social Teaching. An elaboration of general principles is not enough, one must apply them properly, and in order to do that one must have an adequate grasp of their particulars, their causes and perhaps their histories.

If participation in the life of the community is a central part to the lay vocation, then perhaps the Orthodox and the Protestants have Catholics beat and we should be learning from them.

I would claim that much of the loss in the West of the understanding of the lay vocation is tied to the growth of the modern state, the rise of wage slavery, the loss or deliberate destruction of communities. Man (and now women) have been increasingly dispossessed of their natural roles within a community; or, their awareness of these roles has been obliterated through bad culture or the lack of proper formation.

As Shaw points out, Lumen Gentium reminds us that Catholics are called to act in the secular world for the salvation of others. What is the "secular world" but the "temporal" or "natural" political community? We should be witnessing to Christ and living out [the order of] charity in our political communities (and I don't mean with a vague reference to the nation-state, but rather, the local community, and maybe the state). (We should keep in mind the distinction between the political community and the "world" which is rightly derided by our Lord. They are not the same thing. The city of man is not identical to the civitas.)

Despite the constant propaganda about [American] freedom and democracy (put forth even by the bishops), there has been a loss of true citizenship. We are blind to  our current state of subservience, possessing little economic or political freedom (at the national level). Those Christians who lived under other regimes may have had a better understanding of the lay vocation - living with others in community, carrying out their responsibilities to others in charity, and so on, despite having no share in public office.  It is true that the lay vocation is not identical to citizenship, as defined by Aristotle. But for men, the lay vocation does require the exercise of the same virtues proper to the citizen, even if it does not include the same duties: prudence and ordering his affairs and that of his family, cooperating with other men for the sake of the group, and so on. To the extent that men must be concerned with and care for the community, they will need the political virtues; even more if they are engaged in decision-making about the well-being of the community.

There can be no subsidiarity (or recovery of the common good) unless men are willing and able to do this at the local level, going beyond what our impoverished Uhmerican understanding of citizenship requires.

Charity brings about the diffusion of the good. Not just the obvious corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but whatever action within the community that is ordered to the good of others can be sanctified through God's grace. In the Politics, Aristotle defines the perfect community as that which supplies for all the necessities of the good life, and it includes civic friendship. We are accustomed to liberal modes of thinking and to living in aggregate, an arrangement that is not scaled humanely, and so often we think of friendship as being merely one good among the others. We aim for a healthy "life balance," so that our relationships with family and friends are not diminished because of concerns for career and the like. But the common good is really the good life of the whole; living well with others. All other things which the civitas creates or makes possible is ordered to the good of the members.

The private good of the members is not the same as the social good (the good of friendship, community, etc.) but the common good is more than the sum of the private good of the members of the community, and the community exists for the sharing of higher goods. It is the good of the group as a whole, which includes the social good as its foremost manifestation, the members living well with one another. It also includes the sharing or communication of the other goods, which should be directed by the desire to live well with others, or love. In the polis, Aristotle's complete or perfect community, we are able to achieve [temporal or natural]  happiness, securing not only the necessities for survival, but the social good and other goods, leisure, the fine arts, and learning.

We should not [need to] pursue private goods at the expense of friendship, but rather we should do so in concert with others so that we can share those goods with them. "To be a friend is to share," a lesson we may have learned in kindergarten. The civitas may have a division of labor, with the resulting exchange of necessities or products being regulated by justice, but we are oblivious that we should be acting not only for our own benefit but for the benefit of others. Why? Because we have a weak sense of the group and of civic friendship. For instance, that which is aimed at intellectual perfection (scientiae, the products of art, and so on) is not merely for the elite, but should benefit all in some way. (The truths studied in theology and the liberal arts can be transmitted to the community through preaching by an educated clergy)

The natural inclination to the social life finds its fulfillment in civic friendship, and civic friendship (or charity) urges us to work for the perfection of each other. This inclination is naturally met through families joining one another in community, leading to natural affection for the other members, which is developed through civic friendship or sublimated through caritas. In sum, we naturally band together, associate not because  we seek help or benefit from others, but because we are drawn to living with others. One could even claim that cooperation and the division of labor is a consequence of living with others, as everyone in the group seeks to improve the lot of themselves and of the group.

Political communities, like religious communities, are schools of charity for Christians. For those who are not yet united to God, political communities can nonetheless still be schools of love and friendship, the way for us to practice loving others well. The political community is the pinnacle of natural friendship, and so those who aspire to be statesmen or to be practically wise must be cognizant of the conditions that are necessary to bring this about, and this includes the role of culture and group identity. Friendship is not a happy by-product of successful politics; it is one of its aims. One might even say that the first concern of men is the good of the group - what is my group? How do I preserve it and work for its welfare? Who is included in my group and who is not? The outsider is not automatically the object of hatred or enmity, but such distinctions are necessary for following the order of charity.

As lay people striving to rebuild the local community, we need to relearn the primacy of civic friendship, and start from the  beginning, with men and their families networking with each other, rather than presuming that community (or mutual solidarity) exists. We may be aware of some of the trials and problems of living with others through our families, but life is not supposed to be free from difficulties, and these difficulties are occasions for us to grow in grace and holiness through the exercise of caritas.

More on Hospitality

In the latest issue of the Houston Catholic Worker there is an essay by Carlos Diaz, "Hospitality Takes Us Beyond Our Limits." It called to mind Mark Mitchell's "The Culture of Hospitality." Alas the essay is not available at the CJD archive.

Hospitality is the virtue which permits us to break that narrowness of our fears and open our homes to the stranger with the intuition that salvation is coming to us. Hospitality transforms the weak into strong witnesses, those who are suspicious of everything into generous givers, and the fanatics whose minds are closed into recipients of new ideas and perspectives. We live in a desert with many solitary travelers who look for a moment of peace, a refreshing drink and a sign of encouragement in order to continue their mysterious search for freedom. What does hospitality require in order to become a healing power? That the one given hospitality feels as if he is in his own home, a free place without fear. Hospitality is the ability to serve the guest, something which is very difficult if our own stress impedes us from distancing ourselves from our own preoccupations.

As this was published in the HCW, one would expect that the author shares the same view on [illegal] immigration as those who run the newspaper and the organization, though this is not explicit in the article, nor does he explicit draw the implications of his view on hospitality on how we should treat illegal immigrants.

When we become conscious that we do not have to escape our suffering, but rather when we put it in movement, united with us in our shared search for meaning in life, these real sufferings change from expressions of total disillusion and discouragement into signs of hope. Thanks to this shared search, hospitality is transformed into community when it takes us so far beyond our limits. This is not because it cures, but because the scars and pains are changed into doors and open spaces and a new vision. This way, reciprocity is transformed into a mutual deepening of hope, and the weakness in anything that we remember personally and communally becomes the strength that we will receive.

For the ancient Greeks, xenia, hospitality, was linked to piety and service to the gods. While the host was obliged to take care of his guest, the guest was also under obligation to the host. He had an even greater obligation not to kill his host or steal from him than would otherwise be the case, since he was in debt to the host for his hospitality.

Would most illegals prefer to keep the freedom they now have rather than submitting to communal supervision and accountability in exchange for true hospitality (as opposed to government benefits)?

Some throw out as proof of assimilation that children of immigrants are more likely to speak English than Spanish to dismiss concerns with Hispanic immigration to the United States. Just because the children are more proficient in English than the native language of the parents does not mean that they have assimilated - culture and, more importantly, group identity and allegiance are more than the language one speaks.

Various documents have referred to the Holy Family's seeking refuge in Egypt as having some relevance for [contemporary] immigration policy (including something by Pius XII). But the Holy Family did not demand to be given citizenship or to be treated as equals to the natives in all respects or to be reckoned as Egyptians. Nor did they seek welfare assistance from the rules of Egypt. Did they blend in with the natives and other visitors (other Jews?) in a large urban area, seeking to be left alone, for the most part, while doing some labor in order to make a living and survive while they were away?

Bishops who think that Hispanic immigration is good because the Church is getting new blood should take a look at their parishes where Hispanics are the majority and judge for themselves how much assimilation is actually taking place. They should also remember that they should respect the rights of natives (i.e. non-Catholic whites) to their own culture, rather than using this strategy to effect some sort of "conversion" of the country.


Related: The Catholic Worker: A Model for Church and World

(via Casa Juan Diego)

Despite their position on immigration, I do think Catholics have much to learn from the Catholic Worker movement. As for Dorothy Day retaining leftist sympathies even after her conversion, I still have to investigate that...

Rod Dreher on Southern Xenia.

Dorothy Day, Marxist After Her Conversion?

The Thinking Housewife links to a piece at Tradition in Action: Socialist Dorothy Day Being Prepared for ‘Beatification’. Under the topics of related interest: The Catholic Worker Movement: A Critical Analysis
The Spirit of Madonna House
Why is The Angelus Promoting Socialism?

Does Carol Byrne (the author of the first two links) give a correct definition of socialism? Or is distributism being identified as socialism (as is done in the last link)? It's a rather ignorant association, but TIA, which prides itself as being "traditionalist" is not a reliable source of Catholic teaching or analysis. (We see in the third link a sweeping condemnation of the Liturgical Movement and of the Orthodox.) I'm not going to procure Byrne's book to double-check her facts.

The downside of lay people (especially those who lack proper formation in theology and philosophy) having too much access to electronic means of spreading their opinions...

"Articles on Distributism - 2" By Dorothy Day
"All the Way to Heaven is Heaven" By Dorothy Day