Bill Knight column for Monday,
Tuesday or Wednesday, Dec. 11, 12 or 13
This Christmastime, Day remains an
impressive figure. Her granddaughter Kate Hennessy has a new book, “Dorothy
Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty” and the Catholic Church’s cause for
Day’s canonization is proceeding. Both follow Pope Francis’comment during his
2015 U.S. visiting three Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr.,
and Day.
Born in New York 120 years ago last month,
Day attended the University of Illinois in 1914, then moved to New York, where
she lived a Bohemian lifestyle and became a journalist, then activist. She
later co-founded Catholic Worker (CW) with Peter Maurin and participated in
civil disobedience that led to repeated jailing. Also, the Catholic Worker
newspaper – at one point distributing 200,000 copies weekly even as 1,000
people were fed daily – continues to publish, and about 200 CW communities
remain.
State Sen. Dave Koehler (D-Peoria) recalls
meeting Day in 1973 when the recent seminary graduate worked with the National
Farm Worker Ministry.
“She was jailed in Salinas during the
lettuce strike,” Koehler said. “She was in jail with a nun from Tucson, which
was where I was living at the time. She came to visit her, and came to the
house where I was staying and met with a bunch of the United Farm Workers
supporters one afternoon. It was fascinating.
“She was a small and fragile woman,”
Koehler continued, “but with tremendous insight and wisdom – very humble and at
the same time strong. She had a captivating charisma.”
An ardent supporter not only of labor, but
of Civil Rights, women’s suffrage, peace and Distributism/socialism, Day wasn’t
a stereotypical progressive – or pious. She may have had the mind of a saint,
but she had the mouth of a sailor (once commenting, “Don't call me a saint; I
don't want to be dismissed that easily”), and smoked, drank and hung out with
the poor.
Day also criticized intrusive government,
twice attempted suicide, had an affair that resulted in an abortion (which she later
opposed), ended her only marriage after a year and lived with another man with
whom she had a daughter, and opposed welfare.
Her 1927 conversion to Catholicism also
wasn’t easy, she wrote, describing herself as “one who had yearned to walk in
the footsteps of a Mother Jones and an Emma Goldman [who’d] seemingly turned
her back on the entire radical movement and sought shelter in that great,
corrupt Holy Roman Catholic Church: right hand of the Oppressor, the State,
rich and heartless, a traitor to her beginnings, her Founder, etc.”
She also said, “Bourgeois, smug Christians
who denied Christ in his poor made me turn to Communism, and Communists made me
turn to God.”
(In
fact, when the Communist Daily Worker newspaper requested a Christmas message,
she sent a telegram stating, “Catholic Worker joins in appeal for democracy and
peace, therefore asks you to join protest against all dictatorships, fascist
and Bolshevist, against all suppression of civil liberties, fascist and
Bolshevist, including freedom of religious propaganda, education and
organization, against all war, whether imperialist, civil or class. Merry
Christmas.”
Hennessy writes, “The framework of beliefs
for the Worker [are] the need to perform the works of mercy, the need to give
reason for the faith that is in us, the need to remember we are all members of
the Body of Christ, and the need to keep hold of the vision of working for
justice.”
However, Day felt that feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless without reforming society was
incomplete and showed a lack of faith in God – and other people.
“Our problems stem from our acceptance of
this filthy, rotten system … God meant for things to be much easier than we
have made them … 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 change the world. 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.”
This Christmas, Hennessy’s biography can
help readers see life’s tension and balance.
“The final word,” Day said, “is love.”
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