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 Dorothy
Day’s life was a journey...
toward the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment that we love one another.
The Sermon on the Mount characterized her work with the poor on New
York’s Lower East Side, and her founding of Catholic Worker Houses of
Hospitality, farming communes, and retreat centers. It also found
expression in her practice of nonviolence and solidarity with workers
and the poor. For Dorothy Day, to be a Christian meant not only
participating fervently in the prayer and liturgy of the Church, but
also finding Christ in others.
She was born in Brooklyn New York on November 8, 1897, the third child
of Grace and John Day. Her family moved to the San Francisco Bay area
and then to Chicago where she was baptized in the Episcopal Church. She
attended the University of Illinois at Urbana and became interested in
radical social causes as a way to help workers and the poor. In 1916,
she left the university and moved to New York City where she worked as a
journalist on socialist newspapers, participated in protest movements,
and developed friendships with many famous artists and writers. During
this time, she also experienced failed love affairs, a marriage, a
suicide attempt, and an abortion.
Dorothy had grown to admire the Catholic Church as the “Church of the
poor” and her faith began to take form with the birth of her daughter
Tamar in 1926. Her decision to have her daughter baptized and to embrace
the Catholic faith came at great personal cost, the end of her common
law marriage and the loss of many friends. Dorothy struggled to find her
role as a Catholic. While covering the 1932 Hunger March in Washington,
DC, for several Catholic magazines on Dec. 8, she visited the Shrine of
the Immaculate Conception and prayed for guidance on how to use her
special gifts in service of the hungry and the poor. The following day,
back in New York, she met Peter Maurin, an immigrant from France and
former Christian Brother, who had a vision for a society constructed of
Gospel values. Together they founded the Catholic Worker newspaper which
spawned a movement of Houses of Hospitality and farming communes that
has been replicated throughout the United States and other countries.
At the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day lived a life of fidelity to the
Scripture, practicing voluntary poverty, the works of mercy, and working
for justice and peace. Many of the positions she espoused were
prophetic, but always emanated from the Gospel and the example of the
saints, like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Teresa of Lisieux. Always
present for Dorothy Day, was a question expressed in her autobiography,
The Long Loneliness, “ Why was so much done in remedying evil instead of
avoiding it in the first place…Where were the saints to try to change
the social order, not just to minister to slaves, but to do away with
slavery?”
Dorothy Day was shot at while working for integration, prayed and fasted
for peace at the Second Vatican Council, received communion from Pope
Paul VI at the 1967 International Congress of the Laity, and addressed
the 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. Her pilgrimage ended at
Maryhouse in New York City on November 29, 1980, where she died among
the poor.
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