SIGNS OF HOLINESS, Blessed are the Peacemakers

Carolyn Zablotny on behalf of the editorial team • June 21, 2023

Upon the publication of this first digital issue of In Our Time , which is dedicated to exploring the primacy of Dorothy Day’s nonviolence, Carolyn Zablotny (on behalf of the editorial team) offers this prayerful reflection.

Saintly people bear witness with their lives to the truth of the Gospel. When we lose hope, when we doubt or even despair, they help to restore our faith. Dorothy counted on their example: saints served as a bedrock of support.

Once she told her friend and biographer, the psychiatrist, Robert Coles, that she hoped to be remembered as “a humble person of faith who tried her best to live in accordance with the Biblical teachings she kept pondering.”

In spite of criticism, isolation, and even imprisonment, she held fast to the truth of the non-violent Jesus. Often she cited the inspiration of St. Francis of Assisi. Fr. Stephen T. Krupa, S.J., (in Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays , Marquette University Press, 2001), movingly records her testament. It reads like a litany prayed to strengthen us of more wavering convictions in the “law of love”:

Day attempted to render the law of love into countless situations of conflict.

When the nation and the Church sanctioned war, Day refused to abandon
her deep-seated pacifism.

When society and the Church ignored the lynching of black Americans in the South, Day denounced the hangings and racial violence on the front page of her newspaper.

When labor demonstrations grew violent, Day called for nonviolent tactics of resistance and fed and housed striking workers.

When the secular press neglected to report the hiring by factory owners of
scabs to incite violence at strikes, Day reported on the brute tactics used by management in industry.

When the nation and the Church overlooked the persecution of the Jews by Hitler, Day denounced the German atrocities.

When the Church ignored or disowned Catholic conscientious objectors
during and after World War II, Day helped them to organize.

When the government consigned Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II, Day was one of the few American newspaper editors to criticize the injustice in print.

When President Truman delighted in the success of the atomic missions over Japan, Day took him on in The Catholic Worker with a caustic commentary: “Mr. Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True Man. What a strange name, come to think of it. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.”

When the American masses in large cities ran for shelter during the Civil
Defense air raid drills of the 1950s and ‘60s, Day sat down in a New York City park in protest of the government’s nuclear war propaganda and awaited arrest for civil disobedience.

When the government and the Catholic Church refused to support conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, Day backed the young Americans who burned their draft cards.

When the government and the Church disregarded the misery of non-
unionized farm workers, Day left a scheduled speaking engagement in San Francisco in the summer of 1973 to join Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers in a Fresno jail… her final jail sentence before her death in 1980.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus tells us. And blessed, we know, is Dorothy Day. Amen!

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

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Monica Cornell, 1942-2025: A Worker for the Lay Apostolate and Friend of Dorothy Day

By Casey Mullaney • August 16, 2025

Dear Friends, All of us at the Guild were saddened to learn of the death of Monica Ribar Cornell , founding member of and advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild, on Friday, August 8th.

Summer News and Updates from the Guild!

By Casey Mullaney • August 5, 2025

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope this missive finds you well! The heat has finally broken in South Bend, and all of us at the Worker are grateful for the relief as we’ve passed the mid-point of the summer season. For many of us in the Midwest and the Northeast, this time of year is marked by transitions and heightened activity as we begin to bring in stone fruit and tomatoes from our gardens or look towards the start of a new school year. With that in mind, we have a lot of great things to share with you this month, including new resources, song lyrics, events, and two peace and justice action items! Dorothy on the Small Screen: Friday, August 1st marked the third anniversary of the death of Tom Cornell , former editor of the The Catholic Worker, founding member of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and close personal friend of Dorothy. Tom met his wife Monica (pictured here at their wedding, where Dorothy was among the guests!) at the Worker in New York in the 1950s; the Cornells passed on their vocation of hospitality and Gospel nonviolence to their children, Tommy and Deirdre, and to the hundreds of others they welcomed into their homes and lives over the course of nearly sixty years of marriage.

"The Best Revolutionary Technique:" Dorothy on the Works of Mercy, the Mystical Body of Christ, and more

By Casey Mullaney • July 8, 2025

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings on what for many of us in North America is already shaping up to be another hot, sticky summer day! We hope that those of you in hot climates are staying cool and are finding creative ways to support those in your towns and cities who are unsheltered from the elements. Emma, a member of our Catholic Worker community in South Bend, washes out empty milk jugs, fills them halfway with clean water, and freezes them overnight. In the morning, she fills them the rest of the way and hands them out to guests at our drop-in center to help them stay cool and hydrated throughout the afternoon. If you regularly walk or drive past homeless community members on your commute, we encourage you to pack an extra sealed bottle of water to give away on days like this. Here in the United States, we just celebrated the Fourth of July, a holiday which admittedly doesn’t mean very much to many of those who admire Dorothy and seek to follow Christ as she did. Dorothy practiced a very different kind of revolution than the kind which is celebrated by military parades and fireworks displays. In 1940, she wrote , “we consider the spiritual and corporal Works of Mercy and the following of Christ to be the best revolutionary technique and a means of changing the social order rather than perpetuating it. Did not the thousands of monasteries, with their hospitality change the entire social pattern of their day?” To all those who undertake the responsibility of sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, and all works of mercy in the heat, thank you for these revolutionary acts! Summer events: Our Guild’s online and in-person summer programming is in full swing as of this week! As a reminder, we are running TWO book clubs this summer, one in English and one in Spanish. Our English-language club is reading The Long Loneliness and has already had two meetings, but it’s not too late to sign up!