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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Ninety-three years ago today!

By Casey Mullaney • May 1, 2026

Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings to each of you in this fourth week of Easter and on the occasion of the Catholic Worker movement’s 93rd anniversary! On May 1st, 1933, Dorothy, her daughter Tamar, and several others sold the first issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper in Union Square for a penny a copy, and as Dorothy later wrote in The Long Loneliness, “It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on”! It is because of that faithful witness to the Gospel through Dorothy’s practices of nonviolence, hospitality, and voluntary poverty that we get to share in this joyful pilgrimage with you all these years later. Thank you, Dorothy, and happy anniversary to all our Catholic Worker friends, past and present!

Easter with Dorothy Day

By Casey Mullaney • April 9, 2026

Dear Dorothy Day Guild members and friends, Happy Easter; Christ is risen! We hope that the past several days have been occasions of joyful celebration with friends and family for each of you. As a Guild, we would like to extend a special greeting to all of those around the world who were received into the Church on Saturday night at the Easter Vigil. Here in South Bend, several of us from the Catholic Worker community attended the Easter Vigil at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where our pastor surprised us by invoking Dorothy towards the end of his homily. Speaking directly to the newly baptized and confirmed, as well as the entire congregation, Fr. Andrew talked about how Dorothy’s own conversion to Catholicism had been sparked by the unexpected joy of finding herself pregnant with her daughter, Tamar, and how Christ had come to her, offering her peace. We know that Dorothy was on many of our minds as we watched new brothers and sisters in Christ enter the Church. Christopher Hale, of Letters from Leo, wrote an open letter to all the new Catholics who were received at the Vigil last weekend, offering them thanks and welcome, and inviting them to look to a fellow convert to understand the Church. “Dorothy Day — one of the great American Catholics of the twentieth century — converted to Catholicism and spent the rest of her life serving the poorest of the poor on the streets of New York. Her Episcopalian mother once complained that Dorothy had left respectable society to go to Mass with “the help.” Day did not flinch. She knew what the Church was for.” Like Dorothy, each of these new members of Christ’s Mystical Body enrich the Church and are a gift to the world. We hope that like Dorothy, each of them finds a home, a vocation, and a challenge in Her embrace. The following afternoon, our Catholic Worker community hosted a few dozen friends and neighbors, including many of the guests who join us for breakfast on weekends, for Easter dinner. It is truly a gift to be able to celebrate this feast day with so many of the people who have come into our lives because of Dorothy’s witness to the Gospel, and the legacy of hospitality, voluntary poverty, and nonviolence she gave us!

Happy 100th Birthday, Tamar Day Batterham Hennessy!

By Casey Mullaney • March 4, 2026

Dear members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Lenten greetings to each of you! Even just one week in, it’s been a great gift to journey with Dorothy, who reminds us that the practices of Lent, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are powerful tools in the struggle for justice and peace. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper , Dorothy wrote about the seamless garment of love that was the animating force of Christian faith. “We want to show our love for our brother, so that we can show our love for God,” she said in 1943, “and the best way we can do it is to try to give him what we’ve got, in the way of food, clothing and shelter; to give him what talents we possess by writing, drawing pictures, reminding each other of the love of God and the love of man. There is too little love in this world, too little tenderness.”