Day 7, Justice

admin • December 5, 2022

On her reception of the Laetare Medal at the University of Notre Dame in May 1972, University President Father Theodore Hesburgh stated that Dorothy Day was the single most influential Catholic of the last fifty years. “She’s represented the Church for racial justice, for economic justice, for workers, for the right to form unions, for solidarity with the poor, and for peace opposing war. It was a Gospel influence. And an influence of prayer.”


“And I told my listeners … that after so many years of work in the Peace Movement, I had come to the conclusion that basic to peace was this struggle of the Negro for education, job opportunity, health, and recognition as men and women. …They were praying, they were marching, they were doing without (by boycott); they were in a way offering their own flesh, their suffering, their imprisonment, for their brothers. ‘A new commandment’ (not a counsel) ‘I give to you, that you love each other as I have loved you.’ And that commandment of Jesus means the laying down of life itself for one’s brother, black and white….

“It is hard to feel that the color of our skin in a way separates us from this mass of people whom we have injured. It is with too little and too late that we are engaging ourselves. But even if it is at the eleventh hour that we are called to serve, we can respond.” –Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage,” The Catholic Worker , July-August 1963.

Servant of God Dorothy Day, intercede for us; pray that we grow in courage and faith to follow our own path to holiness.

We pray for justice where it has been denied: racial minorities, indigenous peoples, workers, immigrants and refugees, the poor — even the wrongs committed to nature—everyone who and everything that has been treated unjustly. We pray to be instruments of justice by our prayers and deeds. And we pray for forgiveness for our personal and collective sins against justice — whether because of our actions and, as too often is the case, our inaction.

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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.”
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