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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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.
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