Dorothy Day was a Catholic, a professed anarchist, an advocate for the poor and an advocate of pacifism. In her early years she worked as a journalist for some radical newspapers and as an activist for socialist and anarchist causes. After converting to Catholicism, she pondered how best to take the life and example of Jesus seriously. In 1932 she met French Catholic Peter Maurin, who had developed an idea for a “green revolution,” which combined rural farming with establishing houses of hospitality in cities on behalf of the poor. Out of this idea grew the Catholic Worker movement, aimed to unite workers and intellectuals in joint activities ranging from farming to educational discussions. The movement grew quickly. Within three years their monthly newspaper, The Catholic Worker, had a 150,000 subscribers, and houses of hospitality had sprang up in other cities outside of New York. The workers at these houses commit themselves to voluntary poverty and works of mercy.
Day and the Catholic Workers opposed all war, often at cost to themselves. When they protested WWII, many Catholics withdrew support from the Catholic Workers. Day was repeatedly arrested and jailed for protests against war and once while demonstrating in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. She was 75 at the time.
Below are a few quotes from Dorothy Day. If they pique your curiosity, you might want to read these books by Dorothy Day: By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day or The Long Loneliness.
For more information on the web see www.catholicworker.com.
There is a movement to have Dorothy Day canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
And Dorothy said:
“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
“People say, ‘“What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.”
“I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.”
“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”
“Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.”
“Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.”
“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.”
“The true atheist is the one who denies God’s image in the “least of these.”
“It is surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path. Certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way…There are wars, rumors of wars, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, and God’s continuing promise to us that He is with us always, with His comfort and joy, if we will only ask.
“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
