(e)mergent Voyageurs

While I have thus far focused on officially canonized saints, I also want to focus on other people worthy of our examination. To that end I want to introduce you to someone whose life and writings have deeply impacted my life and continue to do so: Dorothy Day. The cause for her canonization was opened in 2000, but it is not likely to happen any time soon, nor, given the quote above, would Day have been much interested in the honour.

Though born in Brooklyn in 1897, Dorothy Day was raised in Chicago, returning to New York years later to begin her career as a journalist, with an emphasis on issue of social justice issues such as poverty, suffragism and workers rights. A believer in free love, she had a series of lovers, one from which she became pregnant. After an illegal abortion, she attempted a marraige (in fact, she had two common law relationships), but given her bohemian lifestyle, it barely lasted a year.

In 1926 Day became pregnant again by her atheist companion. Determining to keep the child, the pregnancy and birth of her daughter Tamar began a spiritual awakening in Dorothy that was inaugurated by her decision to baptize the child Catholic. Deciding that she too wanted to convert, she ended her relationship with the child’s father and was also baptized.

Dorothy’s life was forever changed in 1933 when she met Peter Maurin, a Frenchman who was filled with revolutionary ideas that he wrote and preached with passion, practicing generosity, poverty and hospitality. Together they formed the Catholic Worker newspaper dedicated to be a pacifist voice for the marginalized in a war-torn time. Within three years, it had a circulation of more than 150,000. Charging only a penny per issue, the paper drew people into a community around them.

From this growing “family” they formed a “house of hospitality” to feed, house and care for the poor of the New York slums, sharing what little they had. Soon they added a number of farms where the poor could live together in community, working the land and sharing the fruits of their labour with the urban houses. This pattern repeated itself throughout the US, Canada and the UK.

Day and the other Catholic Workers distinguished themselves as selfless champions for the marginalized, fearless and outspoken activists and an all too common thorn to the establishment, be it government or church. While clearly left in much of her politics and activism, she remained a faithful and “conservative” servant of the church. Often called the “grand old lady of pacism”, Dorothy Day died on November 29, 1980 at the age of 83.

It is my hope that you will take the time to learn more about Dorothy Day and her extraordinary life. I warn you, though, that her example and her words will leave little room to excuse our mediocrity in service to Christ. I hope my life will reflect just a fraction of her selflessness and love.

Dorothy Day Quotes:

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.

It is easier to have faith that God will support each House of Hospitality and Farming Commune and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us – to see Christ in him.

The bridge – it seems to me – is love and the compassion (the suffering together) which goes with all love. Which means the folly of the Cross, since Christ loved men even to that folly of failure.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.

There is plenty to do, for each one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, in our own neighborhoods.

Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate.

Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.

We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

Other Resources:

-Film – “Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story”
-”The Long Loneliness” by Dorothy Day – Amazon
-The Catholic Worker Movement

Missional, Saints