The remarkable Pope Francis, on his first trip to the U.S. this week, is giving 18 speeches. I hope he also has time to listen to Americans and their needs.
Listening to his moving speech today before Congress, I can see that he knows what notes to strike, what tone to take in dealing, as only he can, with major issues that go beyond partisan politics.
I was almost as nervous, proud, and excited as Joe Biden, the VP, and Speaker John Boehner, who wept: a Catholic leader universally regarded as a wise prophet who doesn't shout to be heard, who speaks courageously, from the heart, saying tough things in soft tones. His halting English became more confident and lively as he proceeded, and the audience sat in rapt attention to every word. Quite a contrast to the anti-Catholic attitudes of past times in this country.
The greatest surprise of the speech was his inclusion of two of my favorite people from recent American Catholicism: two radical converts, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, both viewed with some alarm by bishops in the 1960s for their peace activities and their preference for social justice as the way to live out the Gospel message.
I have written a good bit about Merton and have given talks on Day and her Catholic Worker Movement (once considered a socialist-Communist operation) and so was thrilled to hear these two Americans singled out and honored in one of the major speeches in recent memory.
"My duty is to build bridges," Francis said today, putting Merton and Day in the company of Lincoln and M. L. King as four heroic Americans concerned as the pope is with the common good, rejecting by implication the selfishness of ordinary political life and celebrity culture. This is a pontiff who lives up to what that title implies: bridge builder. Merton and Day also built bridges of action and prayer that live on.
I have often been dismayed that many people are unaware of Day and Merton. Now they will have a chance to learn, thanks to Pope Francis, the pontiff who does not pontificate.
Showing posts with label Dorothy Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dorothy Day. Show all posts
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Dorothy Day
I thought of Dorothy Day (1897-1980) today when The Catholic Worker, a newsletter of the peace and justice movement she co-founded in 1933, arrived in the mail. It still sells for one cent.
Dorothy would be pleased that the price has remained the same and that her followers on the Lower East Side of New York continue her work, reporting on injustice in various parts of the world, helping the needy and generally doing work many people don't care to do.
I believe G.K.Chesterton once said that we cannot call Christianity a failure since it has never been tried. Well, Chesterton did not know Dorothy Day, whose life of radical poverty, pacificism, and prayer made her a saint-like figure.
She would be amused to read in the current issue of efforts, beginning in 1984 by then Cardinal-Archbishop O'Connor to promote her cause for canonization. She was a thorn in the side of the hierarchy and hated the idea of being considered a saint.
But if anyone in recent American history deserves this honor as a witness of what the Gospels really are about, it would be this tall, thin woman who was once called "the most influential, interesting, and significant figure in the history of American Catholicism."
She did so with no official job--she was never a nun or a church employee--except to do what was necessary as a simple but eloquent laywoman, often at the cost of considerable suffering, to stand up to unjust power.
Day was shot at, jailed, and investigated by the FBI as a Communist; she called herself an anarchist and was opposed to all war and to predatory capitalism. She wrote, after reading about the lives of saints who helped the needy, "Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place?" She wanted to do nothing less than change the social order since it too often led to poverty, crime, war, and other violence.
At a time when the American hierarchy supported the status quo, Day in her many writings and sit-ins represented the church of the people, most of them in New York at that time poor and oppressed. The sight of the poor attending Mass led her to convert to Catholicism and then to join with Peter Maurin, an activist, to establish the Catholic Worker Movement. It was not enough for her to set up a soup kitchen at the hospitality house on First St. (still there) during the Depression; it was not enough to live like the poor she served or to pray daily or to protest war: she wanted to change the causes of poverty and injustice.
I wonder what she would think of today's hierarchy, whose priorities have shifted after some promising decades of emphasizing peace and social justice. I know she would be pleased that her St. Joseph House and Maryhouse continue and that people like Robert Ellsberg, who worked there before his conversion to Catholicism, remain committed to non-violence in the face of social evils. (Ellsberg wrote a 1992 biography of Dorothy Day.)
To me Dorothy Day and her legacy are a dramatic reminder that in every age remarkable people at least try to live out the Beatitudes and keep Christianity alive.
Dorothy would be pleased that the price has remained the same and that her followers on the Lower East Side of New York continue her work, reporting on injustice in various parts of the world, helping the needy and generally doing work many people don't care to do.
I believe G.K.Chesterton once said that we cannot call Christianity a failure since it has never been tried. Well, Chesterton did not know Dorothy Day, whose life of radical poverty, pacificism, and prayer made her a saint-like figure.
She would be amused to read in the current issue of efforts, beginning in 1984 by then Cardinal-Archbishop O'Connor to promote her cause for canonization. She was a thorn in the side of the hierarchy and hated the idea of being considered a saint.
But if anyone in recent American history deserves this honor as a witness of what the Gospels really are about, it would be this tall, thin woman who was once called "the most influential, interesting, and significant figure in the history of American Catholicism."
She did so with no official job--she was never a nun or a church employee--except to do what was necessary as a simple but eloquent laywoman, often at the cost of considerable suffering, to stand up to unjust power.
Day was shot at, jailed, and investigated by the FBI as a Communist; she called herself an anarchist and was opposed to all war and to predatory capitalism. She wrote, after reading about the lives of saints who helped the needy, "Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place?" She wanted to do nothing less than change the social order since it too often led to poverty, crime, war, and other violence.
At a time when the American hierarchy supported the status quo, Day in her many writings and sit-ins represented the church of the people, most of them in New York at that time poor and oppressed. The sight of the poor attending Mass led her to convert to Catholicism and then to join with Peter Maurin, an activist, to establish the Catholic Worker Movement. It was not enough for her to set up a soup kitchen at the hospitality house on First St. (still there) during the Depression; it was not enough to live like the poor she served or to pray daily or to protest war: she wanted to change the causes of poverty and injustice.
I wonder what she would think of today's hierarchy, whose priorities have shifted after some promising decades of emphasizing peace and social justice. I know she would be pleased that her St. Joseph House and Maryhouse continue and that people like Robert Ellsberg, who worked there before his conversion to Catholicism, remain committed to non-violence in the face of social evils. (Ellsberg wrote a 1992 biography of Dorothy Day.)
To me Dorothy Day and her legacy are a dramatic reminder that in every age remarkable people at least try to live out the Beatitudes and keep Christianity alive.
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