War Peace Nonresistance Term Paper Aaron Kreider Date Due: April 24, 1997 Dorothy Day: A Catholic Radical Dorothy Day is perhaps the most prominent Catholic lay figure of this century, as she fomented a veritable revolution in the church calling it to return to its pacifist and social tradition. Yet in her humbleness she would never want to be thought as so important. When examining her life, it is impossible to separate her beliefs and ideology from her strong commitment to practicing these as shown in her nearly fifty years of living in the Catholic Worker movement. She had a strong foundation in prayer and spirituality, and a strong work ethic that led to her working on behalf of the poor, performing "works of mercy" for most of her life. In doing so, she started the Catholic Worker movement and pushed the Church towards the poor and also towards pacifism. Growing up Dorothy Day was born on Nov. 8, 1897, in Brooklyn to middle class parents. From an early age, unlike the rest of the family that was nominally Episcopalian, she was very religious and acted overtly pious. At times she was the only one in her family attending church (Forest 5). As a child, she always took God's existence for granted and never felt a doubt (Day 17). She had a well-determined sense of right and wrong, and sometimes experienced nightmares of the overwhelming power of evil or God (Day 17, 19). "At the same time, I began to be afraid of God, of death, of eternity. As soon as I closed my eyes at night the blackness of death surrounded me. I believed and yet was afraid of nothingness. What would it be like to sink into that immensity? If I fell asleep God became in my ears a great noise that became louder and louder, and approached nearer and nearer to me until I woke up seating with fear and shrieking for my mother." (Day 21) She prayed daily at school. She recalls spending one Sunday afternoon, at the age of seven, reading a bible in the attic and while not understanding it, being permeated with a sense of the holiness of the book (Day 20). At age eight, she went to Sunday school and, unlike her family, was constantly praying and singing hymns (Day 21). Her family was a victim of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that ruined their house and caused them to move back East to Chicago. In Chicago Dorothy experienced poverty when her father worked on a novel and did not earn much money for the family. However even in those times of poverty, her mother was always able to retain an aura of simple elegance in the house (Day 27). At age ten she began weekly attending an Episcopal church along with her siblings. There she found joy in the service, in the music and prayers, and she memorized many of the psalms (Forest 10). She was later baptized and confirmed into the church (Day 29). One of her best friends, at this time, was a hardworking eldest child of a family of nine, who used to tell her stories about the saints, and Dorothy often "played saint" as a child (Day 23, 25). Eventually her father got a job as a sports editor, and the family was able to afford better accommodations in Chicago. Dorothy led a sheltered childhood due to her father's insistence upon his privacy, and consequently she did not have a social life or contact with what was happening in the outside world (Day 25). She spent much of her time reading books, classics by authors like London, Kropotkin, and Upton Sinclair (Forest 12). In all, her life was quiet, and despite her occasional fears, happy (Day 27, 35). As an example of how important religion and God were to her in her youth, she wrote the following in a letter to friend when she was 15: "Only after a hard bitter struggle with sin and only after we have overcome it, do we experience blessed joy and peace. The tears come to my eyes, when I think how often I have gone through the bitter struggles and the succumbed to sin while peace was in sight. And after I fell how far away it fled. Poor weak creatures we are, yet God is our Father and God is love, ever present ready to enfold us and comfort us and hold us up. I have so much work to do to overcome my sins. I am working always, always on guard, praying without ceasing to overcome all physical sensations and be purely spiritual." (Day 34) She was very concerned with the issue of mind versus body, regarding physical desires in contrast to those of the mind as sinful (Day 34). Origins of her Radicalism When she was fifteen, she loved to walk through the poor side of Chicago (Forest 13). At this time she was beginning to move away from the Church and she decided to dedicate her life to the poor (Forest 13). Her older brother Donald started writing for a left-wing paper called The Day Book where she read stories about strikes and radicals, and learned what was going on in the world (Forest 12). University In 1914, at age sixteen, she won a $300 scholarship allowing her to attend the University of Illinois Urbana (Forest 14). She loved her newly found freedom and attended classes sporadically, preferring to read and write (Forest 14). She did domestic work to help pay her way as well, and often went hungry or ran out of money (Day 44). She began to believe that eliminating injustice was more important than treating its results with charity (Forest 15). As a step towards this goal she joined the Socialist Party, though she was not active in its activities (Forest 15). Moving Away from God While Dorothy still talked about religion, she was beginning to move away from it, as she was influenced by a secular radical movement that was growing in America at the time. But even as I talked about religion I rejected religion... I felt so intensely alive with the importance of the here and now absorbed me. The radicalism which I absorbed from The Day Book and Jack London, from Upton Sinclair and the sight of poverty was in conflict with religion, which preached peace and meekness and joy... Youth, I felt, should not be in a state of peace, but of war... In my reading I must have absorbed a scorn of religion at that time, a consciously critical attitude toward religious people who were so comfortably happy in the face of the injustices in the world. (Day 41) The Marxist slogan, "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains," seemed to me a most stirring battle cry. It was a clarion call that made me feel one with the masses, apart from the bourgeoisie, the smug, and the satisfied. (Day 42) Though she was rebelling against God and the evils of Christianity, she still maintained some attachment, one that was reconfirmed through her reading of Tolstoi and Dostoevski (Day 43). By the end of her two years at the University she became thoroughly radicalized and believed that "The poor and oppressed were going to rise up, they were collectively the new Messiah, and they would release the captives." (Day 46) Radical Journalism in the Big Apple In June 1916, she stopped attending university, deciding it was time to begin working and she followed her family and moved to New York city (Forest 17). She felt very alone in New York without any friends, and she was also horrified by the poverty that was worse than that of Chicago (Day 51). She eventually was hired by a socialist paper, The Call, on a meager wage and wrote an article on how one could live for $5 per week (Farmer 18). Living on the cheap she realized how one could survive with so little if one lived simply, something she would eventually do for the greater part of her life (Day 56). She got her own apartment in a poor neighbourhood that she grew to love, and began to socialize with the staff of The Call (Farmer 19). She humbly claims that she was never a "good radical", but still her reporting sent her to the front line of radical activity (Day 56). She was clubbed once (actually at a pro-war demonstration), and she became involved with socialists, anarchists, the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), peace groups, labour conflicts, and more (Day 57). One of her assignments involved interviewing Leon Trotsky a couple of months before the Russian revolution, and later she celebrated the overthrow of the czar in the streets of NYC with thousands of people (Forest 22). She worked nonstop attended demonstrations, saw riots and mobs face the police, and realized that injustice, poverty, and oppression were at the roots of the discontent (Day 61). Nothing stood out in my mind. We reporters worked from twelve noon until twelve at night, covering meetings and strikes. We walked on picket lines; we investigated starvation and death in the slums. Our function as journalists seemed to be to build up a tremendous indictment against the present system, a daily tale of horror which would have a cumulative effect of forcing the workers to rise in revolution. (Day 65-66) She disliked the excess of theory and doctrine of the socialists, found the anarchists too small, so she tended to side with the IWW, whom she joined, and its American-born style of direct action (Day 62). Due to a personal dispute, she resigned from The Call and began to write for The Masses. It was harassed by the postal officials and eventually forced to close by the police in the end of 1917 (Forest 24-26). DC Suffragist Protest In November 1917, she went to jail along with 38 other women for a suffragist protest in front of the White House (Forest 27). The women immediately declared a hunger strike for better conditions and for recognition as political prisoners (Forest 27). In prison she was handled roughly by guards, faced tough conditions, was unable to communicate with anyone, and had bad accommodations (Day 73). Her stay was a life changing experience. I lost all feeling of my own identity. I reflected on the desolation of poverty, of destitution, of sickness and sin. That I would be free in thirty days meant nothing to me. I would never be free again, never free when I knew that behind bars all over the world there were women and men, young girls and boys, suffering constraint, punishment, isolation, and hardship for crimes for which all of us were guilty. (Day 78) On the fourth day she was given a Bible and comforted herself by reading the psalms (Day 80). After ten days of the hunger strike, the women won better conditions, moved to a new prison, and the right to freely roam the prison during the day (Day 81, 82). President Wilson pardoned them on Nov. 28, in time for Thanksgiving. Working as a Nurse After her prison stay she began to have sudden urges that drew her to the nearest Catholic church (Forest 30). She also began attending morning Mass. In the spring of 1918 she trained as a nurse in a hospital so she could help the sick (Forest 33). As a beginning to her tumultuous romantic life, she fell in love with a man who worked there, lived with him, and the relationship ended with an abortion and his departure (Forest 35-37). She enjoyed the hard work, discipline, and aid to others that work at the hospital brought, but after a year she returned to her true love of writing (Day 93). More Traveling In the spring of 1920 she married a man twenty years older than her who had already been married eight times: Berkeley Tobey, founder of the Literary Guild. They traveled through Europe for a year where Dorothy wrote a "fictionally disguised" autobiography called The Eleventh Virgin. The marriage ended in failure and she went to Chicago and wrote for the communist monthly, The Liberator (Forest 38). Once again involved in the radical scene, she was arrested in the Palmer Raids of 1921 while staying at an IWW house (Forest 39). She was charged with being a prostitute and faced another dreadful experience in jail, this time on an incorrect charge, and finally was released after a couple of days. After jail, she moved to New Orleans where a friend gave her her first rosary (Day 108). She then found out that while her book had flopped, she had been awarded $5000 for the movie rights, so she used that money to buy a cottage on Staten Island along the beach (Day 109). Life with Forster On the island she fell in love, wrote, and lived with Forster Batterham. "The man I loved, with whom I entered a common-law marriage, was an anarchist, an Englishman by descent, and a biologist." (Day 113) She stayed away from direct political activity, but still socialized with radicals, liberals, and literary bohemian types (Day 114). She found peace in her life and began to pray regularly when she walked, and attending mass (Forest 45). She turned to God due to her joy in her life, though at times she still doubted her reasons for turning to God (Coles 43). "I was surprised that I found myself beginning to pray daily. I could not get down on my knees, but I could pray while I was walking. If I got down on my knees I thought, "Do I really believe? Whom am I praying to?" A terrible doubt came over me, and a sense of shame, and I wondered if I was praying because I was lonely, because I was unhappy." (Day 132) Unfortunately Forster did not share her faith. He was an individualist, a loner who loved nature, and an atheist who refused to discuss the "nonsense" of religion (Day 134). However Dorothy still felt that her relationship with him was positive, for it had brought her closer to God by ending her period of searching, and providing her with a family (Coles 45). The Joys of Childbirth On March 4, 1926, her daughter, Tamar Theresa, was born and she wrote a joyful account, Having A Baby, on the joy that any women regardless of the oppression and difficulties she may face can experience (Forest 47). The article was picked up and published all around the world (Forest 47). She decided that whatever the cost, she would have her child baptized even though it would mean conflict with Forster (Day 136). The joy of childbirth and the ability to share her love, caused her to glorify and worship God and to seek out the church she had long known as that of the masses: the Catholic Church (Day 139). Since Forster would not submit to any formal marriage due to his anarchist principles, she had to make a tough choice between God and him (Coles 50). ...I could not become a Catholic and continue living with him, because he was adverse to any ceremony before officials of either Church or state. He was an anarchist and an atheist, and he did not intend to be a liar or a hypocrite. He was a creature of utter sincerity, and however illogical and bad-tempered about it all, I loved him. It was killing me to think of leaving him. (Day 147-148) Tamar was baptized in July 1927 (Forest 49). Forster became depressed after the executions of Saco and Vanzetti and was often absent. On December 26 Dorothy and Foster had a fight. She decided to end their relationship and did not let him back in the house (Forest 50). Two days later she was baptized, even though she still faced many doubts as to her decision (Forest 51): I had no particular joy in partaking of these three sacraments, Baptism, Penance, and the Holy Eucharist. I proceeded about my own active participation in them grimly, coldly, making acts of faith, and certainly with no consolation whatever. One part of my mind stood at one side and kept saying, "What are you doing? Are you sure of yourself? What kind of an affection is this? What act is this you are going through? Are you trying to induce emotion, induce faith, partake of an opiate, the opiate of the people?" I felt like a hypocrite if I got down on my knees, and shuddered at the thought of anyone seeing me. (D 148-149) Though she had converted, she was still appalled at the evil in the Church and in Catholics and held to her radical political beliefs despite the conflict (Day 149). Her conversion was her way of saying that she was going to follow God and work within the Catholic Church (Coles 64). She knew that it was Jesus who pushed her, and her friends and Forster could not understand that (Coles 52). Moving Around She moved back to NYC, was confirmed, worked for the Anti- Imperalist League raising money for Sandino in Nicaragua, and then for worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Forest 52). In 1929 she worked three months as a Hollywood writer, then moved to Mexico City, living cheaply and enthralling in the popular Catholicism that was present there (Forest 53). Then she returned to NYC, started attending daily mass, and gradually lost contact with her former radical friends (Day 161). The Hunger March In November 1932, Dorothy covered the communist organized Hunger March on Washington for a liberal Catholic publication called The Commonweal. On the one hand this put her back in touch with radical politics, but as a Catholic she felt very alienated from the marchers due to the Church's failure to act (Day 163, 165). In 1929, Pope Pius XI had even proclaimed, "The workers of the world are lost to the church." (qtd. in Coles 11) After the march she said a prayer asking God to give her a way to use her gifts to help the workers, and she returned to NYC to find Peter Maurin at her door (Day 166). Peter Maurin Peter Maurin was a French man of humble origins, loaded with ideas and theory, who had spent his life wandering, working at countless unskilled jobs, giving away whatever he had, trying to find someone who would listen to him. He had read Dorothy's work in the Commonweal and felt that they should cooperate together on a project (Day 172). He and Dorothy clicked and he began to educate her in the progressive Catholic tradition and explain his theory for the building of a new society (Day 170). His three part program included: 1. Discussions on catholic theology involving all factions, including publication of a paper. 2. Hospitality Houses. 3. Agronomic Universities: or communal farms, for intellectualizing and farming. (Ellsberg 26) He inspired Dorothy, and together they founded the Catholic Worker movement. The Catholic Worker So on May 1, 1933, at a communist rally of 50,000, they sold the first edition of The Catholic Worker, named after the communist Daily Worker, for a penny a copy (Forest 1). It was eight pages long and they were able to print 2500 copies for $57 by not paying their utility bills. They scraped by at first, and Dorothy had to even pawn her typewriter, but eventually support came in (Forest 60). Within 3 months they were publishing 25,000 copies, 100,000 by the end of the year, and 150,000 by 1936 (Day 182). The paper asked the question "can we not be both Catholic and Radical? To Our Readers: "For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight. For those who are huddling in the shelters trying to escape the rain. For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work. For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight - this little paper is addressed. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program--to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual but for their material welfare."-May 33, Catholic Worker (Day qtd. in Ellsberg 51) The paper focused on local issues that working people would care about such as strikes, and also dealt with international news as well (Day 205). They were always short of money, and relied upon constant appeals and God's provision (Coles 72). The Catholic Worker movement rapidly expanded in the initial years, opening many houses of hospitality to feed and house the poor. The hospitality house in NYC fed 400 people a day in 1937, and twice that in 1938 (Forest 66). In 1935 several attempts were made at starting communal farms, but they all failed due to lack of knowledge, money, equipment, leadership, work ethic, and personal conflicts (Day 234). Remaining Pacifist during the Spanish Civil War Dorothy Day stuck by her strict adherence to pacifism despite many times facing pressure to renounce as the majority of Catholic Workers were not pacifists. During the Spanish Civil War Catholics lined up behind Franco to defend the faith against "the communists and anarchists" (Forest 72). As a radical, Dorothy was more prone to support the radicals fighting against Franco, but she chose not to due to her previous experience with the failings of the left (Coles 78). "We wanted the Loyalists to be Christians in their faith, in their actions, so that we could be wholeheartedly agreed with them. But we knew otherwise." (Day qtd. in Coles 79) On the other hand she did recognize the evil inherent in the fascism that Franco was trying to install in Spain with the help of the Church: When my friends back then kept saying that the Catholic church in Spain was fascist, was part of a fascist coalition, was corrupt and a bulwark of all the worst, most exploitative elements in Spain, I had to agree. I knew what they were saying was politically and economically true. (Day qtd in Coles 79). So the Catholic Worker sided neither with the radicals, nor the fascists, and managed to lose two thirds of its readership mostly for its "failure" to support Franco (Forest 73). While the Church had not originally been critical of the lay Catholic Worker movement, it now began to view some of its teachings as threatening (Coles 77). Before World War II, Dorothy and other Catholic Workers were involved early in protesting against Germany due to its anti- Semitism (Forest 74). When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the US joined World War II, the courageous headline for the month's Catholic Worker declared: "We Continue Our Christian Pacifist Stand." (Forest 74) In her editorial Dorothy wrote: We are still pacifists. Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers. Speaking for many of our conscientious objectors, we will not participate in armed warfare or in making munitions, or by buying government bonds to prosecute the war, or in urging others to these efforts. (Day 74) During World War II the debate on whether to remain pacifist again divide the Catholic Worker movement as it had previously done during the Spanish Civil War (Forest 75). Dorothy and Communism After World War II, Dorothy kept up with her activism, constantly travelling and writing (Forest 77, 78). Anti- communism was the rage in the US and one priest urged the Catholic Workers "to come out in the open, declare yourselves Bolshevik Communists, and fight the Church like men." (Ellsberg 30) Dorothy, while no longer associating with communists, wrote in their defense: "I can say with warmth I loved the Communists I worked with and learned much from them. They helped me to find God in His poor, in His abandoned ones, as I had not found Him in the Christian churches." (Day qtd in Forest 93) In the spring of 1951 she supported a grave diggers strike, in opposition to Cardinal Spellman of NYC (Forest 94). He called the strikers communist and also put pressure on Dorothy to take the "catholic" out of Catholic Worker (Forest 94). She risked red-baiting again, by writing a tribute to the Rosenbergs who were executed, falsely convicted of being Russian spies (Forest 96). Some Catholics thought she was subverting the Church, while the communists though she was dividing the working classes. A Nuclear Activist In the post-war era, one of the major concerns for pacifists became preventing a nuclear war. So in the summer of 1955 Dorothy and a small group of Catholic Workers refused to cooperate with a nuclear drill in NYC, and was arrested risking a potential $500 fine and a one year sentence (Forest 97). The next year they did it again and went to jail for refusing to pay the fine (Forest 98). By 1960 there were a thousand people who refused to take cover, and in 1961 there were two thousand people. After that there were no more nuclear drills in NYC (Forest 100). Vatican II On October 9, 1958, a new more approachable pope, Pope John, was appointed (Forest 104). In 1959 he took the rare step of calling the second ever church council. Meanwhile in 1962 Dorothy travelled to Cuba for a month and reported for the Catholic Worker on the revolutionary regime and how the conditions of the majority had changed (Forest 106). In response to criticism of Castro she argued: Several of our old editors have accused us of giving up our pacifism. What nonsense.... We are certainly not Marxist socialists nor do we believe in violent revolution. Yet we believe it is better to revolt to fight as Castro did with his handful of men ... than to do nothing. (Day qtd. in Forest 107) On October 11, 1962, the Second Vatican council commenced. Dorothy went to the Vatican with a group of mothers to advocate the pacifist stance, hopeful since the Pope had previously made a statement opposing the arms race (Forest 109). Pope John died, but the council went on and in September 1965 Dorothy and some other women did a ten day fast to push the council to adopt the position of nonviolent resistance (Forest 111). The resulting council's statement allowed for pacifism within the Catholic tradition, though Just War theory remained predominant: "We cannot fail to praise those who renounce the use of violence in vindication of their rights and who resort to methods of defense which are otherwise available to weaker parties too, provided this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or to the community itself." (Council Statement qtd. in Forest 112) Against the Vietnam War Meanwhile the Vietnam War and opposition to it were growing. On November 9, 1965, Roger LaPorter, a Catholic Worker, set himself on fire to protest the war and he died in hospital (Forest 114). Most Catholic Workers avoided the draft by doing time in prison, while some actually were involved in the burning of draft board records in 1968 (something that Dorothy would not approve of) (Forest 116, 117). Dorothy recognized that not all were called to pacifism and going to prison: "The thing is to recognize that not all are called, not all have the vocation, to demonstrate in this way, to fast, to endure the pain and the long, drawn out, nerve-wracking suffering of prison life. We do what we can, and the whole field of the works of mercy is open to us... All work, whether building, increasing food production, running credit unions, working in factories that produce for human needs, working in the handicrafts -all these things can come under the heading of the works of mercy, which are the opposite of the works of war." (Day qtd. in Forest 117) Her denouncement of the Vietnam war was clear and absolute: "I accuse the government itself, and all of us, of these mass murders in Vietnam, this destruction of villages, this wiping out of peoples, the kidnapping, torture, rape and killings that have been disclosed to us.... Reparation is needed. We must to penance for what we have done to our brothers." (Day qtd. in Forest 118) She called for love to triumph over hate to end all war: "We are all one, all one body, Chinese, Russians, Vietnamese, and He has commanded us to love one another." (Day qtd. in Forest 119) Problems with the FBI and the IRS Under a Freedom of Information Act request in the late Seventies, the Catholic Worker movement obtained a whopping 575 pages of FBI files that dated back to 1940 (Forest 128). The FBI had clearly been wary of the movement, worrying that it was a communist subterfuge. The movement faced potential financial troubles when in April 1972 the IRS demanded $290,000 in taxes (Forest 129). Dorothy had historically refused to change the movement into an organization that could apply for tax exempt status, refused to do so again, and in June the IRS withdrew its request (Forest 129, 130). Ending her Journey Dorothy declared that she was retired in March 1975, though she continued to contribute to the paper (Forest 133). She was slowly losing her health and had several heart attacks. She slowed down and lived mostly in her room, always praying, reading, taking communion, meditating, and listening to the radio and TV (Forest 140). She died on Nov. 29, 1980, but the movement continues. Anger at the Church Hierarchy During her life Dorothy Day had mixed feelings about the Catholic Church, especially the hierarchy. On the one had, she loved the Church dearly and sought to always follow its direction. But on the other hand she denounced its hypocrisy and its failure to live out the social teachings of Jesus. Peter Maurin taught her the history of dissent within the Church, how to criticize while still obeying, and that to fail to do so would even be sin (Coles 72, 75). While reluctant, she often did lash out at the Church for siding with the rich against the poor. When I see the church taking the side of the powerful and forgetting the weak, and when I see bishops living in luxury and the poor being ignored or thrown bread crumbs, I know that Jesus is being insulted, as He once was, and sent to his death, as He once was. (Day qtd. in Coles 58) There are days when I want to stop all those poor people, giving their coins to the church, and tell them to march on the offices of the archdiocese - tell all the people inside those offices to move out of their plush rooms and share the lives of the hungry and the hurt. Would Jesus sit in some big, fancy, air-conditioned room near the banks and the department stores where the rich store their millions and spend their millions? Would He let Himself be driven in big black limousines, while thousands and thousands of people who believe in Him and His church are at the edge of starvation? Would he tolerate big mansions and fancy estates and luxurious traveling, while people come to church barefooted and ragged and hungry and sick, children all over the world? In my mind, there is only one answer to questions like those: no! (Day qtd. in Coles 76) She still tried to obey the teachings of the Church and believed that it allowed Catholics to think independently as she did. The Catholic Church is authoritarian in a way; it won't budge on what it believes it has been put here to protect and defend and uphold. But the church has never told its flock that they have no rights of their own, that they ought to have no beliefs or loyalties other than those of the pope or one of his cardinals. No one in the church can tell me what to think about social and political and economic questions without getting a tough speech back; please leave me alone and tend to your own acreage; I'll take care of mine. (Coles 83) She understood that the Church was imperfect, human, bound to fail, and she accepted that. Romano Guardini's quote, "The Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified" was typical of her belief in the failings of the church (qtd. in Coles 66). She saw herself as imperfect as well, and therefore did not want to be tempted into fighting the Church, much to the disappointment of some of her friends (Coles 86). She even learned to love it for its imperfections: "If the church were made up of people who weren't hypocrites and who weren't convinced that they are God's chosen personal emissaries, full of every virtue and free of every vice, then it wouldn't be the church it was meant to be, a church of sinners." (Day qtd. in Coles 70) Pacifism One of the issues which Dorothy fought with the Church was over its acceptance of war. In her early years she was originally a pacifist, but "though not pacifist as revolutionist" in her thinking (Day 87). Ever since the Catholic Worker movement started, Dorothy and the paper's answer to all wars has been a simple and straightforward: no (Berrigan 20)! "We had been pacifist in class war, race war, in the Ethiopian War, in the Spanish Civil War, all through World War II, as we are now during the Korean War." (Day 264) Her pacifism is based on the Sermon of the Mount (Day 264). Her first and perhaps most difficult challenge to it was during the formation years of the Catholic Worker movement when the Spanish civil war broke out. She recognized in "The Use of Force", writing in the Catholic Worker on Nov. 1936, that both Communists and Fascists in Spain were clamoring for blood and that Christians must recognize that is it only through martyrdom and suffering that we can follow Christ teachings (Ellsberg 77, 78). Christians should follow the way of the cross which leads not to death, but to true life. She knew that her pacifism was not pragmatic and that a majority of the CW movement did not share her belief, but she remained steadfast (Coles 100). Pride Dorothy has always struggled with her pride and trying to be holy yet humble. She worried about her religious pride, hiding behind her Bible, piety, and the potential of misusing the Bible and religion for evil (Coles 28). She recognized that even helping others could make her feel superior, as if she was acting directly on God's behalf (Coles 116). She often declared that she did not want to be a "saint", though she had to act as the role model for the Catholic Worker movement (Coles 120). She had to balance the need to show herself and the community as human, while also devoutly following Christ (Coles 118). Charity Earlier in her life, Dorothy had focused more on justice than charity, but now in the Catholic Worker movement she emphasized charity or "works of mercy". It was a local movement that focused more on local social issues of caring for the poor and homeless, instead of lobbying the national government (Coles 90). Picketing, leafleting, listening, and consoling were examples of the movement's local politics, as they tried to follow Jesus's example of doing small scale works with unimportant people (Coles 90). In acting locally, the CW movement alienated those who wanted to focus more on justice, and helped but a small fraction of the millions who needed it (Coles 91, 93). So to accompany the charity of the movement Dorothy also wanted social change: "Our was a long-range program, looking for ownership by the workers of the means of production, the abolition of the assembly line, decentralized factories, the restoration of crafts and ownership of property. This meant, of course, an ascent on the agrarian and rural aspects of our economy and a changing of emphasis from the city to the land." (Day qtd. in Coles 90) When asked what she thought about Jesus's statement that the poor would always be with us she replied, Yes, but we are not content that there should be so many of them. The class structure is our making and by our consent, not God's, and we must do what we can to change it. We are urging revolutionary change. (Day qtd. in Forest 67) The Catholic Worker movement tried to combine the reality of economics, sociology, and politics with the gospel to reveal its hidden message of liberation (Ellsberg 24). Dorothy recognized that social change would not be enough and wanted people to have greater responsibility and treat each other with more respect (Coles 96). FDR's New Deal was seen as "the solution" by many, but the problems of poverty and unemployment that it was meant to cure still exist (Coles 99). She felt called to live a simple and sincere lifestyle (Coles 105). She wanted to rebuild society on the basis of small communities from the ground up (Coles 109). In contrast to Marx's call for a dictatorship of the proletariat, she wanted to eliminate it and deindustrialize society (Ellsberg 25). She believed in Peter Maurin's: "personalist revolution" and "building a new shell within the old". Maurin prophesied that, "The future will be different, if we make the present different." (qtd. in Ellsberg 25) CW Hospitality Houses Catholic Worker hospitality houses developed when homeless people started arriving at Dorothy's apartment and soon the Catholic Worker movement was renting apartments for them (Ellsberg 28). Everyone was welcome to a CW house, and there was always a coffee pot on the stove and a little food available (Ellsberg 28). The houses were useful for people who wanted to do good in the world, but were not sure how (Coles 17). They promoted listening to the poor and destitute, and also talking to them (Coles 18). The Depression era, out of which they grew, was definitely a time of need. The CW houses were not meant to be "holier than thou" or to make people feel guilty in comparison, and Dorothy recognized that the community life of service is not for everyone (Coles 113). She was able to keep some privacy within the community and occasionally took a retreat to Staten Island to get away (Coles 130). It was a lifetime job for her to be in charge and the official authority, and many times she found this to be extremely challenging as she had to deal with complaints, lack of structure, questions of authority and finding leaders, and avoiding conflict (ctd. in Ellsberg 86). "Oh yes, my dear comrades and fellow workers, I see only too clearly how bad things are with us all, how bad you all are, and how a bad a leader I am.... It is because I see it so clearly that I must lift up my head and keep in sight the aims we must always hold before us. I must see the large and generous picture of the new social order wherein justice dwelleth." (qtd in Ellsberg 87) Finally it was a tough life living in a Catholic Worker house, always on the economic edge, always asking and needing things and getting them just in the nick of time. Conclusion Dorothy Day's life was a journey of searching for God, reaching out to the poor, writing for peace and justice, working from within to reform the Church, and endless prayer and action. She not only wrote and taught what she believed, but truly lived it. She inspired fundamental change within the Catholic church, founding a movement that is active in advocating reform and still performs "works of mercy" to this day. She was a witness to her faith. "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda or even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist." (Cardinal Suhard, archbishop of Paris, qtd. in Coles 160) WORKS CITED Berrigan, Daniel. Introduction. The Long Loneliness. By Dorothy Day. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1981. Coles, Robert. Dorothy Day. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987. Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1981. Ellsberg, Robert, ed. Dorothy Day: Selected Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992. Forest, James H. Love is the Measure: a biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 1994.