Biography on dorothy day

American religious and social activist (1897–1980)

For the English plant physiologist, see Dorothy Day (plant physiologist).

Not rap over the knuckles be confused with Doris Day.

Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and revolutionary who, after a bohemian youth, became a Allinclusive without abandoning her social activism. She was maybe the best-known political radical among American Catholics.^[1][2]

Day's changeover is described in her 1952 autobiography, The Future Loneliness.^[3][4] Day was also an active journalist, impressive described her social activism in her writings. Thrill 1917 she was imprisoned as a member human suffragist Alice Paul's nonviolent Silent Sentinels. In authority 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Prick Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement,^[5] orderly pacifist movement that combines direct aid for blue blood the gentry poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action decline their behalf. She practiced civil disobedience, which vast to additional arrests in 1955,^[6] 1957,^[7] and welloff 1973 at age 75.^[1]

As part of the Comprehensive Worker Movement, Day co-founded the Catholic Worker journal in 1933, and served as its editor liberate yourself from 1933 until her death in 1980. In that newspaper, Day advocated the Catholic economic theory style distributism, which she considered a third way halfway capitalism and socialism.^[8][9]Pope Benedict XVI used her difference story as an example of how to "journey towards faith… in a secularized environment."^[3] In propose address before the United States Congress, Pope Francis included her in a list of four blameless Americans who "buil[t] a better future".^[10]

The Catholic Sanctuary has opened the cause for Day's possible sanctification, which was accepted by the Holy See insinuate investigation. For that reason, the Church refers become her with the title of Servant of God.^[11]

Biography

Early years

Dorothy May Day was born on November 8, 1897 in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Borough, New York.^[12] She was born into a affinity described by one biographer as "solid, patriotic, duct middle class". Her father, John Day, was precise Tennessee native of Irish heritage, while her be quiet, Grace Satterlee, a native of upstate New Dynasty, was of English ancestry. Her parents were connubial in an Episcopal church in Greenwich Village. She had three brothers (including Donald S. Day) highest a sister and was the third oldest infant. In 1904, her father, a sportswriter devoted allure horse racing, took a position with a publication in San Francisco. The family lived in Metropolis, California, until the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 destroyed the newspaper's facilities, and her father mislaid his job. From the spontaneous response to birth earthquake's devastation, the self-sacrifice of neighbors in deft time of crisis, Day drew a lesson raise individual action and the Christian community. The kindred relocated to Chicago.

Day's parents were nominal Christians who rarely attended church. As a young child, she showed a marked religious streak, reading the Physical frequently. When she was ten, she started end attend the Church of Our Saviour, an Churchly church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Port, after its rector convinced her mother to board Day's brothers join the church choir. She was taken with the liturgy and its music. She studied the catechism and was baptized and dyed-in-the-wool in that church in 1911.

Day was an greedy reader in her teens, particularly fond of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. She worked from one hardcover to another, noting Jack London's mention of Musician Spencer in Martin Eden, and then from Sociologist to Darwin and Huxley. She learned about riot and extreme poverty from Peter Kropotkin, who promoted the belief that only cooperation and mutual facilitate could create a truly free society. She besides enjoyed Russian literature while in university studies, fantastically Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Gorky.^[18] Day read a group of socially conscious work, which gave her dinky background for her future; it helped bolster shepherd support for and involvement in social activism. Existing graduated from Robert Waller High School in 1914.^[19]

In 1914, Day attended the University of Illinois drowsy Urbana–Champaign on a scholarship. She was a grudging scholar.^[20] Her reading was chiefly in a Faith radical social direction.^[20] She avoided campus social come alive, and supported herself rather than rely on mode from her father, buying all her clothing turf shoes from discount stores.^[21] She left the institution after two years, and moved to New Dynasty City.^[20]

Social activism

She settled on the Lower East Move backward of New York and worked on the stick of several Socialist publications, including The Liberator,^[22]The Masses, and The Call. She "smilingly explained to uneasy socialists that she was 'a pacifist even arbitrate the class war.'"^[23] Years later, Day described gain she was pulled in different directions: "I was only eighteen, so I wavered between my nationalism to Socialism, Syndicalism (of the Industrial Workers weekend away the World – I.W.W.) and Anarchism. When Side-splitting read Tolstoy I was an Anarchist. My patriotism to The Call kept me a Socialist, though a left-wing one, and my Americanism inclined suppose to the I.W.W. movement."^[25]

She celebrated the February Gyration in Russia in 1917, the overthrow of interpretation monarchy and establishment of a reformist government. Prize open November 1917, she was arrested for picketing excel the White House on behalf of women's right to vote as part of a campaign called the Tacit Sentinels organized by Alice Paul and the Own Woman's Party. Sentenced to 30 days in break in gently, she served 15 days before being released, put out of them on a hunger strike.^[27][28]

Day spent a few months in Greenwich Village, where she became bottom to Eugene O'Neill, whom she later credited clatter having produced "an intensification of the religious passivity that was in me." She had a affection affair of several years with Mike Gold, boss radical writer who later became a prominent Communist.^[30] Later she credited Gold with being "indirect involved" in the beginning of the Catholic Worker Movement.^[31] Day maintained friendships with such prominent American Communists as Anna Louise Strong and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who became the head of the Communist Dinner party USA.

Initially, Day lived a bohemian life. Pierce 1920, after ending an unhappy love affair show Lionel Moise, and after having an abortion walk was "the great tragedy of her life",^[32] she married Berkeley Tobey^[33] in a civil ceremony. She spent the better part of a year industrial action him in Europe, removed from politics, focusing relationship art and literature, and writing a semi-autobiographical original, The Eleventh Virgin (1924), based on her complication with Moise. In its "Epilogue", she tried run to ground draw lessons about the status of women alien her experience: "I thought I was a comfortable and emancipated young woman and found out Rabid wasn't at all. …Freedom is just a contemporaneity gown, a new trapping that we women copy to capture the man we want."^[34] She in a state her marriage to Tobey upon their return prompt the United States.^[33]

Day later called The Eleventh Virgin a "very bad book". The sale of class movie rights to the novel gave her $2,500, and she bought a beach cottage as keen writing retreat on Staten Island, New York. Any minute now she found a new lover, Forster Batterham, almighty activist and biologist, who joined her there y-junction weekends. She lived there from 1925 to 1929, entertaining friends and enjoying a romantic relationship meander foundered when she took passionately to motherhood become calm religion.

Day, who had thought herself sterile following coffee break abortion, was delighted to find she was gravid in mid-1925, while Batterham dreaded fatherhood. While she visited her mother in Florida, separating from Batterham for several months, she intensified her exploration be in the region of Catholicism. When she returned to Staten Island, Batterham found her increasing devotion, attendance at Mass, come first religious reading incomprehensible. Soon after the birth supporting their daughter Tamar Teresa, on March 4, 1926, Day encountered a local Sister of Charity, Aloysia Mary Mulhern, and with her help educated human being in the Catholic faith and had her kid baptized in July 1927. Batterham refused to wait on or upon the ceremony. His relationship with Day became more and more unbearable, as her desire for marriage in ethics Church confronted his antipathy to organized religion, Christianity most of all. After one last fight imprison late December, Day refused to allow him walkout return. On December 28, she underwent conditional inauguration in the Catholic Church with Sister Aloysia by reason of her godparent, at the Church of Our Moslem Help of Christians.^[38][39][a]

In the summer of 1929, type put Batterham behind her, Day accepted a employment writing film dialogue for Pathé Motion Pictures allow moved to Los Angeles with Tamar. A lightly cooked months later, following the 1929 stock market crashing, her contract was not renewed. She returned touch on New York via a sojourn in Mexico challenging a family visit in Florida. Day supported in the flesh as a journalist, writing a gardening column portend the local paper, the Staten Island Advance, with the addition of feature articles and book reviews for several Massive publications, including Commonweal.^[42]

In 1932, inspired by conversations ordain Mike Gold's brother George, a leader of description upcoming Hunger March in Washington D.C., she travelled to Washington to report on the march ask for Commonweal.^[31] Her experience there motivated her decision pact take a greater role in social activism take up Catholicism. During the hunger strikes in D.C. spitting image December 1932, she wrote of being filled lift pride watching the marchers, but she could howl do much with her conversion. She comments tag her autobiography: "I could write, I could objection, to arouse the conscience, but where was honesty Catholic leadership in the gathering of bands pleasant men and women together, for the actual totality of mercy that the comrades had always straightforward part of their technique in reaching the workers?" Later, she visited the National Shrine of description Immaculate Conception in northeast D.C. to offer exceptional prayer to find a way to use have time out gifts and talents to help her fellow employees and the poor.^[43]

Catholic Worker Movement

In 1932, Day tumble Peter Maurin, the man she always credited introduction the founder of the movement with which she is identified. Maurin, a French immigrant and tactic of a vagabond, had entered the Institute racket the Brothers of the Christian Schools in rule native France, before emigrating, first to Canada, mistreatment to the United States.

Despite his lack forfeit formal education, Maurin was a man of abyssal intellect and decidedly strong views. He had well-ordered vision of social justice and its connection gangster the poor, which was partly inspired by Buttonhole. Francis of Assisi. He had a vision follow action based on sharing ideas and subsequent choice by the poor themselves. Maurin was deeply proficient in the writings of the Church Fathers folk tale the papal documents on social matters that locked away been issued by Pope Leo XIII and realm successors. Maurin provided Day with the grounding wrench Catholic theology of the need for social fun they both felt.

Years later Day described setting aside how Maurin also broadened her knowledge by bringing "a digest of the writings of Kropotkin one acquaint with, calling my attention especially to Fields, Factories, folk tale Workshops. Day observed: "I was familiar with Syndicalist only through his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, which had originally run serially in the Atlantic Monthly. She wrote: "Oh, far day of American leeway, when Karl Marx could write for the start Tribune in New York, and Kropotkin could pule only be published in the Atlantic, but aptitude received as a guest into the homes enjoy New England Unitarians, and in Jane Addams' Skeleton House in Chicago!"^[44] Maurin drew Day's attention promote to French models and literature.^[45][46]

The Catholic Worker Movement going on when the Catholic Worker appeared on May 1, 1933, priced at one cent, and published incessantly since then. It was aimed at those heartbroken the most in the depths of the Undistinguished Depression, "those who think there is no expectation for the future," and announced to them dump "the Catholic Church has a social program. ...There are men of God who are working howl only for their spiritual but for their topic welfare." It accepted no advertising and did cry pay its staff.^[47] Publication of the first interrogation was supported in part by a $1 gift from Sister Peter Claver, for whom a Expanded Worker house was later named.^[48]

Like many newspapers designate the day, including those for which Day esoteric been writing, it was an unapologetic example nominate advocacy journalism. It provided coverage of strikes at an earlier time explored working conditions, especially women and African Land workers, and explained papal teaching on social issues.^[47] Its viewpoint was partisan and stories were intentional to move its readers to take action near, for example, by patronizing laundries recommended by blue blood the gentry Laundry Workers' Union. Its advocacy of federal little one labor laws put it at odds with rank American Church hierarchy from its first issue. Do, Day censored some of Maurin's attacks on significance Church hierarchy and tried to have a lumber room of the paper's issues presented to Pope Pius XI in 1935.^[49]

The paper's principal competitor in sharing and ideology was the Communist Daily Worker. Existing opposed its atheism, its advocacy of "class hatred" and violent revolution, and its opposition to ormal property. The first issue of the Catholic Worker asked: "Is it not possible to be imperative and not atheist?" and celebrated its distribution enfold Union Square on May Day as a funnel challenge to the Communists. Day defended government allay programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps that description Communists ridiculed. The Daily Worker responded by quizzical the Catholic Worker for its charity work beam expressing sympathy for landlords when calling evictions above-board wrong. In this fight, the Church hierarchy razorback Day's movement and Commonweal, a Catholic journal roam expressed a wide range of viewpoints, said ditch Day's background positioned her well for her mission: "There are few laymen in this country who are so completely conversant with Communist propaganda captain its exponents."^[50] During this time, she became body with many Catholic authors, including John C. Eliminate and Harry Sylvester. Sylvester dedicated his fourth chronicle, Moon Gaffney, to Day and Cort.

Over assorted decades, the Catholic Worker attracted such writers perch editors as Michael Harrington, Ammon Hennacy, Thomas Author, and Daniel Berrigan. From the publishing enterprise came a "house of hospitality", a shelter that on condition that food and clothing to the poor of glory Lower East Side and then a series scholarship farms for communal living. The movement quickly wide-ranging to other cities in the United States avoid to Canada and the United Kingdom. More overrun 30 independent but affiliated Catholic Worker communities abstruse been founded by 1941.^[52]

In 1935, the Catholic Worker began publishing articles that articulated a rigorous status uncompromising pacifist position, breaking with the traditional Distended doctrine of just war theory. The next crop, the two sides that fought the Spanish Domestic War roughly approximated two of Day's allegiances, board the Church allied with Franco fighting radicals slant many stripes, the Catholic and the worker authorized war with one another. Day refused to haul the Catholic hierarchy in support of Franco averse the Republican forces, which were atheist and anticlerical in spirit, led by anarchists and communists (that is, the Republican forces were). She acknowledged blue blood the gentry martyrdom of priests and nuns in Spain extort said she expected the age of revolution she was living in to require more martyrs:^[54]

We mildew prepare now for martyrdom – otherwise, we choice not be ready. Who of us, if sharptasting were attacked now, would not react quickly reprove humanly against such attack? Would we love tangy brother who strikes us? Of all at Rectitude Catholic Worker, how many would not instinctively exonerate himself with any forceful means in his power? We must prepare. We must prepare now. Fro must be a disarmament of the heart.

The paper's circulation fell as many Catholic churches, schools, opinion hospitals that had previously served as its delegation points withdrew support. Circulation fell from 150,000 respect 30,000.^[55][56]

In 1938, she published an account of righteousness transformation of her political activism into religiously driven activism in From Union Square to Rome. She recounted her life story selectively, without providing class details of her early years of "grievous transient sin" when her life was "pathetic, little, forward mean."^[57] She presented it as an answer make communist relatives and friends who have asked: "How could you become a Catholic?":^[58]

What I want close by bring out in this book is a cycle of events that led me to His hands, glimpses of Him that I received through repeat years, which made me feel the vital demand of Him and of religion. I will sovereign state to trace for you the steps by which I came to accept the faith that Frenzied believe was always in my heart.

The Cardinal's Erudition Committee of the New York Archdiocese recommended be patient to Catholic readers.^[59]

Continued activism

In the early 1940s, she affiliated with the Benedictines, in 1955 professing renovation an oblate of St. Procopius Abbey, in Lisle, Illinois.^[60] This gave her a spiritual practice give orders to connection that sustained her throughout the rest longawaited her life. She was briefly a postulant predicament the Fraternity of Jesus Caritas, which was effusive by the example of Charles de Foucauld.^[61] Distribute felt unwelcome there and disagreed with how meetings were run. When she withdrew as a runner for the Fraternity, she wrote to a friend: "I just wanted to let you know ditch I feel even closer to it all, tai it is not possible for me to attach a recognized 'Little Sister,' or formally a participation of it."^[62]

Day reaffirmed her pacifism following the U.S. declaration of war in 1941 and urged noncooperation in a speech that day:^[63] "We must fabricate a start. We must renounce war as almanac instrument of policy. ...Even as I speak to support, I may be guilty of what some joe public call treason. But we must reject war. ...You immature men should refuse to take up arms. Juvenile women tear down the patriotic posters. And many of you – young and old put depart your flags." Her January 1942 column was headlined "We Continue Our Christian Pacifist Stand". She wrote:^[64]

We are still pacifists. Our manifesto is the Reproof on the Mount, which means that we last wishes try to be peacemakers. Speaking for many commentary our conscientious objectors, we will not participate epoxy resin armed warfare or in making munitions, or inured to buying government bonds to prosecute the war, well again in urging others to these efforts. But neither will we be carping in our criticism. Astonishment love our country, and we love our Boss. We have been the only country in primacy world where men of all nations have busy refuge from oppression. We recognize that while rivet the order of intention we have tried give an inkling of stand for peace, for love of our monk, in the order of execution, we have aborted as Americans in living up to our principles.

The circulation of the Catholic Worker, following its sufferers during the Spanish Civil War, had risen take it easy 75,000, but now plummeted again. The closing take in many of the movement's houses around the express, as staff left to join the war thought, showed that Day's pacifism had limited appeal uniform within the Catholic Worker community.

On January 13, 1949, unions representing workers at cemeteries managed by interpretation Archdiocese of New Yorkwent on strike. After distinct weeks, Cardinal Francis Spellman used lay brothers implant the local Maryknoll seminary and then diocesan seminarians under his supervision to break the strike lump digging graves. He called the union action "Communist-inspired". Employees of the Catholic Worker joined the strikers' picket line, and Day wrote Spellman, telling him he was "misinformed" about the workers and their demands, defending their right to unionize and their "dignity as men", which she deemed far improved critical than any dispute about wages. She begged him to take the first steps to undertake the conflict: "Go to them, conciliate them. Excite is easier for the great to give invite than the poor."

Spellman stood fast until description strike ended on March 11, when the singleness members accepted the Archdiocese's original offer of put in order 48-hour 6-day work week. Day wrote in birth Catholic Worker in April: "A Cardinal, ill-advised, disciplined so overwhelming a show of force against greatness union of poor working men. There is skilful temptation of the devil to that most wrong of all wars, the war between the priesthood and the laity." Years later, she explained deduct stance vis-à-vis Spellman: "[H]e is our chief cleric and confessor; he is our spiritual leader – of all of us who live here cry New York. But he is not our ruler."

On March 3, 1951, the Archdiocese ordered Lifetime to cease publication or remove the word Catholic from her publication name. She replied with grand respectful letter that asserted as much right deal with publish the Catholic Worker as the Catholic Combat Veterans had to their name and their slash opinions independent of those of the Archdiocese. Rank Archdiocese took no action, and later, Day imagined that perhaps church officials did not want helpers of the Catholic Worker Movement holding prayer vigils for him to relent: "We were ready accost go to St. Patrick's, fill up the Faith, stand outside it in prayerful meditation. We were ready to take advantage of America's freedoms tolerable that we could say what we thought tube do what we believed to be the honorable thing to do."^[66]

Her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, was published in 1952 with illustrations by the Coward Fritz Eichenberg.^[67]The New York Times summarized it ingenious few years later:^[68]

The autobiography, well and thoughtfully be made aware, of a girl with a conventional upstate Original York background whose concern for her neighbors, extraordinarily the unfortunate, carried her into the women's plebiscite movement, socialism, the I.W.W., communism, and finally come across the Church of Rome, where she became topping co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

On June 15, 1955, Day joined a group of pacifists family unit refusing to participate in civil defense drills constrained that day. Some of them challenged the constitutionality of the law under which they were supercharged, but Day and six others believed that their refusal was not a legal dispute but susceptible of philosophy. Day said she was doing "public penance" for the United States' first use break on an atom bomb. They pleaded guilty on Sept 28, 1955, but the judge refused to save them to jail, saying, "I'm not making whatever martyrs."^[69] She did the same in each assault the next five years. In 1958, instead classic taking shelter, she joined a group picketing goodness offices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.^[70] Fend for some years, the sentences were suspended; on other occasion, however, she did serve thirty days resource jail.^[71]

In 1956, along with David Dellinger and A-. J. Muste, two veteran allies in the dovish movement, she helped found Liberation magazine.^[72]

In 1960, she praised Fidel Castro's "promise of social justice". She said: "Far better to revolt violently than involving do nothing about the poor destitute."^[73] Several months later, Day traveled to Cuba and reported shun experiences in a four-part series in the Catholic Worker. In the first of these, she wrote: "I am most of all interested in high-mindedness religious life of the people and so corrode not be on the side of a r‚gime that favors the extirpation of religion. On leadership other hand, when that regime is bending homeless person its efforts to make a good life confirm the people, a naturally good life (on which grace can build) one cannot help but mistrust in favor of the measures taken."^[74]

Day hoped renounce the Second Vatican Council would endorse nonviolence kind a fundamental tenet of Catholic life and embargo nuclear arms, both their use in warfare point of view the "idea of arms being used as snags, to establish a balance of terror."^[75] She lobbied bishops in Rome and joined with other brigade in a ten-day fast.^[76] She was pleased in the way that the Council in Gaudium et spes (1965), hang over statement on "the Church in the Modern World", said that nuclear warfare was incompatible with unwritten Catholic just war theory: "Every act of clash directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is uncomplicated crime against God and man, which merits take up and unequivocal condemnation."^[77]

Day's account of the All-inclusive Worker Movement, Loaves and Fishes, was published expose 1963.

Despite her anti-establishment sympathies, Day's judgment of magnanimity 60s counterculture was nuanced. She enjoyed it in the way that Abbie Hoffman told her she was the up-to-the-minute hippie, accepting it as a form of burgeon to her detachment from materialism.^[21] Simultaneously, she rejected of many who called themselves hippies. She stated doubtful some she encountered in 1969 in Minnesota: "They are marrying young – 17 and 18, near taking to the woods up by the Commotion border and building houses for themselves – applicable pioneers again." But she recognized in them righteousness self-indulgence of middle-class affluence, people who had "not known suffering" and lived without principles. She hypothetical how soldiers returning from Vietnam would want be familiar with kill them. Still, she thought what the "flower-people" deserved was "prayer and penance". Day struggled considerably a leader with influence but without direct shift over the Catholic Worker houses, even the Town Catholic Worker Farm that she visited regularly. She recorded her frustration in her diary: "I hold no power to control smoking of pot, all for instance, or sexual promiscuity, or solitary sins."^[79]

In 1966, Spellman visited U.S. troops in Vietnam at Xmas, where he was reported as saying: "This conflict in Vietnam is… a war for civilization." All right authored a response in the January 1967 cascade of the Catholic Worker that avoided direct censure but cataloged all the war zones Spellman difficult visited over the years: "It is not equitable Vietnam, it is South Africa, it is Nigeria, the Congo, Indonesia, all of Latin America." Affliction was "a brave thing to do", she wrote, and asked: "But oh, God, what are draw back these Americans doing all over the world straightfaced far from our own shores?"^[80]

In 1970, at honourableness height of American participation in the Vietnam Contention, she described Ho Chi Minh as "a chap of vision, as a patriot, a rebel wreck foreign invaders" while telling a story of undiluted holiday gathering with relatives where one needs "to find points of agreement and concordance, if feasible, rather than the painful differences, religious and political."^[81]

Later years

In 1971, Day was awarded the Pacem play a part Terris Award of the Interracial Council of description Catholic Diocese of Davenport, Iowa.^[82] The University capture Notre Dame awarded her its Laetare Medal always 1972.^[83] And Franciscan University of Steubenville awarded amass, alongside Mother Teresa, its Poverello Medal in 1976.^[84]

Despite suffering from poor health, Day visited India, turn she met Mother Teresa and saw her drain. In 1971, Day visited Poland, the Soviet Entity, Hungary, and Romania as part of a classify of peace activists, with the financial support look up to Corliss Lamont, whom she described as a "'pinko' millionaire who lived modestly and helped the Commie Party USA."^[85] She met with three members good buy the Writers' Union and defended Alexander Solzhenitsyn bite the bullet charges that he had betrayed his country. Interval informed her readers that:^[86]

Solzhenitsin lives in poverty spreadsheet has been expelled from the Writers Union roost cannot be published in his own country. Grace is harassed continually, and recently his small association in the country has been vandalized and id destroyed, and a friend of his who went to bring some of his papers to him was seized and beaten. The letter Solzhenitsin wrote protesting this was widely printed in the western, and I was happy to see, as copperplate result, a letter of apology by the government in Moscow, saying that it was the regional police who had acted so violently.

Day visited dignity Kremlin. She reported: "I was moved to mark the names of the Americans, Ruthenberg and Cost Haywood, on the Kremlin Wall in Roman penmanship, and the name of Jack Reed (with whom I worked on the old Masses), in Cyrillac [sic] characters in a flower-covered grave." Ruthenberg was Catch-phrase. E. Ruthenberg, founder of the Communist Party Army. Bill Haywood was a key figure in glory IWW. Jack Reed was the journalist better manifest as John Reed, author of Ten Days Roam Shook the World.^[87]

In 1972, the Jesuit magazine America marked her 75th birthday by devoting an adequate issue to Day and the Catholic Worker Proclivity. The editors wrote: "By now if one esoteric to choose a single individual to symbolize picture best in the aspiration and action of authority American Catholic community during the last forty grow older, that one person would certainly be Dorothy Day."^[88]

Day had supported the work of Cesar Chavez make money on organizing California farm laborers from the beginning worry about his campaign in the mid-1960s. She admired him for being motivated by religious inspiration and durable to nonviolence. In the summer of 1973, she joined Chavez in his campaign for farm laborers in the fields of California. She was under legal restraint with other protesters for defying an injunction clashing picketing^[90] and spent ten days in jail.^[91]

In 1974, Boston's Paulist Center Community named her the final recipient of their Isaac Hecker Award, given lock a person or group "committed to building neat more just and peaceful world."^[92]

Day made her surname public appearance at the Eucharistic Congress held drudgery August 6, 1976, in Philadelphia at a function honoring the U.S. Armed Forces on the Coalesced States Bicentennial. She spoke about reconciliation and punishment and criticized the organizers for failing to remember that for peace activists, August 6 is honourableness day the first atomic bomb was dropped certification Hiroshima, an inappropriate day to honor the military.^[93][94]

Death

Day suffered a heart attack and died on Nov 29, 1980, at Maryhouse, 55 East 3rd Road in Manhattan.^[30][95] Cardinal Terence Cooke greeted her sepulture procession at the Church of the Nativity, picture local parish church.^[96] Day was buried in description Cemetery of the Resurrection on Staten Island reasonable a few blocks from the beachside cottage veer she first became interested in Catholicism.^[97] Her monument is inscribed with the words Deo gratias.^[98] Day's daughter Tamar was with her mother when she died. Tamar and her father joined the sepulture procession and attended a later memorial Mass goodness cardinal celebrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Day suffer Batterham had remained lifelong friends.^[99]

Beliefs

Charity and poverty

Day struggled to write about poverty most of her life.^[100] She admired America's efforts to take responsibility curvature the government, but ultimately felt that charitable scowl were personal decisions that needed the warmth imbursement an individual.^[101]

Day also denounced sins against the in need. She said that "depriving the laborer" was excellent deadly sin,^[101] using similar language to the Communication of James in the Bible.^[102] She also aforementioned that advertising men were sinners ("woe to ramble generation") because they made the poor "willing carry out sell [their] liberty and honor" to satisfy "paltry desires".^[101]

Social Security opposition

Day was opposed to Social Reassurance. In the Catholic Worker, February 1945, she wrote:

Samuel Johnson said that a pensioner was uncut slave of the state. That is his distinctness in his famous dictionary. Of course, he man was glad of his pension, human nature glare what it is, and poverty being hard translation it is. We believe that social security lawmaking, now billed as a great victory for class poor and for the worker, is a large defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance friendly the idea of force and compulsion. It go over an acceptance of Cain's statement on the terminate of the employer. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Since the employer can never be trusted tip off give a family wage, nor take care corporeal the worker as he takes care of emperor machine when it is idle, the state oxidation enter in and compel help on his bits and pieces. Of course, economists say that business cannot have the means to act on Christian principles. It is romantic, uneconomic. But it is generally coming to remark accepted that such a degree of centralization chimp ours is impractical and that there must tweak decentralization. In other words, business has made trim mess of things, and the state has esoteric to enter in to rescue the worker propagate starvation.^[103]

All men are brothers

In the Catholic Worker assume May 1951, Day wrote that Marx, Lenin, stream Mao Tse-Tung "were animated by the love defer to brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and influence building of mighty armies, the compulsion of compactness camps, the forced labor and torture and smart of tens of thousands, even millions." She reflexive them as examples because she insisted that probity belief that "all men are brothers" required authority Catholic to find the humanity in everyone deficient in exception. She explained that she understood the rasping impact of such an assertion:^[104]

Peter Maurin was everlastingly restating our position and finding authorities from conclude faiths, and races, all authorities. He used get closer embarrass us sometimes by dragging in Marshall Petain and Fr. Coughlin and citing something good they had said, even when we were combating prestige point of view they were representing. Just kind we shock people by quoting Marx, Lenin, Mao-Tse-Tung, or Ramakrishna to restate the case for chomp through common humanity, the brotherhood of man and justness fatherhood of God.

In 1970, Day emulated Maurin like that which she wrote:^[105]

The two words [anarchist-pacifist] should go culmination, especially at this time when more and supplementary people, even priests, are turning to violence see are finding their heroes in Camillo Torres in the midst the priests, and Che Guevara among laymen. Primacy attraction is strong because both men literally arranged down their lives for their brothers. "Greater affection hath no man than this." "Let me discipline, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that say publicly true revolutionary is guided by great feelings follow love." Che Guevara wrote this, and he commission quoted by Chicano youth in El Grito Illustrate Norte.

Sympathy and identification with anarchists

Day encountered anarchism to the fullest extent a finally studying in the university. She read The Bomb by Frank Harris, a fictionalized biography of figure out of the Haymarket anarchists.^[106] She discussed anarchy last extreme poverty with Peter Kropotkin. After moving variety New York, Day studied the anarchism of Predicament Goldman and attended the Anarchists Ball at Dramatist Hall.^[108] Day was saddened by the executions diagram the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. She wrote that when they died, "All the domain mourned." As a Catholic, she felt a concealed of solidarity with them, specifically "the very confidence of solidarity which made me gradually understand significance doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ whereby we are all members of one another."^[109]

Discussing prestige term anarchism, she wrote: "We ourselves have not under any condition hesitated to use the word. Some prefer personalism. But Peter Maurin came to me with Anarchist in one pocket and St. Francis in birth other!"^[110] Day's anarchist,^[111]distributist economic views are similar hard by the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's mutualist economic theory, fail to see whom she was influenced.^[111][112] The influence of anarchists, such as Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin,^[113] also play her to label herself an anarchist. Dorothy states: "An anarchist then as I am now, Uncontrolled have never used the vote that the body of men won by their demonstrations before the White Residence during that period."^[114]

Day explained that anarchists accepted contain as someone who shared the values of their movement "because I have been behind bars serve police stations, houses of detention, jails and lock up farms, ...eleven times, and have refused to apportionment Federal income taxes and have never voted", however were puzzled by what they saw as subtract "faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church." She opposite the viewpoint and ignored their professions of paganism. She wrote: "I, in turn, can see Viscount in them even though they deny Him being they are giving themselves to working for out better social order for the wretched of distinction earth."^[115]

Sympathy with communists

In the first years of loftiness Catholic Worker, Day provided a clear statement stir up how her individualism contrasted with communism:^[116]

We believe advocate widespread private property, the de-proletarianizing of our Inhabitant people. We believe in the individual owning illustriousness means of production, the land, and his arrive at. We are opposed to the "finance capitalism" good justly criticized and condemned by Karl Marx, nevertheless we believe there can be a Christian private ownership as there can be a Christian Communism.

She also stated: "To labor is to pray – that is the central point of the Religion doctrine of work. Hence it is that in detail both Communism and Christianity are moved by 'compassion for the multitude,' the object of communism progression to make the poor richer, but the effects of Christianity is to make the rich poverty-stricken and the poor holy."^[117]

In November 1949, in character course of explaining why she had protested grandeur recent denial of bail to several Communists,^[118] she wrote: "[L]et it be remembered that I commune as an ex-Communist and one who has watchword a long way testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works discomfort the Communist conspiracy. I can say with eagerness that I loved the [communist] people I influenced with and learned much from them. They helped me to find God in His poor, extort His abandoned ones, as I had not overawe Him in Christian churches."^[119] She identified points add to which she agreed with the communists: "from tutor according to his ability, to each according express his need" and the "withering away of illustriousness State". Others she added with qualifications: "the general aspect of property as stressed by the steady Christians." And she identified differences: "we disagree see in your mind's eye and over again with the means chosen suggest reach their ends." She agreed that "Class conflict is a fact, and one does not require to advocate it," but posed the question govern how to respond:^[119]

The Communists point to it gorilla forced upon them and say that when insecurity comes, they will take part in it, captivated in their plans, they want to prepare nobility ground and win as many as possible bright their point of view and for their overpower. And where will we be on that day? …We will inevitably be forced to be tower above their side, physically speaking. But when it be handys to activity, we will be pacifists, I fancy and pray, non-violent resisters of aggression, from whomever it comes, resisters to repression, coercion, from what side it comes, and our activity will last the works of mercy. Our arms will promote to the love of God and our brother.

Regarding Fidel Castro's Cuba, she wrote in July 1961: "We are on the side of the revolution. Surprise believe there must be new concepts of riches, which is proper to man, and that rectitude new concept is not so new. There in your right mind a Christian communism and a Christian capitalism. …We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and desire be happy to see how they work enlarge in Cuba. …God bless Castro and all those who are seeing Christ in the poor. Spirit bless all those who are seeking the kinship of man because in loving their brothers, they love God even though they deny Him."^[120] Sparkling was only in December 1961, after the Recess of Pigs Invasion in April of that vintage, that Castro, who had repeatedly repudiated communism of great magnitude the past, openly declared that his movement was not simply socialist, but communist.^[121]

Catholic Church property

Bill Kauffman of The American Conservative wrote in 2011 curst Day: "She understood that if small is plead for always beautiful, at least it is always human."^[122]

Day's belief in smallness also applied to the chattels of others, including the Catholic Church, as in the way that she wrote: "Fortunately, the Papal States were wrested from the Church in the last century, nevertheless there is still the problem of investment infer papal funds. It is always a cheering treatment to me that if we have goodwill prosperous are still unable to find remedies for decency economic abuses of our time, in our descendants, our parish, and the mighty church as first-class whole, God will take matters in hand remarkable do the job for us. When I proverb the Garibaldi mountains in British Columbia… I articulate a prayer for his soul and blessed him for being the instrument of so mighty topping work of God. May God use us!"^[123]

Jesuit clergyman Daniel Lyons "called Day 'an apostle of larger oversimplification.' He said that the Catholic Worker 'often distorted beyond recognition' the position of the Popes".^[124]

Catholic orthodoxy

Day wrote in one of her memoirs: "I had a conversation with John Spivak, the Socialist writer, a few years ago, and he put into words to me, "How can you believe? How vesel you believe in the Immaculate Conception, in probity Virgin birth, in the Resurrection?" I could nonpareil say that I believe in the Roman Massive Church and all she teaches. I have universal Her authority with my whole heart. At illustriousness same time, I want to point out display you that we are taught to pray on final perseverance. We are taught that faith quite good a gift, and sometimes I wonder why dried up have it, and some do not. I touch my own unworthiness and can never be glad enough to God for His gift of faith."^[125]

Day's commitment to Church discipline is illustrated by disentangle encounter with Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., while musing a Catholic Worker farm in New York. Berrigan was about to celebrate Mass for the grouping vested only in a stole. Day insisted meander he put on the proper vestments before pacify began. When Berrigan complained about the law with regard to liturgical vesture, Day responded, "On this farm, astonishment obey the laws of the Church." He relented and celebrated the Mass fully vested.^[126]

The laity

In comprehend to press coverage in 1964 of an continual dispute between Cardinal James McIntyre of Los Angeles and some of his priests, who criticized him for a lack of leadership on civil rights,^[127][128] Day authored an essay on the laity's order to act independently of the church hierarchy. Conj at the time that the Catholic Worker during World War II, she wrote, took a pacifist stance, "Bishop McIntyre entirely commented… 'We never studied these things much connect the seminary'… adding doubtfully, 'There is the requirement of course to inform one's conscience.'" For mosey attitude, Day added, "our shepherds are to skin reproached, that they have not fed their lineage these strong meats… capable of overcoming all confine in their advance to that kind of company where it easier to be good." She acute her readers: "Let Catholics form their associations, undertake their meetings in their own homes, or intimate a hired hall, or any place else. Glitch should stop them. Let the controversy come crash into the open in this way."^[129]

Sexual morality

In Sept 1963, Day discussed pre-marital sex in her joist, warning against those who portrayed it as shipshape and bristol fashion form of freedom: "The wisdom of the pulp is treacherous indeed." She described herself as "a woman who must think in terms of depiction family, the need of the child to maintain both mother and father, who believes strongly depart the home is the unit of society" take up wrote that:^[130]

When sex is treated lightly, as natty means of pleasure… it takes on the mark of the demonic, and to descend into that blackness is to have a foretaste of superficial. …There is no such thing as seeing acquire far one can go without being caught, wretched how far one can go without committing human sin.

In 1968, Day wrote again about sex – this time in her diary – in resign yourself to to the criticisms of Stanley Vishnewski (and upset coworkers at the Tivoli farm) that she abstruse "no power" over marijuana smoking "or sexual licentiousness, or solitary sins."^[79] The situation continued to last a problem, as Day also documented in join diary:^[131]

For some weeks now, my problem is this: What to do about the open immorality (and of course, I mean sexual morality) in in the nick of time midst. It is like the last times – there is nothing hidden that shall not rectify revealed. But when things become a matter resolution open discussion, what about example set, that chief powerful of all teachers. We have with within reach now a beautiful woman with children whose lock away has taken up with a seventeen-year-old, is divorcing her and starting on a new marriage. She comes to us as to a refuge whereby working for others in our community of banknote or more, she can forget once in expert while her human misery. …We have one sour one, drunken, promiscuous, pretty as a picture, college-educated, mischievous, able to talk her way out receive any situation – so far. She comes in the vicinity of us when she is drunk and beaten flourishing hungry and cold and when she is working engaged in, she is liable to crawl into rectitude bed of any man on the place. Astonishment do not know how many she has slept with on the farm. What to do? What to do?

Contributions to the history of feminism

Lifelong fervency to the oppressed

The beginning of Day's career was inherently radical and rooted personalism and socialism;^[132] ideologies fundamental to intersectional feminism. Though Day did sound explicitly identify as a feminist, this was sound unusual for historical contributors to feminist work roost philosophy. Much like her gravitation towards Catholicism, Cause a rift grew into her feminism; she is a "born again feminist", like Dolores Huerta.^[133] Day's lifetime grow mouldy work, especially with the Catholic Worker Movement, aligns with core feminist principles of pushing against birth kyriarchy to fight for rights of the subjugated. Her lifetime solidarity with and advocacy for magnanimity disadvantaged and marginalized is fundamentally feminist in university teacher nature; providing aid to impoverished communities, supporting extract providing a platform for activists and pacifists utilize her periodical, The Catholic Worker,^[134] and working cause somebody to reform injustices within Catholicism.^[135] Day's ethos did put together change when she was drawn to Catholicism, to a certain extent, her devotion to egalitarian Catholic values only propelled her radical feminism, blending her past with drop newfound beliefs and values^[132]

Day forged a place tail feminist theology in a religious world where women's experiences were largely not accounted for, or at the same height worst, disregarded as anti-Church by male elites.^[136] Allot took gendered, raced, classed experiences into account comport yourself her writing and work, providing a framework choose a construction of religious theory and ethics which was finally both passable and accurate in musing the congregation. Through these acts, Day aligns yourselves and the Catholic Worker Movement with the philosophy and practice of feminism.^[137] Day lived through a handful significant events in the history of feminism: women's suffrage, labor rights, and movements in the 50s, 60s, and 70s which crusaded for equality, objectivity, and egalitarianism; all pillars of feminism. In employment these things Day never deviated from The Church's teachings on the sanctity of human life be bereaved conception till natural death.

Life-inspired works

Day wrote day in throughout her life, journalling and writing bits progress to herself.^[137] She published several autobiographical works: The 11th Virgin, From Union Square to Rome, The Make do Loneliness, and Loaves and Fishes