I solicit ideas for my writings from many sources —colleagues, family, friends, students.
(For instance, a recent lighthearted conversation about pop culture made me want to write articles with the suggested titles, “There’s Something About the Virgin Mary,” “Who Framed Pontius Pilate?” and “Angry Birds: How Today’s Technology Impacts Tomorrow’s Cardinals.” Also, Tebow seems to come up a lot).
When I describe this series to people, they almost unanimously ask if I’ve yet discussed Dorothy Day, the foundress of the Catholic Worker movement. So I set out to get myself off the hook from telling them “Not yet, but I intend to.” And to give us all a break from Tebowmania.
Day was born to nominal, but largely non-practicing Christian parents in 1897. She was a college drop-out, sympathetic to anarchist communism for much of her life, and had at least one abortion: just your run-of-the-mill candidate for canonization, for which she is under consideration. Like so many figures, Day proves that sanctity and holiness are oftentimes found in the (perhaps literally) damndest of places.
Day underwent a conversion experience and began to write for such publications as Commonweal and America, two of my favorite magazines. She eventually repented her wayward youth and had a second child, Tamar. Day decided to devote her adult life to the poor and underprivileged, enamored with Catholicism’s dutiful role as advocate for the destitute and immigrants, regardless of residential status. With friend Peter Maurin, she founded what was to come to be called the Catholic Worker Movement. It took many forms: from attempted transformation of the social order through journalism and activism to providing care for homeless and unemployed Americans to afterschool and city beautification programs. The Catholic Worker newspaper is still published and remains a penny a copy, as Day intended (www.catholicworker.org). Her work for peace and justice was recognized by many notable figures of the last century, including Pope Paul VI, Mother Teresa and the University of Notre Dame, who gave her its highest honor, the Laetare medal.
A friend from Scranton, who often donates her mornings after consecutive overnight shifts as a nurse to a Catholic Worker Free Medical Clinic in an impoverished neighborhood, told me that she believed “Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin followed the Gospel about as perfectly as anyone ever has. I think it’s a shame that more Catholics don’t know about the Worker movement. It is rooted in Catholic Social Teaching (which most Catholics also don’t know about), and they believed that we truly encounter Christ in the poor and marginalized. I honestly don’t think there is any faction of Christianity that is closer to the ‘truth’ of Jesus than the Catholic Worker movement. That said, I can’t say that I adhere to all that she believed in — not because I don’t believe it to be true but because I am not strong enough to do it!”
As my friend points out, Day’s vision and demands are rather overwhelming. Spend a few moments reflecting on this gem from her: “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” Not those that deserve it the most or reciprocate it the best, but the groups or individuals I most fear, avoid or detest. That’s a sobering commentary on the human capacity for self-justification and rationalization. “For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Do not even unbelievers do the same?” (Mt 5:46).
Just as the human person is called homo sapiens (the wise or rational being/creature) or homo faber (the toolmaking being/creature), he or she is also described accurately as homo religiosis, (the religious being/creature). No civilization in recorded history has lacked the universal thirst for self-transcendence or drive to recognize ultimate meaning in existence, realities which should always lead us, like Day, to some form of moral stocktaking, inner conversion and ethical action. These experiences are not the exclusive result of a “Christian” call, but of a human one.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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