St. Christopher Ladies Guild Woman of the Month

Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1987)

Since November is the month in which we honor and celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints, our featured Woman of the Month is Dorothy Day, whose life and legacy is currently being reviewed by the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. This formal review of Dorothy’s life will no doubt contain countless examples of the way in which she lived courageously in service to the poor and sought to rid the world of social injustice through her actions, prayers, and work as a journalist. Born in New York City on November 8, 1897, her life spanned the Women’s Suffrage movement, the Great Depression, both World Wars, and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In all of these events, Dorothy took a brave and often controversial approach to leading a Chrisitian life that boldly challenged the Catholic Church to take a more active stance against socio-political injustice and engage with the bold and tumultuous spirit of America in the early to mid-twentieth century. 

Growing up in a working-class family in Brooklyn, New York, Dorothy admits to having a comfortable childhood. Her early knowledge of harsh realities regarding economic and social disparities was influenced by her own observations living in a socially conscious household within walking distance of the tenement district. Her parents were Episcopalians, and although they rarely attended Church, Dorothy and her four siblings grew up reading the Bible. She learned to recognize ways in which her parents and her community consciously chose to exemplify Christian values through neighborly generosity, especially during times of crisis. When her father, a sportswriter, took a job at a newspaper firm and moved the family to San Francisco, Dorothy recalls being moved by the sense of community and sacrifice that seemed to sustain recovery efforts during the Great Earthquake of 1906 (Long Loneliness, 20-21). Her father’s firm suffered huge losses and the family was forced to briefly relocate to Chicago before moving back to New York City. Her passionate desire to serve the downtrodden also motivated her decision to become a nurse in her early twenties at the height of yet another crisis, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, a disaster even more deadly than the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Long Loneliness, 87).

Dorothy’s calling to serve the poor and fight for the rights of the disadvantaged, often came at great personal cost. She was arrested four times for civil disobedience, including a 1917 protest on behalf of the Women’s Suffrage movement that made headlines around the country because Dorothy and her fellow agitators engaged in a fifteen day hunger strike before being released. She became active in socialist, communist, and left-leaning circles, and at various times worked as a journalist promoting the ideas of the Leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the American Socialist Party, both of which were criticized for encouraging radical anarchism that was antithetical to the American way of life. To Dorothy, the extreme and controversial activism of the progressive left represented a more dynamic path to social revolution than the more conservative approach taken by religious charities. In particular, she did not hide her criticism of Christian institutions, who she accused of lacking the backbone needed to take a firm stance against poverty and injustice, claiming that “…changing the world order was not their priority because they benefited in so many ways from the unjust and unequal systems” (Mayfield, 14). 

Ironically, her left-leaning proclivity, desire to unite the masses, and empathy for the common man ultimately drew Dorothy to religion and the Catholic Church. This unexpected transformation was first prompted by the birth of her only child, Tamar Teresa. Tamar was the product of Dorothy’s romantic relationship with socialist activist Forester Batterham, who vehemently opposed organized religion and consequently also refused to partake in the institution of marriage. In her autobiography, Dorothy describes the time when she was pregnant with Tamar as a period of calm happiness, “It was a peace, curiously enough, divided against itself. I was happy but my very happiness made me know that there was a greater happiness to be obtained from life than any I had ever known. I began to think, to weigh things, and it was at this time that I began consciously to pray more” (Long Loneliness, 116). In her work as a journalist and political activist, Dorothy had witnessed oppressed members of the working and poorest classes unite and find refuge in the Catholic Church. These experiences caused her to regard Catholicism as the religion of the masses and she made it her secret mission to baptize her daughter in the Catholic faith and begin attending mass herself (Long Loneliness, 139). Dorothy eventually found private, hidden devotion to be unfulfilling and contradictory to her personal identity. Ironically, she describes her conversion as an expansion of her extreme political philosophies,“My very experience as a radical, my whole make-up, led me to want to associate myself with others, with the masses, in loving and praising God” (Long Loneliness,  139). Forester and many of her left-leaning friends disassociated with Dorothy after she and her daughter became practicing Catholics and moved back to New York City.

Her full conversion to Catholicism was further realized through her friendship with Peter Maurin. Maurin was an eccentric Catholic revolutionary from France who was living poor and homeless on the streets of New York preaching the gospel. Despite never receiving any formal education, Maurin was well-versed in scripture, Catholic theology, and the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. He first sought out Dorothy in 1933 after listening to her agitated speech at a protest march for worker’s rights and reading her radical journal articles in the labor union paper. Maurin provided Dorothy with the spiritual education she lacked, offering her an alternative perspective on the way that Catholic doctrine and socio-political activism could unite for the greater good. 

Together they co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, a revolutionary society dedicated to advocacy and service for the poor and oppressed. Their work began with the establishment of several Hospitality Houses, some of which are still in existence today. Each House became a sort of organically-produced commune that sheltered not only the poor and destitute, but also working-class scholars and activists that voluntarily chose to live among the poor. Dorothy and Peter promoted voluntary poverty as the way to live like Christ and rid the world of injustice by sacrificing for the greater good and mutual aid of those less fortunate (Long Loneliness, 195). The Hospitality Houses also served as hubs for many social justice operations and projects, such as the famous Catholic Worker newspaper, which provided a Catholic perspective on labor unions, workers rights, and left-leaning arguments that wealth and prosperity should be equally distributed among all citizens to minimize destitution and misery. 

Dorothy and Peter believed that the Catholic Worker Movement consummated the spiritual and corporal acts of mercy as outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas: the corporal works to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, harbor the harborless, ransom the captive, visit the sick, and bury the dead; and the spiritual works to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to admonish sinners, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive offenses willingly, to comfort the afflicted, and to pray for the living and the dead (Long Loneliness, 244). Despite this admirable mission, Dorothy and the Catholic Worker Movement often found themselves at odds with the greater institution of The Catholic Church and its leaders, who worried the left-leaning philosophies that permeated the movement’s core and promoted radical activism would undermine public and political sympathy for the Church. Years later, when addressing the United States congress in 2015, Pope Francis described Dorothy Day as one of the most exemplary Americans in history, stating that we should all strive to be more like her. How ironic that a known criminal and radical activist, deemed unpatriotic and subversive to the Church’s agenda, would go on to later be praised by the Pope as the ultimate American Catholic and receive an unanimous endorsement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for canonization. 

Like nearly all Saints, Dorothy’s life is not unmarked by controversy, sin, and a desire to challenge what is accepted and conventional. Her current status in the multi-year process to Sainthood grants her the title Servant of God Dorothy Day, and while this certainly bequeaths great honor, it also comes with great scrutiny. Dorothy herself balked at the idea of being labeled a saint, claiming that “When they call you a saint it means basically that you are not to be taken seriously” (Martin). While easily misunderstood, Dorothy’s claim was not meant to discredit the extraordinary works and wisdom of the many Saints that she venerated and admired throughout her life. Instead, Dorothy humbly dismissed any references to sainthood because she feared that such a magnanimous title would preclude regular, ordinary people from believing they could continue her work and endeavor to make their own change in the world. Although she made it her vocation to feed the hungry and defend the helpless, she knew that this mission would never be done. As Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Long Loneliness, 205). Because of this promise, Servant of God Dorothy Day’s life, legacy, and potential canonization serves to challenge us all to accept our own callings to be saints and to courageously strive to bring more mercy and love to the world.

You can find the The Novena for the United States here.