CATHOLIC WoRKER Movement
Founded on New York's Lower East Side during the depths of the Depression in 1933, the anarchistic Catholic Worker movement was the brainchild of two colorful personalities: Peter Maurin (1877-1949), an eccentric French émigré philosopher, and Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a Brooklyn-born former Wobbly and Socialist with Communist sympathies who.
had become a Catholic convert in 1927. Item= braces four basic tenets: voluntary poverty (to.
build solidarity with the oppressed), and the achievement of social justice through nonviolent activism, pacifism, and personalism (a stress on the individual’s responsibility to remake society through direct, personal intervention).
Primary sources for the Catholic Worker movement's ideas are the life of Jesus, as recorded in the four Gospels of the New Testament, as well as papal encyclicals such as Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931). In addition, the lives of such saints as Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux and the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and ‘others have been important influences. Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality, which feed and shelter the poor, first appeared in 1933 in New York City and then throughout the United States (especially in the Northeast and Midwest) as wellas, toa lesser degree, abroad.
Today the Houses of Hospitality in the United States number about one hundred. Less longlived have been the dozen or so Catholic Worker farming communes that have appeated in the United States since 1933,
Inspiring Day with his ideas, Maurin left the practical execution of them largely to her.
In the Catholic church of the 1930s, such a role at the helm of a radical lay organization was rare for a woman—especially one who, like Day, was a Catholic convert, single parent, and veteran of the Old Left. For Day, the Catholic Worker movement united the secular radical activism of her youth with the traditional Catholic piety of her later adulthood.
Indeed, as a Catholic Worker she continued her civil-disobedience activities, including several arrests and jailings in the period 195560 resulting from her protests against civilian defense air-raid drills in New York City.
A former writer for the Socialist Call, the ‘Masses, and the Liberator, Day instinctively recognized the centeality of reform journalism to the Catholic Worker cause. On May Day, 1933, the first issue of the movement's tabloidsize paper, the Catholic Worker, was distrib uted in Union Square. Day remained publisher, editor, and chief writer until her death, living in voluntary poverty at St. Joseph's, the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in New York City.
She attracted artists such as Fritz Fichenberg, Adé Bethune, and Rita Corbin, and writers such as Jacques Maritain, J. F Powers, Lewis Mumford, Claude McKay, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Danilo Dolci, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Thomas Merton, and Michael Harrington. Through the Spanish Civil War, World War Il (when internal discord over the pacifism issue threatened to split the movement and subscriptions plummeted to 50,500), the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, Day hewed the editorial line to social justice and pacifism. Circulation peaked at about 100,000, where it remains today, and the Catholic Worker may be considered one (of the most significant (and editorially consistent) advocacy publications in U.S. history.
Over the years, the radical stance of the Catholic Worker movement and its paper has attracted the close serutiny of both the Catholic church hierarchy and J Edgar Hoover's FBI.
However, the Catholic Worker has survived to challenge several generations of Americans to strengthen their commitment to social justice and peace. It has invigorated Catholic, nonCatholic, and secular justice and peace activ= ism, See also: Day, Dorothy; Irish Americans —Nancy L. Roberts
REFERENCES
Coy, Patick G., ed. A Revolution of the Heart: sx says on the Catholic Worker. Philadelphia: Tem ple University Press, 1988
Klejment, Anne, and Alice Kleiment. Dorothy Day and “The Catholic Worker”: A Bibliography and Index. New York: Garland, 1986
Miller, Wiliam D. A Harsh and Dreadtul Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholie Worker Movement New York: Liveright, 1973
—. Dorothy Day: A Biography. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982
Fichl, Mel. Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America, Philadelphia: Temple University ress, 1982.
Robers, Nancy L. Dorothy Day and the “Catholic Worker.” Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984
Stoughton, Judith L. Proud Donkey of Schaerbeeck ‘Ade Bethune, Catholic Worker Arts. St. Cloud MN: Nomth Star Press, 1988