Street roots,
Sept. 14, 2012
did not in any way diminish her abiding
commitment to justice for the poor and
fairness for common workers. If anything it
strengthened her resolve to confront the
forces of brute exploitation and injustice.
She pondered what might transpire if her
church engaged in the challenging work of
social justice rather than primarily in works
of charity. “How I longed to make a synthesis
reconciling body and soul, this world and the
next,” Day wrote.
She and Batterham parted ways. Forest
writes: “The five years following Dorothy’s
entrance into the Catholic Church centered
on her search to find something that didn’t
yet exist: a way of supporting herself and
Tamar through work that linked her religious
faith, her commitment to social justice, and
her vocation as a writer. It was a journey in
the dark.”
In 1932 Day had her first meeting with
Peter Maurin, a Frenchman, fellow Catholic
and hobo philosopher. He helped her
synthesize her spiritual and political beliefs
into a profound outlook that would embody
activism, living in community, voluntary
poverty, direct service to the poor and a
prayerful adherence to the Christian
Gospels. After introducing himself, Maurin
said, “George Schuster, editor of
Commonweal, told me to look you up. Also, a
red-haired Irish Communist in Union Square
told me to see you. He says we think alike.”
It was an auspicious meeting that would lead
to a long collaboration and give birth to The
Catholic Worker.
The history of The Catholic Worker
presents a colorful panoply of Christian
anarchism and personalism in action. In
1955, Day, fellow Catholic Workers and
pacifist friends defied New York’s statewide
air raid drill, requiring all citizens to get off
the street as sirens supposedly announced
an imminent nuclear attack. They were
arrested. Protests continued during
successive drills until finally in 1960 no more
A,-
drills were initiated. In July 1963, the
Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement
BY JOE M A R T IN
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N I S T
uthor Jim Forest knew Dorothy Day.
In the early ’60s he edited “The
Catholic Worker” paper, which has
never sold for more than a penny a copy
since its first edition was handed out in
Union Square in New York City on May 1,
1933. “All Is Grace” is Forest’s elegant
homage to Day, the Catholic Worker
movement she co-founded and the many
remarkable people who were part of her
eventful life. Her approach inspires the
founding principles behind several grassroots
organizations in Portland, including Street
Roots, Sisters of the Road and Blanchet
House. She was 83 when she died in 1980.
The book is splendidly enhanced by a terrific
array of photographs and artwork.
Day was an unlikely convert to
Catholicism. Her childhood home was not a
particularly religious one, although she had
been baptized in the Episcopal Church. As a
young woman she was immersed in the
leftist politics of early-20th-century America.
She had been arrested a few times — once at
a suffragette protest in Washington, D.C.,
A
All is Grace - A
biography of
Dorothy Day, by
Jim Forrest
and again in Chicago when a Red Squad
descended upon her rooming house, which
was connected with the Industrial Workers
of the World, the Wobblies.
Day wrote for periodicals such as “The
Call” and “The Masses.” She conducted an
interview with Leon Trotsky shortly before
he returned to Russia where, with other
Bolsheviks, he precipitated a revolution. Her
politics were steeped in the bohemianism of
the day. She had friendships with early labor
leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (memorialized
in songwriter Joe Hill’s “The Rebel Girl”)
author Malcolm Cowley and playwright
Eugene O’Neill.
A persistent, burgeoning, spiritual
yearning within Day’s innermost being
became unshakable. In 1926, her common-
law relationship with Forster Batterham
resulted in the birth of Day’s only child,
Tamar. “No human creature could receive or
contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I
often felt after the birth of my child. With
this came the need to worship, to adore.”
In 1927 Day was baptized in the Roman
Catholic Church. Her turn to a spiritual faith
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n u n i nvw Ed i
Catholic Worker organized the first protest
against the United States’ involvement in
Vietnam.
Day was a devout Catholic and practiced
her faith with the same intensity she brought
to her political activities and writing. She
prayed for the sick and for those who had
committed suicide, bcause she contended
that it is never too late to ask for God’s
mercy. Forest writes: “It seemed to me
Dorothy prayed as if lives depended on it,
and no doubt some did. The physician
Robert Coles of Harvard Medical School
credited Dorothy’s prayers with the
miraculous cure of his wife. She had been
dying of cancer but — to the astonishment of
her physicians — recovered.”
It has been said that Marxism and
socialism were far too moderate for Day.
Mike Gold had joined the American
Communist Party in 1919. He would become
the editor of the party’s The Daily Worker.
He and the young Day were affectionate
friends and she had once suggested that they
might marry. Gold declined and would later
admit his reason: “Because she was too
radical.”
In 1997, her granddaughter, Kate
Hennessy, wrote of Day: “On the one hand,
she has given so many of us a home,
physically and spiritually; on the other, she
has shaken our very foundations.” Jim Forest
concludes his book saying, “I am one of the
many whose foundations were shaken. I am
still wondering what hit me.” Read this lovely
volume and take an exhilarating journey with
an extraordinary woman.
Street Roots is a proud
partner with Jesuit
Volunteer Corps Northwest
and Americorps.