Earlier this month Pope Francis celebrated his first year as head of the Roman Catholic Church. Media around the world marked the occasion by reflecting on what many are regarding as one of history’s most radical pontiffs.
Francis’ calls for better distribution of wealth have been a central talking point in this debate. Yet there have long been figures and groups in the Catholic community who have called for an end to wealth inequality. One of the most prominent and influential of these is Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.
Breadline outside Catholic Worker offices circa 1938
Dorothy was born in New York in 1897 at the start of a century that would see the United States and the world gripped by social change and revolution. In 1904 Dorothy Day and her family moved to San Francisco after her father took a job as a sports writer for a newspaper in the city. Two years later the Days were caught up in one of the worst natural disasters to hit America after 80% of San Francisco was destroyed by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
With the newspaper's facilities destroyed Dorothy’s father was forced to look for new employment and the Days relocated to Chicago. The earthquake left a strong and lasting impression on the young Dorothy who was amazed by the self-sacrifice of the people of San Francisco in reaction to this devastating event. The resulting move to Chicago was, however, even more integral to Dorothy’s life.
Though both Christian, Dorothy’s parents had been nominally religious with a lax attitude toward church attendance. Despite this, Dorothy had become very interested in the bible and its teachings from a young age. In Chicago her religious awakening progressed as she began to regularly attend the local Episcopal church when she was ten years old - she was soon baptised and later confirmed here.
Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me a Saint
Yet Dorothy was also undergoing a social and political awakening at this stage in her life. The Day family found themselves fallen on hard times as Dorothy’s father struggled to find work in Chicago. As a result they were forced to move into a tenement flat and Dorothy experienced firsthand the hardships of poverty. Though this period of poverty ended when her father was made sports editor of a Chicago newspaper, the experience of impoverishment never left Dorothy.
In 1914 Dorothy was awarded a scholarship to the University of Illinois. She was sixteen years old and intent on supporting herself. For the next two years she did just that. Working for room and board Dorothy worked odd jobs and lived very sparingly. This lifestyle further enamoured her to the rising radical left and she joined the university’s Socialist Party. At the same time, however, her interest in religion continued to grow.
Though not entirely incompatible by nature, socialism and religion had found themselves arrayed against one another at the start of the 20th century as each condemned the other. A few figures like Leo Tolstoy had gone some way towards reconciling the two, but philosophies like Christian Anarchism were dwarfed by the more major and clashing political and religious movements. Dorothy’s youthful vigour carried her in the direction of the radical left and, though she doesn’t seem to have ever lost her belief in god, she came to oppose organized religion during her time in college.
Never the greatest of scholars, Dorothy spent most of her college life working part-time, writing for the local newspaper, or furthering her studies of social thought and conditions. In 1916 she dropped out of college and moved to New York with her family. Following in her father’s footsteps Dorothy embarked on a journalistic career and took up a post at the (very socialist) daily newspaper The Call.
Dorothy with her grandchildren in 1958
This was a time of massive social upheaval with the Western world reacted to the destruction and fallout of the First World War and the emergence of the first communist nation following the two Russian Revolutions. The United States was no exception to this era of revolution and change and Dorothy covered a myriad of social issues and campaigns during her time at The Call.
Dorothy soon moved to another left-wing publication, The Masses, which was vocally opposed to US involvement in the First World War. In September 1917 The Masses was shut down, its materials confiscated, and five of its editors charged with sedition. Dorothy was involved in getting the last issue of the magazine out but found herself somewhat adrift in its wake. Two months later she was arrested in front of the White House for her part in the suffragette Silent Sentinel protests.
Dorothy was sentenced to 30 days in jail, as were a number of other suffragettes arrested on the same day. Reacting to their imprisonment and treatment, some of the women, Dorothy included, went on hunger strike. After fifteen days of her sentence served, ten of them without food, Dorothy was released along with a number of other women. This was a marked moment in Dorothy’s life as she moved from sideline observer to frontline activist.
The end of the First World War and the introduction of universal suffrage saw the social and political landscape of the United States change drastically. Dorothy was one of the many young people caught on the crest of this wave of uncertainty and hope. After a brief foray into the world of nursing Dorothy returned to writing and joined the growing bohemian movement. This period saw Dorothy become increasingly sexually and socially active, developing close relationships with a number of prominent American Communists.
Dorothy Day (Center) in 1917
In 1924 Dorothy published her first novel, the semi-autobiographical The Eleventh Virigin. Mainly written during a year spent in Europe, this tale drew on Dorothy’s experiences with one of her past lovers, Lionel Moise. After learning that Dorothy was pregnant Moise threatened to leave her if she didn’t have an abortion. Dorothy terminated the pregnancy and Moise left her soon after.
With the proceeds of The Eleventh Virgin and the sale of the movie rights Dorothy bought a beach cottage in Staten Island. By this stage she had taken on a new lover - Forster Batterham. A botanist by trade, Batterham strongly identified himself as an anarchist and fiercely opposed to religion. This put him at odds with Dorothy whose interest in religion and the divine was being renewed. Then in 1925 Dorothy discovered she was pregnant, much to her delight and Batterham’s dismay.
Batterham was opposed to bringing a child into what he saw as a terribly violent world and began to drift from Dorothy as the pregnancy progressed. The rekindling of Dorothy’s religion was fuelling the drift between the two. The birth of their daughter, Tamar Teresa, in 1926 didn’t mend the gap which began to widen after Dorothy befriended Sister Aloysia and began to educate herself in the Catholic Faith.
In July 1927, Dorothy had her daughter baptised. Batterham refused to attend the ceremony and his relationship with Dorothy degenerated further still, ending permanently in late December. Dorothy then became a member of the Catholic Church on the December 28th after being baptised, with Sister Aloysia as her godmother. 1929 saw Dorothy move to California with Tamar to take up a contract as a writer for Pathé Motion Pictures.
Dorothy Lange's 1936, Migrant Mother, Florence Owens Thompson
The Wall Street Crash, however, put an end to this contract and Day returned to New York and her career as a journalist. The Great Depression that followed the Crash hit many Americans hard and tales and images of poverty and woe dominated the media and popular conscious of the time. Dorothy was one of the journalists who covered the ongoing suffering during this period and this brought her to the attention of the Catholic social activist and writer Peter Maurin.
Peter and Dorothy were dissatisfied with the activist newspapers on offer at the time as none supported both religion and left leaning politics or ideologies. In reaction to this they launched the Catholic Worker on May Day 1933. Being sold for only a cent, the paper looked to help those worst affected by the Great Depression, highlighting their plight, covering strike and industrial actions, and encouraging local initiatives. Unlike other socialist and left-wing newspapers of the time the Catholic Worker, as the name indicates, promoted Catholic social endeavours and teachings.
Though the plan had originally been limited to producing a Catholic newspaper for the working class and destitute of America the remit of the Catholic Worker soon expanded. In the winter of 1933 Dorothy and Peter found a number of homeless and needy calling to the offices of the Catholic Worker. They began to feed and clothe those callers as best they could and soon established the first ‘house of hospitality’. Since then the Catholic Worker Movement has expanded and established independent houses of hospitality in many different corners of the globe with figures like Martin Sheen and Thomas Merton supporting the movement.
Listen in as ‘Talking History’ looks at the life of this Servant of God who was put forward for canonisation by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in November 2012. Join Patrick as he and his panel of experts delve into the life and times of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers Movement. How did Dorothy reconcile her faith, her pacifism, and her self-professed anarchism during the Spanish Civil War? What was America’s reaction to her activism and opposition to military involvement in the Second World War after Pearl Harbour? And why was she arrested numerous times in the 1950s?
