Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 8, 1897. After surviving the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, the Day family moved into a flat in Chicago's South Side. It was a big step down in the world made necessary because John Day was out of work. Day understands of the shame people feel when they Fail in their efforts dated from this time. (Miller, p.4)
When John Day was appointed sports editor of a Chicago newspaper, the Day family moved into a comfortable house on the North Side. Here Dorothy began to read books that stirred her conscience. Upon Sinclair's Novel, The Jungle, inspired Day to take long walks in poor Neighbourhoods in Chicago's South Side. It was the start of a life-long Attraction to areas many people avoid. Day won a scholarship that brought Her to the University of Illinois Campus at Urbana in the fall of 1914. But she was a reluctant scholar. Her reading was in a radical social direction. (Miller, p.5) She avoided Campus social life and insisted on supporting herself rather than live On money from her father. Dropping out of college two years later, she moved to New York where she Found a job as a reporter for The Call, the city's only socialist daily. She covered rallies and demonstrations and interviewed people ranging From butlers and butlers to labour organisers and revolutionaries.
She next Worked for The Masses, a magazine that opposed American Involvement in the European war. In September, the Post Office rescinded The magazine's mailing permit. Federal officers seized back issues, Manuscripts, subscriber lists and correspondence. Five editors were Charged with sedition. In November 1917 Day went to prison for being one of forty women in Front of the White House protesting women's exclusion from the Electorate. Arriving at a rural workhouse, the women were roughly Handled. The women responded with a hunger strike. Finally they were Freed by presidential order. Returning to New York, Day felt that journalism was a meagre response to A world at war. In the spring of 1918, she signed up for a nurse's Training program in Brooklyn. Her conviction that the social order was unjust changed in no Substantial way from her adolescence until her death, though she never Identified herself with any political party. (Forest, p.23)
Her Religious development was a slower process. (Miller, p.6) As a child she Had attended services at an Episcopal Church. As a young journalist in New York, she would sometimes make late-at-night visits to St. Joseph's Catholic Church. In 1922, in Chicago working as a reporter, she roomed with three young Women who went to Mass every Sunday and holy day and set aside time each Day for prayer. It was clear to her that «worship, adoration, Thanksgiving, supplication... were the noblest acts of which we are Capable in this life.»(Day, p.8) Her next job was with a newspaper in New Orleans. Back in New York in 1924, Day bought a beach cottage on Staten Island using money from the Sale of movie rights for a novel. She also began a four-year common-law Marriage with Forster Batterham, an English botanist she had met through Friends in Manhattan. Batterham was an anarchist opposed to marriage and Religion. In a world of such cruelty, he found it impossible to believe In a God. (Miller, p.6) It grieved her that Batterham didn't sense God's Presence within the natural world. «How can there be no God,» she asked, «when there are all these beautiful things?»(Day, p.11) His irritation With her «absorption in the supernatural» would lead them to quarrel. (Miller, p.7) What moved everything to a different plane for her was pregnancy. She Had been pregnant once before, years earlier, as the result of a love Affair with a journalist.
This resulted in the great tragedy of her Life, an abortion. The affair and its awful aftermath had been the Subject of her novel, The Eleventh Virgin. Her pregnancy with Batterham Seemed to Day nothing less than a miracle. But Batterham didn't believe In bringing children into such a violent world. On March 3, 1927, Tamar Theresa Day was born. Day could think of nothing Better to do with the gratitude that overwhelmed her than arrange Tamar's baptism in the Catholic Church. «I did not want my child to Flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe, and I wanted my Child to believe, and if belonging to a Church would give her so Inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was to have her baptised a Catholic.»(Day, P.16) After Tamar's baptism, there was a permanent break with Batterham. In the winter of 1932 Day travelled to Washington, D. C., to report for Commonweal and America magazines on the Hunger March. Day watched the Protesters parade down the streets of Washington carrying signs calling For jobs, unemployment insurance, old age pensions, relief for mothers And children, health care and housing. Back in her apartment in New York, Day met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant 20 years her senior. Maurin, a Former Christian Brother, had left France for Canada in 1908 and later made His way to the United States.
When he met Day, he was handyman at a Catholic boys' camp in Upstate New York, receiving meals, use of the chaplain's library, living Space in the barn and occasional pocket money. During his years of wandering, Maurin had come to a Franciscan attitude, embracing poverty as a vocation. His celibate, unencumbered life offered time for study and prayer, out of which A vision had taken form of a social order, instilled with basic values of the Gospel. A born teacher, he found willing listeners, among them George Shuster, editor of Commonweal magazine, who gave him Day's address. What Day should do, Maurin said, was start a paper to publicise Catholic social teaching and Promote steps to bring about the peaceful transformation of society. Day Found that the Paulist Press was willing to print 2,500 copies of an Eight-page tabloid paper for $57. Her kitchen was the new paper's Editorial office. She decided to sell the paper for a penny a copy, «so Cheap that anyone could afford to buy it.»(Day, p.7) On May 1, the first copies of The Catholic Worker were handed out on Union Square. Few publishing ventures meet with such immediate success. By December, 100,000 copies were being printed each month. Readers found a unique Voice in The Catholic Worker.
It expressed dissatisfaction with the Social order and took the side of labour unions, but its vision of the Ideal future challenged both urbanisation and industrialism. (Miller, P.14) For the first half year The Catholic Worker was only a newspaper, but as Winter approached, homeless people began to knock on the door. Maurin's Essays in the paper were calling for renewal of the ancient Christian Practice of hospitality to those who were homeless. Miller, p.14) these Way followers of Christ could respond to Jesus' words: «I was a stranger And you took me in.» Maurin opposed the idea that Christians should take Care only of their friends and leave care of strangers to impersonal Charitable agencies. (Miller, p.14) By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for ten women, Soon after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936 the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no Enlargement could possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they Were men, Day wrote, «grey men, the colour of lifeless trees and bushes And winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the Rising sap of faith.»(Day, p.13) Many were surprised that, in contrast With most charitable centres, no one at the Catholic Worker set about Reforming them. A crucifix on the wall was the only unmistakable Evidence of the faith of those welcoming them.
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Dorothy Day
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