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Dorothy Day

[dey]

Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist turned anarchist, social activist and ultimately a devout Catholic. She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. Day, with Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933, espousing nonviolence, and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden.

Biography

Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Chicago. In 1914, she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship, but dropped out after two years and moved to New York City. Settling on the lower east side, she worked on the staffs of Socialist publications and engaged in anti-war and women's suffrage protests. She spent several months in Greenwich Village, where she became close to Eugene O'Neill. Initially Day lived a bohemian life, with two common-law marriages and an abortion which she later wrote about in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin (1924). With the birth of her daughter, Tamar (1926-2008), she began a period of spiritual awakening which led her to embrace Catholicism, joining the Church in December 1927 with baptism at Our Lady Help of Christians parish on Staten Island.

The Catholic Worker movement started with the Catholic Worker newspaper, created to promote Catholic social teaching and stake out a neutral, pacifist position in the war-torn 1930s. This grew into a "house of hospitality" in the slums of New York City and then a series of farms for the poor to live together communally. The movement quickly spread to other cities in the United States, and to Canada and the United Kingdom; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941. Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.

By the 1960s Day was embraced by Catholics. Yet, although Day had written passionately about women’s rights, free love and birth control in the 1910s, she opposed the sexual revolution of the sixties, saying she had seen the ill-effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s. Day had a progressive attitude toward social and economic rights, alloyed with a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality and piety. She was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World ('Wobblies').

In 1971 Day was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth.' Day was accorded many other honors in her last decade, including the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame, in 1972.

Day was buried in Resurrection Cemetery on Staten Island, just a few blocks from the location of the beachside cottage where she first became interested in Catholicism. She was proposed for sainthood by the Claretian Missionaries in 1983. Pope John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open Day's "cause" in March of 2000, naming her a Servant of God.

Legacy

Her autobiography The Long Loneliness was published in 1952. Day's account of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes, was published in 1963. A popular movie called Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story was produced in 1996 about the life and struggles that Day endured. Day was portrayed by Moira Kelly and Peter Maurin was portrayed by Martin Sheen, both known for their roles on The West Wing television series in the United States. The first full-length documentary about her, Dorothy Day: Don't Call Me a Saint, premiered at Marquette University, where her papers are housed, on November 29, 2005. Her diaries, edited by Robert Ellsberg, were published by the Marquette University Press in 2008.

Publisher, pacifist, civil disobedient, altruist for her work with the poor and founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Day was awarded the Courage of Conscience award September 6, 1992.

Memorialization

A named professorship exists in the honor of Dorothy Day at the School of Law of St. John's University, a Catholic university in Queens, New York, United States, currently occupied by labor law scholar David L. Gregory.