By Hannah Glickstein, Catholic Herald (UK), November 3, 2023
Hannah Glickstein wonders whether canonization might obscure her more ordinary, human message.
Dorothy Day was born in November 1897 and died in November 1980; already declared to be a Servant of God, she is a candidate for canonization. In 2015, Pope Francis singled her out as one of four Americans – alongside Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King – who have made America “great”. But the late Jesuit priest Fr Daniel Berrigan said that to canonize Day would be a “demotion”. Her legacy is of vital importance to 21st-century Catholics. Does her putative sainthood run the risk of diminishing it somehow?
Day was something of an outsider: a convert who, at times, had a complex relationship with the Church. Though orthodox, she was troubled by what she perceived to be the Vatican’s failure officially to condemn the Nazi regime. She faced criticism from within the Church for stubborn pacifism and early sympathy with the Communist cause, though she – unlike many of her closest friends – was never a party member. Day herself was uncomfortable with insinuations that she was especially holy. In the early days, in Little Italy, locals who witnessed Day’s daily attendance at Mass and her work with the poor would sometimes call her a saint, to which she replied: “Bullshit.”
Her legacy as co-founder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker newspaper is well known. Begun at the height of the Great Depression, the paper’s circulation rose from 2,500, in 1933, to 110,000 by mid-1935. The paper carried articles that were not always palatable to the Church hierarchy. Thomas Merton used the paper to publish important essays; in October 1961, “The Root of War Is Fear” appeared, arguing that, during the Cold War, America had “entered the ‘post-Christian era’ with a vengeance”. Day was in sympathy with Merton’s thought, though she may not have been aware that he added two important paragraphs, from which that quotation comes, after his essay had been approved by Church censors.
Day opened houses of hospitality associated with the paper in response to the needs of hungry, destitute people who showed up at her door. There are still currently nearly 250 Catholic Worker houses in America and worldwide. The lay movement still operates according to Day and Maurin’s belief in charity, self-sufficiency and respect for the land. Day and Maurin were also the first Catholic leaders in the 20th century to call for a “green revolution”; Day’s concern for the natural world alone might be enough for her to appear as a much-needed prophetic figure in some quarters.
To simplify Day’s legacy, however, might tempt Catholics to forget the more difficult – but just as significant – aspects of who she was. A 2017 biography written by Day’s granddaughter Kate Hennessy draws on memory, anecdote, private letters and conversations with Day’s daughter, Tamar, to reveal Day as a complete human. It is essential reading, because we have to acknowledge Day’s wholeness – her imperfection – if we are to learn all we can from Day’s life and work.
Resisting hagiography as only a close relative could, Hennessy depicts Day as a flawed woman with a temper. When Tamar, aged 23, pregnant with her third child and trapped in an unhappy marriage while living in a house with one woodstove when it was 14 degrees Fahrenheit below zero outside, Day advised her daughter to be less ungrateful. Nor does Hennessy avoid significant failures and divisions in several Catholic Worker houses Day founded.
One thing we understand from Hennessy’s book is how Day learned to accept failure and continue working. The way Day continued to strive for her cause, despite challenges that could have seemed impossible, was totally remarkable. Running the newspaper and the houses despite being an unmarried single mother in the face of residents’ extreme suffering and – often – chaos must have been gruelling, to say the least.
She kept it all going throughout the Second World War, the Cold War and Vietnam, when it would have been easy to think the world could be blown up any minute. Hennessy quotes Day as saying that “faithfulness and perseverance are the greatest virtues – accepting the failure we all must have in our work… since Christ was the world’s greatest failure.” Day’s work can only be understood if we acknowledge the enormity of her struggle.
Day’s joy in life was evident. In her old age, she reminisced about taking her grandchildren outside “to kiss the earth”. Her love of the sea is a repeated theme in Hennessy’s book: Day saw prayers as “pebbles cast into the water, sending ripples in all directions”. Day read and re-read immense quantities of books and always looked forward to reading in bed; her spirituality had a matter-of-factness about it.
Day said that attending to her spiritual life took three hours a day and once commented that her job was “prayer”, but she was also funny. Towards the end of her life, she answered the phone in a Catholic Worker house – in the middle of the night – to a man who was hoping to speak with a lover with whom he desired to renew an affair. He got Day instead, who said “It’s too late. I’m 82,” and then hung up.
Day was able to remain in awe of the natural world and to love the poor, whom she served, throughout her life. If we understand her personal struggle and the incomprehensible strain of running the Catholic Worker amid the tumult of 20th-century America, her achievement becomes even miraculous. If she were to be declared a saint, might Catholics obfuscate what she went through, and what it took for a flawed human being to persevere? Whatever might be in the future, we should nevertheless acknowledge Day’s complexity.
Her achievements, despite everything, offer hope to ordinary believers in our own confused – and sometimes terrifying – times.
Hannah Glickstein is a youth counsellor.
THis article first appeared HERE.