Catholic Worker Movement

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Has anyone here ever worked with them? Volunteered in one of their houses? Thoughts??
 
catholic_rn said:
Has anyone here ever worked with them? Volunteered in one of their houses? Thoughts??
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My understanding is that each Catholic Worker house has its own flavor. Although they share the same name and roughly the same vision, what they focus on may vary wildly. one may focus on hospitality in the form of a soup kitchen and food pantry, while another provides hospitality in the form of a homeless shelter. But both will have Dorothy Day’s and Peter Maurin’s emphasis on being Christ for each other, and this requires openness to the pain of others.

Other Catholic Worker houses may emphasize pacifism, and perhaps protest military installations or nuclear facilities.

I have heard there are Catholic Worker farms, but I don’t know anything about them. 😊

The point I want to make is that you really can’t group all Catholic Worker houses. Each one is different. An individual interested in Day’s and Maurin’s vision may feel like their local Catholic Worker suits them, or they may find that it doesn’t. However, if they move to another city, the situation might be the reverse.
 
Here is a news article about the Catholic Worker house in Waterloo, Iowa.
More than 25 years ago, a woman by the name of Nancy Hemesath, a Franciscan sister of the Dubuque community, wondered how to put the Gospel into action. Quirk wrote of Hemesath as an impetus and the early days in a newsletter put out by Waterloo’s Catholic Worker House.
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At the Catholic Worker House, service always has been a group effort. Numerous churches of a variety of denominations, student groups and caring citizens supply food for community meals, dollars to keep the two homes up and running and talents to assist with repairs.
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The Catholic Worker House, because it is not a non-profit and does not receive federal dollars, operates with less paperwork and more flexibility than many social service organizations. Also, the Waterloo operation, and others like it, do not receive or give tax write-offs, and pays property taxes. This practice, in Day’s perspective, is a way to identify with the poor.
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Any man, woman and child who comes looking for a temporary bed or a hot meal is welcomed, no questions asked, Quirk said. Though visitors, called guests by volunteers, must abide by house rules. Waterloo’s Catholic Worker House includes a home for about six men and a home for about five women and some children.
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wcfcourier.com/news/metro/article_86b3a43c-8e11-5971-a3df-f33c8a7d7349.html

They are an inspiring group of people who live the Gospel message.
 
Strangely, there’s not a whole lot out there on the Catholic Worker Movement.

Here in Chicago, we’ve been a hotbed of many activist organizations for a long, long time. We have an official Catholic Workers’ house, but I think there are splinter communities that are more or less Catholic than the other.

For example, at the beginning of the week of Chicago’s infamous NATO protests, we had some of these “Worker” fragments doing their own protests at Obama’s campaign headquarters:

chicagotribune.com/news/local/natosummit/ct-met-nato-catholic-worker-protest-20120515,0,5818781.story

There is little out there on these splinter groups, or who belongs to them, and how many members exist. I do know one group has a young Jesuit involved from a local university.
 
Elizium23 said:
That is just an evaluation of the website of that organization, and makes no effort to investigate the actual culture, beliefs, or practices of the organization itself.
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You’re probably right… maybe.
 
Dale_M said:
My understanding is that each Catholic Worker house has its own flavor. Although they share the same name and roughly the same vision, what they focus on may vary wildly. one may focus on hospitality in the form of a soup kitchen and food pantry, while another provides hospitality in the form of a homeless shelter. But both will have Dorothy Day’s and Peter Maurin’s emphasis on being Christ for each other, and this requires openness to the pain of others.

Other Catholic Worker houses may emphasize pacifism, and perhaps protest military installations or nuclear facilities.

I have heard there are Catholic Worker farms, but I don’t know anything about them. 😊

The point I want to make is that you really can’t group all Catholic Worker houses. Each one is different. An individual interested in Day’s and Maurin’s vision may feel like their local Catholic Worker suits them, or they may find that it doesn’t. However, if they move to another city, the situation might be the reverse.
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You’re right. I did some research and there are several in our area, though hugely different, and none of them ones I see myself being a part of. There is a Catholic Worker farm several hours away though.
 
catholic_rn said:
You’re right. I did some research and there are several in our area, though hugely different, and none of them ones I see myself being a part of.
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I am sorry to hear that, but think your position is very reasonable. I enjoyed volunteering at the Catholic Worker in Waterloo, Iowa but from what I have heard about other houses, I probably would not with them.
 
I know that Dorothy Day herself was an inspiring woman. I read her autobiogaphy for a course in college and was deeply affected by it. The teaching assistants in the course were all from the Divinity School, and mine had worked with her on the Catholic Worker Newspaper. It was through his inspiration by her that, for one thing, my hitherto disastrous course in college was saved by that course, and, again, through his inspiration by her, that course laid down a foundation that helped me get through unspeakable things in my life soon after and indeed, to date. I hope she is canonized.
 
catholic_rn said:
Has anyone here ever worked with them? Volunteered in one of their houses? Thoughts??
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Franky, I’m skeptical of any organization that uses the term “worker movement.” Sounds too much like socialism to me.
 
Actually, (I feel my nose growing) I don’t remember the book that well. I was into Dietrich Bonhoeffer and wrote my paper about his participation in an assassination attempt on Hitler (being a child of WWII children). But a Swedenborgian student at the Divinity School said that Bonhoeffer was not taken all that seriously as a theologian and my teaching assistant encouraged me to look at Dorothy Day’s pacificism and being a “holy fool,” something I didn’t understand at all at the time. I was more just intellectual and curious about religion and inherited relish at the thought of exterminating those Nazis from my parents, who grew up living in bomb shelters, et cetera, as children.

I guess the teaching assistant was conpelling in his own right. I wish I could thank him. I always kept that in my mind, my inability to comprehend what he presented to my attention about the value of the “holy fool,” I was so rationally and reality-baased.

I think that a female American saint who attempted suicide and had an abortion and always regretted it could present a powerful witness in this confused world we call America.
 
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