Dorothy Day and Private Property

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It is easy claiming to be a pacifist when you know others will be the tip of the spear

It is easy claiming to be anarchist knowing full good and well you have law to protect you.

It is easy being anti capitalistic when your pay check comes from government or charities.

It is easy being against private property when you have no private property to lose.
 
Dorothy Day - along with a body of other Catholic figures - endorsed distributism.

I haven’t read the encyclicals you posted but the Church doesn’t view private property to be a right in the same way it views life as a right. It is circumstantial. For example, governments sometimes acquire private property to build transportation or other projects and the Church historically has not condemned this or called it an abuse.

The Popes in the late 19th century/early 20th were dealing with communist revolutionaries so they had a lot of work to do in terms of spreading the message that man wasn’t reducible to his or her labor or reducible to an economic asset.
 
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phil3 said:
It is easy being anti capitalistic when your pay check comes from government or charities.

It is easy being against private property when you have no private property to lose.
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Except Dorothy Day was against the welfare state and was for private property.
 
TK421 said:
Dorothy Day - along with a body of other Catholic figures - endorsed distributism.

I haven’t read the encyclicals you posted but the Church doesn’t view private property to be a right in the same way it views life as a right. It is circumstantial. For example, governments sometimes acquire private property to build transportation or other projects and the Church historically has not condemned this or called it an abuse.

The Popes in the late 19th century/early 20th were dealing with communist revolutionaries so they had a lot of work to do in terms of spreading the message that man wasn’t reducible to his or her labor or reducible to an economic asset.
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I think you are correct; the Church does not view private property the same way it views life (though it does reject the absolute abolition of private property).

Here was my thought process:
  1. Day writes an article in support of Castro and his revolution
  2. Castro is a communist and wants all property to be owned by the State (which he accomplishes later)
  3. Various Papal Encyclicals (See above answers) have condemned this notion
I believe this leads to two possible conclusions:
  1. Day mistakenly supported Castro without knowing what he was planning to do with Cuba.
OR
  1. Day, already knowing what Castro was planning and knowing Church teaching on the proper understanding of property, supported Castro.
Maybe I am missing something, but I can’t think of any other alternatives.
 
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Not everything about Cuba is bad. Could you specifically tell me what you read in that Day article that you see as a conflict with official Church teaching? A sentence or paragraph might be helpful versus your overall impression of the article.

Peace.
 
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TK421 said:
Not everything about Cuba is bad. Could you specifically tell me what you read in that Day article that you see as a conflict with official Church teaching? A sentence or paragraph might be helpful versus your overall impression of the article.

Peace.
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I don’t know enough about Cuba to tell you all the good and bad, but I am mainly focusing on the way the Cuban government handles private property. The Cuban government is a self-declared Communist State which limits private property. Only recently, first in 2011 then in 2018, did Cuba begin to allow individuals to hold property.

Day, it appears, supported Castro. In the paragraph I quoted in the OP, she specifically focused on commune living in Cuba. I will requote the paragraph from her article here:
In regard to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, she [Day] wrote in July 1961: “We are on the side of the revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man, and that the new concept is not so new. There is a Christian communism and a Christian capitalism… We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba… God bless Castro and all those who are seeing Christ in the poor. God bless all those who are seeking the brotherhood of man because in loving their brothers they love God even though they deny Him.”
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The Church has said on many occasions in many encyclicals that it is absolutely wrong for a State (in this case Cuba) to abolish private property. Here is a short quote from the Papal Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (para 49):
The natural right itself both of owning goods privately and of passing them on by inheritance ought always to remain intact and inviolate, since this indeed is a right that the State cannot take away: “For man is older than the State,”
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I do not doubt Day’s good intentions, but if she was aware of what Castro was planning with Cuba in her 1962 remarks, then it seems like she was contradicting Church teaching.

I’m not sure how to make sense out of all this! Thanks for the help 🙂
 
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@TheWryWren

Catholics in the 1st century and onward (such as in the book of Acts) sometimes lived in voluntary communes where people were given according to their need, including the elderly and widows. The rich sold everything they had for the sake of Christ. On the surface, communism follows a similar principle but it is distorted by the state using violence in order to achieve those ends. The ends do not justify the means.
 
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Thanks for the insight @TK421! So, would you say that Day mistakenly thought Castro was planning on doing something similar to 1st century Christians?
 
I’ve read enough about Day to know with 100% certainty that she absolutely wouldn’t support the state seizing everybody’s property at the end of a barrel, though I admit I don’t have an exact quote handy. Maybe somebody else can help.
 
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TK421 said:
I’ve read enough about Day to know with 100% certainty that she absolutely wouldn’t support the state seizing everybody’s property at the end of a barrel, though I admit I don’t have an exact quote handy. Maybe somebody else can help.
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Thanks, that helps. As I mentioned earlier, I have only read her autobiography. It’s a good book, but it doesn’t really provide a lot of perspective into a lot of her actions. I’ll try to work on reading more of her other writings to get a better feel for how she blends Catholicism into politics 🙂
 
TheWryWren said:
Maybe I am missing something, but I can’t think of any other alternatives.
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Other thing, we look back with our modern eyes. The world was not awash in a 24/7/365 news opinion cycle when Dorothy Day was writing. She could not check the Reddit thread or tweets coming from Cuba.
 
TheLittleLady said:
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TheWryWren:
Maybe I am missing something, but I can’t think of any other alternatives.
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Other thing, we look back with our modern eyes. The world was not awash in a 24/7/365 news opinion cycle when Dorothy Day was writing. She could not check the Reddit thread or tweets coming from Cuba.
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True, though she did make an actual trip to Cuba!
 
TheWryWren said:
Thanks, that helps. As I mentioned earlier, I have only read her autobiography. It’s a good book, but it doesn’t really provide a lot of perspective into a lot of her actions. I’ll try to work on reading more of her other writings to get a better feel for how she blends Catholicism into politics 🙂
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Most of her articles are available here.

https://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/search.html
 
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