Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker?

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Hi,

Is there any reason I shouldn’t invite a person from a local Catholic Worker home to talk to our church group?

Thanks!
J
 
The experences I’ve had have shown them to have socialist leanings.
 
The experences I’ve had have shown them to have socialist leanings.
Actually, and I may be wrong on this, but their may leanings may be more accurately described as Distributist, such as that espoused by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Nevertheless, I went to their website here:

catholicworker.org/AllLinks.cfm#

and noticed that in their Catholic links they link Call to Action. Not a good sign, but maybe you should talk to one of the workers first.
 
I would not be so quick to dismiss anything about Catholic Worker. dorothy Day was always called a communist in her day, as well as Catherine Doherty. It is much easier to call people names than it is to look into what they do. They help the homeless, feed the hungry, etc. Here is her biography by Jim Forest:

catholicworker.org/dorothyday/ddbiographytext.cfm?Number=72

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 tenement 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’s understanding of the shame people feel when they fail in their efforts dated from this time.

http://dorothydayguild.org/images/hercausephoto.jpgIn March of 2000, John Cardinal O’Connor announced the approval of the Holy See for the Archdiocese of New York to open the Cause for the Beatification and Canonization of Dorothy Day. With this approval, Dorothy Day was given the title of Servant of God. Edward Cardinal Egan is continuing the efforts for her canonization.

dorothydayguild.org/hercause.htm
 
Actually, and I may be wrong on this, but their may leanings may be more accurately described as Distributist, such as that espoused by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Nevertheless, I went to their website here:

catholicworker.org/AllLinks.cfm#

and noticed that in their Catholic links they link Call to Action. Not a good sign, but maybe you should talk to one of the workers first.
Love Dorothy Day. Here’s to Dorothy!

She was distributist, but that does not guarantee that the new generation of CW is faithful to her thinking. A Call to Action link is a very bad sign.
 
Many people love Dorothy Day, yet like the Jesuits would she recognize the Catholic Worker movement today?

Call to Action is a pretty telling sign that they have gone off the rails, or the management is not doing a good job of checking the website. Since Call to Action calls for direct opposition to Catholic teachings, I would be very cautious.

God Bless
Scylla
 
It’s a shame we don’t hear more about Dorothy Day’s cofounder at CW, Peter Maurin.

On another board I posted some of his writings, and he wasn’t exactly a tree hugging left winger. Get a load of this:

The Age Of Treason
  1. Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Newman
    considerd liberalism,
    whether it be
    religious, philosophical, or economic,
    the greatest error of the nineteenth century.
  2. Modern liberalism
    is the logical sequence
    of the so-called age of Enlightenment-
    the age of Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine-
    sometimes called the Age of Reason
    in opposition to the Age of Faith.
  3. By sponsoring nationalism and capitalism
    modern liberals
    have given up the search for truth
    and have become paid propagandists.
  4. Modern liberals have ceased to appeal to reason,
    and have chosen to appeal to prejudice.
  5. So the Age of Reason
    has become the age of Treason,
    as Julien Benda points out
    in his book entitled:
    “The treason of the Intellectuals”.
B. Maurin on separation of Church and State

Church And State
  1. Modern Society
    believes in the separation
    of Church and State.
  2. But the Jews
    did not believe in it.
  3. The Greeks
    did not believe in it.
  4. The Romans
    did not believe in it.
  5. The Mediaevals
    did not believe in it.
  6. The Puritians
    did not believe in it.
  7. Modern society
    has separated Church and State
    but it did not separate the State
    from business.
  8. The State is no longer
    a Church’s State.
  9. The State is now
    a Business Men’s State.
 
It’s a shame we don’t hear more about Dorothy Day’s cofounder at CW, Peter Maurin.

On another board I posted some of his writings, and he wasn’t exactly a tree hugging left winger. Get a load of this:

The Age Of Treason
  1. Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Newman
    considerd liberalism,
    whether it be
    religious, philosophical, or economic,
    the greatest error of the nineteenth century.
  2. Modern liberalism
    is the logical sequence
    of the so-called age of Enlightenment-
    the age of Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Paine-
    sometimes called the Age of Reason
    in opposition to the Age of Faith.
  3. By sponsoring nationalism and capitalism
    modern liberals
    have given up the search for truth
    and have become paid propagandists.
  4. Modern liberals have ceased to appeal to reason,
    and have chosen to appeal to prejudice.
  5. So the Age of Reason
    has become the age of Treason,
    as Julien Benda points out
    in his book entitled:
    “The treason of the Intellectuals”.
B. Maurin on separation of Church and State

Church And State
  1. Modern Society
    believes in the separation
    of Church and State.
  2. But the Jews
    did not believe in it.
  3. The Greeks
    did not believe in it.
  4. The Romans
    did not believe in it.
  5. The Mediaevals
    did not believe in it.
  6. The Puritians
    did not believe in it.
  7. Modern society
    has separated Church and State
    but it did not separate the State
    from business.
  8. The State is no longer
    a Church’s State.
  9. The State is now
    a Business Men’s State.
Great stuff, thanks. Do you have a link for it?
 
I’m really a fan of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. His Easy Essays are such a great synopsis of Catholicism and Catholic social theory. Dorothy Day can be a rather confusing figure since her politics were radical in many ways, but in matters of religion and sexual morality she would be considered a Traditionalist. However, I would agree with other posters when they say that Dorothy Day would be appalled at what the Catholic Worker Movement has become, as many of her so-called heirs scorn the beliefs that were most precious to her. I would suggest that you buy some books by Day and Maurin and donate them to your parish, but do not invite an actual Catholic Worker to speak unless you are sure that the person in question is an orthodox Catholic rather than a radical poser.
 
From reading their paper, they (currently) seem like a bunch of religious dissenters and political commies.

Good point on the Jesuits and St. Francis Xavier-while Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin might have been great folks, that doesn’t mean the organization they founded is such today.
 
I have been reading all of this and have not kept up with Catholic Worker. I suppose, as you say, if St Ignatius of Loyola came back, St Francis of Assissi or even St Alphonsus of Liguori…they woudl be appalled at the cushy life that exists today.

I love Dorothy Day, as well as Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Mother Maria Skobstova…they seem to be spiritual triplets of their time.
 
Most important, from my viewpoint, is that Dorothy Day was a woman of prayer, a Benedictine Oblate who attended mass and prayed the Divine Office (at least Lauds and Vespers) daily.
 
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