American Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. Edited by Anne Klejment and Nancy L. Roberts. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996. xii + 198 pp. $57.95 cloth.

1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-609
Author(s):  
Mary J. Oates
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement ◽  
American Catholic

scholarly journals The Catholic Worker Movement and Racial Justice: A Precarious Relationship

Horizons ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Lincoln Rice
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Critique Of Violence

The Catholic Worker Movement, widely known for its critique of violence and capitalism in American culture, has largely neglected racism. This seems surprising because its urban houses of hospitality, staffed mostly by middle-class whites, provide material resources disproportionately to impoverished African Americans. The movement's embodiment as a white movement and the failure of its founders (Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin) to prioritize racial justice has impeded its ability to adequately confront racism. This article contrasts the ways in which racism was addressed by the founders with the way it was addressed by two prominent African American Catholic Workers. The article includes a new Catholic Worker narrative to explain the movement's relationship with racial justice and offer suggestions for ways the movement can mine its own rich resources to become an authentically anti-racist movement.

The Eucharist as a Source of Political Action: Dorothy Day as a living example of Johann Baptist Metz’s “Dangerous Memory”

2021 ◽  
pp. 001452462110570
Author(s):  
Riyako Cecilia Hikota
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Johann Baptist Metz ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement

Attending Mass and helping the suffering are not two separate things. In Christian life, the former should directly lead to the latter. In order to clarify this deep connection, first I will turn to Johann Baptist Metz, especially the centrality of the concept of anamnesis in his theology and hence how his political theology is deeply linked with or actually grounded in the Eucharist and liturgy, for which anamnesis is an essential concept. Metz points out the centrality of the “dangerous” memory of the crucified Lord for the Christian faith and suggests that when we remember the suffering of Christ we also remember all of the victims of history. Further, this memory of accumulated suffering should prepare us for socially emancipatory action. Thus, through the concept of anamnesis, we can see how participating in Mass should directly lead to political action on behalf of the suffering. As a concrete example of this connection realized, I will look at Dorothy Day in the second half of the paper. The Eucharist was central to her conversion, her spirituality, and her Catholic Worker Movement. In her, we can see a concrete example of the living memory of the suffering constantly nourished by the Eucharist and realized as a socially emancipatory action. Thus, by looking at Day through the lens provided by Metz with a focus on the living memory of suffering, I will stress that the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life,” is the key to bring theology into action.

Dignity and Just Treatment of Workers

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-46
Author(s):  
Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
United Farm Workers ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rerum Novarum ◽  
Cesar Chavez ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement

This chapter examines some of the historical trends, events, individuals, and experiences that pushed Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to release Rerum Novarum, the first papal encyclical. It also summarizes the main themes of this encyclical, whose title is translated as “The Condition of Labor.” It further provides an overview of the second papal encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (“After Forty Years,” also known as “The Reconstruction of the Social Order”), released in 1931 by Pope Pius XI. The chapter concludes with an exploration of how these teachings on labor were interpreted and put into practice by the Catholic Worker movement, led by Dorothy Day, and the United Farm Workers movement, led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta.

Sufficiency: Single Parenting and Dorothy Day

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Marguerite Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Single Mother ◽  
Single Parents ◽  
Military Spouses ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Single Parenting ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement

Single parenting vastly affects women (divorced, widowed, and military spouses, among others). Single parents are caught between contemporary parenting wars (including welfare reform wars) and the need to be self-sufficient. Single parents suffer from never quite living up to parenting ideals, thereby being utterly un-self-sufficient. Christians, especially, emphasize perfect parenting as a means of discipleship. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, was a single mother because she decided to baptize her daughter, and become a Christian herself. She discusses the importance of Christian community in parenting, and narrates how, for Christians, family means more than biological ties. Day helps all Christians understand the need to be family for each other and to loosen the stranglehold that sufficiency has on parenting in Christian life.

Dorothy Day's Apologia for Faith after Marx

Horizons ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-213
Author(s):  
Sandra Yocum Mize
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Catholic Worker ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
The People ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Catholic Worker Movement ◽  
Political Character

AbstractDorothy Day has received a great deal of attention from contemporary scholars of U.S. Catholicism. This article makes a unique contribution to this growing literature by offering a close reading of Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness. The purpose is to highlight the narrative's integrity as a sustained argument in defense of Christian faith transformed by wrestling with the Marxist charge: religion is the opiate of the people. Day deserves credit for a daring approach to Catholic apologetics in the 1950s. The article presents the narrative as a dialectic between the personal and the political, the material and the spiritual, and the natural and the supernatural that resolves itself in a creative synthesis through the Catholic Worker Movement. Day embraces Marxist aspirations and acknowledges their criticism's truth in defending the authenticity of her Catholic commitment. Day simultaneously demonstrates that the Incarnation's reality informs traditional Catholicism with its radical political character.

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