DOROTHY DAY
STRUGGLING TO SAINTHOOD

 

Review of “LOVE IS THE MEASURE”, A Biography of Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker, by Jim Forest. Revised edition.

Orbis Books, N.Y. ISBN 0-88344-942-0. 1986, 1994. Pb, 163 pages.

Review written by Dara Molloy. Published in The Irish Catholic. June 1994.

Dorothy Day used to say: “Don’t call me a saint; I won’t be so easily dismissed.” Nevertheless today, 13 years after her death, the process for her canonisation is under way.

Reading of her life in Tom Forest ‘s biography Love Is The Measure, I was struck by two things about her. One was her humanity – she spoke with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, was capable of telling a bawdy story, could lose her temper, had lived with men without ever marrying, had one child out of wedlock – and even had an abortion! Not exactly a saintly image!

But what also struck me was her deep sense of God and her hunger for a spirituality that matched her great works of mercy. Prayer and the Eucharist became her life. They fuelled her work of feeding the homeless on the streets of New York, her protests against war and injustice, her frequent bouts of imprisonment for civil disobedience.

The story of Dorothy Day is disturbing. She was a comforter of the afflicted and an afflicter of the comfortable. Dorothy Day made a preferential option for the poor long before it was fashionable to do so.

A convert to Catholicism she nonetheless had regular runs-in with the Church. At one stage Cardinal Spellman of New York told her to remove the name ‘Catholic’ from her newspaper.

Dorothy also regularly crossed swords with the State. In 1955 she refused to participate in a nationwide civil defence drill. When the air raid sirens blew, everyone was meant to head for the fall-out shelters. Dorothy with her friends gathered in City Hall Park for the occasion and refused to budge. She was arrested and jailed. This became an annual event until 1961 when the authorities gave up and abandoned the drill.

After her conversion, Dorothy published a newspaper The Catholic Worker. A journalist by profession, she had previously worked only with socialist publications. Some of her best friends were Marxists, communists and anarchists. The resulting newspaper was a blend of the Sermon on the Mount and a manifesto for a just society. Calls to prayer and fasting were mixed with support for strikes, protests, boycotts and trade unions.

The Catholic Worker sold for 1 cent a copy. This meant that even the poor could afford it. It carried no advertising. Even though these policies made no commercial sense, the paper still survives, sixty one years later, still selling at 1 cent a copy.

Dorothy then opened a house of hospitality, sharing her home with the poor and homeless. With a team of volunteers she ran soup kitchens and provided free clothing. This house became the first Catholic Worker community. Today there are 130 of them.

Dorothy died on November 29th 1980 at the age of 83. She was hailed as the most influential American Catholic of the last hundred years. She had become a close friend of Mother Theresa and a regular correspondent with Thomas Merton. A visit from Cardinal Cooke had brought greetings to her from Pope Paul.

Jim Forest lived and worked with Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker house in New York. His biography of her is a series of short essays, each of them a story about Dorothy. It is a book of inspiration, one that can be dipped into and savoured. It tells the story of a woman who as a child was fascinated with sainthood, who spent her adult life struggling to be one, and who, in the end, made it.

Dara Molloy.
June 1994.

^ Back To Top