Dorothy Day Biography: Dorothy Day was a writer, a social activist, and an anarchist. She later became a Catholic but didn’t stop being a social activist or an anarchist. American Catholics knew her as a very left-wing politician. Day wrote about her change of heart in her book, The Long Loneliness, which emerged in 1952. She also wrote about her work as a social activist. As a member of Alice Paul’s peaceful Silent Sentinels, she was jailed in 1917.
In the 1930s, Day she collaborated with Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement. This pacifist movement provides direct aid for the poor and homeless and nonviolent immediate action on their behalf. Her civil disobedience resulted in arrests in 1955, 1957, and 1973, when she was 75.
As a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day helped start the Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933 and was its editor until she died in 1980. In this newspaper, Day supported distributism, a Catholic economic theory she saw as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism.
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Pope Benedict XVI has used her story as an example of how to “journey toward faith… in a secularized environment.” During a speech to the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis said she was one of four great Americans who “built a better future.” The Catholic Church started the case for Day to become a saint and said it would look into it. Because of this, the Church calls her a Servant of God.
Three brothers, one sister (including Donald S. Day)
Religion
Episcopalian
Education
Robert Waller High School (1914)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Work
Social activism
Famous for
Co-founding the Catholic Worker Movement
Date
Event
1917
Settled on the Lower East Side of New York and worked on the staff of several Socialist publications, including The Liberator, The Masses, and The Call. Celebrated the February Revolution in Russia. Arrested for picketing at the White House for women’s suffrage as part of a campaign called the Silent Sentinels.
1920
She married Berkeley Tobey in a civil ceremony. She spent the better part of a year with him in Europe, removed from politics, focusing on art and literature, and writing a semi-autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin.
1925
Found herself pregnant with Forster Batterham’s child, intensified her exploration of Catholicism, and had her baby baptized in July 1927.
1929
She accepted a job writing film dialogue for Pathé Motion Pictures and moved to Los Angeles with her daughter. She returned to New York via a vacation in Mexico and a family visit to Florida.
1932
Travelled to Washington to report on the Hunger March for Commonweal. The experience there motivated her to participate more in social activism and Catholicism.
Year
Event
1932
Day meets Peter Maurin, founder of the movement she is identified with
Maurin, a French immigrant, envisioned social justice and a connection with the poor.
Maurin provides Day with a grounding in Catholic theology for social action.
Maurin provides Day with a grounding in Catholic theology for social action.
1933
The Catholic Worker movement started with the publication of The Catholic Worker.
The newspaper is aimed at those suffering the most in the Great Depression.
The paper does not accept advertising and does not pay its staff.
A $1 donation partly supports the paper’s first issue from Sister Peter Claver.
The paper covers strikes and working conditions and explains papal teaching on social issues
1934
The Catholic Worker newspaper engages in advocacy journalism and seeks to move readers to take action locally.
The paper advocates for federal child labor laws and is at odds with the American Church hierarchy.
Day censors some of Maurin’s attacks on the Church hierarchy and tries to present a collection of the paper’s issues to Pope Pius XI.
The Catholic Worker newspaper’s principal competitor is the Communist Daily Worker.
Day opposes the Daily Worker’s atheism, advocacy of “class hatred,” and violent revolution
1935
Day defends government relief programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps that the Communists ridicule.
Maurin broadens Day’s knowledge through exposure to French models and literature
The Church hierarchy backs Day’s movement.
Day becomes friends with many Catholic authors, including John C. Cort and Harry Sylvester.
Year
Event
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Catholic Worker attracted writers and editors like Michael Harrington, Ammon Hennacy, Thomas Merton, and Daniel Berrigan.
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Catholic Worker established a “house of hospitality” for the poor in the Lower East Side.
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Catholic Workers established farms for communal living.
1941
Over 30 independent Catholic Worker communities were founded.
1935
Catholic Worker began publishing pacifist articles.
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Catholic Worker broke with the traditional Catholic doctrine of just war theory.
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The Church (allied with Franco) fought the radicals of many stripes (the Catholics and the worker were at war with one another) in the Spanish Civil War.
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Day refused to support Franco against the Republican forces.
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The Catholic Worker’s circulation fell as many Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals withdrew their support.
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Day published “From Union Square to Rome,” an account of her political activism transformation into religiously motivated activism.
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Day was affiliated with the Benedictines and became an oblate of St. Procopius Abbey.
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Day reaffirmed her pacifism following the U.S. declaration of war in 1941.
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The circulation of the Catholic Worker rose to 75,000 but then plummeted again.
1949
Employees of the Catholic Worker joined a strike led by unions representing workers at cemeteries managed by the Archdiocese of New York.
Date
Event
March 3, 1951
The Archdiocese ordered Day to cease publication or remove the word Catholic from her publication name.
She replied with a respectful letter asserting her right to publish the Catholic Worker as the Catholic War Veterans had theirs.
The Archdiocese took no action.
June 15, 1955
Day’s account of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves, and Fishes, was published.
She pleaded guilty on September 28, 1955.
1956
Day helped found Liberation magazine.
Day praised Fidel Castro’s “promise of social justice.”
Day traveled to Cuba and reported her experiences in a four-part series in the Catholic Worker.
1960
Day hoped the Second Vatican Council would endorse nonviolence as a fundamental tenet of Catholic life.
She lobbied bishops in Rome and joined other women in a ten-day fast.
1963
Day’s account of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes, was published.
1966
Spellman visited U.S. troops in Vietnam at Christmas.
January 1967
Day authored a response in the Catholic Worker to Spellman’s visit.
1970
Day described Ho Chi Minh as “a voice of sanity and Christian conscience” and the Vietnam War as “an abomination.”
Day was arrested outside the White House protesting the Vietnam War.
She also fasted as part of her opposition to the war.
1979
Day died in New York City.
Event
Details
Visiting the Kremlin
Day visited the Kremlin and saw the names of Americans C. E. Ruthenberg and Bill Haywood on the Kremlin Wall in Roman letters. She also saw the title of Jack Reed in Cyrillic characters on a flower-covered grave.
America Magazine
In 1972, the Jesuit magazine America dedicated an entire issue to Day and the Catholic Worker movement, calling her the symbol of the best in the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community in the last forty years.
Support for Cesar Chavez
Day supported the work of Cesar Chavez in organizing California farm laborers and admired him for being motivated by religious inspiration and committed to nonviolence. She was arrested with other protesters for defying an injunction against picketing and spent ten days in jail.
Isaac Hecker Award
Day was named the first recipient of the Isaac Hecker Award by Boston’s Paulist Center Community, given to a person or group committed to building a more just and peaceful world.
Last public appearance
Day spoke at the Eucharistic Congress held in Philadelphia in 1976. She criticized the organizers for failing to recognize August 6 as the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, an inappropriate day to honor the military.
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