Will Pope Francis Canonize Dorothy Day?

[Benton D Struckcheon]

Bio hère: http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/ddbiographytext.cfm?Number=72

At their 2012 annual meeting, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously recommended the canonization of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement. By then the Vatican had already given her the title “Servant of God,” the first step in formally recognizing Dorothy Day as a saint. On Ash Wednesday, 2013, preaching in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of Dorothy Day as a model of conversion.

While awareness of her remarkable life has been growing steadily, she is at present still not widely known. Who was Dorothy Day? Why do so many people regard her as a model of sanctity for the modern world?

She was born into a journalist’s family in Brooklyn, New York, on November 8, 1897. After surviving the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the Day family moved into a tenement flat on 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.

…

Long before her death on November 29, 1980, Day found herself regarded by many as a saint. No words of hers are better known than her brusque response, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily." Nonetheless, having herself treasured the memory and witness of many saints, she is a candidate for inclusion in the calendar of saints. Cardinal John O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, launched the canonization process in 1997, the hundredth anniversary of Day’s birth.

This could be a very interesting thing if it happens. Her life was not exactly an easy one to pigeonhole or airbrush, but it seems to fit very well with the various themes this new Pope has been pushing.

[Kingofalldems]

1. Bill Donohue and his pals at EWTN not liking this one.

[Beringia]

2. I hope so

She is my Godmother. My father knew her well and he opened our farm as a Catholic Worker Farm for a while in the 50s.


Here are letters he wrote her, published in the Catholic Worker.

http://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/leavesandtrees/dadfarm.html

[rug]

3. Thanks for posting them.

Geez, a Catholic Worker in the age of McCarthy.

He has my respect.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

5. Wow. Just read the 1st. Great stuff.

Thanks for posting.

[redwitch]

9. That's wonderful!

She was truly amazing! Did you know her well too?

[Beringia]

13. No

I think she visited our farm near St. Louis, Missouri in the 50s. There was a very good friend of hers that lived nearby I think, Ruth Ann Heaney. I was the last one born on the farm in 1960. Then the family moved from various places and eventually settled down in Chicago where I grew up. My parents were strict Catholics in their younger years. My father especially was born into a family of Catholics. My father also carried his faith, and was a very vital, vibrant outgoing person. He did work in social integration, housing in Chicago, helped bring lawsuits for people who were discriminated against.

One time I asked my father what Dorothy Day was like, and he said, "She was all business".

I don't think they corresponded much after the 60s, but I don't really know. I do not remember her, though I read all her books and got The Catholic Worker Newspaper for a long time. My father also knew Thomas Merton, who was his novice master at Gesthemane. I read all of his books too. I read his journals last year and loved them, different than his books, much more of a person comes through.

http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=681

From the above link, "On Pilgrimage - January 1955"

I had a fine visit with David Dunne and Mignon McMenamy of the Pio Decimo Press at Baden, St. Louis 15. (Send for their catalogue of books and cards, medals, crucifixes, etc.) One day I visited Rhineland where Ruth Ann Heaney and her five children, and Marty and Gertrude Paul and their four children are living these last seven years. The drought has been bad these past two years, and crops and gardens have been a failure, so the families are hard put to it to feed their stock. Marty had been sending eggs into St., Louis but you can buy three dozen for a dollar now and he could not afford the feed to keep the chickens laying, at that price. Thanks to Frank Lakey who is working as an engineer in St. Louis some extra machinery and a farm truck have been acquired so Marty helps neighbors with bailing and other jobs. They tried to sell Christmas trees but there is no marker for Cedars which is all the crop they have. [font color=blue] I saw Jack Woltjen and Fran and Judy and spent a good evening [/font color] after a meeting at the Center which is the meeting place for all the old friends of the Catholic Worker. Meetings are held, as well as classes several nights in the week and Evelyn Gibson is helping run the place.

I am Ann Woltjen, Fran is my mother and Judy is my sister who is adopted. Dorothy Day also helped arrange for my parents to adopt Judy.

[Cleita]

4. She had an abortion and believed in free love and women's rights.

I wonder how conservative Catholics will regard this.

[hollowdweller]

6. One of her grandaus is a friend of mine.

Lives a few hollows over. From what she has said the sainthood thing has been kicked around for a while.

[PCIntern]

7. I still get The Catholic Worker

I might be heir to one of their original subscriptions if my mother of blessed memory is to be believed. The postman a few months ago asked why ibreceived it because he knew I was Jewish. I told him it was because my family stood united with the workingmen and workingwomen of the world.

[enough]

8. Is it still 1 cent? (nt)

[PCIntern]

15. Yes it is! nt

[starroute]

10. For a more kickass version of her life...

http://anachro-anarcho.blogspot.com/2013/06/dorothy-day-pissing-off-church-by.html

Dorothy Day: Pissing off the Church by Acting Like Jesus

Dorothy Day was a Christian. That doesn’t seem like much of a statement; Christianity is kind of a big deal these days, has been for a couple thousand years, and there are a lot of people out there who call themselves Christians, often loudly and publicly while exhorting everyone else to do the same, but if we use the word “Christian” in its most literal sense, as a person who actually follows the advice and instructions of that guy they call Christ, we find a lot fewer people. Probably because a lot of the stuff that Jesus guy said to do; selling everything you own to feed the poor, helping the sick, hanging out with people shunned by society, and refraining from judging people while at the same time harshly judging yourself, are all time-consuming and fairly hard. Not to mention pacifism; turning the other cheek can be really difficult, it turns out. But when I say that Dorothy Day was a Christian, I mean that she actually did all of those things. Except maybe for the not judging, but she generally did a good job of treating others as though she wasn’t judging them, which is close enough for most people. (I don’t know if it’s close enough for Jesus. I haven’t asked him.)

Ok, so, she was a Christian. The particular flavor of Christianity she went with was Catholicism, which is nice if you like funny hats, and bad if you like birth control, but where it gets weird is that she was also an anarchist. The Christian anarchist thing doesn’t seem so odd if you go with Quakerism or something, and there are people out there prepared to argue that there is no way to be a Christian without being an anarchist (though fewer, I’m guessing, prepared to argue the inverse), and it’s certainly not unprecedented for the two to go together, but the Catholic Church is one of the most hierarchical institutions you’ll find outside of the military. So, how does someone hold Catholicism and anarchism inside one human brain at the same time without causing a messy explosion? And, more importantly, how does someone live the ideals of both Catholicism and anarchism?

The life story of Dorothy Day is basically the answer to that question. A shorter answer would be “by having a lot of arguments with pretty much everyone.”

Dorothy Day did not begin life as a Catholic. (Or, for that matter, an anarchist.) She was actually brought up in a fairly secular environment, something she seems to have resented when she got older, feeling that she had had “no one to teach” her about Jesus. Her childhood was not a particularly bad one, but her family went through periods of poverty, and she lived through the famous San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and she was both deeply traumatized by the devastation, and inspired, at the age of eight, by the number of people she saw coming to the aid of their neighbors. (Christian charity, or anarchist mutual aid? If you’re Dorothy Day, you don’t have to decide!)

[Benton D Struckcheon]

12. Good essay. n/t

[shenmue]

11. I hope so

[alfredo]

14. A photo

[Wilms]

16. ^