‘Catholic Worker’ at 75: Long Ties with Union Movement

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/06/08/catholic-worker-at-75-long-ties-with-union-movement/

It was 75 years ago when two priests, a nun and a devout Catholic woman named Dorothy Day scraped together $57 and printed 2,500 copies of a tabloid newspaper they called the Catholic Worker. They made their way to Union Square in lower Manhattan, where they sold copies of their paper for one cent each.

The impact of the first issue, according to the author Dwight MacDonald, was “an ambiguous thud.” The Catholic Worker wasn’t exactly a media giant. The first several issues were written by Day on her kitchen table. She had to sell her typewriter to pay for the second issue.

But that shoestring operation was the beginning of the Catholic Worker movement, one of the most remarkable allies American union members have ever had.


Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day


For Day, the demands of Catholicism were clear. As she told the moral philosopher and psychiatrist Robert Coles:

Jesus meant us to fight for those He fought for, to fight for those He chose to be with. He lived with the rejected ones, the scorned ones, and the more luxurious and important our lives, the further we are from Him, from living His life.

She would conclude from this that “to pledge yourself to voluntary poverty for life so that you can share with your brothers is not enough. One must live with them, share with them their suffering, too.”

Until her death in 1980, that was exactly what she did. She and Peter Maurin, a former Christian Brother and French peasant anarchist, founded Catholic Worker hospitality houses in Little Italy and Harlem in New York City to feed the hungry and provide shelter for the homeless, no questions asked. Day herself lived in a small, austere hospitality house room. Over time, other hospitality houses based on the Catholic Worker model were created around the country.

FULL story at link.