Inspiring Christian Lives

Dorothy Day, 1897-1980

Disgusted at the narrow minded hypocrisy and bigotry of 'religion'? Angered by its failure to do something positive about poverty and social injustice? Sickened by war? Confused about Christianity? Then, you are not alone - in fact you are in the finest Christian company. Read about the life of Dorothy Day, mostly in her own words, one of the most fascinating, controversial, modern and inspiring Christians.

Dorothy Day was born on 8 November 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. Her family were not at all religious, and she had never been baptised. Here she is in her own words, speaking about what turned her off the thought of 'religion': 'Religion, as it was practised by those I encountered, had no vitality. It had nothing to do with everyday life; it was a matter of Sunday praying. Christ no longer walked the streets of this world. He was two thousand years dead and new prophets had risen up in His place. There was no attack on religion because people were generally indifferent to religion. They were neither hot nor cold. They were lukewarm, the materialistic, who hoped that by Sunday churchgoing they would take care of the afterlife, if there were an afterlife. Meanwhile they would get everything they could in this'. But all this began to change when she interrupted a neighbour whilst she was praying. She recalls: 'I felt a warm burst of love towards Mrs Barrett that I have never forgotten . . . She had God, and there was beauty and joy in her life.' That said, coming round to a new way of thinking and being is not always as dramatic and sudden as it had been for St Paul. So, her life went on.

She dropped out of university, became involved in communist activist journalism, campaigned for social justice for workers, struggled for women to have the vote, was imprisoned for political activism and experienced the loss of a close friend through suicide. She also led a highly charged party life. It was whilst at one of these parties that she heard a drunken friend constantly reciting that poem by Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven. During World War One she became a nurse, tended to the victims, fell in love, moved into an apartment in downtown Manhattan and herself attempted suicide when the relationship hit the rocks. She got pregnant to try to save the relationship, had an abortion at six months and saw it fail to save the fling. On the rebound, she got married, only to see that relationship hit the rocks.

Meanwhile, she started working on a radical newspaper. At lunch time she started to join the Catholic girls she lived with in going to church to pray. In all the mess of her life she remarked that 'worship, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication . . . were the noblest acts of which we are capable in this life.' - silent worship and adoration were the fullest statements a human could make. A gifted writer, she wrote a book, sold the film rights moved to the coast on the profits and lived in a colony of artists and writers. Her marriage failed, she fell passionately in love again with an atheist and experienced some of the frustration of this, given that she was looking beyond this: "I have always felt that it was life with him that brought me natural happiness, that brought me to God. His ardent love of creation brought me to the Creator of all things. But when I cried out to him, "How can there be no God, when there are all these beautiful things," he turned from me uneasily and complained that I was 'never satisfied'. She got pregnant by him, had a baby and he left her.

Whilst out walking on the beach near where she lived, she met a nun, developed a strong friendship with her, had the baby baptised, and was eventually received into the Catholic Church. After this, she experienced rejection for this from her communist friends, experienced anguish about her vocation, fell to her knees in prayer for guidance and met Peter Maurin, a French Peasant, a lay Franciscan. She was later to say of him: "When people came into contact with Peter . . . they change, they awaken, they begin to see, things become as new, they look at life in the light of the Gospels. They admit the truth he possesses and lives by, and though they themselves fail to go the whole way, their faces are turned at least towards the light." With Peter and a few others she began to meet regularly and to discuss the problems of the day in the light of the Gospel. She said: 'We are our brother's keeper, and the unit of society is the family . . . we must have a sense of personal responsibility to take care of our own, and our neighbour, at a personal sacrifice'.

Out of this grew a programme for meeting these needs, the voice of which was a newspaper she set up, the Catholic Worker. During the 1930s in Depression wracked New York, she set up free bread and soup kitchens for hungry workers. All those who came for food and drink were fed; people who stayed were asked not to leave. Faith and worship were installed at the centre of the houses. They preached pacifism during World War Two, and found themselves imprisoned for it. She was scathing in her criticisms of Truman for dropping 2 Atomic bombs on the Japanese, campaigned against nuclear disarmament and the Vietnam War. In her own words: 'St Augustine says that we are all members or potential members of the mystical Body of Christ. Therefore all men are our neighbours and Christ told us we should love our neighbours, whether they be friend or enemy".

In the 1970s, she met Mother Teresa, who pinned on Dorothy's dress the cross worn only by professed members of the Missionary Sisters of Charity. "We are all called to be saints, and we might as well get over our hang ups about the name. We might also get used to recognising that there is some of the saint in all of us. In as much as we are growing, putting off the old man and putting on Christ, there is some of the saint, the body, the divine right there".

At the heart of her message is the boundless love of God for humanity, which we are called as Christ's baptised followers to share with others, particularly the poor. "We want to be happy, we want others to be happy, we want to see some of this joy of life which children have, we want to see people intoxicated with God, or just filled with the good steady joy of knowing that Christ is King and that we are His flock and He has prepared for us a kingdom, and that God loves us as a father loves his children, as a bridegroom loves his bride, and that eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God hath prepared for us."

Her life was a great witness to Christ's love for the poor and the rejection of war and violence. It was also a wonderful example of how God can write straight with crooked lines of our lives.