Last
summer I was wandering around lower Manhattan and stumbled into Dorothy Day’s original
office and living space. The staff was wonderful and showed me around the
building which still houses the Catholic Worker newspaper and living space but
a soup kitchen has been added.(photos below)
FROM
WIKIPEDIA
Dorothy
Day, Obl.S.B., (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American
journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert.
Dorothy
Day became famous after her conversion. She initially lived a bohemian
lifestyle before becoming Catholic. This conversion is described in her
autobiography, The Long Loneliness.
Day's
social activism is also described in her autobiography. In 1917 she was
imprisoned as a member of suffragist Alice Paul's nonviolent Silent Sentinels.
In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow
activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist
movement that combines direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent
direct action on their behalf.
She
practiced civil disobedience, which led to additional arrests in 1955, 1957,
and in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.
Day
was also an active journalist, and described her social activism in her
writings. As part of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day co-founded the Catholic
Worker newspaper in 1933, and served as its editor from 1933 until her death in
1980.
In
this newspaper, Day advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism,
which she considered a third way between capitalism and socialism.
Her
activism and writing gave her a national reputation as a political radical, perhaps
the most famous radical in American Catholic Church history.
Dorothy
Day's life is an inspiration for the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI used
her conversion story as an example of how to "journey towards faith... in
a secularized environment."
Pope
Francis included her in a short list of exemplary Americans, together with
Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton, in his address
before the United States Congress.
The
Church has opened the cause for Day's possible canonization, which was accepted
by the Holy See for investigation. Due to this, the Church refers to her with
the title of Servant of God.
