Dorothy Day, who is on the path to sainthood, was an intellectual. But more importantly, she was a manifestation of what deep Catholic faith becomes. Very few have had the courage to live th
eir Catholic faith beyond their front porch like Dorothy Day…the Desert Fathers, the martyrs, St. Francis of Assisi and Bl. Teresa of Calcutta come immediately to mind. These are the ones who hung on every word of Christ, and these are the ones who convict me of my unworthiness to fancy myself a Catholic man. These are the saints of the saints.
One of my philosophy professors was a close friend of Dorothy Day’s. He is not a Catholic, but he contributed to the Catholic Worker in New York for many years. He told me that Dorothy Day was the real thing. He also told me that she was tough as nails, which is surprising given her pacifism. But Dorothy Day was the real thing–unflinching in terms of Liturgy, faith and her hallmark, social justice.
An important component of Dorothy Day’s exemplary faith was pacifism. But her pacifism was not the result of sentimentality or liberalism. It was the product of vivacious faith, strong intellectual formation and experience in hospitality to the poor and forsaken. A truly brilliant and beautiful article on Dorothy Day written by Andrew Hamilton, which extrapolates the foundations of her pacifism, appeared at Eureka Street. I post it here in full:
I have always found pacifism an attractive option. It is radical and simple. But I have never been persuaded that the Scriptures or the practice of the early Church command it. Still there is more behind pacifism than intellectual conviction.
The reflections of Dorothy Day, an enduring influence on United States Catholicism, suggest what that more might be. In her life, with its mixture of intellectual enquiry, hospitality to the poorest of people and protest against injustice, pacifism had a central place. She used many arguments to justify it. But her emphasis on it remained constant and costly.
Pacifism did cost. The Catholic Worker, the newspaper which Dorothy Day founded, grew quickly to 100,000 copies. But when it refused to endorse Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil War it lost two-thirds of its readers. Catholics saw that war as a battle against the atheist Communists who had murdered priests and nuns. When the United States later entered the war against Japan and Germany, the Catholic Worker took a pacifist stance. Many of those in their houses of hospitality resigned in protest. As a result a third of the houses closed. This was just one of many occasions on which Dorothy Day had to address the resistance to pacifism among her supporters.
Pacifism was also personally costly. It often took her to gaol. She regularly refused to participate in New York City’s annual civil defence drill. She objected that the purposes of the drill were to support increased military expenditure and to suggest New York could survive a nuclear attack. So in 1955 when the sirens sounded, she and others sat on the Town Hall steps. They declaimed, ‘In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in God if we depend upon the atom bomb.’ They were duly jailed.
Her pacifism was initially shaped by Peter Maurin, the major intellectual influence on the nascent movement. Maurin’s pacifism was of a piece with his radical Gospel — he also believed that all Christians should live very simply and should welcome the homeless into their houses. The Gospel was to be taken dead seriously in all aspects of life.
For Dorothy Day, too, pacifism had less to do with reasons than with a seamlessly radical way of living. Although in defending her pacifist stance she used arguments from Just War theory and from Jesus’ life, finally her commitment to it was more deeply grounded in experience. She found it an indispensable support for the Catholic Worker way of life.
When she commends the commitment to pacifism, she usually places it within Peter Maurin’s program. She does not defend it in isolation. She found that the radical hospitality to the poor embodied in their houses, the non-revolutionary commitment to justice maintained in the face of the communist alternatives, and the intellectual commitment to radical conversation could be held together only with an equally radical commitment to pacifism.
Maurin first proposed that all Christians should offer hospitality in their homes. The Catholic Worker houses began when people off the streets took the newspaper at its word. They came to stay. Of those taken in some were mentally ill. They often differed sharply in their views, and were accustomed to express disagreement physically. This challenged a community that encouraged a style of honest conversation in which the value of each participant was recognised.
The life of the Catholic Worker houses required an adamantine ethic of radical non-violence, of domestic pacifism. The public commitment to political pacifism in turn strengthened the ground rules of the houses. The two fed into each other.
The commitment of the Catholic Worker communities to social justice, too, demanded a radical base. Dorothy Day described her pain when, after her conversion to the Catholic Church, she watched demonstrations against injustice. A committed activist, he felt unable to join them because they were communist-led and so inconsistent with her new faith.
Peter Maurin enabled her to articulate a radical form of Christian faith that was radically engaged in issues of justice. But it needed a radical symbol of commitment that differentiated it from revolutionary movements. Pacifism provided a symbol.
Ultimately pacifism is not supported only by intellectual arguments. Its appeal comes from its place in a radical way of life lived with integrity.
Thanks for posting this… Dorothy Day is one of those people who really make you feel uncomfortable and make you walk the talk.
What I have found more fascinating about Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day is the stance they took with regards to issues that we can always relate to: in this case war. We always think so romantically of saints such as St. Francis that we can often forget the radicalness of their positions as well. That is why the message of Maurin and Day is so important for today’s Christians.
Excellent essay, and beautiful icon– can these be purchased?
Nice essay. What is striking about Dorothy Day is that for her, non-violence was a radical NORM, rather than a radical OPTION. For this reason, I suspect that her canonization is unlikely.
For this reason, I suspect that her canonization is unlikely.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
SMB,
I read Dorothy Day’s pacifism–as forcefully as she promoted it–as a radical option for Catholicism, and a radical norm for Catholic Worker. Perhaps I am wrong in this, but I think Dorothy Day understood that most Catholics will not reach the depths and darkness of faith so as to embrace such a radical choice. I think once one has had a radical “second” conversion and a deep, mystical experience with God, one is never again conventional in any way. Not many of us are graced with this powerful transformation, and Dorothy Day understood that. I think the deeper one penetrates, or is drawn up rather, into the mystery of God, the more and more they embrace simplicity, social altruism and pacifism. Not all saints achieved the same level of understanding and faith. There are degrees of saintliness, there are degrees of faith. I believe she will someday be St. Dorothy Day of New York.
“nonviolence . . . belong(s) to the heart of the Gospel”
- Pope Benedict XVI, quoting a dialogue between Mennonites and Catholics
“May people learn how to fight for justice without violence”
- Pope John Paul II, referencing Solidarity’s victory over the Soviet empire
Slowly but surely, the Church has begun to differentiate between fighting for justice and killing for justice. We’re learning that killing is counterproductive, that war is “always a failure.”
Violence is only an option in the sense that suicide is an option. Love others as yourself. It is only a matter of time before the Church recognizes the true folly of violence:
“All who take the sword will die by the sword.”
- Jesus Christ
“that war is “always a failure.””
Tell that to the surviving Jews of Europe and their descendants.
Donald, you’ll have to take that up with Benedict. The words are his. I’m surprised your ultramontanist tendencies do not urge you to listen to him.
The icon is by Robert Lentz. And yes, it can be purchased.
Along with other Lentz icons of these Catholic saints and blesseds:
Saint Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Saint Albert Einstein
Saint Fakhr ad-Din al-Farisi
Saint J.R.R. Tolkien (actually, I kinda like that one, although I think the subject himself would have been horrified at the prospect)
Saint Martin Luther King
Saint Mohandas Gandhi
Saint Mother Jones
(and many, many more)
“War” is not simply the fighting, but also the circumstances that condition it. The inhumanity of the Holocaust was but one chapter of WWII, and though I am not a Jew, let alone a Holocaust survivor, I reckon no Jew would suggest that liberation from the Holocaust is greater than no Holocaust what so ever. War, its acts and its conditions, is failure.
Donald, WWII did not save the Jews of Europe. It nearly destroyed them.
America had a chance to accept million of Jews from Europe during the 30s, But we refused. If you listened to our Popes instead of repeating the same tired references to the holocaust, you’d get a lot more mileage.
Donald, you’ll have to take that up with Benedict. The words are his. I’m surprised your ultramontanist tendencies do not urge you to listen to him.
Good grief. And at this point, we’ll do another comparison/contrast of selective quotations from Benedict that lend the appearance of an absolute pacifism or an abolishment of just war doctrine with other quoteations that contradict said interpretation, as we have time and time again on this blog . . .
On second thought, why bother. =)
Policraticus’ comment is to be much appreciated in highlighting that WW2, in particular, was no mere response to the evil of fascism and genocide, but was everything that provoked and conditioned and defined it, including the endeavours of the Nazis (and in the East, we could include the Soviets) before fighting ever broke out. In that sense, it was indeed a horrendous calamity, an extraordinary failure. The subsequent fighting that we remember as the “good war” was the ensnaring of the world in such a failure and the compulsion to prolong it unto exhaustion.
While I cannot share, or endorse, the notion of absolute pacifism as binding upon the Christian conscience, I think there are occasions when it may be the only legitimate option, however radical it may seem. I see it therefore not just as a radical option, but conditionally normative.
Christopher – As you know, Benedict is no pacifist. Nevertheless, he said what he said.
Nate, there would be no Jews alive in Europe today if they had listened to one of your pacifist forebears:
http://die_meistersinger.tripod.com/gandhi9.html
All your pacifism would accomplish is to make the world safer for tyrants.
Michael Joseph, if pacifism is only useful when no conditions exist that could lead to war than it is truely a useless philosphy. The question is what good men should do when a war arises. A pacifist says they should never fight. I think history demonstrates what would happen if only evil men take up the sword. The Jews had no army to protect them and they suffered the worst crime in secular history.
Nate, for your perusal:
“Nor can I fail to mention the many soldiers engaged in the delicate work of resolving conflicts and restoring the necessary conditions for peace. I wish to remind them of the words of the Second Vatican Council: ”All those who enter the military in service to their country should look upon themselves as guardians of the security and freedom of their fellow-countrymen, and, in carrying out this duty properly, they too contribute to the establishment of peace”.(8) On this demanding front the Catholic Church’s military ordinariates carry out their pastoral activity: I encourage both the military Ordinaries and military chaplains to be, in every situation and context, faithful heralds of the truth of peace.”
Pope Benedict World Day of Peace January 1, 2006.
The question is what good men should do when a war arises.
Does war simply “arise” apart from the human beings who start them?
Donald,
Pacifism is different than nonviolent peacemaking. Soldiers do have the role of defending society. The only question is – how? Violently or nonviolently? You do not believe that nonviolent defense is possible. The Church does.
[...] themselves on issues of war and peace, wars of aggression versus wars of defense, and so on. Policraticus has an informative post on Day and her pacifism which merits looking at: “An important [...]
Pacifism does not mean passivity or quietism in the face of evil – it means resisting evil through means other than violence.
The Nazis didn’t just “arise” in some pre-ordained, law-of-physics sort of way. They worked to gain power, using German’s (somewhat justified) resentment of having been assigned sole blame (and suffering under ruinous reparations) for the carnage of World War I.
European nations failed to recognize the danger posed by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and Germans allowed themselves to be seduced by the intoxicating brew of nationalism and self-exhaltation being peddled by Hitler and his minions.
None of that was inevitable: The allies could have been more humble and willing to accept more of the blame for WWI after their victory in 1918, and thus not impose such unfair and one-sided reparations upon Germany.
Germans could have resisted the temptation to give in to the Idolatry and self-glorification of nationalism, and instead worked to convince the victorious nations of the injustice of the Versailles armistice, through the non-violent means of appealing to their consciences.
Matt’s right – pacifism is a broad word. Donald uses it as if it is passive non-resistance to evil, while we who actually call ourselves pacifist use it to mean non-violent struggle against injustice.
Nate and Matt seem to say implicitly what is quite explicit in Donald’s view of pacifism: he conflates nonviolent resistance, conditional pacifism and absolute pacifism. Now, I am not an absolute pacifist, and I suspect Donald is insinuating that I am one in order to simplify my position for an ad hoc refutation. His ensuing refutation is based upon this conflation, and turns out to be a straw man. There is no question that the Church commends authoritatively nonviolent resistance and conditional pacifism. Absolute pacifism in terms of warfare is neither endorsed nor rejected by Church doctrine, and it remains a viable option for the Catholic. Pope Benedict XVI feels that absolute pacifism is not a sustainable option, though he cautiously advances his sentiment so as to leave open the debate.