Literature and the Revolution of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day’s calling to found the hospitality houses of Catholic Worker in the 1930s was certainly inspired by the gospel and by saints such as Francis of Assisi and Theresa of Lisieux.  Her “conscious adherence to the Church,” however, did not extend to the ecclesiastical establishment. She was a Catholic activist who challenged the Church and its institutional conservatism. She was also a socialist radical at odds with the secular left. To understand her importance as an American activist, then, we must look beyond the veil of hagiography and consider the iconoclastic beliefs that shaped Day’s thought and practice.  She developed her social theory in the process of protest against institutional authorities, chastising both church-goers and Communist Party members for their inattention to social ethics.  Catholic Worker, in Day’s view, operated not only as a social relief program, but as a direct challenge to the Church, the Party, and the State. Remarkably, secular writers showed her the way.  Through her reading of F. M. Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin, and Ignazio Silone, Day crafted the unique, unorthodox form of socialism that became associated with Catholic Worker projects. The formal structures of traditional socialism were of little use to her, but she preserved its moral core and reemphasized the interpersonal relations she believed had gone lost behind institutional loyalties.