Posted on 12/06/2012 10:00:52 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
As you observe, Augustine rejected Manichaeism. However, Day continued to associate with and present an unrealistic and sanitized account of those whose lives resembled her bohemian past. She tolerated and enabled sexual immorality at the Catholic Worker farms. When I visited Tivoli in 1971 I was puzzled and confused by the things I observed, and naively thought Dorothy must not be aware of the goings-on, such as a couple living together without benefit of clergy. But her diary (”The Duty of Delight,” 2011) reveals that she knew what was happening (pp. 419, 454), decided to sell the farm (p. 486), and then took 10 years to do so (p. 675).
In addition, Day allowed Ammon Hennacy to remain a “Catholic” Worker (he had become Catholic because Dorothy was Catholic) after he married outside the Catholic Church. Ironically, Joan Thomas, Ammon’s second wife, met him at the CW after Day had told her, “Oh, you must meet Ammon. He knows all about fasting. And he likes pretty girls”; Thomas found this “an extremely puzzling remark for a bona fide Christian woman” to make (Joan Thomas,”The Years of Grief and Laughter,” 1974, p. 7). Day eulogized him in “Ammon Hennacy: Non-Church’ Christian” (CW,February 1970).
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1)You claim that Day “forced austerities on nobody except herself.” Perhaps you are unaware of the famous “retreat” embraced by Day and given by Fr. John J. Hugo at the Catholic Worker many times (Carol Byrne, “The Catholic Worker Movement(1933-1980): A Critical Analysis,” 2010, pp. 232-238). The retreat—which urged austerities on the laity with no loopholes—did little good, according to longtime Catholic Worker Stanley Vishnewski in “Wings of the Dawn”(1984, pp.208-215). Day’s daughter Tamar had austerities forced on her and detested the retreat. The retreat was so controversial Hugo was “silenced” and the retreat called “Jansenistic in tendency” (William D. Miller, “Dorothy Day,” 1982, p. 340). When Day died, Fr. Hugo was to say the mass, but the funeral mass was said by then-Fr. Geoffrey Gneuhs, the CW chaplain, because Day’s daughter Tamar refused to attend with Hugo (R. G. Riegle, “Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her,” 2003, p. 184,note 2). Day herself reneged in later life—the retreat inveighed against listening to the radio and having linoleum—and reports in her diary listening to radio and watching television programs (pp. 647, 650, 659) and accepting half a bottle of port (p. 658).
2) As for Day’s “authority, which she had by example only,” Day’s co-workers would disagree. CW Tom Cornell said, “[We] Let everyone know that if they talked to reporters, that would be against Dorothy’s will, which is tantamount to saying good-bye. (We had no redress, no committees or any of that shit. If you’re out, you’re out)” (R. Riegle Troester, ed., “Voices From the Catholic Worker,” 1993, p. 40). Similarly, Michael Harrington stated that Day was the head of the CW, and after people engaged in a discussion, she did what she wanted (Maurice Isserman, “The Other American: The Untold Life of Michael Harrington,” 2000, p. 73).
Dear me, you may feel “she is as good as bread,” but some who read her diary feel the need of a stiff drink!
Keep in mind that anyone can become a Catholic, from whatever background, if he or she is respondng to divine grace. The Church has patriarchalists transformed by the Gospel, and feminists transformed by the Gospel. Monarchists and democratic/republicans. Leftists and Rightists.. What matters is not "Left" or "Right". What matters is the transformation.
As for Day's faults --- all sinners have them, and that means everyone. Dorothy used to say, "You can go to hell by imitating the vices of saints." She also had a short fuse. On being told she ought to hold her temper, she remarked, "I hold more temper in 10 minutes than you hold in a lifetime."
She struggled. I would do better--- much, much beter --- if I struggled as well as she did.
Let me close with these thoughts:
Gerald Vann, O.P. wrote in his book *The Heart of Man* (Ch. III) that “where there is obvious wickedness, we must protest and fight against the external crime, indeed, but we can never judge of [another person’s interior] sin because we can never know the human heart.”
As Vatican II’s constitution *Gaudium et Spes* stated (in Section 28), “[God] forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone.”
In any case, I will wait serenely to see if she gets her two miracles. That should settle things.
Dear me, you have not responded to the issues in my post, just stated obvious things—about baptism, not judging someone’s interior state, who may convert—that are not being questioned.
If you read what Dorothy Day wrote, you might discover that her “transformation” from Marxism was incomplete. Would that you had read Day’s diary (”The Duty of Delight,” 2011, p. 43), where she notes that her Russian friend Helen Iswolsky “has said I was too kind to the Communists in my book [”From Union Square to Rome”] and the attitude taken by our opponents is that we do not realize what they are capable of.” Years later Day wrote about “what they are capable of”: “These men were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions”(”Catholic Worker” [CW], May 1951).
Similarly, Day’s co-worker Tom Cornell in “Voices from the Catholic Worker” (1993, p. 78) states that Day did not like Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s “lapses into anti-Sovietism at all.” The Baroness was the Russian emigre who founded Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario, and is a Servant of God.
True, Day prayed for the salvation of her prominent Communist friends Rayna Proehme, Mike Gold, Anna Louise Strong, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn throughout her life. She also praised their support of the Soviet Union (and overlooked their efforts to foment violent revolution) repeatedly in the CW, often without identifying their positions in the Party. For example, Gurley Flynn was one of the three founders of the USA Communist Party and became its head. Both she and Proehme received state funerals in Moscow.
Day’s praise of the political stands of these committed Communist friends should not be a surprise, given her remark that “When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me” (”Duty of Delight,” p. 98) and her treating Lenin, “who had nowhere to lay his head,” and “Papa Marx” as secular saints in the April 1948 CW.
Having posted this “kinda [confusing] article from the *bad* NCR”—which is now publicly identified as a “non-Catholic” publication by Bishop Finn, in whose jurisdiction it is—please rest serenely as you await the required miracles for the canonization of the woman one blogger calls “Dotty Day.”
Thanks. I’ll pray. You, too.
One of the things I find challenging in the Lives of Saints and Blesseds is their struggle with being men (or women) of their age: Chrysostom could have been called with some justice an anti-Semite; Augustine an incompletely-converted Manichee or a proto-Calvinist; Charles de Foucauld a French imperialist (up to the end: had a cache of French military weapons in his hemitage at the time of his death, 1916); Cyril of Alexandria a mobocrat; Josemaria Escriva a Fascist; Thomas More a burner of heretics; John Paul II a naive gull of corrupt clergy --- I could go on.
I love all these men. They distanced themselves slowly and imperfectly from the sins of their age. They can be faulted for where they came from. I am far more interested in where they were going.
Here I say Finis. Peace to you. Peace to the soul of Dorothy Day.
Yes,I do pray and will continue to pray for the millions starved to death and executed brutally by the Communists who Day idolized. May they rest in peace.
In closing, I note that again you shift from the subject (Day) to others. As “what’s up” remarked in post 14, “You seem to be missing the point.” Your comments confuse the issue. For example, it’s nice to know you believe (post 11) the wage system is “not immoral” or “condemned”—it’s too bad that neither Day nor Peter Maurin would share your view.
As Carol Byrne points out in “Complete Supplementary Notes to ‘The Catholic Worker [CW} Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis,’’ for page 152:
Day stated that “Peter shocked people by calling for an ‘abolition of the wage system’” in CW May 1953.In CW April 1963, Day quoted Peter Maurin who reiterated the expression “fire the bosses” and also “Work not Wages”, “Labour is not a commodity to be bought and sold”.
Byrne’s notes can be read online at “Dorothy Day Another Way.”
I don't see Day as ever repentent of her damaging beliefs. Far from it.
Like Jane Fonda...if I saw evidence that she now worked in favor of freedom, I would believe she was truly repentant. But this was not so with either Fonda or Day.
There's something very wrong with the idolization of Day. Way too many Catholics idolize the poor (which has led to their social justice politics) much like the communists idolized or romanticized the peasantry. I wish they regarded freedom with the same sentiment. Putting Day up as a saint only amplifies that serious mistake. Thanks for your posts.
I agree that Day never abandoned her Communist beliefs, and most of those supporting her cause—which was introduced with a denial of this key fact—still will not admit the error.Day remained unrepentant, just like “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, who richly deserves that title. “Moscow Mary” was Day’s. Thanks for your posts.
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