Did she not quit being a communist once she became a Catholic?
No, her writings and actions show that she never gave up her “radical” beliefs, but sought to create a “Christian Communism” in the Catholic Church. She maintained friendships and working relationships with prominent US Communists Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who was one of the US Party’s founders and later its Chair; Mike Gold, “Daily Worker” columnist and author of the “proletariat” novel “Jews Without Money,” which she praised to “CW” readers; and Anna Louise Strong, her fellow journalist and propagandist, who received a state funeral in Moscow. Day was an invited “observer” at the 16th Annual Convention of the Communist Party USA, although the press was excluded. Day praised “Papa Marx” and Lenin, who she wrote “went about doing good,” in the April 1948 “CW.” She defended the guilty Rosenbergs and Black Panther Bobby Seale; she recommended Saul Alinsky’s books and praised his efforts in the May 1966 “CW.” (Perhaps Cardinal Dolan needs to take time to read the “CW.”)
Day was also called “Moscow Mary,” an epithet based on her actions: “I have spoken at Carnegie Hall against the Smith and McCarron acts, with Communists and fellow travellers; others of us have walked on picket lines protesting the payment of income tax and lastly there have been four days of picketing the Spanish consulate in New York in protest against the executions of the five Spanish trade unionists. These last demonstrations were headed by Norman Thomas, the highly respected Socialist, and included the aid of the I. W. W., Catholics, the Independent Socialist League and others. I assume the Communists were not invited” (”CW,” April 1952). For more details, see Carol Byrne’s “The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis” and her “Complete Supplementary Notes,” available at “Dorothy Day Another Way.”
My favorite Dorothy Day quote is the following:
Dorothy Day was not a political theorist, but a broom-pushing, bread-baking, rosary-praying Personalist. You don' have to believe just me: here's 21,000 sources that say the same:
http://tinyurl.com/D-Day-vs-Holy-Mother-the-State
Of course, this is a different perspective than you'd get from "Tradition in Action," the source of a great deal of the anti-Dorothy-Day propaganda. You can see all that at their website --- not that I'd recommend anyone going there, because it is full of shocking attacks on the past five Popes as well.
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So instead...