US bishops endorse sainthood cause of Catholic Worker’s Dorothy Day
In the 1990s "Entertain
US bishops endorse sainthood cause of Catholic Worker’s Dorothy Day
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
BALTIMORE
(CNS) -- The U.S. bishops, on a voice vote, endorsed the sainthood
cause of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement,
who was famously quoted as saying, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want
to be dismissed so easily."
The endorsement came at the end of a canonically
required consultation that took place Nov. 13, the second day of the
bishops' annual fall general assembly in Baltimore.
Under
the terms of the 2007 Vatican document "Sanctorum Mater," the diocesan
bishop promoting a sainthood cause must consult at least with the
regional bishops' conference on the advisability of pursuing the cause.
In the case of Day, whose Catholic Worker ministry
was based in New York City, the bishop promoting her cause is Cardinal
Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. bishops' conference.
The cause was first undertaken by one of Cardinal Dolan's predecessors
in New York, Cardinal John O'Connor.
Cardinal Dolan had earlier conducted a consultation
with bishops in his region, and subsequently chose to seek a
consultation with the full body of U.S. bishops.
He
and the other bishops who spoke during the consultation, some of whom
had met Day, called her sainthood cause an opportune moment in the life
of the U.S. church.
Cardinal Dolan called Day's journey "Augustinian,"
saying that "she was the first to admit it: sexual immorality, there was
a religious search, there was a pregnancy out of wedlock, and an
abortion. Like Saul on the way to Damascus, she was radically changed"
and has become "a saint for our time."
"Of all the people we need to reach out to, all the
people that are hard to get at, the street people, the ones who are on
drugs, the ones who have had abortions, she was one of them," Cardinal
Theodore E. McCarrick said of Day. The retired archbishop of Washington
is a native New Yorker.
"What a tremendous opportunity to say to them you
can not only be brought back into society, you can not only be brought
back into the church, you can be a saint!" he added.
"She was a very great personal friend to me when I was a young
priest," said Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y. "To be
able to stand here and say yes to this means a great deal to me."
Bishop Alvaro Corrada del Rio of Mayaguez, Puerto
Rico, recalled being assigned to Nativity Parish in New York City in the
1970s. "I had the privilege of being in that parish for the last years
of her life. ... her final days and suffering" and her 1980 funeral.
The work of the Catholic Worker movement is still active 80 years after Day co-founded the movement with Peter Maurin.
There
are many Catholic Worker houses in the United States, some in rural
areas but more in some of the most desperately poor areas of the
nation's biggest cities. They follow the Catholic Worker movement's
charism of voluntary poverty, the works of mercy, and working for peace
and justice.
The Catholic Worker, the newspaper established by
Day, is still published regularly, and still charges what it did at its
founding: one penny.
"I read the Catholic
Worker when I was in high school and I've read it ever since," said
Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago. He recalled meeting Day soon
after the 1960 presidential election.
"I had just voted for the first time, for John F.
Kennedy. I listened to her critique of our economic and political
structures. I asked her, 'Do you think it will help having a Catholic in
the White House who can fight for social justice?'
"She was very acerbic. She said, 'Young man' -- I
was young at that time -- 'young man, I believe Mr. Kennedy has chosen
very badly. No serious Catholic would want to be president of the United
States.' I didn't agree with her at that time. And I'm not sure I agree
with her now."
Day's early life was turbulent and unsettled. She
was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1897, but her family soon moved to San
Francisco, where she was baptized an Episcopalian. Her family later
moved to Chicago, and Day attended the University of Illinois in Urbana.
However, she left college to go to New York City to
work as a journalist. While in New York, she got involved in the causes
of her day, such as women's suffrage and peace, and was part of a circle
of top literary and artistic figures of the era.
In Day's personal life, though, she went through a string of love affairs, a failed marriage, a suicide attempt and an abortion.
But
with the birth of her daughter, Tamar, in 1926, Day embraced
Catholicism. She had Tamar baptized Catholic, which ended her common-law
marriage and brought dismay to her friends.
As she sought to fuse her life and her faith, she
wrote for such Catholic publications as America and Commonweal. In 1932,
she met Maurin, a French immigrant and former Christian Brother.
Together they started the Catholic Worker newspaper -- and later,
several houses of hospitality and farm communities in the United States
and elsewhere.
While working for integration, Day was shot at. She
prayed and fasted for peace at the Second Vatican Council. She died in
1980 in Maryhouse, one of the Catholic Worker houses she established in
New York City.
She has been the focus of a number of biographies.
Other books featuring her prayers and writings have been published. In
the 1990s, a film biography "Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story"
starring Moira Kelly and Martin Sheen, made its way to theaters.
END
Sent by Agnelo Vaz sj
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