A saint on film
Future saint Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, died in 1980. There are photos, film interviews and living witnesses who worked with her to spread the message of voluntary poverty.
Don’t Call Me A Saint is a remarkable new documentary biography of Day. (Director Claudia Larson took the title from Day’s often-quoted remark that she “didn’t want to be dismissed that easily” by being called a saint.) Eileen Egan, biographer of both Day and Mother Teresa and friend to both, is on video talking about two of the most remarkable women of the past 100 years. Peace movement veterans Fr. Daniel Berrigan and Deacon Tom Cornell are there, too, as is Day’s daughter Tamar Henessey and present-day Catholic Workers.
The documentary is an unvarnished look at Dorothy Day, who exemplified love for the least of God’s creatures. The Houses of Hospitality, by accounts in the film itself, were sometimes noisy, chaotic places where guests suffered from schizophrenia, knife-fights erupted and prayer was interrupted by the constant clean-up of vomit or blood. These weren’t pristine monasteries where hours were regular and silence was observed. The film quotes one of Day’s favorite authors, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in describing the reality of the Catholic Worker houses: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
The harsh and dreadful love that Dorothy Day offered God is evident in Larson’s emotionally direct film. The documentary footage of the times Day lived are evocative and the subjects who provide different aspects of her character speak from the heart. Don’t Call Me A Saint should be part of the documentation that the Vatican must consider as Dorothy Day moves toward canonization. Larson is selling copies of the documentary on DVD to raise funds for a comprehensive project to preserve years of documentary interviews with Day’s contemporaries. It would make an extraordinary gift for anyone who wants to see love at its most exalted under the harshest and most dreadful of conditions.
Here, we meet a woman who wasn’t perfect, but who was perfectly in love with the Works of Mercy as a way to love God. It’s a rare treat and a spiritually satisfying work.
