Write for God

The Catholic Worker newspaper appeared in May 1933 with 2,500 copies distributed by hand. Circulation grew to 190,000 by 1938, and dropped to 50,000 during World War II, largely because of the paper’s pacifist stand. (Today’s circulation is over 80,000.)

Factoids about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker only hint at the struggle that this courageous woman faced when she turned Catholicism on its ear in the 1930s.

On May 1, 1933, she published a newspaper that sold for a penny. Seventy-six years later, it still sells for a penny. The debut of a paper on a day that was significant to the labor movement caused grief for some conservative elements within the Catholic Church that insisted on labeling the Catholic Worker –and Dorothy Day– as a Communist. (May 1 is really International Workers Day, which was first celebrated in the United States, not in the Soviet Union, as propaganda would have us believe. It began as a protest for the eight-hour workday.)

The Catholic Worker’s newspaper did grow throughout the 1930s, but its readership shrank during World War II. Day’s staunch pacifism during a time when the vox pop called for fighting Hitler, Franco, Mussolini and Tojo further painted the movement as outside the mainstream.

We receive the papers from the New York, Los Angeles and Houston Catholic Worker houses. They are not affiliated and operate independently because Dorothy Day’s movement was not about top-down leadership. (It was about bottom-up charity toward all. ) These three papers vary in their approach and their scope.  The one from Los Angeles is called the Agitator.

New York’s is still the closest to the paper that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin started. It has news from its houses, articles from the archives and very good social justice articles. Los Angeles has longer, more polemical articles and news about protests.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Houston’s paper, which is bilingual because the house serves Latino migrants. The paper has two front pages–one in each language. Half the paper is printed in one language going one way; turn it over and you can read it in the other language. The writings of the Zwick family and its contributors at Casa Juan Diego are always very readable.

If Dorothy Day were alive today, she would still be prodding the church to serve the poor and preach the Gospel. She would be challenging us to speak out against injustice and to have the guts to take unpopular stands in the face of opposition.  She would be publishing a newspaper in a time when newspapers are dying.  If she were with us, Dorothy Day would be burning with a love of God, just as she was until her death in 1980, and she would be asking us why we are not, too.

Contact any or all of these Catholic Worker newspapers and get a subscription to support the movement and to keep her spirit alive.

In typical Facebook fashion, a friend sent me a list to amend and then forward to more friends on my list. Usually, the lists run along the lines of “what do you like to do on a day off” or “name your 15 favorite CDs.” Today’s list was more interesting.

The list I received today asked for 10 items on my “bucket list,” meaning things I’d like to do before I die. (The name comes from the expression “kicking the bucket” and was also the title of a recent Jack Nicholson movie about the same subject.) It didn’t take me long to think of things I may one day tick off my list. There’s altruism, self-development and a little selfishness in my 10 items:

1. See my three grandchildren graduate from high school, at least.
2. Travel to Europe with my husband.
3. Spend time in a really nice spa just getting pampered.
4. Publish a book.
5. See the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel.
6. Live on the beach permanently.
7. Run another marathon.
8. Open a Catholic Worker house.
9. Get a Montblanc fountain pen.
10. Read all the books on my shelves.

It struck me how some of these list items are in direct contrast to one another: How many Catholic Workers who live in voluntary poverty would even think of wanting to have a Montblanc fountain pen or being pampered in a spa–if only for a day? I thought of the entry in Dorothy Day’s diaries from The Duty of Delight where she writes that women are always interested in clothes, no matter how old they are. There’s a certain frisson in holding something so beautiful that it appeals to the senses without necessarily being something you would, or could, actually ever own.

Some of my choices made it on the list just because of curiosity. I love fountain pens and Montblanc is the epitome of fine writing instruments. One of their collectors’ series featured pens commemorating William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, three of my favorite authors. I can look through the Montblanc mall window like a child outside a candy store just ogling their elegantly crafted pens and dream about writing with one. I don’t think I could ever feel good paying hundreds of dollars for something to write with when my Parker fountain pens do a fine job, but looking doesn’t cost anything.

Wanting to improve my health by running again and being blessed with more years of life to see my grandchildren grow are honorable things. I would rather fulfill those two items than the other eight. Traveling with my husband would be a fine thing, too, since I enjoy his company now as much as I did when we first met in 1981. After 25 years of marriage, we still like working side-by-side and conversing.  

It was fun to write my list and to come to grips with choices that are so divergent. It’s not likely that I could ever check off all 10, but it doesn’t matter. Flights of fancy never require boarding passes.

For the last several nights at dinner, I’ve been reading at The Duty of Delight, Dorothy Day’s diaries during the years of the Catholic Worker. Sometimes her entries are incredibly brief and at times they are epic. They are always consistent, though.

This blog began on Holy Innocents Day 2007, but the spans between entries have sometimes been long as life got in the way. I’ve been unemployed, re-employed, become a grandmother three times, saw my husband fracture his skull and end up in a trauma unit and then witnessed our 13-year-old survive five weeks in a coma and five weeks in rehab. Since October 2007, life has been a maelstrom of sorrow, prayer, anger, acedia, joy and resignation.

For a diary or a blog to serve its purpose as confessional and record of daily life, it must have continuity. As our daughter continued to improve each day, the light at the end our tunnel grew nearer and brighter. Now it’s time to step out into the sunshine of God’s love and see life with fresh eyes.

Long or short, trivial or deep, these entries will continue.