The Movement
It all began in 1932 with Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a recent convert to Catholicism from an often-turbulent life as a journalist and social activist. While Dorothy was covering a hunger march in Washington D.C., she had prayed for a way of integrating her love for the poor and social questions with her newfound faith. At that time Dorothy took her membership in the Church to mean that she was unable to support the kinds of radical causes, such as the communist party, that she once had. Her prayer was asking for a way to put some of her old life together with her new. When she got back to New York City, as it turned out, an answer to her prayer was waiting for her on her doorstep in the person of Peter Maurin (1877-1949). Peter was a French immigrant, at one time a peasant farmer, and who in his youth had spent time teaching with a Catholic religious order. He had come to the United States as a
homesteader, and immersed himself deeply in Catholic social thought, philosophy, and cultural criticism.
Like Dorothy, Peter shared a deep concern for the social upheaval that was taking place in relation to the ongoing industrial revolution and in society in general, not least in the wake of the First World War and the Great Depression. His learning had led him to develop a radical but orthodox Catholic analysis of what was wrong with the world, as well as a practical program for making it right. He had heard of Dorothy’s literary and organizational talents, and he wanted her to help him put that program into action. The first thing that they did was start a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, to be a means of spreading Catholic social teaching to the men and women in the streets. Then they got to work on the rest of Peter’s program, which had three main elements: hospitality houses for the relief of the homeless and poor (recall, it was the Great Depression in the largest city in the world), small group discussions for the “clarification of thought” on social and political matters, and small farming communities, where the unemployed could find good work.
To make a long, complex, and wonderful story short, the paper was a hit, and very quickly a movement formed, centered out of St. Joseph House, the main hospitality house (still today) in Manhattan. Other houses formed too, as well as other papers, and a few farms, throughout the country. There were no official membership qualifications, and each local house or farm was free to embody Peter’s ideas as they saw fit. Today there remain dozens of houses, papers, and farms scattered throughout the country and even the world. There are plenty of books and websites that you can explore if you are interested in more of the history of the movement, or the life and thought of its personalities, including Peter and Dorothy.
One of the good things about the movement’s lack of official credentialing was the ability to be flexible, and for anyone to take the initiative and start their own farm or hospitality house or newspaper, and use the Catholic Worker name. Indeed, this was part of the point: Peter was always stressing “personal responsibility” – the Christian duty and right to begin to simply practice the Gospel without waiting for anyone to say it was okay. Yet, perhaps predictably, this freedom has also had a significant downside: it has meant that sometimes people have claimed the Catholic Worker name without sharing the core convictions that animated its founders. Peter and Dorothy were devout, faithful Catholics, and it was only in light of their unflinching devotion to the Church – in all its official teaching – that the Movement they founded makes any sense. Yet sometimes today the Catholic Worker is better known for espousing certain political views divorced from the Gospel than in anything Dorothy and Peter had in mind. It is one of the goals of the Center for Catholic Social Thought to put the “Catholic” back in Catholic Worker.
It should be clear by now that that is not the approach taken here. What follows is a series of short chapters, each of which presents one of the distinct features of, as the title suggests, not just a way of thinking, but of a whole way of life. This involves unpacking how the logic or rationale of each practice is deeply rooted in traditional Christianity. Many of these practices are rather counter-cultural, and so it will be important to show, as Peter did, why they are not counter-cultural just for the sake of being different, but for the sake of being pro-Christian. At the same time, as I mentioned, the book does not simply repeat what Peter and Dorothy said. Though their analysis and program is more relevant than ever, their audience was somewhat different a hundred years ago than it would be today, simply due to vast changes in society. In what follow I therefore sometimes use insights and analysis eclectically gathered from other thinkers and theologians (usually without naming them) to update what Peter and Dorothy said in order to rearticulate that message for today. To say the same thing to different audiences, you have to say it differently to each. But there remains plenty of Dorothy and Peter themselves here to let their own voices shine through. I pray that you find them as inspiring as I do.