Catholic Worker

Robert Ellsberg 3-29-2010

It was surprising to see Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, described on the Glenn Beck show as a Marxist.

Jen Owens 3-03-2010

As an adolescent, I had a lot in common with my youngest brother in terms of my approach to my faith.

Jim Forest 2-01-2010

City of Belief, by Nicole d'Entremont

Glen Peterson 11-04-2008
Activists, evangelical Christians, and Catholic Workers have joined in a hunger strike in downtown Los Angeles to expose the plight of immigrants in the United States and to motivate 1 million peop
Jennifer Svetlik 9-15-2008

Christians for Comprehensive Immigration ReformLast year I lived in a Catholic Worker house that offers hospitality to immigrants without first inquiring about their legal status. One day, a woman called the house on behalf of two young boys who had come home to an empty apartment; [...]

Rosalie Riegle 9-01-2008
The Catholic Worker After Dorothy Day: Practicing the Works of Mercy in a New Generation, by Dan McKanan.
Eda Uca-Dorn 5-16-2008

Christine Haider, 25, is preparing for her confirmation to the Roman Catholic Church. When asked about her confirmation name, she smiles broadly and says, "Dorothy." Seventy-five years since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin continue to call a new generation of the faithful to a radical gospel of nonviolent resistance to evil and hospitality to [...]

Tobias Winright 9-01-2006
The authors connect the dots between Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and those who influenced them.
Jim Wallis 7-01-1998
Sojourners Community

It was both a blessing and an opportunity to meet Dorothy Day. Sojourners was just in its beginnings, and the founder of the Catholic Worker was nearing the end of her life. We spent some time together on a few occasions, once to interview her for the magazine (December 1976). Dorothy, characteristically, had tough and probing questions for me, but was also very affirming and encouraging of what we were trying to do. Perhaps she felt some connection to a group of young Christians who were trying to start both a magazine and a community among the poor, just as she had done. I even remember the fond description of Sojourners by her co-workers in New York as "a Protestant Catholic Worker"!

In one of those conversations with Dorothy, I enthusiastically described our vision of Christian community. She listened pensively, but her eyes betrayed a certain skepticism. "I thought we were creating a community too," she sort of sighed, "but the Catholic Worker turned out to be more of a school." Over the years many people came to the Catholic Worker, but most of them eventually left to go on to other things. While the list of those who passed through the Catholic Worker is quite impressive, few stayed and I sensed that Dorothy missed many of them.

Well, it’s been more than two decades since that conversation with Dorothy and, now, I would have to say the same thing about Sojourners. Literally hundreds and hundreds of community members, interns, and worshipers have come and gone, most to lives and work very consistent with Sojourners’ vision. Like Dorothy, I once hoped and even expected that most people would stay; but it wasn’t to be. Now we are like a dispersed community, a Diaspora, scattered across the country and around the world.

Jim Wallis 9-01-1995

In Oklahoma City, 168 people died because they were in the way of somebody's anger at the government.