Receiving the Francis Magisterium in the spirit of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day knew to receive our Faith through the prism of the lives of the saints and at the same time to reverence our hierarchy (source of efficacious sacraments and infallible teaching) with a brutal, candid realism about the failings and sins of any particular priest, bishop and pope. Dorothy's life and spirituality provide a marvelous template by which to receive the contrasting pontificates of Francis and John-Paul-Benedict.  She is unsurpassed (excepting Mother Theresa of course) in the boldness and vigor with which she reached out to those at the margins: the homeless, addicted, mentally ill, radicals, communists, artists, bohemians and all the rejected. She epitomizes like no one else Francis' passion to reach out to those who feel neglected and rejected by the Church. Indeed, she was most at home with these very people and clearly had problems with someone like Cardinal Spellman and his conviviality with war, wealth, status and power. At the same time, she was rigorous and uncompromising in her acclamation of the Truth of our faith in all its splendor and depth. There was nothing puritanical or prurient in her view of sexuality and romance: she was flamingly passionate in her love affairs even as she later embraced the rigorous, vigorous Catholic ethos of chastity, largely from her exquisitely feminine sense of the needs and vulnerabilities of women and children. If the dual JPB pontificate announced Truth with impeccable clarity, depth and gentleness; and Francis burns with desire to share the Love of Christ with the alienated; than Dorothy is a splendid, fascinating, synthesizing embodiment of both impulses, which require crave each other in a marriage made in heaven.

The Catholic Worker as Matriarchy: Absence of Father

My lifelong fascination and admiration for Dorothy Day is being renewed by reading the Jim Forest biography All Is Grace.  Her profound love for the poor and deep Catholic faith have inspired me to pray to her for our work at Magnificat Home in providing a home for women. In her femininity she is fierce, fearless, compassionate, intelligent, and determined. My favorite vignette: she picks up two cold, homeless men; brings them to the bar she frequented with radicals, writers and mobsters of various stripes. She sits at the bar, orders three shots and then busts spontaneously into song. Eugene O'Neill was among those awestruck by her strange beauty...bold, passionate, unrestrained by custom, radiantly feminine! I have always, however, been put off by her anarchism and pacifism. Reading Forest's chapter on the Catholic Worker in the 60s helped me understand the underlying problem: absence of the masculine as paternal. Forest quotes Tom Cornell as saying that the anarchy of the Catholic Worker was Dorothy's anarchy. It was (and probably still is) a matriarchy. She was the one in charge...even as, true to her anarchy, she was "not in charge." Especially in the late 60s the NY Catholic Worker received an influx of "hippies" enamored of  rebellion, drugs and free sex. The community lacked the resources for control and protection. There was an absence of the paternal  as an internal principle of order, accountability, discipline and definition. Dorothy herself, and her movement, lacked an appreciation of the necessary use of fatherly force in a way that is rational, controlled, peace-enhancing and even merciful, for the victims and offenders both. She would never call the police. Her own experiences of the police in her radical youth was tarnished with abuse. In our own residences for women here in Jersey City we have received police visitations perhaps 25 times or more.  Impeccably they are gentlemanly, courteous, reassuring, professional...really agents of peace and protection. Dorothy seems not capable of imagining such. The root cause for this may be that her ferocious femininity was never balanced by a compensating virility. Her father seems not to have been a strong presence although she follows him into a career in journalism. He moved frequently for his career and so left a sense of rootlessness and impermanence that followed Dorothy as she traveled always and everywhere in an illusive homelessness even as she rooted herself always with the poor and in the Church.  She loved, passionately,  a very short list of men, but the love was largely unrequited. When she told her first lover, Lionel, that she was pregnant he left her to abort their child. This abandonment surely left her wounded. The "love of her life" Forester also left her when she became both pregnant and Catholic. Again, she is deeply violated by abandonment. These pivotal relationships surely left a negative effect. But not all is dismal. Her friendship with Eugene O'Neill remained chaste and drew her (she attests) closer to God. Peter Maurin was a significant masculine influence and the Catholic Worker may not have happened without him. In that sense the movement did issue from the conjoining of man and woman. Brilliant and learned in an eccentric manner, he was a humble and holy man but weak compared to the Lioness Dorothy whose imprint clearly determined the nature of the paper and movement. More deeply and spiritually, she was relentlessly, obediently filial in her loyalty to the masculine, hierarchical Church. Her bridal soul was receptive of the Divine Bridegroom...immaculately so from the time of her conversion. But that wholesome spousality never was reflected in her social practice which retained a militant femininism of a distinctive flavor. I am sensitive to this since my own Irish Catholic family sustains a milder form: a fiery femininity that is allergic to masculinity as authority, warrior, entrepreneur or preacher.  While our five uncles all served honorably in World War II the traditional Irish Catholic pride in the noble virility of fireman, policeman, soldier and FBI agent has been largely forgotten in the anti-war, anti-authority, anti-masculinity tsunami of the 1960s.  And so we see that the Catholic Worker is emblematic of the affliction that is destroying our society and parts of our Church:  the absence of the strong-and-gentle father.

My Prayer

Draw me to Yourself O Lord, fill me with your love.
Draw me to Yourself, cleanse me of my sin.
Pour Your blood upon me and make me pure, holy, good.

I am sick, give me your health; I am sinful, give me your mercy; I am tired, give me your rest; I am weak, give me your strength; I am lonely, give me your love.

Preserve my heart in purity, patience, perseverence, and peace.
Seal and secure my heart in your love.
Revive, defend, enhance my innocence.
Sanctify me by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit.
Strengthen me with your beautiful strength.

Make me humble, holy, loving and pure.
Make me quiet, still, calm, attentive, alert, watchful and vigilant.
Make me receptive, docile, pliable, disponible, responsive, obedient and grateful.
Make me patient, painstaking, longsuffering, persistent and persevering.

Make me sensitive, compassionate, kind, generous, merciful;
Make me magnanimous, joyous, zealous, fierce and fearless;
Make me steadfast; make me wise and prudent in all things.
Make me trustworthy as I place my trust in you.

Inflame me with love for you and let this fire consume what is not of you and purify all my loves.

Let me sing your praises forever.
Let me be a Praise of your Glory.

Let your mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you.