“A new generation of communities are integrating hospitality and solidarity with the poor through prayer and Church fidelity, consistent with the vision of the movement’s founders.

Emily Lehman, January 10, 2023. National Catholic Register

The Catholic Worker movement — with members scattered throughout the U.S. and around the world — provides a compelling encounter with the Catholic Church for many struggling with homelessness or poverty. But sometimes the movement, like co-founder Servant of God Dorothy Day herself, can be an enigma. 

Not all Catholic Worker communities are in fact Catholic, and some openly question Church teaching on issues relating to gender and sexuality or minimize Day’s staunch opposition to abortion. 

But several houses founded in the Catholic Worker spirit, some only in the past few years, are living a liturgical and communal life that warmly embraces Church teaching while being faithful to the principles of Day and Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin. Households like the Simone Weil House in Portland, Oregon, the Peter Claver House in South Bend, Indiana, and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Harveys Lake, Pennsylvania, are witnesses to the rich life that can arise out of a commitment to liturgical prayer, living in community, and serving the poor. 

But these communities don’t see their way of life as exceptional or the product of a special charism, restricted to their own movement in the Church. Catholic Workers “understand the Catholic Worker charism really just to be the Gospel,” commented Emma Coley, who became a resident of the Simone Weil House after studying religion and ethnography at Princeton. “It’s not a special vocation, but rather it’s just the general Christian vocation to hospitality, to prayer, to community.”

…More

— Cardinal Pell Dies

— Catholic bishop arrested in Nicaragua for allegedly spreading “Fake News”

— The Marxist Social Justice Agenda