By Dorothy Day. We must begin sometime to aim at sanctity. The tragedy, Newman said, is never to begin. Or having put one’s hand to the plough, to turn back. To become a tired radical. To settle down to relish comfortably past performances of self-sacrifice and self-denial. It is not enough, St. Ambrose remarks, to… Read More Sanctity
Mark and Louise Zwick, Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XX, No. 3, May-June 2000, excerpt. “You ape, you assent to get the better of me. Hold your tongue… If there is no God, then I am God!” – — Fyodor Doestoevsky, The Demons “…It was Dostoevsky among the Russian novelists who struck the deepest chord with Dorothy during her… Read More Dostoevsky and Dorothy Day
Neither Socialism nor lassez faire CapitalismOctober 1, 2001 | By Mark and Louise Zwick The following was a talk given at the American Chesterton Society annual conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2001. Dorothy Day and G. K. Chesterton were contemporaries. Both came into Catholicism in the 1920’s, Chesterton in 1922 at age 48… Read More G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day on Economics
“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern… Read More Michael Davies on the Merciful, Ever Welcoming Church
Dorothy Day and the spiritually subversive Works of Mercy. Most of us must pay taxes or else we are forbidden to work, and this would put our families in grave jeopardy. Dorothy Day knew this. She chose to work outside of “the system” in service to those in need. But she counseled the rest of… Read More Dorothy Day Rendered Spiritual Gifts to Caesar
“For a more Christian view of life, the best books I have run across are “In Defense of Purity” by Dietrich von Hildebrand … the Encyclical on “Christian marriage” by Pope Pius XI, and the “Nuptial Mass” in the Missal.” — Dorothy Day. Her Faith was ever the same.. The Distributism Review. Dorothy Day wrote, “I… Read More Dorothy Day’s Cross
Romano Guardini on “The End of the Modern World“. “This frightful destruction did not drop down from heaven; in truth it rose up out of hell!” —Romano Guardini. Mark Malvasi writes, “…absorbed by technology, [Romano] Guardini anticipated the emergence of a new type of human being that was defined by regimentation and conformity. This “man… Read More Disappearing Into the Collective
In this 1945 meditation on Christmas, Dorothy Day reflects that it is not too late for any of us to welcome Christ, “who is always asking for room in our hearts” in the guise of our contemporaries, especially the poor. — Catholic Worker.org It is no use to say that we are born two thousand years too… Read More Dorothy Day: It Is Not Too Late to Make Room for Christ
Fetaltissue.org. 2021. | “Fetal tissue vaccines are the everyday means by which pro-lifers unawares develop some complicity in an industry they oppose. Our aim is to accessibly summarise the relevant facts regarding fetal tissue vaccines — which are obscured behind a veil of academia and technical jargon, concealing from the public legitimate moral & ethical… Read More Fetal Tissue Vaccines: 12 Faulty Assumptions
“A major area of distress for [Dorothy Day] in the 1970’s was what seemed to her the erosion occurring in the spiritual life of her fellow Catholics, including those in the Catholic Worker movement. More than ever Catholics seemed attentive to social issues she had been raising for forty years, but they were increasingly neglectful… Read More The Real Dorothy Day
“We support “right to repair” legislation for consumer products and capital equipment. We believe more ownership means more economic freedom in the truest sense. If you can’t fix it without being bound to the manufacturer’s terms, you don’t really own it. — American Solidarity Party Join the cause! We are building a free repair manual for every… Read More The Right to Repair v. Consumerism
Larry Chapp seems to express a kind of anxiety or apprehension in this video discussion about the obvious problem of the traditional magisterium as he comes “out of the closet” and reveals himself to be, of all things, an eschatological “universalist” wherein, in the end, we can all hope that Scripture and Tradition will be… Read More A Note on Dr. Larry Chapp — at the edge of Hell. Nothing to lose.
I know we are allowed to choose the lesser of two political evils, — but even moral principles must be applied according to the convictions of a Catholic conscience and circumstances. This is the (Christ-centered) “liberty” I believe in. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is… Read More Not an inch to Planned Parenthood…
“substituting the worship of Mammon for that of Christ” “We know in our hearts that Christ has overcome sin and death. We ask ourselves how we can best participate with him in overcoming the iniquity in the cosmos. …We were struck by [Fr. Louis] Bouyer’s statement that, “Man can recover true life and preserve the… Read More Detachment and Voluntary Poverty vs. Avarice and Seeking Power
How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance. 2000, Harper’s Magazine Foundation. “Ah, tolerance. Who could be against something so virtuous? And who could object to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Alabama-based group that recently sent out this heartwarming yet mildly terrifying appeal to raise money for its “Teaching Tolerance” program, which… Read More The Birth of the Southern Poverty Slander Center (SPLC)
Updated 2x. While on the one hand the so-called Social Justice movements of the 1960’s often devolved into a jumble of contradictory directions, some of them noble and some of them not, Dr. Martin Luther King denied the canard about being some kind of “Communist” (see YouTube) some of his friends and supporters may have… Read More Trying to Make Sense of Dr. Martin Luther King
Over a thousand psychiatrists in 1964 said Barry Goldwater was unfit to be Presiden of the United States. “The Goldwater rule is Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of… Read More Goldwater, Trump, and The Duty to Warn
Note: To tell you the truth I don’t think much of the “Catholic Worker Movement” these days. Even Dorothy Day herself was becoming somewhat discouraged by the naivete and moral incoherence of not a few of her admirers near the end of her life. Her own pain and understanding of the Gospel had made her… Read More Dorothy Day and Taxes in a Nuclear Age
FBI whistleblowers say pro-life groups, Catholics and others were ‘target of the government‘ “The FBI targeted pro-life groups, Catholics, and parents attending school board meetings with investigations in an effort to “inflate” the sense that they were a domestic terrorism threat, according to new whistleblower reports. “House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, detailed the reports in a… Read More News Conference on FBI Malfeasance. FBI Whistlerblowers Come Forward
“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… Read More Putting ‘Catholic’ in the Catholic Worker
A stoneis not an individual.You can make little onesout of big ones. A treeis an individual.It comesfrom a germ.“Only Godcan make a tree,”says the poet. A horseis an individual.The horse is notan individualthe way the treeis an individual.It has animal life. Man is an individualand has animal lifelike the horse.Man has also reason.which the horse… Read More On Personalism. Peter Maurin.
Updated. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s new book, To Change The Church: Pope Francis And The Future of Catholicism … is an urgent, compelling work of popular religious journalism. Douthat reads the signs of these anxious times with acute clarity and far-seeing vision. This book is must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of… Read More Revisiting the 2018 Dreher / Douthat Interview: the Great Gamble of Francis.
The New Oxford Review. In our October [1987] symposium, Thomas Molnar, an authority on all things French, threw out the intriguing morsel that the New Oxford Review seems to be following in the footsteps of Esprit, the French Catholic review founded in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier (who lived from 1905 to 1950). Although we would… Read More Are We “Personalists”?
Linking antiwar, anti racism and abortion. Opinion. Bill Ayers and His Media Groupies by Cliff Kincaid. And brought up to date— especially regarding “the Catholic movement” and the abortion connection— in a Spotify podcast below (August 2022). Bill Ayers’ claim that the Weather Underground bombed property, not people, in order to protest the Vietnam War, is two lies… Read More What’s been happening?
…and what can be done. “In this wide-ranging conversation, Glenn Loury, Ian Rowe, and Robert Woodson debunk The 1619 Project. “If there were a Mount Rushmore of American Black intellectuals, the three guests on this show would certainly be on it: Glenn Loury is a professor of the social sciences in the Department of economics at… Read More Myths About the Black Experience in America
“This is not a book “about” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, or the Catholic Worker movement in general. This is a book inspired by them and formed within the thought-world that they have created within me. But to understand why it is that these particular thinkers have had such an influence upon… Read More Confessions of a Catholic Worker by Larry Chapp
No Conceivable…Justification” for aerial warfare, “dreadful weapons”. Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and John XXIII, wrote in 1947: “The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished… Read More What Could These Men Possibly Have Had in Common?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to… Read More The Image of God in Our Turning Techno-logical Moment
Neither Socialism nor Laissez Faire Capitalism Pope Pius XI in 1931 warned of International Finance, the grave dangers of ‘economic domination’ accumulated in the hands of the few He warned in Quadragesimo Anno of the dangers of international finance controlling credit, crushing competition and families. And this message flows directly and seamlessly from the teachings of Christ… Read More Despotic Economic Dictatorship — Pope Pius XI
Catechism of the Catholic Church Avoiding war 2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war. 105 2308 All citizens… Read More Traditional Just War Teaching
Catholic Critique 