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
“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 of the… Read More Dorothy Day and Catholic Tradition
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
“Since Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891, a significant part of Catholic social doctrine has focused on man’s economic life and the challenge of building a well-ordered society rooted in correct first principles and animated by the twin virtues of justice and charity. The Church has boldly engaged the ideologies of the modern age—not… Read More Thomas Storck on Catholic Social Justice
5/14/25/ I don’t know what it is like where you live, but here where I live in, yes, liberal Massachusetts, most immigrants I see on a daily basis appear to be very good and hard working persons. I’ve worked with some myself in the last couple of years taking care of very elderly clients with… Read More Deport Criminals Not Working Refugees Seeking a Way Out of Poverty
“May the first…not be your last”. Catholic Worker 92 years old this month. The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, International Labor Day, on May 1, marked ninety-two years since Dorothy Day distributed 2,500 copies of The Catholic Worker in Union Square, boldly competing with the Communists’ The Daily Worker, and quickly edging it out in popularity, printing more… Read More The Original Catholic Worker’s deliberate Alternative to Communism
When we work we are either building or destroying. Written in 1948, the truths set out here are more timely than ever. By Carol Robinson, Integrity magazine. Nothing could be more unnatural by way of discovering one’s life work than the current, debasing system of “job-hunting.” … Back of today’s perusal of the want-ad columns,… Read More Vocation Versus Job Hunting. The Catholic Alternative.
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
“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
Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on “How the New Deal Coalition Fell Apart” in the DNC Chicago riot of 1968. After a moment of goofy kidding around mimicking the “Yippies,” Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland tell the most dramatic story of this seminal event which many of us saw on our TVs, horrifying our… Read More The Riot That Tore the Democratic Party Apart: Chicago 1968.
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…
By John C. Cort | New Oxford Review. January-February 1987. I’ve been thinking a lot about Karl Marx lately. Nearly two billion members of the human race liver under Marxist regimes, while leaders of the major opposition to oppressive regimes in Africa and Latin America usually look to Marx — and sometimes to a queer composite… Read More Neither Karl Marx Nor Adam Smith
“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
Dave DeCampMarch 12, 2024antiwar.com President Biden has requested a record $895 billion in military spending for the 2025 fiscal year. Of that amount, about $850 billion will go to the Pentagon, and the remaining funds will go to other US federal agencies for military programs, including the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program. While a massive… Read More Endless Warfare. Biden Requests $895 Billion For Military Spending For 2025
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
“Intersectionality is a Woke standard, but what is it? Where does it come from? The history of the concept isn’t that hard to trace, and where it leads us is back to some of the worst regimes in history. Kim Crenshaw tends to be credited with Intersectionality, but she got it from the radicals in… Read More Maoism With American Characteristics
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
The American Solidarity Party is based in the tradition of Christian democracy. We acknowledge the state should be pluralistic while upholding a vision of the common good of all and of each individual conscience informed by Christian tradition and acknowledging the primacy of religion in each person’s life. Our Principles 1. Sanctity of LifeHuman life… Read More An Alternative to Trump-Biden-Harris. The American Solidarity Party.
“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”?
…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?
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 