Who Was Dorothy Day?

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Beginning her professional life as a radical journalist in the early twentieth century and later a convert to Catholicism in her twenties, Dorothy Day was the cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, a group of autonomous communities across the United States (currently numbering around 150) and abroad (currently numbering around 40). These provide food and shelter to the homeless and a platform from which to remind Americans and others that the American Dream has not been an attainable reality for all of its citizens.  Moreover, the newspaper that she edited beginning in 1933 is still being published by the New York Worker house (and still costs a penny a copy, as it did in 1933).  Finally, she was foremost in virtually every socially progressive movement in the twentieth century, beginning with women's suffrage to labor issues to pacifism to nuclear disarmament to civil rights to the struggles of migrant workers.  These issues necessitated travel, protest, and regular stays in jail.

Those individuals who began the process of canonization shortly after her death in 1980 and continue it today have their work cut out for them.  Her early radical and unconventional life, and her frequent criticism of the Catholic hierarchy, make her a most unusual candidate for sainthood.  It has been said by several writers and historians there is enough in the record of her dramatic life to alienate anyone. Conservatives often were concerned with her rejection of capitalist values; liberals mourn her personalist philosophy that demanded that individuals, not government, should bear the responsibility of those who were unable to provide for themselves.  Nonetheless, many regard her as the most significant lay Catholic of the twentieth century.