Dorothy Day – birthday today – on politics

I’ve excerpted the first quote below the link  – the third excerpt (of three) really lays out the Catholic Worker political and economic thoughts – but you’ll need to hit the link to read it, and it’s laid out as bullet points. The author of this posting is a professor and dean in the Villanova law school.

It seems somehow fitting that this Election Day falls on the birthday of Dorothy Day (1897). I usually include a unit on Day when I teach courses on Catholic social thought because she is wonderfully disruptive of our usual categories. And so here are some quotes for today from this remarkable woman on matters broadly political (Day, of course, was essentially an anarchist when it came to what we would count as “politics”)

From “Our Fall Appeal,” The Catholic Worker, November 1955:

In the light of our present difficulties it is necessary to restate our position and tell our readers again just what it is we are trying to do–what it means to us to perform the works of mercy, spiritual and corporal. The most important thing in the world to us is to grow in the love of God, to try to do His will. Our Lord Jesus told us that what we do to the least, we do to Him. St. Paul told us we are “members one of another, and that when the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered.”

We believe not only in St. Thomas’ doctrine of the common good, but feel it can be affected only if each one of us alone realizes his personal responsibility to his brother, that his love for God must be shown in his love for his brother, and that love must be expressed in the works of mercy, practiced personally, at a personal sacrifice. So we live together, here at the Catholic Worker, pool resources of money and abilities, and so are able to take care of far more than just ourselves.

People have so far lost that sense of personal responsibility that our country is becoming a country of institutions and a gigantic part of our income goes to support them. State responsibility has come to take the place of personal responsibility.

….

That love of brother, that care for his freedom is what causes us to go into such controversial subjects as man and the state, war and peace. The implications of the gospel teaching of the works of mercy, lead us into conflict with the powers of this world. Our love of God is a consuming fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It is a living God and a living faith that we are trying to express. We are called to be holy, that is, whole men, in this life of ours.