Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was born on November 8th, 1897. As a young child she received little exposure to Christianity, except for a few neighbors. Throughout her life she found religion very interesting and she always wanted to know more about the subject. Dorothy was well educated and started her early career as a journalist, like her father.

In her childhood Dorothy experienced many moves. In 1906 an earthquake hit San Francisco, where they were a fairly wealthy family, and Dorothy’s family moved to the south side of Chicago, where her father did not have a job at first. After a small period he received a job as an editor at a Chicago newspaper, but the position wasn’t as prestigious as his previous job. This is where Dorothy received her first experience with Catholicism. While in Chicago she had her first true experience with the poor, when she would take walks through the poor neighborhoods.

After she dropped out of the University of Illinois she moved to New York where she found a job as a reporter. She befriended many communists and agreed with Karl Marx in believing that religion was the “opiate of the people”. As a reporter she usually covered the social issues and rallies of the times. She interviewed all types of radical people fighting for causes.

Dorothy got involved in the protests herself, like when she was arrested in 1917 with 39 other women fighting for women suffrage in front of the White House. The women all organized a hunger strike while in captivity, that resulted in a presidential pardon for all of the women. She also protested American involvement in WWI, when she wrote for The Masses. After this time period she felt that merely writing the issues was insufficient, so in 1918 she enrolled in a nursing program.

Then she spent a short time in New Orleans then bought a house on Staten Island after selling rights for a movie about a book she wrote. She began a common-law marrige with Forester, who was opposed to marrige and religion. Then she became pregnant and in 1927 her daughter Tamar Theresa was born, then she and her daughter were baptised in the Catholic church.

She later met Peter Maurin, a French immagrant, who inspired her to do more outreach work to the struggling people of New York. Together with little money and a great deal of faith in Jesus they started The Catholic Worker and it became very successful in a short amount of time.

Peter and Dorothy took their outreach a step further when they started to allow needy people eat meals and sleep in the apartment that Dorothy was staying at, this is also where they did a lot of the work for the newspaper that they published. Later the Catholic Worker movement had swept the nation and in 1936 there were 33 Catholic Worker houses.

She continued to speak out against war and violence in WWII and also during the cold war with the U.S.S.R. and she became a spokesperson for the left-winged Catholics. Her type of Catholicism was speading by her example. She was such a strong model for Catholics, Christians and every kind of people everywhere. Pope John Paul II opened her case up for saint hood, although she remained to be humble through out her life and continued to work with the less fortunate. Day said, “Don't call me a saint -- I don't want to be dismissed that easily.” Calls attention to just how humble she was.

In analyzing Dorothy Day it is not very valid to use Karl Marx because she disproves his theory that “religion is the opiate of the people”. She was active politically and socially before she was religious, that much is true but after she became a Catholic and met Peter who was also a very devout man, she began to live, breathe, and act out social change more intensely than ever before. Religion was her life blood and the teachings of Jesus Christ inspired her to new levels of action against the oppressed people of the nation.

In the area of psycoanalital analysis, Freud is far from the truth that religion hindered her development. It is hard to tell if the different stages as a youth were met or not. She did come out of an unconventional childhood, because she moved many times in her youth, but also once she became independent on her own. Although it would be hard to believe that her id was not properly developed because I don’t believe that it comes natural to help and reach out to people when they are in need and especially when they are complete strangers. Religion did not cause Dorothy into a recession but instead religion inspired her in a way that might not have been possible if it wasn’t for the Catholic faith.

Day was well acquainted with Marx in her early stages of her life but she decided she would use the ideas of Max Weber and use Catholicism as a means for social change. She took the teachings of Jesus to heart and tried to help in every way she could for her fellow man. Her faith gave her strength in the face of adversity. According to Weber she would have had “the Protestant work ethic”, where she worked very honestly and then achieved her goals. A good example of this ethic for her is when she first started to publish The Catholic Worker. She put of her faith in god, with the help of Peter, but she also put her faith in hard work would reap it’s reward.

Erikson and Allport would said that the religion that she practiced would have been mature. She listened to the teachings of the bible but she did at the beginning in more of a scholarly way than a way of devotion. Once she found that the faith she then took a devotional approach to the faith. Still as this was happening she asked many questions and she also brought some change to the Catholic Church at the time.

Another issue would have been her development. I think that she did regress a little bit because she tried to find information on religion, which she lacked in her childhood but after she went backwards she took two steps forward in her maturity level and became a better person. This would be encouraged by Allport and Erikson. Freud would have said that moving back was bad, no matter the circumstances.

Berger would have stated that religion was very important in “world building”, both in the inside of Dorothy and the community that she produced all around her. She shows a great model of the sacred canopy and how her faith made her a stronger person. Religion helped Dorothy externalize much further than would have been possible is she was secular. Because of her faith she had a sense of connectedness. She would have never done what she did if she didn’t feel that she was important, connected and could make a difference. She never became totally stable and she always had

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