Today the Catholic Church is considering Day's possible canonization. But in her youth around the early 1900s, Dorothy Day was by her own words ‘lost and in a Bohemian life’. She participated in protest movements without understanding the true motive, experienced failed love affairs, a marriage, a suicide attempt, and an abortion.
After she came to identify with the Catholic Church, its various activities, missionary initiatives, she was attracted to it. Alongwith Peter Maurin, a French immigrant, she co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper. The mission of the newspaper was to have a society constructed of Gospel values. *The newspaper spawned a movement of houses of hospitality and farming communes that has been replicated throughout the United States and other countries.
*source - Dorothydayguild site
Initially working as a journalist on socialist newspapers, Dorothy Day’s spiritual conversion reflected in her later writings. She often wrote to promote the “arousal and examination of conscience”. She believed that one of the chief objectives of The Catholic Worker was to raise Christians’ consciences on many philosophical and practical matters.
Some of the topics she commonly wrote on were Christian hospitality, war and peace and encouraging a Christian pacifist stance on preventing future wars, rapid industrial expansion shortly after World War II, poverty and destitution, anti-nuclear issues and on the labour movement.
Loaves and Fishes
Loaves and Fishes: The Inspiring Story of the Catholic Worker Movement is the second major memoir by Dorothy Day released in 1963. The memoir is Day’s experiences after her conversion to the Catholic Church. She is happy and content with her decision, but has questions regarding the bureaucracy of the church. She also questions the secular movements around her in the world, devoted to Communism, Socialism, or Anarchism. She also talks about the co-founder of the newspaper, the movement - Peter Maurin. The book is narrated well with philosophy, smartly and compassionately explained beliefs, role models in a humorous and readable way.
Image - Originally published: New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
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