Spinning in Her Grave: Of Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, and Gender Ideology

This letter to the New York City Catholic Worker was mailed in early September 2023. A copy was also included in the package of newspapers returned via mail at the same time. To date, I have received no reply. Given the recent release of Dignitas Infinita, I thought it was worth making the letter public at this time. 

Dear Catholic Worker friends, 

I’m returning my bulk order of NYCW newspapers for the current issue as well as the previous one. I had intended to send back the latter much sooner, but I didn’t get around to composing an accompanying letter of explanation, and it seemed necessary to include one. When the new bulk order arrived a few days ago, I decided I needed to sit down and get this done, so here it is.

You’ll see from your records that I’ve been getting a bulk order of the NYCW for many, many years. Year after year, I’ve been dutifully putting them out in the literature racks at my parish, South Bend’s St. Matthew Cathedral, in hopes that my fellow parishioners would pick them up, read them, and develop an interest in the Catholic Worker shtick.

In truth, I’d stopped reading them myself long ago, but I trusted that the New York CW community would never publish anything that would directly fly in the face of Catholic teaching. I mean, I knew there would be some squishy stuff from time to time, and maybe even some edgy propositions, but I had no fear that Dorothy Day’s flagship newspaper would promote outright heterodoxy or heresy.

I was wrong. The “Declaration of a Catholic Commitment to Trans-Affirmation” you included in your January/February 2023 issue is beyond squishy and edgy, which is why I’m returning these papers to you and asking that you cancel my bulk subscription. Since I don’t read the CW anymore, I missed that statement last winter, and it only came to my attention when I came across Larry Chapp’s piece in the National Catholic Register, "Whither the Catholic Worker Movement?" As I skimmed through it, this line jumped out at me: “…a full-throated endorsement of modern transgender ideology.” That caused me to slow down, read the whole piece thoroughly, and then go track down a copy of the Jan/Feb ’23 CW to verify Chapp’s assertions.

Regrettably, everything Larry wrote was true, and I became disoriented and distraught. When I recovered from the shock, I immediately went to St. Matt’s and removed all NYCWs from the literature racks, including stray copies of the issue in question. Plus, I let the pastor know about the situation, and I apologized for any confusion or scandal that I might’ve inadvertently engendered by stocking the church’s literature racks with that particular issue and giving parishioners the false impression that the parish endorsed (or at least condoned) your dangerous, anti-human, and, frankly, anti-Catholic viewpoint.

Anti-Catholic? You know the Church’s teaching as well as I do, and you know that the LGBTQ+ ideology reflected in that Declaration is inconsistent with Catholic anthropology and morality, including morally responsible stewardship of creation. Pope Francis writes about “human ecology” in Laudato Si, and notes that “acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home.” He goes on to specify that “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.”

Even aside from all that, your embrace of so-called “gender-affirming care” is particularly egregious since it involves medical and surgical interventions that do not restore or promote health, but seriously undermine it – especially in the young. Of course, you’re free to subscribe to or promote whatever worldview or associated practices you choose, but to do so under the banner “Catholic” is, at the very least, disingenuous and misleading.

The whole situation makes me so sad, so sad, for Dorothy Day and the whole Catholic Worker “thing” was the crucible of my Catholic conversion. As noted above, I always knew that the CW would gravitate to the left side of any issue – theological, political, cultural – but I naively assumed that the NY CW community would stay true to its Catholic roots out of deference to Dorothy, if nothing else. Surely you can see that there are plenty of us in the Catholic Worker diaspora that see your promoting that Declaration as a bewildering betrayal. You can see that, right?

I’d love to hear back from you and even enter into dialogue with you about this matter. And I would be happy if you’d consider publishing this letter in the NYCW paper. I could be wrong, but I’ll bet you’d be surprised how many likeminded readers would be prompted to send in their own letters of protest.

Truly, and I mean this without the least hint of sarcasm or cynicism, God bless you. I trust you’re following your consciences with sincerity, but I urge you to seek additional formation of conscience in line with Catholic teaching with regards to this very controversial moral arena.

PEACE,

Rick Becker
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Saint Wannabes: Catholic Higher Education and the Pursuit of Holiness

Saints don’t have to found activist movements, start religious orders, or run colleges. They can also become saints by getting the kids to soccer practice, making dinner, and reading bedtime stories.  

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Jim Eder (1940-2023): Conjurer of Community

“Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust,

where there is companionship.”

~ Dorothy Day

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Servant of God Dorothy Day: A Personal Witness

 

"Don't call me a saint, I don't want to be dismissed that easily." 

 ~ Dorothy Day

"Once you get to know her, she's just like any other crabby old lady." 

 ~ Stanley Vishnewski

Even so, many thanks, Dorothy. Pray for me. 

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Veterans Day 2018

Although I get (and distribute) the New York Catholic Worker newspaper, I rarely read it all the way through – as I used to do when I was hanging around Chicago’s St. Francis CW House. But I’m older and cranky and tired most the time now. When the CW bundle arrives in our mailbox every month or two, I’ll usually lay the pile out flat, scan the headlines for names I recognize, and then distribute them in our church’s vestibule the next time I’m there for Mass. “I’m sure somebody will benefit from these,” I’ll mutter.

Last week, however, for some reason, some providential reason, I leafed through a copy of the latest issue, page by page. That’s when I came across Dan Jackson’s moving testimonial, “Dorothy Was Right All Along.” He’s referring to CW founder Dorothy Day’s pacifism, which was unequivocal. Like Jackson, I found Day’s Christianity inspiring in my youth, but I held back from her call to total nonviolence. “I might get married and have children someday,” I argued (with anyone who’d listen), “and I’d have responsibility for protecting them, even if it required returning violence for violence.” And I am married, and I do have children today, and I would do whatever was necessary to protect them.

But war is another matter altogether. It seems impossible to reconcile modern, total war with the relative niceties of just war criteria. The aims of today’s wars are especially elusive and fungible, yet the costs are always incalculable. Jackson’s poignant reflection was a stark reminder of the latter. He describes an epiphany he had while working at a Catholic cemetery one summer. He’d witnessed numerous military burials, but one in particular jarred his soul.

No one spoke. No one coughed. The twenty-one gun salute reverberated under the arches of the nearby Whitestone Bridge. The only sound at the gravesite was the uncontrolled sobbing of this boy’s father. As they never had before, my eyes filled with tears. That was the day I stopped doubting Dorothy. That was the day I became sure that she was right all along.

I had Jackson’s testimonial in mind as Veterans Day arrived this year – the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. A friend of mine posted a recording from that day in 1918 when the guns went silent along the front. It’s surreal: one moment Europeans bent on slaughtering each other across stretches of land, the next moment there was calm. You can even hear the birds begin singing after the pause.

But it was a calm arranged by the very parties who’d initiated the conflict in the first place, and it prompted me to track down a movie that depicts a different, more organic ceasefire that preceded the Armistice by several years. The movie is Joyeux Noël (2006), and it tells the tale of the Christmas Truce that spontaneously occurred along the French battle lines in 1914. German, French, and British soldiers put down their arms and fraternized across enemy lines. They ate and drank; they shared photos and played soccer.

We watched it tonight, and I couldn’t help thinking that this silencing of guns was accomplished by those who were most directly affected. The men who were killing and being killed themselves decided to stop the slaughter. In time, their superiors compelled them to take up arms again against each other, but the men had chosen, even for a brief period, to choose against killing as a way of solving problems. It didn’t make sense to them. The cost was too high.

It’s still too high.

Veterans Day is the day we honor the living, and I do thank vets for their service and sacrifice. I’m also committed to praying for peace so that fewer of those who follow them in service will have to be commemorated on Memorial Day.
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In Gratitude for a Fresh Glimpse at Dorothy Day

Joe:

I can't recall if I sent you a thank-you note for that book, but I'm finally reading through it, and I'm grateful you sent it along.

You mentioned that the author is a friend of yours. If you're in touch with him, please tell him that he has succeeded in coaxing the dying embers of my Catholic Worker enthusiasms back into flame.

I didn't become a Catholic because of Dorothy Day, but I don't think I would've become a Catholic without her – and Peter...and the whole messy Catholic Worker schtick. 

Deo gratias.

– Rick
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Decades ago, in Eugene, Oregon, I read Dorothy Day's autobiography and decided to move to "the city" to find out about this Catholic Worker thing she started. Before I left, I forked over to Harper & Row for a whole box of Long Loneliness paperbacks, and I handed them out to family and friends and strangers. I urgently wanted others to meet this extraordinary woman – to see Jesus through her eyes, to meet him again, as I had, with her help.

Years ago, here in South Bend, I asked the New York Catholic Worker community to sign me up for a bulk subscription to their newspaper. Ever since, every month or two, I get a tight roll of 50 copies in the mail. I spread them out on a table, weigh them down with encyclopedias to flatten them, and then place them in the vestibule and exits at my church. It's not quite the same as passing out copies of Dorothy's autobiography. Still, there's always the possibility that somebody will, out of curiosity, pick up one of the newspapers and discover the Catholic Worker for the first time – and, indirectly, discover Dorothy.

However, Terrence Wright's new book, the one Joe sent me, has brought me up short. I read it eagerly, and I'm looking forward to reading it again. Far from nostalgia, it makes Dorothy's complex legacy and the rollicking CW ethos come alive, succinctly and compellingly. And, for me, it was a powerful reminder of why I've been pushing The Long Loneliness and the newspaper all these years: Because Dorothy Day knew Jesus, and she hoped the Catholic Worker – through the works of mercy and peacemaking and clarification of thought – would help others to know him and make him known.

So, stand by, Ignatius Press. Once I scrounge together the cash, I'll be contacting you for a boxful of Wright, and I'll get back into the book-pushing business.
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Deus Caritas Est: A Family Response

"It's our hope that our kids grow up to be other-oriented, selfless. And that doesn't just mean going to Calcutta like Mother Teresa. It's the way you treat the teller at Walmart and the guy in the car that's driving slowly in front of you and the person at work that rubs you the wrong way."
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Excerpted from a family interview with South Bend Tribune writer Karen Rivers that appeared in her story "Local Catholics respond to the Pope's first letter" (7/20/2006). The story also featured the reactions of others to Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est, including our friends Brenna Cussen of the South Bend Catholic Worker and Amy Schlatterbeck of St. Pius X Parish in Mishawaka.

One Book

"I read through Dorothy’s autobiography like a starving man tucking into a feast, and I well remember sitting in the Fishbowl at the University of Oregon when I turned the last page. 'I’ll never be the same,' I said out loud, and I was right."

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From "Ecumenism, Conversion, and the Catholic Worker: Dorothy Day's Appeal to Evangelicals," Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present, & Future, eds. Lance Richey and Adam DeVille (Solidarity Hall, 2016). 

Let’s Get Radical: Has the Catholic Worker Movement Betrayed Its Founders?

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

Liberals are too liberal to be radicals. To be a radical is to go to the roots. Liberals don’t go to the roots; they only scratch the surface. The only way to go to the roots is to bring religion into education, into politics, into business.

To bring religion into the profane is the best way to take profanity out of the profane. To take profanity out of the profane is to bring sanity into the profane. Because we aim to do just that we like to be called radicals.

~ Peter Maurin

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