Today is a significant anniversary for the Catholic Church in the United States. It’s especially important for all who appreciate the life and ministry of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker movement which they founded.
It was 80 years ago today — on May 1, 1933 — that the first issue of the Catholic Worker newspaper was published. This was the very first step in what would become the Catholic Worker movement, an international network of communities and people dedicated to living and promoting the Gospel’s call to care for the poor and human solidarity, especially as these are expressed in Catholic social teaching. (The image on the right is of an issue dated April 1936.)
Dorothy printed 2,500 copies of that first edition of the paper and distributed them at May Day celebrations in New York. She remained its editor until her death in 1980. Contributing writers over the years included Jacques Maritain, Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Robert Coles, and others. At its height, it had several hundred thousand subscribers.
In May 1933, Dorothy Day was 35 years old and had been a Catholic for less than 6 years, having been baptized in December 1927. She chose to do it at the expense of a treasured relationship with her beloved partner and the father of her child. Before that, she had worked on the staffs of several socialist newspaper in New York. After her baptism, Dorothy moved with her daughter to Los Angeles, where she worked briefly as a Hollywood screenwriter. She returned to New York and began writing for the Catholic journals Commonweal and America. In early December 1932, she traveled to Washington, DC, where she covered a large hunger march for the journals. While there, on December 8 (the feast of the Immaculate Conception), Dorothy prayed inside the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception that God would guide her into the work her wanted her to do. On the day she returned to her New York City apartment, Peter Maurin was waiting there to introduce himself.
They talked at great length, for several months, about Catholic social teaching and how it could be made better known and lived more faithfully. It was Peter’s suggestion that Dorothy start a newspaper (though he liked the title The Catholic Radical). In the months and years after the paper began publication, the houses of hospitality, Catholic Workers farms, and social activism followed.
The Catholic Worker movement remains alive today, though not as prominent as it once was. (See the interesting article by Eric Anglada in the brand new issue of America. Also Dan McKanan’s The Catholic Worker after Dorothy.) The bishops of the United States recently voted unanimously to move forward with her canonization cause.
The newspaper is still published today in at least a couple of formats. Click here for information on a version still published by a CW community in New York City. I used to receive one published by Casa Juan Diego, a CW house in Houston. There’s an online publication known as the Catholic Worker Journal here.
Dorothy Day, pray for us.