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Maybe you’ve heard of Dorothy Day or the Catholic Worker movement she helped to start. If you’re curious what Catholic Worker is all about, let’s look at the history of this movement and what it is today.
Catholic Worker started in 1932 when Day, a veteran left-wing journalist and Catholic convert, met Peter Maurin, an itinerant French worker-scholar. Day greatly desired to work for social justice as a Catholic, as she had with the radicals of the Left. Maurin became her close friend and collaborator in this work.
On May 1, 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, The Catholic Worker newspaper made its debut with a first issue of 2,500 copies. Servant of God Dorothy Day and a few others hawked the paper to passersby in Union Square, New York City for a penny a copy (still the price).
From that small beginning, the movement spread around the world via communities called “houses of hospitality.” Today there are more than 200 of these Catholic Worker communities. They remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms.
An ongoing work
Martha Hennessy, Day’s granddaughter, is an active leader in the Catholic Worker today. She shared with Aleteia some details about the communities.
“Each community varies in who comes to live, work, and pray together, and the focus depends on the needs of the local neighborhood,” she said. “Basic principles of Catholic Worker houses of hospitality include the works of mercy (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned), the practice of Gospel nonviolence, and voluntary poverty.”
She explained a bit more about the practice of nonviolence and voluntary poverty: “We don’t support any wars as this is a theft of resources from the poor and spills innocent blood, and breeds hatred amongst brothers and sisters. It is also the biggest carbon footprint contributing to climate disruption. Voluntary poverty means going without luxuries so that all may have a decent life with the basic needs being met for everyone.”
Diversity of missions
Each house practices a different kind of mission based on the needs of the local community. The Catholic Worker (CW) house in Houston, for example, ministers to undocumented migrant workers injured on the job. Hennessy said:
The Los Angeles house feeds hundreds of homeless people on skid row, New Haven provides tiny houses for the homeless, and several midwestern communities grow food for local food pantries. Duluth ministers to trafficked Indigenous women. Many Catholic Workers have gone to prison protesting war, nuclear weapons, drones, and torture. The Birmingham CW protests the death penalty on a regular basis. Other communities address prison abolition.
The heart of the Catholic Worker mission is drawn from Jesus’s words in the Gospels, Hennessy said: “To remember God’s commandment to love Him with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves—that is what the Catholic Worker tries to live and embrace. Nothing can be done without the beloved community and prayers to God.”
Learning more about Catholic Worker
If you are interested in getting involved and volunteering with Catholic Worker, look up the CW Houses of Hospitality directory. It lists the many locations of houses around the country.
“Come and visit, come to volunteer and to study our co-founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin,” Hennessy said. She also recommended getting to know Catholic Worker by reading Day’s books. They include The Long Loneliness, Loaves and Fishes, and From Union Square to Rome.
