Dorothy Day’s Pacifism–The Result of Reason and Praxis

Last updated on: October 26, 2007 at 7:23 pm by Policraticus

Dorothy Day’s Pacifism–The Result of Reason and Praxis 2007-10-26T19:23:28-05:00 Policraticus

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Dorothy Day, who is on the path to sainthood, was an intellectual. But more importantly, she was a manifestation of what deep Catholic faith becomes. Very few have had the courage to live their Catholic faith beyond their front porch like Dorothy Day…the Desert Fathers, the martyrs, St. Francis of Assisi and Bl. Teresa of Calcutta come immediately to mind. These are the ones who hung on every word of Christ, and these are the ones who convict me of my unworthiness to fancy myself a Catholic man. These are the saints of the saints.

One of my philosophy professors was a close friend of Dorothy Day’s. He is not a Catholic, but he contributed to the Catholic Worker in New York for many years. He told me that Dorothy Day was the real thing. He also told me that she was tough as nails, which is surprising given her pacifism. But Dorothy Day was the real thing–unflinching in terms of Liturgy, faith and her hallmark, social justice.

An important component of Dorothy Day’s exemplary faith was pacifism. But her pacifism was not the result of sentimentality or liberalism. It was the product of vivacious faith, strong intellectual formation and experience in hospitality to the poor and forsaken. A truly brilliant and beautiful article on Dorothy Day written by Andrew Hamilton, which extrapolates the foundations of her pacifism, appeared at Eureka Street. I post it here in full:

I have always found pacifism an attractive option. It is radical and simple. But I have never been persuaded that the Scriptures or the practice of the early Church command it. Still there is more behind pacifism than intellectual conviction.

The reflections of Dorothy Day, an enduring influence on United States Catholicism, suggest what that more might be. In her life, with its mixture of intellectual enquiry, hospitality to the poorest of people and protest against injustice, pacifism had a central place. She used many arguments to justify it. But her emphasis on it remained constant and costly.

Pacifism did cost. The Catholic Worker, the newspaper which Dorothy Day founded, grew quickly to 100,000 copies. But when it refused to endorse Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil War it lost two-thirds of its readers. Catholics saw that war as a battle against the atheist Communists who had murdered priests and nuns. When the United States later entered the war against Japan and Germany, the Catholic Worker took a pacifist stance. Many of those in their houses of hospitality resigned in protest. As a result a third of the houses closed. This was just one of many occasions on which Dorothy Day had to address the resistance to pacifism among her supporters.

Pacifism was also personally costly. It often took her to gaol. She regularly refused to participate in New York City’s annual civil defence drill. She objected that the purposes of the drill were to support increased military expenditure and to suggest New York could survive a nuclear attack. So in 1955 when the sirens sounded, she and others sat on the Town Hall steps. They declaimed, ‘In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in God if we depend upon the atom bomb.’ They were duly jailed.

Her pacifism was initially shaped by Peter Maurin, the major intellectual influence on the nascent movement. Maurin’s pacifism was of a piece with his radical Gospel — he also believed that all Christians should live very simply and should welcome the homeless into their houses. The Gospel was to be taken dead seriously in all aspects of life.

For Dorothy Day, too, pacifism had less to do with reasons than with a seamlessly radical way of living. Although in defending her pacifist stance she used arguments from Just War theory and from Jesus’ life, finally her commitment to it was more deeply grounded in experience. She found it an indispensable support for the Catholic Worker way of life.

When she commends the commitment to pacifism, she usually places it within Peter Maurin’s program. She does not defend it in isolation. She found that the radical hospitality to the poor embodied in their houses, the non-revolutionary commitment to justice maintained in the face of the communist alternatives, and the intellectual commitment to radical conversation could be held together only with an equally radical commitment to pacifism.

Maurin first proposed that all Christians should offer hospitality in their homes. The Catholic Worker houses began when people off the streets took the newspaper at its word. They came to stay. Of those taken in some were mentally ill. They often differed sharply in their views, and were accustomed to express disagreement physically. This challenged a community that encouraged a style of honest conversation in which the value of each participant was recognised.

The life of the Catholic Worker houses required an adamantine ethic of radical non-violence, of domestic pacifism. The public commitment to political pacifism in turn strengthened the ground rules of the houses. The two fed into each other.

The commitment of the Catholic Worker communities to social justice, too, demanded a radical base. Dorothy Day described her pain when, after her conversion to the Catholic Church, she watched demonstrations against injustice. A committed activist, he felt unable to join them because they were communist-led and so inconsistent with her new faith.

Peter Maurin enabled her to articulate a radical form of Christian faith that was radically engaged in issues of justice. But it needed a radical symbol of commitment that differentiated it from revolutionary movements. Pacifism provided a symbol.

Ultimately pacifism is not supported only by intellectual arguments. Its appeal comes from its place in a radical way of life lived with integrity.

Catholic Worker Movement

Dorothy Day

Pacifism

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