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Seeing Christ in Each Other:The Causes and Consequences of Dorothy Day’s Pacifist StanceRobert P. Russo, Day Scholar and ResearcherDuring the Second World War, Dorothy Day—co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and currently a Servant of God in the Catholic faith, had a “dreadful” nightmare in which she heard jeers and laughter from an unseen entity. The voices that Day had heard, taunted her with the words, “BE KIND, CAIN! BE KIND, CAIN! BE KIND, CAIN!” Day’s nightmare was indicative of the kind of mockery that she had endured as an unwavering Pacifist—a stance which had become ingrained in her essence three decades earlier (circa 1912). Although Day’s pacifist views would be severely tested during the Second World War by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin—individuals who had sought the utter destruction of humanity over political ideologies, she would remain firm in her convictions by employing Weapons of the Spirit. These Weapons, which included prayer, penance, and, for Day, surrendering one's life in a non-violent manner—would allow her to put a face on those who taunted her, and bear the consequences of her pacifism, by seeing Christ in each other. Day had become appalled at the poverty which she had encountered as a teenager in Chicago, especially after reading and internalizing Upton Sinclair’s heartbreaking novel, The Jungle. She railed at the injustices that she had seen—after the United States’ entry into the First World War—as a young journalist for the Socialist New York Call, and The Masses. Day was later galvanized by the senseless executions of political anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, in 1927. She had converted to Catholicism shortly thereafter. However, it must be stressed that Day had already adopted a pacifist stance many years before her conversion. Shortly after her conversion in December of 1927, Day had begun to internalize notions of the Mystical Body of Christ, as espoused by Karl Adam, in The Spirit of Catholicism. Day had abhorred killing of any kind. She did not believe that a just war was possible, and her vehement opposition against both sides of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused great consternation amongst traditional Catholics, to the extent that circulation of The Catholic Worker newspaper plummeted drastically. Many patrons ceased donating to the Catholic Worker movement, causing a drain on finances, and a vast amount of debt, incurred while maintaining day-to-day operations and the feeding of the poor. However, Day never vacillated in her commitment to uphold human dignity, even while enduring numerous arrests, personal attacks, the constant threat of censure from the New York Archdiocese, and intense scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.). This research paper will explore the underlying causes behind Day’s adherence to pacifism, and the dire consequences which she had faced because of this stance. The conclusion will affirm that Day’s use of Weapons of the Spirit, however arduous to follow, still offers the world a viable example of peaceful, Christian discipleship.THE ROOT CAUSES OF DAY’S PACIFIST STANCE Although Day never directly stated the underlying causes of her pacifist stance, she did write extensively about the events of her youth, which formed her character. The primary cause of Day’s pacifism was her unique ability to assimilate what she had read in her youth, and apply those readings to events which she had also experienced in her own life. However, pacifism in Day’s case must not solely be considered in light of the death occurring from an unjust war, but also through the death of the human spirit arising from injustice, brutality, crass materialism, and poverty. By the time of Day’s twentieth birthday, in November of 1917, she had experienced enough tragedy to fill a lifetime—including survival of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the poverty and injustice found in Sinclair’s novel—poverty which the Day family had endured while living near the stockyards of Chicago, violence incurred while protesting against war, and the suicide of Louis W. Holladay, Jr.—a friend of Eugene O’Neill’s who died in Day’s arms in Greenwich Village. All of these incidents helped to shape Day’s pacifist beliefs, which were solidified in 1927 by her conversion to Catholicism, and internalization of the notions of the Mystical Body of Christ.INNATE ABILITY TO INTERNALIZE WHAT SHE READ Day had possessed the innate ability to internalize what she had read at an early age, allowing her to empathize with the misery which she had encountered. A voracious reader during her formative years, Day had read such socially-conscious authors as Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (e.g. Crime and Punishment), Jack London, and Leo Tolstoy. However, it was Sinclair’s The Jungle, read during Day’s early teens while a resident of Chicago (circa 1913-1916), that awoke in her a love for the poor, serving as the main catalyst for her pacifist stance. Sinclair’s novel portrays, with stark brutality, the mass victimization which many immigrants faced in cities across America. Set in the stockyards of Day’s Chicago, The Jungle presents the harrowing circumstances faced by a Lithuanian family forced into an enslavement of a different kind in the meatpacking industry. The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, and his extended family, are decimated by corporate greed, death (through childbirth), poverty, rape, theft, and unfair labor practices. Upon reading Sinclair’s novel, Day became “inflamed,” and experienced a conversion toward the poor, “to a love for and desire to be always with the poor and suffering—the workers of the world.” Day was amazed by the fact that The Jungle took place in her neighborhood, “whose streets I walked, [and] made me feel that from then on my life was to be linked to [the poor], their interests were to be mine; I had received a call, a vocation, a direction to my life.” The Day family had at one time lived near the corner of Cottage Grove Avenue and 37th Street in Chicago, behind the very stockyards described by Sinclair. The younger Day could very well identify with the sounds and smells of the meat packing industry; she would soon be able to identify with the injustice of the world, including the senseless death caused by war and poverty.THE POVERTY THAT DAY HAD WITNESSED FIRSTHAND Day’s formation as a Pacifist began with the example set by her mother, Grace Satterfield Day, who showed her daughter what it meant to love others after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. From their minimally damaged home in Oakland, the elder Day ministered to the destitute and homeless, giving away every piece of extra clothing the Day family owned. While still in California, the younger Day recalled the sheer joy of doing good works during times of tribulation, “of sharing whatever we had with others after the earthquake, an event which threw us out of our complacent happiness into a world of catastrophe.” Despite the “catastrophe” which would soon see her family living in poverty in Chicago, Day could rightfully claim that her mother’s witness provided her with a strong sense of right and wrong, good and evil, forming within her youth an active conscience that could grasp and act upon both ethical and religious concepts. The Day family did not fare well during their time in Chicago. Day had recalled that, in her childhood, she had had to move four times within the city limits, and changed schools on at least six different occasions. Day was so ashamed of one of her apartments, which was located above a tavern that she had tried to fool her classmates by pretending to live in a “more respectable building.” After school, Day would hide in a different apartment house on 37th Street, only returning to her real home after her friends had passed her by. Living a short distance away from the very stockyards which Day would one day read about in The Jungle, her family would experience many of the injustices serialized in Sinclair’s novel: union violence, financial victimization, and poverty. Day recalled the horror of seeing a non-union man beaten to a pulp by two union members. Day’s mother rescued the beaten man, and nursed his wounds in her kitchen. Her father had struggled to find employment during their time in Chicago, and young Day remembered visits from installment loan collectors, who threatened to repossess their beds if payments were not made on a timely basis. Day could readily identify with the poverty that many immigrants experienced in this country, especially after she had read The Jungle, and applied its victimization to her own memories. She recognized that the immigrants fled here to better their situations, but “they became exploited in sweatshops, in the stockyards. They lived in dilapidated frame houses; they were unorganized, with little chance of becoming owners and escaping from their proletarian position.” Day’s childhood experiences—her mother’s moral witness, and the injustice of poverty that the Day family had witnessed and endured in Chicago, were also leading causes of Day’s pacifism, in that she had fallen in love with the destitute masses. This love of humanity warmed her heart, and directed her towards her true vocation. She reflected that “[i]t was those among the poor and the oppressed who were going to rise up, they were collectively the new Messiah, and they would release the captives.”THE BRUTALITY AND INJUSTICE DAY ENCOUNTERED IN 1917 It was once stated of Day that she had the unique ability, as a journalist, to read between the lines, connecting a particular story to other events occurring in the world. However, it must also be submitted that Day’s ability to empathize with human suffering went above and beyond any normal journalistic endeavor. By the tender age of twenty, Day could claim a variety of life experiences, allowing her to stand in the place of those in misery. In March of 1917, Day experienced her first taste of mob violence, as a reporter for the Socialist newspaper, The New York Call. While covering a group of Columbia University students protesting in favor of the peace movement in Baltimore, Day was present when the students were interrupted and jeered at by a group of Catholic college students. A riot had ensued, wherein Day was unintentionally attacked by a policeman who, blinded by a cut over his eyes, began swinging his nightstick violently. Day reported that she had suffered two cracked ribs. However, Day looked upon the mob scene with a morbid fascination, claiming that her attack “did not disturb in any way the curious, detached, mad feeling that flowed through her veins as the crowd seethed and shouted and fought.” A few weeks after the Baltimore riots, Day wrote what would be her final signed article for The New York Call. Entitled “Europe’s Moloch Claims Old Man’s Son; He Comes to America and Starves,” the article related the tragic story of an aged Englishman, whose son was sacrificed—hence the reference to Moloch—in France during the early part of the Great War. The Englishman, who had not eaten in three days, had traveled to the United States in the hopes of finding employment. He found nothing but poverty—for he was deemed too old to work in any of the American factories, which were employing mostly women in order to lower the cost of labor. Here, Day brilliantly equated the plight of the old man to that of the victim in the Parable of the Good Samaritan [Luke 10:25-37]. Day had pityingly witnessed both “a well-dressed man,” and a mother and daughter dressed in their finest Easter clothes, ignore the old man as he sat and cried. Finally, a “ragged derelict,” who also knew what poverty was, stopped, and gave the old man a dime, so that he might have lunch, and “cheer up!” Day would later admit that she had done much more than merely report on the tribulations of war, and the events of the peace movement. Her “curious, detached, mad feeling” had caused her to join the Columbia students in their work as a Pacifist, a conviction which would shortly result in her enduring the brutality of prison. After Day had left The New York Call, circa June 1917, she joined the staff of The Masses—a radical Socialist magazine—which was shortly suppressed by the Government, for its immoral artwork and views against the Conscription Act. Unemployed, Day had decided to accept an invitation to picket the White House. In the fall of 1917, a group of forty women traveled by bus to Washington, D.C. to protest against the United States’ involvement in the Great War, and in favor of the women’s suffragist movement. Day later claimed that she had joined the group more out of concern for the humane treatment of the suffragists, who had previously been arrested and were undergoing hunger strikes, than any interest over women’s voting rights. Once arrested outside of the White House, Day and her fellow prisoners were transported to the House of Detention, where fifteen women were forced to sleep in a room meant to accommodate two people. During the middle of the night, in what would come to be known as “The Night of Terror,” the women were transferred to the Occoquan Workhouse (Lorton, Virginia), where they were immediately accosted by guards, lifted bodily, kicking and screaming, dragged on the ground, roughly thrown down on benches, and beaten to the point of near unconsciousness. When Day had tried to cross the room to protect a friend, she was pounced upon by four guards, and tackled to the ground as if she were a fumbled football. In the ensuing fracas, Day accidently struck Warden William H. Whittaker, landing her in solitary confinement for thirty days. Day had described her time in solitary confinement as the “blackness of hell.” Deprived of food, light, and human companionship for many days, she began to empathize with the plight of the prisoner. She could later state with verity that, “I was the oppressed. I was that drug addict, screaming and tossing in her cell, beating her head against the wall. I was that shoplifter who for rebellion was sentenced to solitary.” During her prison stay, which lasted sixteen days, Day further witnessed the brutal treatment of her cellmate, noted suffragist Lucy Burns, who was strung up by her wrists to the cell door, and chained like an animal for three hours. It was experiencing incidents such as these that aroused in Day a call for social justice, wherein protests should be held in support of “all those thousands of prisoners throughout the country, victims of a materialistic system.”WITNESS TO LOUIS W. HOLLADAY, JR.’S SUICIDE Day had been released from the Occoquan Workhouse on Thanksgiving Day, 1917. She immediately traveled to Greenwich Village, where she spent a few months on the scene with playwright Eugene O’Neill, and other, unsavory characters. It was once rumored that Day was favored by the criminal element (e.g. a notorious gang known as the Hudson Dusters) of certain saloons, “because she could drink them under the table.” Day, in a 1959 letter to Donald Powell concerning a recently published biography of O’Neill, further alluded to her Village experiences as “one winter, three short months in my life, from the time I got out of [Occoquan] on Thanksgiving day in the suffrage days, until the death of Louis Holliday [sic]… .” Holladay had been a classmate of O’Neill’s at Princeton University, and he had left Greenwich Village for a year in order to sober up for his girlfriend—Louise Norton. Upon Holladay’s return to New York, he was jilted by Norton, who had coldly informed him that she would be marrying famed composer, Edgard Varèse. Holladay immediately began drinking heavily, in the presence of O’Neill and Day, and then calmly proceeded to swallow a vial of heroin, dying in Day’s arms shortly thereafter. Although Day had never met Holladay before that fateful evening, she was so concerned for his dignity that she concealed the empty vial from the police. Holladay’s death was ultimately ruled a heart attack by the coroner, as Holladay’s sister, Paula (better known as “Polly” Holladay) had affirmed that her brother had had a history of heart disease. One may wonder why Day would risk further imprisonment for tampering with evidence. However, it must be pointed out that she was so traumatized by the event—the loss of a precious human life, that she shortly left Greenwich Village behind, and “went into training as a nurse at King’s [sic] County Hospital.” During her year of voluntary service to the hospital in Brooklyn, New York, Day would encounter death of a different kind, and on a much larger scale.THE DEATH ENCOUNTERED WHILE WORKING AS A NURSE By early January of 1918, Day had considered herself to be a “bitter pacifist,” against imperialistic war, but not yet fully formed in the revolutionary sense. Therefore, her training as a probationary nurse did not run contrary to her pacifist beliefs, because she felt strongly called to the ministry—the upholding of human dignity. Her witness was a response to human misery, because she had felt that it was “the poor” that were suffering. Although Day had claimed that the daily busyness of nursing kept her mind off of the “suffering of the poor,” she was deeply affected by her experiences, noting that “it was heartbreaking to see young people dying all around us of the flu.” Day had noted that the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 claimed as many as eight victims per day in her ward, stating sadly that, “[e]very night before going off duty there were bodies to be wrapped in sheets and wheeled away to the morgue. When we came on duty in the morning, the night nurse was performing the same grim task.” Day was surrounded by death during the ensuing year, and she had nursed victims of great tragedies: The Malbone Street wreck—the horrific crash of an elevated train, wherein 120 people were killed and at least 200 injured; an Air Force test plane which crashed in a family’s garden in Flatbush—both airmen were crushed to death; and men and women dying daily from a variety of illnesses. Day could claim from experience that, “these things had more reality for [herself] than the ending of the war and the signing of the armistice.”EXECUTIONS OF SACCO AND VANZETTI AND THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST The senseless executions of political anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Day’s internalization of the Mystical Body of Christ are grouped together because these events occurred within a few months of each other. Both occurring in 1927, the events helped to form Day as a member of the Catholic faith, affirming her beliefs as a Pacifist. In July of 1927, Day had made the difficult decision to have her daughter, Tamar Therese, baptized in the Roman Catholic faith. The entrance into Catholicism, for Day’s only child, created a rift in her common-law-marriage to Forster Batterham—a turbulent relationship that would come to an end in December of that year, when Day herself would be baptized, conditionally, as a Catholic. Amidst the turmoil over Tamar’s baptism, and Day’s fractured marital relationship, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23rd, 1927. Although Day did not describe her own emotions regarding the killings in great detail, she did relate the angst that Batterham experienced, in that he “lay with his face to the wall, almost unconscious with shock and grief.” Day had exclaimed that Batterham could not eat for days after the executions, due to the sheer injustice which he perceived that life proffered. Day had stated that the execution of the political anarchists was “a grand tragedy. One felt a sense of impending doom. These men were Catholics, inasmuch as they were Italians. Catholics by tradition, but they had rejected the Church.” Day’s entrance into that same Catholic Church, four months later, soon brought her into contact with the notions of the Mystical Body of Christ, which she immediately internalized, and applied to her own pacifist convictions. Shortly after becoming a Catholic, Day was given a copy of Adam’s The Spirit of Catholicism, by a Marist priest named Father James McKenna. Day called Adam’s groundbreaking work the first serious book that she had read as a convert, and subsequently gave away many copies to prospective Catholics. Day had equated the Mystical Body of Christ to a slogan which was prominent during her brief time (circa 1914-1916) as a Socialist member of the International Workers of the World, “[a]n injury to one is an injury to all.” Applying this Socialist credo to her pacifist beliefs, Day would from then on view the atrocities of war as a tearing at the Body of Christ, and death of the human spirit. She saw Adam’s notions as the “inseparable oneness of the human race from Adam to the last man,” and stated that if we have animosity for those who are different from us, then we are merely “liars in Christ.”THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAY’S PACIFISM Day, and her fellow members of the Catholic Worker movement who were in accord with her pacifist convictions, often suffered dire consequences as a result of their adherence to non-violent means, and unwillingness to relinquish their positions in the face of war. The consequences ranged from the subtle nuances of the loss of circulation of The Catholic Worker newspaper, with a subsequent decrease in donations to help the poor, to the more aggressive affronts endured such as personal attacks by the press, acts of violence while picketing, and intensified Government scrutiny. For nearly five decades after her conversion to Catholicism, Day did not waver in her pacifist beliefs. Day’s great sacrifice in bearing the consequences of her pacifism was viewed by her as a form of suffering—an atonement which brought her closer to the heart of Christ and endured by her as reparation for the evils that war wrought upon humanity.DECREASE IN CIRCULATION AND DONATIONS The Catholic Worker newspaper was launched in May of 1933, with a modest circulation of 2,500 copies. Within two years of its inception, the newspaper had experienced a meteoric rise in circulation, reaching 110,000 copies by May of 1935, and peaking at 150,000 by 1936. Day had accounted for the dramatic increase in readership by noting that many parishes across the United States had ordered the newspaper in bundles of 500 copies, or greater. In 1936, Day had openly criticized General Francisco Franco, and those involved in the Spanish Civil War. She felt that the violence done in Spain accomplished nothing, except a fragmentation of the Mystical Body of Christ. Her pacifist beliefs confounded many Catholics worldwide, resulting in a steady decline of the paper’s circulation. By January of 1943, circulation of the paper had plummeted to 55,000 copies per month. Day further attributed the decline in circulation to the cancellation of bundle orders. She reported that archbishops in Cincinnati and Worcester, Massachusetts, uneasy with The Catholic Worker’s editorial position, demanded that the pastors in their dioceses cease distribution of the paper on both the parish and school level. Many years later, Day would note with irony, that “‘[w]e lost a lot of readers during those Spanish civil war days, and some of them, I’m sure, never became our readers again.’” The vast decline in readership also resulted in decreased donations, making it more difficult for the Catholic Worker staff to minister to the poor and marginalized. Day often wrote appeals wherein she mentioned that the Worker’s checking account was empty, and large amounts of money were owed to both the grocer, and printer of the paper.CLOSURE OF HOUSES OF HOSPITALITY AND CATHOLIC WORKER FARMS As a result of American involvement in World War Two, many Houses of Hospitality and Catholic Worker farms were vastly understaffed, and subsequently closed. Day had reported that before the beginning of the War, there were thirty-two Worker houses, and more than a dozen farms, in operation. By January of 1943, approximately one half of the houses were closed due to a lack of staff, including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. By January of 1948, there were only nine Houses of Hospitality and four farms left to minister to the poor in their respective communities. Admittedly, there were several factors for the closure of the houses and farms. Many of the Workers, upon receipt of their draft notices, joined the armed forces willingly—fighting bravely, and dying in defense of their country. However, there were also many individuals who were influenced by Day, and shared her pacifist mindset. These men chose to either evade the draft and risk imprisonment, or seek the status of Conscientious Objector. Day had advocated that her fellow Catholics enter Conscientious Objector camps. This action on Day’s behalf represented a consequence of her pacifist stance, in that many of the men who entered internment camps had not yet been drafted, and could have theoretically served the Worker movement up until the time that their “number came up.” Those individuals who had entered Conscientious Objector camps suffered greatly, including working twelve hours a day at hard labor with no compensation, forced feedings during hunger strikes, and being placed in solitary confinement. Day had found hope in the sacrifice made by her fellow Catholic Workers, along with the stark realization that everything they did would “be attended with human conflicts, and the suffering that goes with it, and that this suffering will water the seed to make it grow in the future.” The Catholic Worker movement also faced the additional burden of finding dioceses willing to allow the placement of new Houses of Hospitality within their boundaries. Differences over pacifism had caused many bishops to withdraw their support for the Worker movement. Day had noted that Archbishop Stritch of Chicago had advised his priests that, without his express approval, he was opposed to the opening of new houses and other centers of mercy within his diocese. Day’s view was that since the bishops would not in any way be held responsible for the houses, she did not need their permission to begin practicing the works of mercy in any particular diocese. CLOSURE OF THE WORKER SCHOOL IN HARLEM Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, had developed a synthesis for a new world which included “Cult, Culture, and Cultivation.” His vision for the Culture of the Church included encouragement in the creation of works of art and literature, and the conversion of individuals through instruction of the tenets of the Catholic faith. After reading an appeal in the pages of The Catholic Worker in 1933, a Mr. Daley, a member of the National Guard, agreed to donate a storefront in Harlem, rent free. The storefront served as a residence for Maurin, wherein he instructed anywhere from thirty to sixty people per evening. In 1935, Mr. Daley evicted the Catholic Worker from the premises, because he thought that they were subversive, and he did not agree with their pacifist stance. Day had lamented the loss of the Worker school, stating that Daley was “not in accord with our principles in regards to war, so he will not help The Catholic Worker any longer.” Daley had also demanded that they vacate the premises, immediately. Ironically, the Worker school had previously been spared during a violent and deadly riot in Harlem, which occurred over the segregation of certain ethnicities to low-income neighborhoods. Day had noted that the mob of rioters had actually recognized the positive influence which the Catholic Worker was trying to bring to the neighborhood, and there was no damage done to the storefront.RISK OF CLOSURE OR NAME CHANGE BY THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK The Catholic Worker movement had existed for decades with the threat of closure, or name change, by the Archdiocese of New York. Although Day had acknowledged that Francis Cardinal Spellman had initially approved of many aspects of the Catholic Worker, she soon ran afoul of the hierarchy when she advised young men not to register for the draft during the Second World War. Day had also published a petition in The Catholic Worker which listed the names of forty-eight women who would not register if they were drafted, citing that they “will be conscientiously unable to comply in any way with any law or executive order extending conscription for war purposes, on the ground that such conscription is inconsistent with the achievement of justice and freedom for all mankind.” Day was ultimately called to the Chancery Office, where she was rebuked for her pacifist stance, and ordered to stand corrected. Although Day had acquiesced to the demands of the Archdiocese, she often feared that both the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper would be suppressed. She had claimed that she was “always expecting [to] be asked to leave the work for the good of the cause, and [was] more or less prepared for it.” Tensions further came to a head during the Calvary Cemetery (Woodside, Queens) strike of 1949, when members of the New York Catholic Worker picketed in favor of the striking gravediggers—most of whom were Catholic. Day had also written a scathing editorial in the pages of The Catholic Worker in April of that year, wherein she called the Cardinal “ill-advised” for his bullying tactics, and pleaded for the use of non-violent means to resolve the conflict. Day was ordered to the Chancery Office, again in 1951, and advised by Monsignor Edward R. Gaffney that the Catholic Worker would either have to change its name, or cease publication. Although Day claimed that she was always ready to obey the Archdiocese in terms of closure of the Catholic Worker, she ultimately decided to refuse Monsignor Gaffney’s request, arguing that she had as much right to use the name “Catholic” as did the Catholic War Veterans. Although the Archdiocese of New York never officially censored the Catholic Worker movement, they were able to effect the eviction of the movement from its long-time home at 115 Mott Street, and further dictate the neighborhoods in which Day could practice the works of mercy. Day had been renting space on Mott Street from Gertrude Burke and the House of Cavalry Hospital since April of 1936. Burke had willed the properties to the Archdiocese and, after her death in 1949, the Chancery Office ordered the House of Calvary to sell the buildings in order to raise capital for a new hospital wing. The Worker movement received an eviction notice in the summer of 1950. In May of that year, the Catholic Worker had sought to purchase a new residence on 62nd Street. Subject to Cardinal Spellman’s approval, Day’s request was refused by consultors of the Archdiocese, whom she felt were “[a]fraid of fire, trouble with the city, [and] of sponsoring [The Catholic Worker], etc.”THE SCORN OF THE PRESS, VERBAL AND PHYSICAL AFFRONTS OF THE PUBLIC Day and various editors of The Catholic Worker often endured the scorn of the press, wherein they were misquoted in other publications, with their words taken out of context and used for dubious purposes. Day later noted with irony that the press seldom considered that someone could be restrained without being violently killed during conflicts, and that the writers “have you say and do what they want you to, in their articles, and then write around it.” Day related that a former Communist acquaintance, Mike Gold, had accused her during the Spanish Civil War of being pro-Franco in his column, “Change the World.” During the Second World War, a fellow Catholic newspaper condescendingly claimed to sympathize with The Catholic Worker’s “sentimentality” over pacifism. Day had responded to their subtle accusation of cowardice, by stating cynically that, “[w]e are supposed to be afraid of the suffering, of the hardships of war.” Day and members of the Catholic Worker staff were often subject to verbal assaults as a result of their pacifism. They were accused of being Communists by their fellow Catholics, and accused of cowardice by the Communists. Day had responded to the constant taunts by stating, wryly, that “[w]e have been called necrophiliacs, we have been accused of taking a morbid delight in the gutter and worshiping ashcans.” Day had further been accused of “lowering the tone of the neighborhood,” or devaluing property values merely by ministering to the poor, and she was treated with hostility and scorn at various speaking engagements, over her pacifism and notions of non-violent resistance. Those who opposed Day’s pacifist stance often resorted to cowardly acts of physical violence of their own. Day had reported that she had been pelted with hard-boiled eggs, had suffered acts of vandalism from right-wing extremists, the beating of individuals associated with the Worker movement, the destruction of mailing lists and Worker records, and the suspicious burning of houses and barns. Other members of the Catholic Worker had firecrackers, ice, and potatoes thrown at them. Windows were broken regularly at the New York Catholic Worker, and Day stated sadly that, “[n]ot a week passes when there have not been knives drawn, a fist up-raised, the naked face of hate shown and the silence of bitterness and despair shattered by the crash of breaking crockery or glass, a chair overthrown.” Day had once been involved in a physical altercation, which occurred over a disagreement of pacifist beliefs. She had related an incident in which a deranged veteran assaulted several members of the Catholic Worker staff, nearly breaking Day’s wrist in the ensuing fracas. The deranged man had grabbed a knife, and threatened to kill Arthur Sheehan, then editor of The Catholic Worker. The veteran was ultimately restrained before he could murder Sheehan, but not before hurling a heavy can of vegetables at his head, causing a gaping hole in the wall. Day often had nightmares as a result of acts of violence, and she had a “haunting memory of having read somewhere of a woman being torn to pieces by a mob and [she]…felt so surrounded by hatred that [she] was afraid.”STRIFE AMONGST CATHOLIC WORKER STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS One of the saddest consequences of Day’s pacifist stance was the misery which she had to endure due to the divergent opinions offered by various members of the Catholic Worker staff and volunteers. Day had noted that the heads of Houses of Hospitality in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Seattle outwardly disagreed with her position. Her pacifist stance was also questioned by the heads of the Chicago and Milwaukee Houses. Leaders in the Boston and Rochester Houses further thought that Day’s position on war was too extreme. This “dissension in the ranks” was felt keenly by Day, who once stated that at least seventy-five percent of the Catholic Worker movement was against her. Day had well understood the gravity of her pacifist position, and she recognized that there would be differences of opinion. However, several houses took it upon themselves to suppress the paper, further limiting The Catholic Worker’s circulation. Day had sternly warned those in disagreement with her position, that “it would be better in these cases for the Houses to disassociate themselves from the Catholic Worker movement. They can continue as settlements for the works of mercy, but not as Catholic Worker units.” Several key Workers in various cities abruptly left the movement, leaving the centers understaffed. John Cogley, leader of the Chicago House of Hospitality, left to join the Army. Later on, Tom Sullivan and Bob Ludlow also left the Worker movement in New York over differences regarding pacifism. Stanley Vishnewski, a mainstay of the Worker movement, began to question his pacifist stance during World War Two, in favor of traditional Church teaching. He would, however, remain loyal to Day and the movement for the remainder of his life. Those Workers, who chose to remain with the movement, often committed acts of violence over pacifism, causing Day much consternation. She related that Dave Mason, who had come to the New York House of Hospitality after the closing of the Philadelphia House, had physically attacked men on the bread line on two occasions, and told a Japanese guest that Japan deserved the dropping of atomic bombs.ROUGH HANDLING WHILE PICKETING AND IMPRISONMENT Day had experienced one of the most harrowing consequences of a belief in pacifism, which was violence and victimization while picketing in support of human dignity. In Boston, Day and members of the Catholic Worker had their picket signs ripped from their hands, and were choked by a rival party, with many bystanders joining in on the ensuing riot. Day further related that she had once been on a picket line when shots were fired at the protesters by a riot squad, who then chased the fleeing picketers down the street, knocking them to the pavement, and beating them senseless. She could state with conviction that she, too, had “fled down streets to escape the brutality and vicious hatred of the ‘law’ for those whom they consider ‘radicals.’” Day had also witnessed a most brutal assault—the near murder of an individual, by two plainclothes policemen, in the summer of 1935. She and other members of the Catholic Worker movement had been picketing the German ship Bremen, over Nazi Socialist policies, and German persecution of Catholics and anti-Semites. A riot had occurred when Communists, also picketing the Bremen, stormed the ship, and tore down a Nazi flag. During the ensuing chaos, the protesters had progressed to the police station near Unity Hall, where Day encountered the act of brutality. In a letter of complaint to the New York Police Commissioner, Day chastised the police for their aggressive use of force. She railed that, as the protesters fled from the police, “two men dragged another man up the steps by the side of us, knocking me over in their haste, and in the darkness of the doorway, one man held the victim while the other began smashing his face in.” Day’s conviction to pacifism also forced her to endure the dire consequences of prison. From 1955 until 1960, Day openly defied the Civil Defense Act, compulsory air raid drills, which sought to protect the public in the event of the dropping of the atomic or hydrogen bombs. Day had refused to participate in what she had termed “psychological warfare,” and viewed her disobedience as “an act of public penance for having been the first people in the world to drop the atom bomb… .” Day related in graphic detail the misery which she had endured during the course of her numerous arrests, which equated to a total of forty-five days spent in prison. She was crowded in the back of a prison van with thirty other prisoners, in a space barely meant to contain ten people. Shuttled from station to station, Day and her fellow protesters were transported in a van without springs or shocks, with the result that the prisoners were tossed to the ceiling, in danger of experiencing broken bones and bruised spines. The prisoners were then locked in a cage-like structure that one may have found in an antiquated zoo, with no room to sit or lie down, poor air circulation, and inadequate lighting. During her arrest in 1955, Day related that the prisoners were detained for at least twelve hours without any food or drink. She and her fellow picketers were ultimately shuttled to night court, wherein the judge accused the dissenting group of being murderers, setting their bail at $1,500 apiece. Of this travesty of justice, Day could fitfully reply that their actions were “not a question of obedience to the law or to duly constituted authority. Law must be accorded to right reason, and the law that made [the air raid drills] compulsory to take shelter was a mockery.” Once admitted to prison at the overcrowded Women’s House of Detention—500 prisoners crammed into a facility meant to hold 250, Day and her fellow prisoners were lined up naked, stripped of all their possessions—including rosaries and Bibles, searched for drugs, pushed and prodded about, and dressed in ill-fitting garments. Day had believed that all of these actions were intended to intimidate the prisoners, rendering their time behind bars into an ugly experience. Life behind bars further subjected the prisoners to acts of violence and sexual perversion, jeers, foul language, and a cacophony of noise which Day claimed was “the greatest torture in jail. It stuns the ears, the mind. It took me a week to recover from it after I came out. The city itself seemed silent.”INCREASED SCRUTINY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT During the years of the Second World War, Day and the New York Catholic Worker movement experienced increased scrutiny from the federal Government. Day reported that she had received constant visits from members of the F.B.I., who often interviewed her at length, draining energy from her that could have been spent on ministering to the poor. The federal agents questioned Day regarding the sincerity of the Catholic men claiming Conscientious Objector status. They also belittled her religious beliefs, and questioned the validity of her ministry. Of this blatant audacity, Day had replied cynically that, “[o]ne government man acted as though he had never heard of the Sermon on the Mount, and the idea of loving one’s enemies is strange to many of them.” Day had also received letters of admonishment from the Office of Censorship in Washington, D. C. During a trip to the west coast in the early 1940s, Day had become enraged by the placement of anti-aircraft nests at different monastery gardens. She had inadvertently named specific locations of the weaponry in the pages of The Catholic Worker, risking potential Government censorship. Day had apologized publicly for her error, and did not repeat the indiscretion again. Day was present on the farm in Easton, Pennsylvania, on one occasion, when two federal agents arrived to interrogate a Father Clarence Duffy, regarding the whereabouts of a draft dodger. Day related that the agents’ repertoire consisted of bullying tactics, an emotional appeal, and, finally, threats. She railed at their ignorance, claiming that “[w]e have had many a man from the FBI come in to interview us but none so stupid in their behavior as these two.” On another occasion, an F.B.I. agent questioned Day regarding a particular Conscientious Objector. When the agent did not obtain a satisfactory response from Day, he showed her his weapon in the presence of women and children, and sarcastically advised her that he was not a pacifist. Robert Ellsberg reported that Day’s pacifism did not go unnoticed by J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had placed a note in Day’s F.B.I. file, stating that she had engaged in activities which suggested that she may have been used as a pawn by the Communists. Ellsberg further uncovered evidence that Hoover had recommended prosecution of the Catholic Worker on numerous occasions in the 1950s, placing Day’s name on a potential list of detainees in the event of a national emergency.WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT-SEEING CHRIST IN EACH OTHER Day had admitted that the atrocities committed by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin challenged her greatly during the Second World War. She thought that a pacifist response, especially in regards to Hitler, was incomprehensible in the face of mass murder, and yet, she did not waver in her conviction of a non-violent resolution to armed conflict. Day had viewed Hitler’s life and death as a tragedy of sin and cruelty, and she claimed that he was truly, “‘a lost soul.’” Regarding such dictators as Hitler and Stalin, Day was able to use her internalization of the Mystical Body of Christ to see all men as brothers, even those who forced evil upon society. Although it was difficult, Day was able to see these dictators as temples of the Holy Spirit, beings made in the image of God, greatly in need of prayer, love, and even pity. A question arises as to how Day was able to maintain her pacifist beliefs in the midst of great turmoil and adversity. During the outset of World War Two, Day began making annual retreats, allowing her to employ Weapons of the Spirit—retreats created by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, S. J., brought to Day by Fr. Pacifique Roy, S. S. J., and expanded upon and continued by Fr. John J. Hugo. Father John J. Hugo, a diocesan priest from Pittsburgh, PA, developed his notions of the Weapons of the Spirit from the teachings of the Popes—specifically Leo XIII and Pius XI. Hugo, who began publishing a series of articles in The Catholic Worker in December of 1942, advocated that the root causes of war (i.e. greed, materialism, pride, and a general turning away from God) could not be changed without prayer, penance, and conversion of the interior self. Hugo further allowed that the use of prayer (with specific emphasis on the Rosary, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus), and both negative (i.e. denial of legitimate pleasures—forgoing comforts and bodily ease) and positive penance (i.e. activities which inflict pain on the body—including abstinence, and fasting), could only be effective when undertaken by the entire world. For Day, Weapons of the Spirit were meaningless unless they were centered upon a vow of personal poverty, a willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the benefit of all humanity. Day further allowed that such Weapons as poverty, precarity, self-abnegation, and suffering as did the crucified Christ, were necessary to let “loose [a] grace upon the world far more powerful than any atom or hydrogen bomb.” Are Day’s extremist pacifist beliefs a viable alternative to war in the postmodern world? Admittedly, her pacifist witness seems very difficult to imitate. However, one must consider that when Day’s convictions were strengthened by retreats, which affirmed her use of the Weapons of the Spirit, she was able to endure not only the dire consequences detailed above, but to see the face of Christ in all whom she encountered. Day’s varied life experiences, and close affinity with the suffering of Christ, also allowed her to put a face on the Cain of her nightmares—Cain was not only Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, but all of humanity with herself included. Seeing the Christ in each other allowed Day to show the world that love was the greatest conqueror of all. ................
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