My oldest child, who is a senior at a college in Chicago, called me the other day, deeply upset by the ICE raids on immigrant communities throughout the city, and the talk of the National Guard being deployed against the wishes of the mayor and the governor. When he was little, we lived on the far north side of the city, and we have all been following stories of detainments being carried out in our old neighborhood. He was feeling both rage and a sense of helplessness. How does one respond in the face of injustice?
There are, of course, no easy solutions for wanton cruelty or rising authoritarianism, or for the targeting of the marginalized and weak. One place I’ve been turning for both inspiration and consolation is to the work of Dorothy Day, and I suggested that my son check out some of her old columns from ”The Catholic Worker,” where she wrote eloquently and powerfully about the Gospel imperative to resist injustice, and to embrace both the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy as an antidote to the works of war.
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Catholic historian David O’Brien called Day (1897-1980) “the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.” In her younger days, she was a socialist, and after her conversion to Catholicism in 1927, she dedicated her life to living out the radical nature of Christ’s message in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. She started “The Catholic Worker” newspaper to spread the message of social justice, care for the poor, and non-violence, and to explain how all of these positions are grounded in the message of the Gospels. The Catholic Worker movement that she co-founded with Peter Maurin opened multiple Houses of Hospitality to feed and shelter the homeless, as well as farming communes, to demonstrate that it was possible to live in radically different ways than typical Americans — to create “a new society within the shell of the old.”
She was also unafraid of speaking out against the government, particularly around issues of war, and was arrested for civil disobedience on numerous occasions. It was this willingness to stand up to injustice — to provide a prophetic witness grounded in an orthodox Catholic worldview — that is particularly relevant in our current moment.
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In the 1950s, Day explained her decision to protest against the government’s mandated air-raid drills by writing, “Silence means consent, and we cannot consent to the militarization of our country without protest. Since we believe that the air-raid drills are part of a calculated plan to inspire fear of the enemy instead of the love which Jesus Christ told us we should feel toward him, we must protest these drills.”
This was but one specific example of the animating ethos of the Catholic Worker movement, which insisted “the implications of the Gospel, teaching of the works of mercy, lead us into conflict with the powers of this world.”
Day was not naive or simplistic. She knew that this kind of witness was not easy, and that it would be controversial, even among Catholics. But she also knew that people needed to be reminded, repeatedly, about what Jesus actually said in the Gospels, how the early Church carried out his message, and how we must continue this legacy in our own time. Standing up against the powers of the world is a daunting task, but she was very clear that this is no reason to give in or fail to speak out: “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.”
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As I revisited her work, there were more than a few passages that seemed to speak directly to my 21-year-old son, and (I think) to all people of goodwill who are feeling overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the current outrages: “One of the greatest evils of the day is the sense of futility. Young people say, ‘What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform these actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.”
This call to direct action, grounded in a love for God and for neighbor, is a recurring theme in her writing. Day lived this call in a radical, dramatic way, but she also emphasized the necessity of every person making the effort to lay their own brick and take their own step. A key element in her witness is the need for all people to do what we can when we can. So while these things feel almost inconsequential in the face of all that is wrong right now, my son and I are, each in our own ways, doing what we can: We’re showing up at protests, we’re giving to the food bank, and we’re contributing to collections for families affected by ICE detainment. And we’re praying.
So in this moment of trial and unrest, I ask Dorothy Day, Servant of God, to pray for our country, and for us as individuals, that we may have the strength to do what we can to resist injustice and advance the Kingdom of God here on earth.
