From the Sojourners blog today and Robert Ellsberg.
It was surprising to see Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, described on the Glenn Beck show as a Marxist. Beck himself acknowledged that he had no idea who “the Marxist Dorothy Day” is, though he supposed she must be known to other Marxists.
Hold on, he doesn’t know who Dorothy Day is? I wonder if he’s alone in that? Well, Ellsberg fills you in here and the link gives you and him a neat biography of her.
Day, who died in 1980 at the age of 83, was accustomed to being called names. Though no Marxist, she was an unapologetic radical — which meant, for her, a determination to get to the root of social problems — both in human selfishness and greed, and in the social structures build on selfishness and greed.
Day indeed looked to change the social order and was always working not just for charity but for change. If that’s Marxism or Communism, then there were a lot of poor people in Russia who wish that Dorothy Day would’ve told people that her Catholic Worker ideal was all they needed to make a go of it.
Day was inspired by saints. But she also wondered why they didn’t do more. Ellsberg continues.
“Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?” Dorothy Day’s vocation was planted in that question. Where were the saints to try to change the social order? It was a question she answered with her own life.
Indeed. She also didn’t want to be “dismissed too easily” by people calling her a saint–even if she was one. She thought her work was the work that we were all REQUIRED to do as a demand of our faith.
Amen. This week may we ask ourselves who is too hard to love? And may we look at the cross and realize that it is because of our failure and Jesus’ heroism in loving the least of our brothers and sisters that Jesus went to that cross–not just for you or for me, but for everyone.
Even Glenn Beck who I wish an enlightened holy week.