Martha Hennessy’s Revolution of the Heart

by Julie Clague

The highly anticipated visit to Scotland of the granddaughters of Dorothy Day, the lifelong non-violent social activist and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, took place from 14th to 21st March 2024. During their stay, hosted by the Glasgow Catholic Worker, peace activist Martha Hennessy, accompanied by her sister, the artist and writer Kate Hennessy, gave numerous talks to groups of students at the University of Glasgow, and to Catholic and Scottish Episcopal parishes in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Hennessys had a private audience with Archbishop Nolan, took part in a meeting at the Scottish Parliament hosted by Bill Kidd MSP, and paid a visit to Faslane to pray at Clyde Naval Base, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons.

In different ways, both sisters continue the work of their ‘granny’, embracing sacramental Catholicism and Catholic social teaching and making Christ visible in the world by taking on the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead.

In the following text, derived from her talks at the University of Glasgow, Martha Hennessy discusses Dorothy Day, her canonisation cause, and how her grandmother’s example led her to a life of voluntary poverty and radical social and anarchic political activism.

This article first appeared in the April 2024 issue of Open House and is reprinted here with the permission of the publisher, the author, and Martha Hennessy.

Martha’s Testimony

Dorothy Day had one child, Tamar, and Tamar had nine children. I’m number seven of nine. Kate Hennessy, my sister, is number nine of nine. Growing up in a big, messy Catholic family out in the rural countryside of Vermont was very different. Dorothy was a big part. As our father had left the family, we had this matriarchy, this women’s example of independence, strength, and capacity to hold it together when the world was and is crumbling in many ways. So we have great memories of Dorothy. She visited us in Vermont as much as she could. What my grandmother Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and others in the Catholic Worker movement embodied for us was to pay attention to the suffering of others. I grew up with and very clearly understood Dorothy’s sense of social justice. All of my life choices were influenced by my mother’s and my grandmother’s sympathies and expectations: find your vocation, the vocation that is needed for the common good and that you love to do.

Conversion

I was 25 years old when Dorothy died. I spent the next 20 years in a kind of dormancy processing her legacy, her influence. I spent my 20s, 30s, and 40s not being in the church, working as an occupational therapist, raising my three children, and paying my war taxes. Things shifted for me in the early 2000s. It’s not easy to explain a conversion experience. It is a very mystical, mysterious thing. Somehow, I found myself going back to the Catholic Church, going back to my baptism, and then going back to the Catholic Worker. I would say that I had to re-enter into my baptism. I had to revisit my understanding of my Catholic faith before I could go back to the Catholic Worker. I spent my time between family in Vermont and volunteering at the Maryhouse Catholic Worker on Third Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where we provide clothing, lunch, showers, access to the phone for homeless women. Saint Joe’s house for homeless men is on First Street two blocks away. Dorothy lived the last five years of her life at Maryhouse and died there with my mother Tamar by her side in 1980. Going back to Maryhouse was a very difficult thing for me. I was drawn to it, but I was also repelled by it. It’s not easy living in a house of hospitality, living with the homeless. You’re dealing with a lot of mental illness.

Arrested

I was first arrested in 1979, the year before Dorothy died. The cause for that was nuclear power. A lot of folks came from the Maryhouse Catholic Worker to protest at the Seabrook Nuclear Power plant in New Hampshire. My son was two years old. I spent three months in prison. It was painful, you know, to leave my two-year-old for three months. That wasn’t good for either of us. I didn’t do anything again until 2007. I re-entered the Catholic Worker community through a group we put together called Witness Against Torture. This action related to the post-9/11 war on terror and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. It was seeing images of torture, as a newly renewed Catholic and occupational therapist, that disturbed me so deeply. As a practicing therapist, I was appalled that psychologists were involved in Guantanamo. I ended up going down to Washington, DC for several years. We would pray, hold vigils and fast, protesting the treatment of prisoners and indefinite detention. There are still Guantanamo prisoners who have been there for 20 years with no charges ever brought against them. In the federal courts, we lose all the time and get sent to prison where we go and live with those who are scapegoated, those who are the most vulnerable, just like those who come to us on the soup line. What an education prison was for me. We fail the underclass in their educations, in their nutrition, in their well-being. The prison system is all about addiction, poverty, violence, and racism.

Peace

My anti-nuclear stance led me to become involved in the peace activism of the Plowshares movement, which specifically targets the nuclear program by disrupting the manufacturing and military sites where nuclear weapons are developed or stored. Plowshares, which has strong links with the Catholic Worker movement, was formed in 1980, the year Dorothy died, by brothers Dan Berrigan (1921-2016) and Phil Berrigan (1925-2022), taking its inspiration from Isaiah 2:4; “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Seven of us, all practicing Catholics and practicing Catholic Workers, broke into Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia, which supports the Trident nuclear submarine fleet and also services the UK Trident fleet. As part of our discernment process beforehand, we read the Bible to reflect on what Jesus was saying. If we want to call ourselves disciples of Christ, how do we apply what Jesus was saying 2000 years ago to ourselves in the 21st century? So we prayed using lectio divina, to translate the gospel teachings into what we should do next. It was very powerful. We studied the nuclear program, the nuclear arsenal, then we took our evangelizing action. I would describe that action as a non-violent, direct sacramental act. We felt that we were bringing the body of Christ to a place of great sin.

As we walked onto the naval base, I was terrified. To do something that you have great fear over doing, to act, to take a step that is risking your personal safety, I found to be such a challenge. But I believe these actions have given me a much deeper understanding of my faith. How am I to take personal responsibility? How can I have some kind of an impact? With non-violent action, it is important not to focus too much on what you will achieve. You do what you do, not because of the results or that you have stunning success or any of that. It’s you that can get nailed up on a cross when you respond to the issues of the day, especially with the Plowshares movement. A lot of people in my family think I’m crazy for the things that I have done, and in the ways that I’ve gotten involved with non-violent activism. Some raise questions about the rights and wrongs of breaking into military facilities. Some believe Dorothy did not support these actions because of the destruction of property. That was one question Dorothy had; another was the secrecy. Gandhi, in his acts of non-violent resistance, would tell the British exactly what he was going to do ahead of time. That is something that non-violent direct action should be practicing, but you’re not going to get onto these U.S. military bases by announcing yourself. Is the cutting of a padlock more devious and more horrifying than dropping a nuclear bomb on an open city?

Resistance

Dorothy’s stance and that of the Catholic Worker met with resistance from the institutional Church. The Catholic Worker movement is a lay movement, and you don’t wait for the clergy to lead the way. You don’t wait for the bishops. You pay attention to the saints, and to the situation faced today. The Cardinals really hounded Dorothy in her lifetime. The church gave Dorothy a hard time, and now as part of her canonization cause they want to exhume her and put her in the church with all the men who gave her so much trouble. We have bishops and cardinals in the US today that fully understand what the Catholic faith should be about, but there is also a very right-wing Christian fundamentalist voice that is having its way in the United States right now. We do have some support, we had one bishop write a letter of support for the King’s Bay nuclear weapons non-violent action, but generally speaking, it’s a slog.

Dorothy was our charismatic leader. She is a saint who lived her life in a way that was just beyond comprehension for most of us. Dorothy said, “Don’t call me a saint, I don’t want to be dismissed that easily”. I believe what she was saying was, come help me with this work. I have tried to do that.