It’s May 1. Do You Know How Many Catholic Workers There Are?

They’re sure signs of spring here at CatholicWorker.org: the red-winged blackbirds are back at the feeder, the cherry blossoms perfume the air, and we start fielding frantic phone calls from journalists writing articles about the upcoming anniversary of the Catholic Worker movement.1 Why, just the other day I answered a call from a prominent media outlet that, for reasons of charity, shall remain anonymous. Here’s a rough approximation of the conversation, as best I remember it:

Me: “Hello, you’ve reached CatholicWorker.org, no we’re not the New York Catholic Worker and we can’t help you with your subscription to The Catholic Worker newspaper, we just run the website and community directory, how can I help you today?”

Journalist: “Hi there, this is (name withheld, but let’s call him Bob, after a guy I knew in journalism school), and I write for (big media company name also withheld)—you’ve probably heard of us—well, anyway, we’re running a story about the Catholic Worker movement for the anniversary coming up, and I included a paragraph kind of summing up what the whole thing is all about—you know, Dorothy meets Peter, 1933, communism, newspaper, hospitality, etcetera, etcetera, and then I have this line that’s causing a bit of a kerfuffle with Theresa over at the copy desk: ‘Today, there are more than 200 Catholic Worker communities around the world.’2 My copy editor did some checking, and it looks like Wikipedia pins the number at more than 240, while the Encyclopedia Britannica says more than 200. And then, your website only lists 178. So, it’s really a very quick and simple question: What’s the real number?”

I sigh, because this perennial question comes back every year, just as reliably as the Creeping Charlie peeking through the melting snow in my garden.

And like the Creeping Charlie, it never comes to a good end.

Me: “Bob, I’ll grant that’s a quick and simple question, but there isn’t a quick and simple answer.”

Bob: “Can’t we just go with the number on the directory? Or hasn’t it been updated in a while?”

Me: “Regardless of whether I have updated it recently or not,3 that number is at best an approximation. Catholic Worker communities are notoriously difficult to count. It’s not like counting McDonald’s franchises or chapters of Rotary International, you know.”

Bob: “Yeah, but it’s Catholic, right—?”

Me: “Meaning the Vatican keeps track? Here’s the thing, Bob: Catholic may be in the name, but we are more ‘Catholic adjacent,’ if you know what I mean—we’re not formally affiliated with the Church.”

Bob: “Yeah, I think I heard something about some friction between you guys and the institutional Church—”

Me: “It’s more than that, Bob: we’re not institutional at all. See, each Catholic Worker community is completely autonomous; in theory, each one embodies the values of the larger movement, but in its own particular way. In your reporting, did you run across anything about personalism or Christian anarchism?”

Bob: “Yeah, yeah—I even put that in the story, something about the influence of the French personalist movement and the Russian anarchists, like Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin.”

Me: “Wow, way to do your research, Bob.”

Bob: “I got it off Wikipedia. But listen, getting back to the number question—because we’re kinda coming up on our deadline here—what does Peter Kropotkin have to do with counting Catholic Workers?”

Me: “Well, the principles of decentralization and personalism mean that anyone can start a Catholic Worker community without getting the approval or say-so of anyone else in the movement. There’s no paperwork, no corporate training, no ordination. One day, you’re just sitting around talking; the next, you’re having arguments with community members about the best way to organize the refrigerator to accommodate the twelve gallons of leftover pasta salad some church just donated from a funeral lunch.

Bob: “Really.”

Me: “Uh huh. So, people start a community and they get busy with pasta salad and one thing or another and they never get around to reaching out to list their community in the directory. It’s not exactly the priority of community-oriented personalists, Bob.

“Of course, if we hear about them, we might reach out to them to ask whether they want us to set up a listing, but then, some communities deliberately choose not to be listed.”

Bob: “Hmm, so there are probably more communities out there than you’ve got listed, so why don’t we just say there’s ‘more than 180 communities’ and call it good?”

Me: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Bob—not so fast. The real number is probably lower than the number listed in the directory because some of the communities on it don’t exist anymore.”

Bob: “Why don’t you take them off the list, then?”

Me: “Because most communities don’t announce when they close. Some do, but more often, the community ‘takes a hiatus’ or sort of slowly fades away, or things end on a bad note. Bottom line, no one’s left to reach out to have their community taken off the list. But when we look over the directory, we see communities that just don’t seem to be active. Their website or Facebook page hasn’t been updated in years, or their website is down and we can’t find a new one. On top of that, we haven’t heard from them or about them at Catholic Worker gatherings or in the global Catholic Worker group email.”

Bob: “Then wouldn’t it be safer to just take them off the list?”

Me: “If we can’t reach them by phone or email or any other means, we might. But just because a Catholic Worker is off the grid doesn’t mean it’s not out there. Catholic Workers are an esoteric lot, Bob.”

Bob: “I see. Well, I’m sure we can just say ‘about 180 communities.’ Theresa—that’s the copy editor—should be good with that.”

Me: “Maybe, maybe not, Bob. What kind of ontologist is Theresa?”

Bob: “I think she’s more of a vegetarian?”

Me: “Because if she’s more of a realist, she’s probably going to ask how many of the communities on the list share the core beliefs, practices, and goals that act as universal properties for belonging to the movement—you know, like the ‘Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Movement.’ Do you know the ‘Aims and Means,’ Bob?”

Bob: “Er, yes, that’s in my notes here—let’s see, says here they’re an ‘orientation of purpose’ like nonviolence, doing the works of mercy, personalism, manual labor, voluntary poverty, decentralization….”

Me: “That’s the gist of it. Some folks would add some other items to that list, like actively resisting injustice. So, even though this is a decentralized, anarchistic movement and there’s no checklist or test to determine when a Catholic Worker is a Catholic Worker, and even though no community perfectly embodies the essence of the Catholic Worker movement, someone like Theresa who takes a realist approach to her ontological inquiries might cast a critical eye on certain communities in the directory. There have always been Catholic Worker communities that aren’t as fully on board with the principle of nonviolence as Dorothy was, for example. And then there are some organizations in the directory that do some of the works of mercy, but in a very institutional and non-personal way. They say they have roots in the Catholic Worker movement or that they were inspired by Dorothy Day, but if they have paid staff, ‘clients,’ paperwork, tax-exempt status, rainy day funds, and government grants—well, Theresa might not want to include them in the count. They’re just not Catholic Workery enough.”

Bob: “Ha ha, well, speaking of Theresa, she’s waiting for me to give her some kind of answer so she can go home for the day…she says her daughter has a school play tonight and she doesn’t want to be late, so….”

Me: “That’s totally understandable, Bob. Well then, hopefully Teresa is more of a nominalist than a realist so she doesn’t miss her kid’s show. If that’s the case, then she’ll probably want to evaluate the list by looking at the actual interactions, affiliations, and shared practices between the local community and the movement as a whole. You know, does the community self-identify with the movement? Do people in the community have relationships with people in other Catholic Worker communities? Do they do stuff together? That sort of thing. A nominalist is going to say it’s the self-identification that counts.”

Bob: “That’s quite the philosophical analysis, there.”

Me: “Thanks. I got it off Wikipedia.”

Bob: “And which way does your ontology lean at CatholicWorker.org?”

Me: “Probably in more of a nominalist direction. If a group wants to be listed and says it’s a Catholic Worker, we tend to keep it on the list. But don’t think we are too loosey-goosey, Bob! We do have limits. We don’t list hair salons, car dealerships, personal injury law firms, or cleaning services, regardless of whether they lay claim to the Catholic Worker tradition.”4

Bob: “Well, this has been fascinating, but—”

Me: “I know, Theresa’s kid needs to make her curtain call. Well, how about this. What if you didn’t Include any number at all? I mean, why does it actually matter?”

Bob: “Err…well, I guess it just shows how successful and relevant this quirky little movement is, even after all these years.”

Me: “Ah, yes—success and relevance. Well, that’s thoughtful of you, Bob, but as the last sentences of the Aims and Means say: ‘Success, as the world determines it, is not the final criterion for judgments. The most important thing is the love of Jesus Christ and how to live his truth.’”

A long silence from Bob, then:

Bob: “Wow, what a different perspective. I feel like I’ve framed this story all wrong, like instead of viewing the Catholic Worker through the upside-down logic of the Gospel, I’ve looked at it through the lens of, er, I don’t know—”

Me: “The idol of late-stage capitalism?”

Bob: “Yeah, maybe?”

Me: “In the future, then, when you tell others about the Catholic Worker movement, be sure to tell them that we don’t count franchise numbers, or the number of clients served, or the number of card-carrying members. We’re not primarily worried about ‘success’ because we know, at the end of the day, we’re not going to remake the world on our own. That’s God’s job. We’re just called to cooperate, to do our part. And if we do that, then maybe at the end of the day we might look back and see that we helped make something beautiful, something bigger and more wonderful than we could have ever imagined on our own. Maybe we’ll see that, together with other people of good will, we did something to help make the world a place in which it is easier to be good, as Peter would have said.”

Bob: “…”

Me: “Bob?”

Bob: “Yeah…I just need to sit with that.”

Me: “No time for sitting around, Bob. You’re a man with a deadline to meet.”

Bob: “But now I feel like I need to rewrite the whole story!”

Me: “Or you could re-run a feature on spring—‘Nine Tips for Home Garden Success’ or something. Save this article for next year, when you have time to do it right.”

Bob: “Or maybe I’ll quit this journalism gig, sell everything I own, and start a Catholic Worker community!”

Me: “Baby steps, Bob. Baby steps.”

Again, I provide this rough transcript as an approximation of how our conversation unfolded. I do so in the hope, however remote, that next April I might be spared spending half an hour on the phone with every journalist who comes looking for “the actual number” of Catholic Worker communities.

In the meantime, I have a directory to update.

This essay first appeared in the Roundtable newsletter. Cover photo: Des Moines Catholic Worker, 2014.