Dorothy Day: We Are Urging Revolutionary Change
A response to David F. Evans’ “Damned Whiteness” with consideration to Dorothy Day’s own words by Brian Terrell of Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa.
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Communities | Essay | News
Fill the Jails! A Catholic Worker Vocation
In this transcript of Brian Terrell’s presentation to the National Catholic Worker Gathering in San Antonio, Texas in October 2025, Brian shares about his experiences with imprisonment and Dorothy’s belief that we ought to move beyond learning about the world by looking down from above, to learn about the world by looking up from below and “filling the jails.”
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“This Shameful Silence”: Why We Must Actively Resist the War Machine
Reflecting on Pope Francis’ address to Congress and Dorothy Day’s legacy, Brian Terrell argues that opposing the arms trade and practicing nonviolent resistance remain essential duties, not optional additions, to the Catholic Worker movement’s mission.
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Dorothy Day’s Permanent Dissatisfaction with the Church: A Model for the Jubilee Year
“Dorothy’s dissatisfaction with the Church is not in contradiction to her equally emphatic devotion to and love for the Church. It is not a denial or even a qualifier, but an intensifier of that love.”
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What the Myth of the Coffee Cup Mass Gets Wrong—and Why It Matters
People love to tell the story of Dorothy Day’s “Coffee Cup Mass,” but how much of it is true? As the story evolves with each retelling, it risks overshadowing the deeper truths of Dorothy’s spirituality. Brian Terrell explains what this enduring tale gets wrong—and why the reality of Dorothy’s faith offers a more profound lesson than any legend.
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The Sower (Fall-Winter 2024)
Here’s the Fall-Winter 2024 issue of THE SOWER, the newsletter of Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm.
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Remembering Cliff Lichter, a CW Pilgrim
Brian Terrell remembers Cliff Lichter, a former soldier, Jesuit brother, and hospital orderly, found his true calling as a wandering pilgrim. Known for living out of a knapsack and frequenting Catholic Worker houses and monasteries, he died on July 11. His ashes will be interred at a South Dakota monastery.
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Dorothy Day Inc.?
When offered the choice between a ‘Catholic Worker House Incorporated’ and a Catholic Worker that is homeless, penniless and its leaders in prison, Dorothy chose the latter.
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Dorothy Day on Celebrating Christmas in a Year of War
Celebrating Christmas in a way that truly honors the incarnation of love requires more than works of charity; as Dorothy Day insisted in 1941, it requires an ongoing commitment to justice, too.
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The Farmer and the Agitator: The Catholic Worker Needs Both
In the July/August 2023 issue of The Regenerative Reader, Spencer Hess writes of “Maurin-ite” and “Hennacy-ite” Catholic Workers—those who farm and those who agitate. But does that distinction really make sense? For many Catholic Worker farmers, the work of the land and the work of resistance go hand-in-hand.
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Our Lady the Hibakusha: A Story of Two Cathedrals
Two bishops, two cathedrals, and two very different responses to the devastation American atomic bombs wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This essay appeared in the August 2010 issue of THE CATHOLIC WORKER and is reprinted here with permission from the author.
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Strangers & Guests: An Appeal and an Invitation
Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa, is looking for new community members.
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Whose Confession?
Forty-five years after the publication of Michael Garvey’s “Confessions of a Catholic Worker,” Larry Chapp has written his own “Confession.” But his attempt to link the theology of Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar to the vision of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin is far off the mark, writes Brian Terrell.
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Is Going “Hyper-Local” Enough?
A recent article in The Nation celebrates the hyper-local focus of new Catholic Worker communities. But is this really a “new” trend in the Catholic Worker? And more importantly, in the face of rampant militarism, is it enough by itself?
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Acclaiming Saint Dorothy: An Argument Against Her Canonization
Many Catholic Workers support the process of adding Dorothy Day to the Church’s official roster of canonized saints—but not all do. While this opposition to the canonization process is often acknowledged, the reasons behind it are rarely detailed. In the spirit of “clarification of thought,” then, here are some of the those reasons.
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At 90 Years, Where is the Catholic Worker Movement Going?
The CW “no longer follows in Dorothy Day’s footsteps,” some complain, but I am confident that if on the day I arrived at the CW in New York almost 50 years ago I told Dorothy that I had come to follow in her footsteps, she would have immediately put me on a bus home.
