ByBrian Terrell
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.
ByBrian Terrell
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.
ByCatholicWorker.org
All I was asking for was a little retreat and reprieve from all the sufferings of my heavy heart. Instead, Brian and Betsy and a menagerie of goats put me to work.
ByKathy Kelly
Unimaginable terror afflicts refugees, including children, on dilapidated boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Humane alternatives should guide policies.
ByCatholicWorker.org
On the 40th anniversary of “Reluctant Resister,” a collection of L.A. Catholic Worker Jeff Dietrich’s letters from prison, the book has been republished with a new Introduction, reprinted here with the permission of the author. This article first appeared in the April 2023 edition of the Catholic Agitator, newspaper of the L.A., Catholic Worker.
ByBrian Terrell
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?
ByCatholicWorker.org
Going to our roots, being radical, not liberal or conservative, marks Catholic Workers as a unique blend of old and new.
ByJoanne Kennedy
A reflection on the future of the Catholic Worker: ” The climate catastrophe’s quickening pace and capitalism’s unbridled consumption will bring us close to that shell again, and the Catholic Worker’s experiences with living differently may become reality for more and more people.”
ByMartha Hennessy
“We live life in precarity, but we will hold on to the belief that God will always provide if we respond to that love with our own practice of love. We may fail daily but we are still called to be a witness, to be the hands and feet of Christ….”
ByFrank Cordaro
Every day during my walk down to the river, I pray the Our Father out loud, as loud as I can, as if it were a prayer for disciples who are already followers of Jesus.
ByClaire Schaeffer-Duffy
“Loneliness is the greatest poverty, Mother Teresa said.” In this edition of Mason Street Musings, Claire Schaeffer-Duffy recounts the stories of a 20-year-old guest working jobs up and down the coast and a toddler named Davide. “Time is looping back on itself,” she writes, reflecting on how she and Scott are once again working on issues of nuclear disarmament, just as they did as young Catholic Workers.
ByBrian Terrell
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.
ByCatholicWorker.org
“With the passing years, I have come to see our work of hospitality at the Catholic Worker – this doing the works of mercy – as an ever-available antidote to despair, a practical pushback against the mercilessness of the day. A welcoming cup of coffee and pot of soup are tools for defying the trench mentality that sets in when belief in goodness wanes.” Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, a member of SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts, reflects on the Works of Mercy in a talk she gave at the 2022 Catholic Worker Gathering.
