Let’s Uphold the Right to Seek Safety
Unimaginable terror afflicts refugees, including children, on dilapidated boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Humane alternatives should guide policies.
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Essay | News | Uncategorized
On Its 40th Anniversary, a New Intro for “Reluctant Resister”
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.
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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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We Have Not Truly Arrived
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.”
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The Catholic Worker Movement: Our Future
“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….”
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Praying the Our Father Today in the USA
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.
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Davide Is Dancing in the Kitchen
“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.
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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.
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The Works of Mercy: An Antidote to the Mercilessness of the Day
“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.
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The Case for St. Dorothy Day
In this classic essay from the May 2015 issue of The Catholic Worker, Robert Ellsberg reflects on what saints meant to Dorothy Day, what they mean for the Church, and why the question of her canonization ultimately comes down to whether it will draw people to live out the radical love of Jesus.
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A Radical Call to Love
A meditation on the Catholic Worker’s commitment to nonviolence and its inseparability from doing the works of mercy. This essay originally appeared in the October 1982 issue of The Catholic Worker.
