ByRobert Ellsberg
Here’s a lecture delivered by Robert Ellsberg at Loyola University Chicago’s Joan and Bill Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage on February 17, 2017. Ellsberg was a member of the Catholic Worker community in New York from 1975 to 1980, and served as the managing editor of The Catholic Worker newspaper from 1976 to 1978. He later went on to become editor-in-chief at Orbis Books.
Robert Ellsberg is the publisher of Orbis Books. From 1975-80 he was part of the Catholic Worker community in New York City, and served two years as managing editor of The Catholic Worker paper. He has edited five volumes of Dorothy Day’s writings, including Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, All the Way to Heaven: Selected Letters of Dorothy Day, and two volumes of On Pilgrimage, from the Sixties and the Seventies.
ByDorothy Day
Summary: Focuses on worker ownership and calls for workers to fight for the means of production, to shun working for the war effort, for priests to come out of their rectories to help the poor, and for all to start the struggle for reform of the social order and against charity growing cold. Repeats the need to be one with the poor and to resist the present social order. (DDLW #452). The Catholic Worker, March 1947, 2, 4.
ByDorothy Day
Summary: Outlines Peter Maurin’s three step program of social reconstruction (round table discussions, houses of hospitality, farm colonies) led by the laity working out the principles in the Popes’ encyclicals on social justice. (DDLW #266) The Catholic Worker, June-July 1933, 4.
ByDorothy Day
Summary: A conversation with her young daughter (Tamar Teresa) about faith in God. Notes the ways liberal relatives influence their children’s disbelief and the effects of religious education on Teresa. Argues that faith in God is not unreasonable and that unbelief stems not from lack of reason, but from lack of inquiry. (DDLW #41). America, 48 (January 14, 1933) :359-360.
Reprinted from America, January 14, 1933, with permission of America Press, Inc., © 1933. For subscription information, call 1-800-627-9533 or visit www.americapress.org
ByDorothy Day
In her introduction to the 56-page pamphlet “Two Agitators: Peter Maurin — Ammon Hennacy” (The Catholic Worker, New York, 1959) Dorothy Day sketches a portrait of Peter Maurin and Ammon Hennacy and provides some background on their place in the Catholic Worker Movement. She marks similarities and differences between the two men, noting that their humility expressed itself in very different ways. Both men believed in the power of ideas and lived in a way that communicated their ideas as powerfully as any of their words.
ByDorothy Day
Summary: Reveals that a pilgrimage in September 1932 to the shrine of the Jesuit martyrs and her later prayer for a vocation at the Blessed mother shrine combined to draw Peter Maurin to her. Resolves to halt travelling to complete writing assignments after two speaking engagements already agreed to. Notes the first wedding of a grand child and death of her brother Donald. Notes the sadness of November with nature dying around us until we rise again. (DDLW #845). The Catholic Worker, October-November 1966, 2, 7.
ByDorothy Day
Summary: Tells of George Clements whose skeleton was found in the woods near Peter Maurin Farm. Paints a picture of the natural surroundings at the beach house. Describes the men’s house in the city, wishing they had yellow paint for the walls. Answers critics who say they have a “morbid preoccupation with misery.” (DDLW #759) The Catholic Worker, December 1959, 2, 6.
