Engaging the Internet as a Catholic Worker

Editor’s Note: The following essay was written by Jim Allaire after Easter 1997. In 2011, he transcribed it in its current form with bracketed notes providing updates and context. It is presented here in its entirety based on the 2011 version. Also, his reference to the Catholic Worker Roundtable refers to the original name of the website he developed in 1995, not the Catholic Worker Roundtable newsletter that launched in 2024.

“The Catholic Worker on the Internet? Outrageous! Congratulations!” wrote one of the first people to discover the Catholic Worker presence on the World Wide Web. This cryptic message perfectly presaged the controversy about the Catholic Worker Movement and the Internet that has developed—surprise, opposition, and support. My intent in this article is to explain what I am doing and why I believe a Catholic Worker online presence is congruent with both Christian and Catholic Worker tradition.

[The following descriptions are of an early version of the catholicworker.org website.]

So what is the Catholic Worker Roundtable Web site all about? When someone types in the Roundtable address in their Internet browser software (http://www.catholicworker.org/roundtable), they see the Catholic Worker Roundtable’s “front page” with a photo of Peter Maurin and these words from an easy essay: “…why the things are what they are, how the things would be if they were as they should be, and how a path can be made from the things as they are to the things as they should be.” This text conveys the purpose of the site, and for me expresses the essence of clarification of thought: analysis, vision, and action. This first page also contains the table of contents for the site, which allows readers to select other pages to read.

The “About the Catholic Worker Movement” pages are devoted to helping the readers familiarize themselves with the Catholic Worker Movement. There is an essay by Tom Cornell, an excerpt from my Praying With Dorothy Day, and a link to the Catholic Worker Home Page (http://www.cais.com/agf/cwindex.htm) [no longer available] developed by Anne Fullerton, a Web site that is rich in content about the movement (biographical sketches of Dorothy and Peter by Jim Forest, bibliographies, some Easy Essays, a list of houses, seasonal features, and more). Another section of the Roundtable is titled “Catholic Worker Essays” and contains online reprints of articles from Catholic Worker papers and newsletters from around the country. As I write this, there are articles from the Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, and Tacoma papers on the site.

Unlike many Web sites, which are static repositories of information, the Catholic Worker Roundtable invites participation and dialogue—an online roundtable. [No longer available.] I call this section “Union Square: A Public Forum,” Union Square being a symbol of dialogue and thought intended to change the social order. The section is a conferencing system where anyone can initiate a topic or respond to what others have said. As Union Square was in the 1930s, so today the World Wide Web of the Internet is one of the commons, the street, where the hawking of ideas increasingly takes place. Although this is not face-to-face communication, it has the characteristic feel of letter writing.

Next comes a directory of all known Catholic Worker communities in the world. Each community has a page displaying its name, address, phone number, publication, Web site (three houses currently have home pages), [As of 3/2011 62 houses have web sites] and in many cases a brief description of the community’s work. Those who use the directory are invited to contact the communities to volunteer or participate in the community life. (Lynda Milne, who now works with the Detroit Catholic Worker and has just written an article for their paper, discovered the Worker through the Internet.)

Most Web sites have links to other places on the Internet where similar or related information might be found. I call this section “Links to Allied Movements on the WWW.” There are links to Sojourners Online, International Workers of the World, Catholic Resources on the Net, the Noam Chomsky Archive, PeaceNet, and Claretian publications, to name a few.

Sometime soon I will add an “Action/Events Calendar” to the Roundtable where anyone can post information about demonstrations, protests, boycotts, conferences, workshops, etc. [This was never implemented.] Visitors to the site will be able to add items or search for items in the calendar by locality, type, and timeframe, hopefully so they can participate.

That’s what the Catholic Worker Roundtable is, but why have I done it? At a personal level, I often wonder how it happened that I find myself with both computer skills and a Catholic Worker identity. My involvement with personal computers began in 1984 and for the past seven years I have worked for myself writing software for mental health agencies in Minnesota. Besides earning a living, I experience the joy and satisfaction of creating useful software that puts computers to work to solve real problems for my customers. The computer is not an alien tool to me.

The route to the Catholic Worker for me began while living in Philadelphia from 1970 to 1982 where I participated in protests and demonstrations against US policies and actions in Vietnam and El Salvador. I also worked with the poor and was involved in a small Catholic intentional community, as well as being active in my parish, St. Vincent’s, in Germantown. After returning to my hometown of Winona in 1982 in response to family needs, my wife and I struggled to find and form a Christian community that was vital and concerned about peace and justice. In 1991 my wife and I joined Mary Farrell, who carried the Catholic Worker vision to us, and together we started the Winona Catholic Worker.

When I was first introduced to the Internet five years ago by my sons when they were in college I was unimpressed. Even though I was computer savvy, finding useful information on the net was frustrating to me and I resisted their attempts to get me online. New graphical interface software appeared making it much easier to navigate the Internet and eighteen months ago I went online. After my son Jeremy showed me two sites he developed, one devoted to the works of Noam Chomsky, the idea for the Roundtable began to develop. I saw how I could combine my talents, resources, and Catholic Worker convictions. Somehow I have been prepared for this Catholic Worker-Internet task and it has become for me a responsible use of the talents and opportunities God has given me.

Although it is difficult at times to discern all our motives, recalling that the way to hell is paved with good intentions, I am sure of this much: I experience both joy and peace in my work—computer and Catholic Worker alike. At present there is a conscious confluence of the various streams of my life experience.

From my vantage point as a Catholic Worker and a software developer, I see two core issues in the Catholic Worker-Internet controversy, both in the letters I have received and the articles I have read.

The first core issue involves the proposition that computers and their related technologies are evil, causing great harm and injustice in our world, and that therefore we should reject these technologies unequivocally. The second core issue, related to the first, is that computers and their related technologies are antithetical to the meaning of the Catholic Worker Movement; Catholic Workers shouldn’t use these things.

Computer Technology: More Evil Than Good?

The first core issue takes the form of assertions that computer technology and the Internet are more evil than good. The most frequently cited objections maintain that computer technology displaces workers, increases alienation, fosters consumptive and addictive behavior, reduces human freedom, harms the environment, and is the principal tool of modern warfare. Furthermore, this group says, it is an illusion to confuse cyberspace communication with personal encounters and to substitute virtual communities for the real thing.

I concede that there is plenty of evidence to support these objections in many instances. I offer, however, the following distinctions as a way to approach the above objections. Where there is good in any of our human inventions and they are appropriately used, we can see them as fruits of our God-given creativity that can contribute to the common good. Where there is harm and injustice to be found, we can also find a human will making choices about how our tools and inventions are used. When technology is misused and does harm in today’s world it can usually be traced to the forces of the dominant economic system whose driving will is for maximum profit. In an unequal system, inventions serve the will of the dominators. I maintain that computers and their related technologies are a mixed good (good in themselves), but can be used for evil purposes (good and evil in their use).

Plenty of evidence can be cited for the good uses of computer technologies. In a recent column the theologian Richard McBrien articulates the essence of the Catholic sacramental vision that forms the basis of the above distinction. He writes “For the Catholic, all creation is good, even if fallen, because it comes from the hand of God and is suffused even now with the presence of God, because it has been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ, because it has been renewed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and because it is destined for eternal glory in the final Reign, or Kingdom, of God.” The products of human labor and creativity, even computers and the Internet, are good until we misuse them for purposes of domination or greed, something we humans are all too prone to do. But through the mystery of the Incarnation, that redeeming entry of God into our fallen and broken world in Jesus, all things are made new in Christ (II Cor 5:17), and all human activity is drawn into the task of reconciling all things in Christ (Col 1:20 and Eph 1:10). As St. Paul teaches—“Indeed, the whole created world eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God (Rom 8:19-21).” When we put on Christ we accept the challenge to “renew the face of the earth” in cooperation with the Spirit.

Evil may abound and even appear to be taking over the Earth. But relying on a fundamental sacramental sense, something that was a keynote of Dorothy Day’s spirituality as well, we can engage our world with Christian hope and shun all theological pessimism and tendencies to withdraw, which may carry the assumption that our withdrawal is a solution.

Related to the above theological arguments is Emmanuel Mounier’s personalist principle of “engagement.” Mounier notes that over and over again humanity is tempted to retreat, to go inside and hide from the fears of the world. We see that in individual lives and in our collective behavior. We see it in the behavior of nations and in the Church. (Is fundamentalism just such an attempt to hide?) Against the tendency of withdrawal, individualism, and egoism, he proposes the principle of engagement as an essential imperative of personalism. Engagement for Mounier is living in one’s time, blending existential joy and tragic tension, acting to influence history, and continuing the analysis and redirection of our Spirit-given energies when necessary.

Given that the issues around technology are likely to be ambiguous for some time to come, with neither proponents nor detractors winning the day, Jeff Dietrich has suggested a constructive principle. He suggests that when we use technology we do so “confessionally,” acknowledging that our use implies some degree of complicity in the harm that technology often brings. This confessional stance can be a stimulus to discernment. And discernment about how and why we engage technology must continue. We need thoughtful and prayerful reflection on what points toward the realization of the Reign of God versus what merely indicates the progress of culture.

Computers, the Internet, and Catholic Worker Identity

The second core issue I have identified involves reconciling computer and Internet involvement with a Catholic Worker identity. One worker who wrote suggested that Catholic Worker involvement in the Internet will give the appearance that all is well — “if Catholic Workers do it, it must be OK?” Since all is not well (the first core issue), she argues, we should conclude that Catholic Workers shouldn’t be involved with computers and the Internet.

In my view, the principal reason that the Catholic Worker and the Internet are not antithetical comes from the desire to communicate that lies at the foundation of the movement. The Catholic Worker Movement started when Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin teamed up in 1932 to start a tabloid newspaper, a common medium at the time, called The Catholic Worker. They had a vision and message to communicate. Over the years Dorothy and Peter published in print and crisscrossed the country speaking to students, workers, clergy, and anyone who would listen. Peter would go to Union Square in New York, in the 1930s a center for radical social thought, and argue his radical Christian ideas for transforming society. Dorothy wrote seven books and hundreds of articles about her convictions. Today over 70 [as of 3/2011 the number is 213] Catholic Worker communities carry on this tradition and publish newspapers or newsletters. I maintain that the Internet is an important publishing medium, in our decade, for communicating the distinctive Catholic Worker themes of the primacy of the spiritual, nonviolence, voluntary poverty, hospitality, and community. The many encouraging words in support of my and Anne’s efforts are in agreement with this position.

Related to the communication charism of the movement is the renewed awareness in today’s Church of what is being called the “new evangelization.” Recent Church documents cite Mark 16:15: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation,” as the very reason for the Church’s existence. This new evangelization is all the more imperative since it is encountering a new “dechristianization”—the loss of faith and the moral sense so widespread today. The Internet, and the people who use it, are part of that creation hungry for the good news and its citizens cannot be written off or neglected.

At this year’s Easter Vigil, during the Easter Proclamation, I was again reminded how Christ, the Morning Star that never sets, dispels all evil and sheds his peaceful light on all humankind. No one, anywhere, is excluded—that includes “Netizens.”

While the above arguments and principles are convincing to me, I know that many Catholic Workers are at best ambivalent about these issues and remain perplexed about where they stand. And some Catholic Workers cannot reconcile any involvement with computers and the Internet with their own image of the movement. No doubt every Catholic Worker has an image or set of beliefs about what constitutes the authentic meaning of the movement, shaped by each person’s Catholic Worker experience. The Catholic Worker movement is “large, highly diverse, diffuse, and decentralized—not to mention anarchistic” one letter said. I believe that within the movement there are many roles, gifts, and ways to communicate.

Some Catholic Workers are gifted writers, others focus on resistance work and endure jail, many protest injustice in public witnesses and vigils. Some Workers show a holiness that we can all admire, and most Catholic Workers preach the Gospel daily, without words, by practicing hospitality and the works of mercy. Now there are some Catholic Workers, motivated by the same Spirit, who ply the Internet, a medium that relies on many-to-many communication, has an anarchistic structure, and fosters decentralization and cooperation.

How shall the Catholic Worker proceed in this era of transition and find a way to reconcile core charisms with new forms, to find new wineskins? The theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, reflecting on the experience of the early Church, wrote: “For the virtues of a particular tradition emerge more clearly from the way in which the tradition is able to accord a real place to new and above all ‘divergent’ experiences— dynamically remaining itself, without eclecticism or false aggiornamento.” (Christ, p. 38-39). In the context of this article, the question becomes: How can the Catholic Worker movement engage and accord a real place to computer and Internet technologies?

A recent letter from Mark and Louise Zwick in Houston, sent to all Catholic Worker communities, invites us all to reflect on “what are considered basic Catholic Worker concepts and principles, e.g., hospitality.” I concur with their suggestion and suggest these questions to guide our reflection on our Catholic Worker identity: What does it mean for me, individually, to call myself a Catholic Worker? What does it mean for a group to say it is a Catholic Worker community? What are the core charisms of the Movement? What is our theology of technology? What would a voluntary poverty of technology look like? What in our tradition supports change and renewal?

My final words are devoted to hospitality. A letter from a long-time worker says: “Nothing that comes out of our heads has any real value unless it was first in our guts and our hearts. If it goes from there to the Web, what’s the beef?” These words have become for me what I call “the hospitality test.” The active love of hospitality and the works of mercy is how we train our hearts, how we stay grounded as Catholic Workers. Hospitality and the works of mercy need to take precedence over other claims on my time and energy, whether those claims be the Internet or any other personal attachment.

Originally written about 1997.

Jim Allaire