Maryn Hakes: Queerness, Community, and the Catholic Worker (CCW Ep 29)

We say God created water and God created dry land, and yet God also created marshes and bogs. If we know that this God created this in between, this rich, diverse, beautiful creation, why would we say that human beings are just male and female? Even when we have scientific evidence that people aren’t just male and female, that we have these biological categories that we’ve just kind of created because humans like boxes. – Maryn Hakes

Play the episode or read the full transcript below.

Episode transcript

The following episode transcript was autogenerated from the audio transcript and subsequently reviewed and lightly edited for accuracy and clarity. Filler words (ah, um, like, etc.) and false starts have been removed to improve readability.

Theo:

Welcome to Coffee with Catholic Workers, a podcast made by and for Catholic Workers. I’m Theo.

Lydia:

And I’m Lydia. We’ve both been a part of the Catholic Worker for the last decade, and we’re excited to bring to you conversations with Catholic Workers from around the world.

Theo:

On this episode, we’re talking to Maryn Hakes from the Loaves and Fishes community in Duluth, Minnesota. Maryn shared about their journey from the Jesuits to the Catholic Worker, and then about navigating the Catholic Worker movement and the Catholic Church as a gender non-binary person.

Lydia:

Now, here’s Maryn.

Theo:

Maryn, thank you for joining us today on Coffee with Catholic Workers. Can you start by telling us how did you find your way to the Catholic Worker movement?

Maryn:

Yeah, totally. I kind of stumbled into community at the first time I joined the Catholic Worker community. I joined Loaves and Fishes back in 2017.

It was not long after I’d left the Jesuit novitiate. And I just was really desiring community life, but knew that I wasn’t being called to be a Jesuit priest and was starting to navigate a non-binary identity, which doesn’t quite fit within the binary structure of Catholic religious orders. And I had read The Long Loneliness right before I entered novitiate and thought, yeah, the Catholic Worker sounds pretty neat.

My parents live in Florida, so I ended up, after leaving the novitiate, spending about two months laying on the beach in Florida, listening to a lot of podcasts and doing a lot of reading and reflecting. And while I was there, I thought, you know, there’s a Catholic Worker community in Duluth, and I really would like to be back there. And I reached out and I became a Catholic Worker.

And then I left community in 2018 to move in with my partner at the time. And then through COVID, our relationships, we just found we were better friends. And I ended up in community again, because I just feel very much like this is where I need to be.

So now I’ve been back in the Loaves and Fishes community since last April, so about a year now.

Lydia:

So from Florida to Duluth, that’s quite the transition. What had you go to Loaves and Fishes in Duluth, of all places, from Florida? There’s a lot of Catholic Workers in between.

Maryn:

Yeah, there are. I had actually moved to Duluth first in 2010 for grad school. I moved up here to attend the University of Minnesota Duluth.

And then when I was done there, I dabbled around in some different things and then went off to be a Jesuit. So Duluth at that point had kind of become my home. And so moving back to Duluth made a lot of sense to me.

I had a built-in network of friends and community. And so then joining Loaves and Fishes just enhanced that.

Theo:

Can you tell us a little bit about Loaves and Fishes? What do you all have going on there in Duluth?

Maryn:

Yeah. Well, first, I think it’s really remarkable that a city of Duluth’s size, we’re about 86,000 people in the city proper, and not much more than that in the metro area. We have two Catholic Workers in town.

We have Hildegard House and we have Loaves and Fishes. So I think that’s really, really special. And actually, Michelle and Greg, who are with Hildegard House, were once members of Loaves and Fishes.

And Loaves and Fishes itself, we have four houses. Two of them are open houses of hospitality. So there are some drop-in hours each week at both houses.

And then one house is for men and masculine folks, typically, and single men and masculine folks. And then the other house is for families and then femme folks and female-identified folks. And then we have two other houses.

Those two houses, that’s Dorothy Day House, because you have to have a Dorothy Day House, right? And then Alla Branch. And then Hannah House is where I live.

And we have community members that live here, but we also do foster care. So that’s a really, really special thing that we’re able to do. And then we have Bread and Roses, which is our most recent house.

And right now, it’s just community members that live there, but it’s kind of our rotating guest house. Whenever we have friends of the community or something come, they often will stay at Bread and Roses. And our main focus is that hospitality work.

We have a tremendous homeless population in Duluth. And even though it gets so cold here in the middle of the winter, yeah, we have a number of folks that are living outside. And so for a long time, the focus has been making sure that we’re accompanying and serving alongside people who are experiencing homelessness.

And then recently, one of our members, Tone, is really involved in climate work and has helped the community be connected to some of that climate work in Duluth. Yeah, I think that’s all we do. Oh, and we also have a community garden, and we have the Bike Cave, which is a no-cost bike shop and place where folks can just get a bike.

So that’s really cool. And then we do some outreach. This last winter, we did some work at a space called the Warming Center, which is just a place for folks who are living outside to come in during the evening hours and be able to be someplace warm.

And so I delivered some food, some regular meals out there.

Theo:

Yeah, well, that sounds like plenty going on up there. I’m curious a little bit, and if you don’t want to say anything on the record, I’m curious about, you said you do some foster care in your house. I’m just curious how that kind of functions for you all.

If you want to talk about it, you don’t have to.

Maryn:

I mean, so we have anyone who moves into the house, we have two folks that are licensed foster parents, and then anyone else who moves into the house, so like me, I’m not a licensed foster parent, but I am an approved adult. So any adult that’s going to move into Hannah House at the moment, as long as we want to continue doing foster care, needs to go through that process of either becoming a foster parent or being approved, which you just go through the Department of Human Services in Minnesota, and they navigate that with you. But yeah, we’ve had a few foster placements, and it’s really a special way of doing hospitality.

Actually, right now, this summer, there are two kids that used to be placed in our house that are in Duluth for the summer visiting some family, and they are spending time at our house, because there’s still that relationship. So yeah, it’s really, I think probably fairly unique among Catholic Workers to do foster care, but really special. And just has made a lot of sense for the space that we have at Hannah House and the work that our community is doing.

I wasn’t part of the community when they started doing foster care, so I don’t know some of the conversations that were had around that time, but we’ve been doing foster care since about 2016, 2015. And I didn’t mention before, but we, in total, we have 12 community members, live-in community members, and then a wider network of folks that have been either part of the community as live-in members or have been longtime supporters of the community. And so, yeah, we have that core group of live-in volunteers, but we definitely couldn’t do the work that we do without that wider network, that wider community.

Lydia:

That is really impressive to be maintaining that number of live-in volunteers, and then thinking about also maintaining not only like multiple houses of Loaves and Fishes, but also there being Hildegard House in Duluth. I guess it is a very, very Catholic area, which I suppose if anywhere is going to sustain it, it would be that region. I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of your transition from the Jesuit novitiate to Catholic Worker community.

What were some of the things that attracted you to the Catholic Worker?

Maryn:

I think that sometimes we can romanticize this a lot as Catholic Workers, but the simplicity of a Catholic Worker life, part of the reason I felt called to be a Jesuit was that simplicity of lifestyle, although I have to say a lot of Jesuit communities aren’t very simplistic. That could be on the record, but sorry Jesuits. Yeah, so when I left the Jesuit novitiate, I really was craving that community.

I knew I wasn’t called to be a Jesuit at that point, but knew that I really desired to live in community. And being able to not just live a more simplistic life, but to live with people that we traditionally have said we’re serving. As Catholic Workers, we’re not serving, we’re entering into a different kind of solidarity, a different kind of subsidiarity.

We’re choosing to invite all sorts of people into our spaces and we have to navigate this weird hierarchy that still exists, even when we’re trying to break down that hierarchy between longtime community members and folks that are coming to stay at our houses. But that idea of being able to live alongside people as they’re just continuing their journey and to support them, that really is what drew me to the Catholic Worker.

Theo:

Do you think you’ve learned how to navigate some of those difficulties well in your time there at Loaves and Fishes?

Maryn:

Yeah, I think it’s ever-developing, right? But I think that we as a community, and a lot of the folks actually that are part of the community were part of the community when I was a member back in 2017, which, right, Lydia, you mentioned it’s remarkable that we have 12 members and we’re able to sustain that. It’s also remarkable that we have such longevity with them.

But because of that longevity, we’ve had a lot of conversations a number of different times and been able to find some sort of consensus, some sort of way forward with different things. I can’t say that we do anything perfectly. But I would say that I think that we have found a way of navigating that hierarchy in a way that we hold ourselves to the same expectations that we hold folks that live with us.

I remember a conversation, Theo, that you had with the German community, Brot und Rosen, and they mentioned something about how they don’t have guests. They use some different language, and I really love that. I listened to that recently because I’m actually thinking of maybe visiting that community.

And, yeah, just really appreciated the language that they had around guest, but it wasn’t guest. I think it was like the first week you’re a guest, and then after that, you’re a household member. Maybe that’s the language.

And so, like, right, we’re still learning as a community. That’s something that I’ve just taken from another conversation. So this is a rambly way of answering your question, but I don’t think that we found a perfect way of navigating that hierarchy.

But I really appreciate the ways that different communities are navigating that conversation and navigating that hierarchy that exists and trying to break it down. And I think that one of the great benefits of workers being connected to each other is that we’re able to share some of those conversations that we’ve had and some of that knowledge, some of that experience that we’ve gained in this work.

Lydia:

You mentioned that part of your transition away from the Jesuits was partially influenced by a discovery of being or journey towards being non-binary. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit of what that’s been like for you being engaged still with not a Catholic organization, but one that’s sometimes Catholic adjacent. And what’s that been like?

Maryn:

Yeah, I would say in my community, it’s been really wonderful. I have always felt supported in my identity. When I first joined community back in 2017, I was using a different name, was using masculine pronouns.

I wouldn’t have described myself necessarily as non-binary. That was just starting to be something that I was thinking about, that I was like, you know, I think that this is part of who I am. Although if you ask Judith Butler, the great gender theorist, they would say that you actually get to choose your gender, that it’s not necessarily innate.

So maybe I got to choose it too. Regardless, I would choose who I am. But I also, in addition to being a Catholic Worker, I am a practicing Catholic, which isn’t always the case.

So when I enter that space, it feels very different. Actually, I just had a conversation with my priest this last week, where I was asked to not wear nail polish when I distribute communion, because he had had some phone calls from parishioners who were just really confused as to why a man would be distributing communion with nail polish on their fingers. And of course, you know, it’s difficult to have that conversation with some people about, well, no, not a man.

But in my community, it’s been a really great experience. But we also have two houses of hospitality that were opened in the binary, right? We traditionally have talked about these two houses as being the men’s house and the women and families house.

And so even now, you know, softening that language and saying the men and masculine house, the house for fem folks and female identified folks, you know, that’s a way of softening it. But it’s still these two houses that are in the binary. And we are, as a community, just beginning to have some conversations around how do we navigate this?

What does this mean for us? How do we, especially as we know, a large number of folks experiencing homelessness. Well, I should say it the other way.

A number of trans identified folks will experience homelessness at some point during their life. And so how do we make, if we’re trying to be hospitable, if we’re trying to have these welcoming, affirming spaces, safe spaces for people to exist and get back on their feet, then we need to navigate these conversations before we have somebody knocking on our door. And so, yeah, we have no answers on how we do hospitality outside of the binary.

But check back in in a year and we’ll see where we’re at then.

Theo:

I know you’ve written some about this, but I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how does your non-binary life affect your understanding of God and your understanding of being part of this Catholic Church and the broader Christian community?

Maryn:

Yeah, how much time do we have? As I’ve gotten to know myself in a deeper way, I’ve gotten to know God in a deeper way. That ability to see ourselves fully as we are created in a fearfully and wonderfully way, it just has deepened and broadened and blown open my idea of who God is and what God can do, can do in this world with us. I appreciate there’s a post that’s gone around social media at different points, but, you know, this breakdown of binaries, we say that God created light and God created darkness. But didn’t God also create the dusk and the dawn?

We say God created water and God created dry land, and yet God also created marshes and bogs. If we know that this God created this in between, this rich, diverse, beautiful creation, why would we say that human beings are just male and female? Even when we have scientific evidence that people aren’t just male and female, that we have these biological categories that we’ve just kind of created because humans like boxes.

So, for me, coming to terms with my identity, embracing my identity has really allowed me to live a spiritual and, in my own way, Catholic life. I don’t think that I would be able to continue to be a Catholic if I wasn’t embracing all of who I am. But embracing all of who I am also puts me at odds with some current teaching.

You know, Pope Francis typically speaks fairly well when it comes to LGB folks, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual folks, although I’m not sure that Pope Francis knows about pansexual folks. And unfortunately, he of course just made some comments where he utilized a really strong pejorative word for queer folks. So he’s certainly not perfect in the way that he talks around about LGB folks.

But when he talks about trans folks and gender non-conforming folks, he just has no understanding. And so many Catholic leaders have no understanding of what it actually means to live as a trans and or non-binary person in this world. It’s clear that they’re not having those conversations, they’re not listening.

And for some people, that means, I can’t be a part of this, I can’t be part of this church, I need to leave. For me, I just, I feel like, well, first, I chose to be a Catholic. I became a Catholic back in 2012.

So I’ve already decided to be part of this Catholic family. And I’ve claimed this space. I feel like I have this space and nobody’s going to take it away from me.

This is my home, this is my spiritual home. And by me being present, by me showing up and distributing communion with nail polish on my fingernails, I am in my own way broadening somebody’s idea of what it means to be a Catholic. And I’m also telling those little non-binary and queer kids in the pews, because we know they’re sitting in the pews too.

I’m telling them, just by being present, you have a place here. You have a home here. And I think that that’s really, really essential.

I don’t think that it’s a reason to martyr myself. If I get to a point that I don’t think I can be in the church any longer, I’ll cross that bridge, cross the Tiber as it is. But in this moment, I feel very strongly that part of my role, part of my vocation is to claim that space for myself and in turn claim it for other queer folks.

Lydia:

I think at least what I’ve seen, so I’m not Catholic, but my wife and I go to a United Methodist church that’s extremely queer. It’s maybe like, I don’t know, 90% queer folks. And it’s a really special and unique space.

I think when you have that many queer people all sort of engaged in church, where there’s almost like a depth to it of people who are in a space, in a belief, where you know other people don’t want you there. And so I think there is something about this conscious choice that you chose to be a Catholic. People who are queer, who are in church, they are consciously choosing church, choosing this belief, sort of despite all odds.

And I think there’s oftentimes a depth that people don’t realize is there because it’s not for tradition, it’s not for just something fun to go do on a Sunday or whatever day people show up. But there’s a lot of pain and a lot of struggle that goes into it. I think sort of adjacent to that, rather than just church but in worker communities, it is sort of a toss-up of whether or not different communities are supportive of queer folks, of trans folks.

And I know of different queer workers who oftentimes have had some trepidation or anxiety visiting different communities, just not being sure kind of what you’re going to run into.

Maryn:

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that part of the reason why I’ve had such a great experience with my community is that we are a fairly secular community. We don’t have a common prayer.

We center our work certainly on the tradition of the Catholic Worker. We center our work, you know, we read the aims and means, and we certainly know the rootedness in like Matthew 25. And we all have our own spiritual practice, but we’re certainly not a big C Catholic, Catholic Worker.

We are definitely a collection of Lutherans and Buddhists and Catholics and agnostics. And I think that that’s part of the reason why I’ve been able to continue to be a Catholic Worker. Certainly there are other communities, as you mentioned, Lydia, that would not welcome me in the same way, would not respect me in the same way.

In the same way that there’s like this, this plethora of Catholic churches that I can go to and some are going to be affirming and some aren’t. So I’m glad I found a good community.

Theo:

Yeah, it’s, you know, I like to talk about the Catholic Worker. There’s all these different spectrums out there. Right.

And there’s some that are like really conservative Catholics and then there’s like Loaves and Fishes, where it’s like we don’t really necessarily have a Common prayer together. Those folks are going to daily mass every day together kind of thing. And it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s beautiful that we can have some of both of that.

Unfortunate, you know, it is unfortunate. Sometimes those Catholic ones aren’t too friendly to folks, but even like Friends who’ve been around the LA Catholic Worker for a long time because they they’ve had in A history of queer folks in their community for going back like decades being out there in California and stuff. Some, some of them, you know, shared even you know yeah there there’s these people that think they’re like really radical to but like they don’t realize they have their own like difficulties as straight CIS folks.

I sorry I maybe lost my train of thought, but I don’t know it’s It’s just always this is maybe one of the most interesting things I enjoy about this show and the Catholic Worker generally is like there is like such diversity out there that I’m glad we can find space for all kinds of folks.

Maryn:

You know, I had to say, I really wish that some of those more Catholic communities would be a space that’s open to me because that like like being able to have a communal prayer would be so beautiful for me. Right. I, I am a devout Catholic, I would love to be in a space where yeah we are praying the Rosary together or in in the Episode where you were interviewing Martha Hennessy.

She mentioned mass happening at Mary house and I’m like, yes, I want mass to happen. That’d be beautiful. So, you know, I, it’s this this weird living in two worlds where I, I have my queer community where I can be fully and authentically myself there.

But I really should probably leave my Catholicism at the door because it it it’s something that causes pain for some of my queer friends and then I go to my Catholic communities and and I really should leave my queerness at the door. And I’m not going to leave either at the door, no matter what. So it’s a, it’s an interesting life to live, certainly, but I think you’re right.

This, this great diversity of communities is Really unique strength of the Catholic Worker movement.

Theo:

I think back to your, your metaphor or maybe metaphor is not the right word like lesson from nature about these, you know, connected spaces that flow into each other and and and I was just thinking about it to like continue that lesson like as we’ve tried to eliminate those spaces. Sometimes, you know, like turning the wetlands into like farmland and stuff. We see that like the natural community like suffers greatly and and our human communities suffer greatly as a result to and and it’s just can be unfortunate when our, you know, supposedly loving Catholic folks don’t see that same reality in in our human communities to One thing that I should mention that I think is really cool.

Maryn:

You know, I mentioned earlier, some of the the difficulty that I have with some of the Catholic hierarchy and and I think it’s obvious when you look at the news. Some of the difficulty that queer folks in general have with Catholic hierarchy. But, you know, I think that there are some of those Catholics that are, are seeing some of seeing the goodness of Of queer folks.

I was able through New Ways Ministry. To participate with a conversation with a group of bishops around gender and specifically trans identities. And the conversation was really beautiful.

But unfortunately, part of the reason why those bishops were willing to show up is because it wouldn’t get out that they were there that part of the ask was that we weren’t going to talk about who was there or or that it You know, or the the content specifically of those conversations or what they had to say, or what they were going to do in their diocese so that they had the freedom to show up and listen without any blowback from more conservative circles in the church.

But, and I say that to just share that, you know, we do have some some folks in the hierarchy who, who recognize the innate goodness of queer folks and are working within that hierarchical structure to To at least make room.

Lydia:

Some real cloak and dagger stuff like Nicodemus like meeting Jesus in the middle of the night.

Maryn:

Totally.

Lydia:

Well, now that you’ve been back in community, taking a brief hiatus sometimes hiatus is from community is like very healthy for people. I had a very brief period where I sort of lived in community and sort of had my own apartment in Iowa.

But you are fully back in community. What’s, what’s some of your hopes and dreams for life in the Catholic Worker.

Maryn:

It’s a great question. Yeah, I’m excited for my community’s conversations around the binary and how we navigate and do hospitality. I think that we have a very biased opinion.

We have a really great community that is at a place where we can begin to have that conversation and and navigated in a good way. I also think that, you know, the community might not appreciate me putting this on the record, but I think that Loaves and Fishes hasn’t done a great job of being connected to the wider worker. In recent years, I think that there have been in each community and ebb and flow and and how you show up in different spaces.

But I think that moving forward where we’re really committed to having a presence at faith and resistance and at the Sugar Creek gathering and that and I think, again, being able to share space and share ideas and share experiences only makes us that much stronger. I like, I love metaphors. So I like to think of each of us as like this beautiful square on a patchwork quilt. And we’re, we’re beautiful on our own.

I mean, you look at me. I’m actually sitting on a patchwork quilt right now and you look at each patch and it’s beautiful. But it’s not a quilt on its own. We truly need each other to be a quilt.

And I think that that is one of the benefits of having those opportunities together. Yeah, and I also have, I have hope that the Worker will continue to to be a catalyst for for agitation in the Catholic community, but in the wider World. I think that Yeah, we are uniquely positioned to,  not just speak on nuclear proliferation and homelessness and housing, but thinking about facial justice and being in a mostly white organization. How do we navigate those conversations? How do we enter into antiracist work in a really effective way?

And then how do we model that for other white folks, especially and how do we as a worker navigate conversations around queer folks. Yeah, I anybody is having those conversations. I’d love to hear more about that.

So maybe at the next faith and resistance or Sugar Creek or or someone can shoot me an email.

Lydia:

There, there was a roundtable at the last Sugar Creek on queerness and trans books and the Catholic Worker. Awesome. Yeah, it, you know, those conversations are always difficult.

I think, but, but it happened. And that’s, that’s a good thing.

Maryn:

It is a good thing. And all the more reason for me to go to the next Sugar Creek.

Lydia:

There you go. What a plug for it. Go for it.

Sorry.

Theo:

Oh, well, I was just gonna say Maybe we’re wrapping up with, you know, we’ve gone about as long as we normally do. Is there anything else you really want to get out there about the dilute the scene in Duluth that Loaves and Fishes and in your life?

Maryn:

Well, I mean, I should say the New York Times describes Duluth is like the number one climate refuge. So Duluth is where it’s at. Even the New York Times says so, but it’s a, it’s a pretty, pretty awesome area to live in. Obviously, I’m biased. I live up here, but the natural beauty of northeastern Minnesota is pretty, pretty epic.

Theo:

Well, the good thing we have to Catholic Workers in Duluth for those climate refugees that are going to be letting in there soon.

Maryn:

Exactly.

Theo:

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for talking to us and, you know, taking one of those steps to making the Loaves and Fishes connected to the broader Catholic Worker, a little bit.

Maryn:

Thanks for having me. It’s good to have this conversation.

Lydia:

Well, a huge thanks again to Maryn for joining us. We really enjoyed that conversation and talking through Maryn about their journey, both, both coming from the Jesuits. And also the overlap of their journey with transitioning, discovering gender and what that looks like for them both personally and theologically and with community.

So many, so many different things for us to explore. One of the things I enjoyed learning about in this interview is I was not aware. I did not realize that Loaves and Fishes did foster care and it sounds like has done foster care in one of their homes for some time.

And that’s something that my wife and I have thought about but haven’t been sure about what that might look like in community.

Theo:

Yeah, I think that’s a fairly unique project in the Catholic Worker movement. I’ve definitely known individual Catholic Workers who have raised foster kids or adopted children, but they usually from what I’ve seen don’t live in community in that way, so it’s cool to hear about that they’ve figured out a way to to do both of those things live communally and share that communal home with kids in need.

Lydia:

Yeah, yeah, just sort of a large expansion of what the community might look like and who it might include Yeah.

Theo:

I’m curious. I’d be curious to talk more to Maryn or some of the Duluth folks about what that community experience is like for kids coming there. It’s already a little bit of a weird setup.

Anytime you’re going to the Catholic Worker and I wonder if it’s easier or harder coming to it as a foster kid like that.

Lydia:

Sure. Yeah, yeah. I did a little bit of work in the foster care system here in Illinois for some years and honestly, I’d imagine that those kids are probably just happy to get into a home.

And to get into a home in which people are caring Is sort of the very unfortunate state of many the foster care systems sort of across the US. So just simply not having enough homes and not having enough quality homes for kids who need them.

Theo:

Yeah. One of the things I’ve been thinking about both for this, but just also about Loaves and Fishes is kind of the continuity continuity that Maryn was talking about with the community members that they’ve had their longevity of community members that you know it takes some trust to want to help raise or take care of kids with other people in in the house. So that’s like an advantage there and but I was also thinking about, you know, some sometimes there are Catholic Workers and they flip through people coming and going a lot, you know, folks come for 123 years and then they’re gone and that can lead to to kind of power dynamics in the community and in a weird way.

Sometimes there are sometimes places where like the, the quote unquote guests have lived at the house far longer than the new younger Catholic Workers, but, you know, because they chose to stay at the Catholic Worker house coming from different scenarios. They have different access to it and access to the power structures and dynamics within their house. So yeah, it’s, I’m sure, helpful for Duluth to have like the continuous group like this.

And then also, it sounded like they’ve been intentional about thinking, how did these dynamics play out in their community to Sure, yeah.

Lydia:

And I think the end result we see from that is a community in which someone like Maryn is able to kind of discover how to be one’s best self. Right. It’s the kind of the goal of the Catholic Worker and ways in which it’s easier to do good and to be good, both in our interior lives and our exterior actions.

Yeah, I suppose that that may be like a measure of health of community of both how long do people stay and how well is it enabling all of the community members to sort of live into their true selves.

Theo:

Yeah. Speaking of Maryn’s true self, you know that they were mentioning that they’re a Catholic convert, which as a cradle Catholic always seems a little weird to me that someone would choose to throw in. I feel like I didn’t have a choice.

It was kind of where I came from, but it’s a little suspect. Yeah, yeah, I’m not sure that I know what to think about it, but it seems like most of the converts I’ve ever met in my life like the vast majority have been through the Catholic Worker movement, actually. Almost all of them were and no small number are drawn in by Dorothy Day and stuff like that. But it’s definitely not the the Catholic Worker is not the first thing most people think of when they think of the Catholic Church or anything to Sure, yeah, probably not.

Lydia:

It does seem to have this continual draw I have been wanting Maybe I’ll do it now that I actually say it on the podcast. I’ve been wanting to do some sort of survey of Catholic Workers, and I think it would be interesting to see demographics of age of people in the Catholic Worker where At least in my head. It’s split both between sort of some folks who are older.

But also a lot of young people, which I think is encouraging thing, both for the movement and and also perhaps for Catholicism for those who are young and interested in it.

Theo:

I’d be curious to see the results of your Catholic Worker survey. I wonder, you know, what kind of methodology, it would take to be accurate and who would tend to respond to it. How do you get it into everyone’s hands, but, but then you’d have to also figure out what qualifies as a Catholic Worker who who is going to take this survey to Sure, yeah.

Lydia:

Or who do we exclude and leave out from the results. Who knows, you know, right. Well, right now it’s still just a pipe dream.

So we’ll, we’ll see if it comes to fruition.

Theo:

All right. Well, you did say it on a podcast.

Lydia:

Well, that wraps up another episode of coffee with Catholic Workers. If you’d like to reach out to us with any comments, suggestions, clarification of thought. You can email us at CoffeeWithCatholicWorkers@gmail.com. We want to thank our Catholic Worker audio engineer Chris, as well as David Hayes for music and Becky McIntyre for our graphics.

Theo:

Thanks for joining us again for some clarification of thought. We hope today’s conversation has been enlightening and maybe even that you’re encouraged to go out and help build a world where it’s easier to be good.

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Coffee with Catholic Workers is a podcast by and about Catholic Workers. Every two weeks, join Lydia Wong and Theo Kayser for a conversation with some of their favorite Catholic Worker folk. Special thanks to sound engineer Chris of Bloomington, IN.