Living Nonviolence Every Day: Stories and Insights

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy and Martha Hennessy explored the challenges of practicing “loving-kindness” in personal confrontations and daily community life in this presentation at the October 2025 Catholic Worker gathering at the San Antonio Catholic Worker.

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy (Sts. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker, Worcester, Massachusetts) shared several anecdotes from his experience as a Catholic Worker, including a physical altercation over a stolen rollaway bed, a de-escalated mugging, and a humorous interaction with armed militia members at outside a rod and gun club.

Martha Hennessy (New York Catholic Worker) offered personal reflections on her own internal struggles with anger and “self-disarmament,” contrasting them with memories of Dorothy’s patience in the face of verbal abuse . She also touched on the complexities of pacifism within a family, recounting how Dorothy respected the free will of family members who chose to join the military.

The following transcript was auto-generated from a recording of the event and reviewed by a human editor who made corrections and edited it for clarity. This transcript omits the question-and-answer period, which you may want to listen to on the YouTube recording. Cover photo courtesy of San Antonio Catholic Worker.

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Scott Schaeffer-Duffy:

I want to touch on two examples of nonviolence that are different than protests and taking a political position. Because some of us will decide to do that—put ourselves on the line, risk arrest, and whatever—and that’s a kind of nonviolence. But all of us in our life have situations where people threaten us. They get angry. People might even threaten us legally. What do we do?

Dorothy Day has inspired me in two instances, and I’ll just give those examples and turn the mic over to Martha.

One of them, I was in Washington, D.C., as a young Catholic Worker, and we got word that one of our guests, who drinks a lot, had fallen down and cut his head. So we run out into the alley and into the street. We’re helping a guy into an ambulance—he needed a few stitches—and somebody else runs over to me and says, “Oh, it’s Poo-Poo.”

Now, this guy named Poo-Poo was totally misnamed. He was the fiercest, toughest guy in the neighborhood. I don’t know why they called him Poo-Poo. He would steal from us in broad daylight while we were saying Mass. I mean, he was a rough, rough guy. And they said, “He’s stealing a rollaway bed out of the back of your house.”

So I run out into the alley, and he’s pushing the rollaway down the alley. I said, “Excuse me. What are you doing?”

He said, “Oh, one of the people in your house sold me this bed for five bucks.”

I said, “Well, that’s not unbelievable. But that’s Calvin’s bed. I’m sleeping on the floor; if it were my bed, you could have it. But it’s Calvin’s bed, and we have rats. So, let’s go back with the bed. You point out who sold you the bed for five bucks, and I’ll get you your money.”

He goes, “No. You go back. I’ll stay here and bring you money.”

Now, being nonviolent doesn’t mean being stupid. If I go back, he and the bed are going to be gone. I said, “No, I’ll take the bed. You can come with me.”

And he punched me. He punched me really, really hard in the face, and I went down. I got back up slowly, and I stood there. I looked at him, and he looked confused that I didn’t run away. I thought, Ooh, the victory of nonviolence.

And he punched me again. Maybe not as hard, though. Then I got up really slowly and I said, “That doesn’t change anything. It’s still Calvin’s bed, and I’m still going to take it.”

There was a board on the ground with a rusty nail in it. I said, Oh my God, why? This is turning into a really bad day. If he picks that up, this is going to be the worst. I had always romanticized martyrdom. I thought it was going to be the kind of thing like in the movie Quo Vadis, where you get to say really cool last words and the “ooh-ahh” music comes on and you walk to heaven. Or where Thomas More’s last word is a joke, and he gets to say it before they chop off his head. And here I am in a garbage-strewn alley arguing about a rollaway bed. I’m like, Boy, this is so much shabbier than I expected it.

But at that moment, a police car pulled up to the end of the alley. One of the guests maybe called the cops. You know when they show something in the movies, and it’s a distance, but it looks incredibly far? It looked like about 500 yards. I don’t think it was.

He says, “You’re going to put the cops on me now?”

I said, “We don’t need the police to resolve this.” I turned my back on him and started pushing the bed away. I full well expected to feel the nail breaking down on my back. But I didn’t.

The day went on, and things were fine. Four days later, a fellow volunteer and I got sentenced to three days in D.C. jail for a demonstration. We get to D.C. jail, they process us, they do medical, they give you your uniforms. Oh my god, look who’s here! Poo-Poo got a three-month sentence, and he was on the block we were on.

All I could think of was, Wow, I’m really glad I didn’t use violence. Because in the D.C. jail, he really could have hurt me. So it felt like, okay, it worked out.

About three weeks later, I’m walking at night near the house down on New York Avenue. A guy comes up to me, pulls out a knife, and says, “Give me your money.”

I reached in my front pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and gave it to him. I thought about Dorothy Day, and I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He said, “What?”

I said, “What do you need it for?”

He said, “If it means anything to you, it’s for food for my kids. I lost my job. It’s for my kids.”

I said, “Wait a minute.” I reached into my back pocket where I had a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Here, take this. Go to the Catholic Worker House. It’s over here. This is the address. We get food all the time. Come on over tomorrow. We’ll hook you up. We’ll take care of you.”

He goes, “Oh, wow. I can’t take your money.”

I said, “Here, look at this. Put the knife away.”

He puts the knife away. “Give me back the five.”

He gave me the five. I said, “Here, I gave you the twenty-five. Now I’m giving it to you. You’re not stealing it.”

He ended up being a volunteer and really helping us. And I thought, you know, this is a good idea.

I’ve got three copies left of my book that was written on a dare. I got dared to write a murder mystery with Tamar—Martha’s mother—solving it with Peter Maurin. It was a way to introduce the Catholic Worker to people a little unorthodoxly. But there’s a story in there about Dorothy, where there was a person that threatened people in the dining room. He might have had a weapon. Everyone was very afraid. Dorothy got up, approached him, and said something to him.

“It looks like you need a cup of coffee.”

And he said, “Yeah, I do.” And they ended up sitting down. She was able, on the personal and the international level, to believe in that and do it. I think that’s an inspiration, and it can help us in these small things that happen day to day.

Martha Hennessy:

Thank you, Scott. Great stories. Scott’s an incredible storyteller.

I have not had any experiences like that. I don’t honestly know how I would handle them. Some of the experiences I’ve had in hospitality work… we have the clothing room. The clothing room is a real bone of contention in terms of how you distribute stuff. It can be a difficult place. I very much ran up against myself trying to help with the clothing room. Nowadays, I say I’m not fit for this. I just turn into a little two-bit Hitler when you get me in the clothing room. So I’m not doing this job anymore.

But I guess what I want to speak from is witnessing Granny [Dorothy Day] putting up with all kinds of crap, both at the Tivoli Farm—that’s where we saw her most when I was a kid—but also with family members. My dad was not nice to his mother-in-law. She had to put up with both family and community in terms of being judged and being harangued.

I think I was maybe twelve years old when there was a woman who was clearly not well, and she was verbally attacking both Dorothy and Rita Corbin, a wonderful artist of the movement. I can remember being very impressed with the fact that both Rita and Dorothy just simply stood there and accepted what she was saying to them. They had looks on their faces of absolute, complete compassion. It’s like they understood what she was saying, why she was saying it, and it didn’t matter. They were not taking it personally. So that was a real lesson for me in terms of trying to meet the person where they’re at. We never know. Even with ourselves, sometimes our own being comes out in really weird ways towards others because we are dealing with our own internal stuff.

I have to say my throat is really bothering me in this weather. I can’t speak anymore… [Pause] Thank you.

In Dorothy’s young life, she witnessed a lot of violence, maybe even was forced to participate in violence. As a young journalist, she witnessed people being hurt. I think none of us can dismiss or get away from our own personal experiences. All of that helps inform us. But what I witnessed—and I witnessed it in my mother as well—was this incredible sense of patience and compassion. From a very early age, I certainly understood and was made to understand that you do pay attention to the suffering of others and you don’t add to their suffering.

So I think for me, that basis of nonviolence… of course, it certainly came from their training as Catholics. One of the other terms that I frequently heard from both Dorothy and Tamar was “loving-kindness.” I believe that’s a phrase that we see a lot in the Psalms. That example certainly was there for me.

But I had a friend who had guns growing up in Vermont. They liked to hunt and fish. And then my brother was drafted, and that just brought a whole other dimension to the idea of nonviolence. I believe that Dorothy did say to my brother, “Do you want to pursue conscientious objector status?”

He said, “No.”

The point she was trying to make was that we all have free will. We all have to make decisions for ourselves. For my brother, it was going in and doing the training. She respected that.

Now, for me, that has got to be one of the most ultimate forms of nonviolence. My son wanted to go into the military, and every bone in my body screamed no, but ultimately he did end up going in. He only ended up lasting five weeks, and we believe that that was divine intervention on the part of Dorothy. He went to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, and his life turned out very different.

I know that for the folks who lived before World War I, I don’t think they had a choice. I think they were drafted, and they did try to go into ambulance service, not actual combat. So my brother went into combat, and he came home. Once again, these stories about how the Vietnam veterans were being treated—a lot of that turned out to be false. What we tried to do for my brother was to just continue to love and accept him and to not judge him. This was his choice. He went through it. He came back injured psychologically. And what are we to do with that? We have to move on. We have to keep accepting one another.

So this is all kind of personal stuff for me. Dorothy studied theology. Dorothy studied the pacifists. The saints. It is a discipline, just like the prayer life. The necessity to study is always there for all of us throughout our entire lives.

I’m pretty excited about a guy named Gene Sharp who was really trying to show the way of committing civil resistance nonviolently and having it be effective. And I know that there was a book written recently—I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything about it other than it gave example after example in history in the last maybe thirty years of different nonviolent efforts on the parts of various countries, the Philippines being one of them. Erica Chenoweth? Yes. I thought this book came out before she came out with her book.

So we do have a history. We do have a track record. And certainly, we have what Jesus showed us needed to be done: “Put up your sword.” As a child going through catechism, that really, deeply affected me, this business of someone’s ear getting cut off and Jesus instantly healing them.

So, I firmly believe in nonviolence, but don’t ever ask my husband how pacifist I am. I’ve been accused by family members of being a hypocrite. “You’re a pacifist? You’re screaming at me, you’re throwing stuff at me.” It’s a tough road to walk personally and in public life. I’m sure that figures like Martin Luther King Jr. struggled with that within the context of personal relationships.

I can’t tell you any stories about Granny losing it and getting violent. There are no skeletons in the closet with that. She was just so infinitely patient. I’m sure she went through periods in her young life where she lashed out angry; my mother was full of anger. I do love that quote that someone just touched on here: “I hold more anger in one minute than you’ll hold in a lifetime.”

That’s the practice. That’s the sacred practice. You definitely put yourself in a war zone, and when you’re caring for the poor, it is a war zone.

What else I would have to say about my own experience… I never met Phil Berrigan. He died in 2002, and I didn’t really start getting involved with the Worker until 2004 as an adult. I was afraid of the place. But anyhow, Phil talked about how when we do these actions, we are coming up against our own internal rage and capacity to make war. That really hit me over the head when we were in the discernment process of doing this pacifist action. It’s the self-disarmament that I find is such a challenge on a daily basis, both within the family…

Oh, I do have an example of Granny losing it. My sister Becky, the firstborn, she was a pretty mouthy little kid. Dorothy slapped her.

So we get challenged every day in terms of how we’re going to hold that temper. I saw this on a much bigger scale with going and hammering on nukes. I still had to deal with my own anger. And then I came up against myself while in prison. I would get so upset with certain stupid little things that other women just had to put up with and did put up with. There was always rancor in my heart about injustice. I think even from young, young childhood. I mean, I’m more Irish. I have Irish in me. My mother and grandmother didn’t have Irish in them per se. I always use that excuse: It’s the Irish in me that gets my hackles up.

But certainly, living and working in a house of hospitality… I don’t know if I could do what Scott did with someone taking off with a bed. But we’re constantly in situations of how are you going to react to this? Are you going to be cynical? Are you going to be angry? Are you going to be this or that or the other? The personal practice of pacifism is always available in a house of hospitality.

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy:

I just wanted to pick up something. Some of you are parents here and you’ve got young children. Think about this too. Those of us that are adults, we didn’t think about the Gospel and the example of Dorothy and everything to try to form what we’re doing. But as a child, it’s difficult.

When I was in seventh grade, a kid sitting across the table tapped me on the shoulder. I was eating an orange. He says, “Your orange just squirted me in the eye. Meet me after school and we’ll settle this.”

First of all, I couldn’t see how it was possible the orange squirted him in the eye. And no way was I going to meet this guy. He was an eighth-grader. He was bigger than me. He bumped me into the hallway the next couple of days. Meet me after school? No, no, no.

Then he calls my house on Saturday—my house!—and he wants me to meet him at Precious Blood Cemetery. If I’m going to meet him anyway, I’m not going to meet him at Precious Blood Cemetery.

A couple of days later, I’m coming out of a music class and it’s near one of the exits of the school. I walk out of the class and he’s there, and he’s got his two goons—I call them Brad and Goyle. They grab me and pull me out of the door. I’m outside the school now, and the two goons are standing on either side of me, and he goes—because I’m a nice guy, this guy’s name was Bruno—he says, “I’m even going to let you throw the first punch.”

I thought, You know, I don’t know how much power I have in my arm, but I’d like to hit him so hard to send him to China. But then I thought, Why is he letting me hit him first? If a teacher comes out, he’s going to say I started it… what a jerk!

I said, “No.”

He said, “Come on, hit me.”

I said, “No, I can’t.”

And then the door opened, and the teacher came out and said, “What’s going on here?”

I said, “Nothing, it’s all over.” So, you know, that wasn’t Dorothy, it’s just like circumstances… the way it works. We want to encourage our children, people who are not Christians, to think about it.

One other thing that I mentioned to some of you that happened more recently—this is a separate story. After the riots at the Capitol, there was a group of people outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, that wanted to hold a rally for the “heroes” of January 6. I had been to this rod and gun club for a haunted Halloween thing. It’s on a rural road, and then there’s a long road through the woods that goes to the club. I figured the demonstration would be at the end of the rural road at the public place.

So I made a sign that said, “Nothing heroic about the January 6th riots.” I had to park quite a ways away. I had to walk to the woods, and I got to the front, and nobody else was there. I said, “Where are the other demonstrators?”

After a couple of minutes, a guy comes out wearing camo. And he starts talking to me. He says, “I bet you’ve never fired a gun.”

I said, “My dad was in the NRA. I had to learn how to fire a rifle.”

He says, “Well, I bet you’ve never been in a war zone.”

I said, “Well, actually…”

And then another guy comes out, and he’s got bandoliers and a rifle. And a third guy comes out and he’s carrying some kind of assault rifle. We’re talking, and the conversation was actually okay. And then a driver slows down, rolls down the window, and says, “You can go straight to fucking hell.” And then drives away.

I turned to the three guys in camo, and I said, “Which one of us do you think they were talking about?”

We all laughed. I said, “I’ve got to go now.” And they said, “You’re all right. You’re all right. You’re not as full of shit as we thought.”

So again, this nonviolence. It’s creative. It’s taking a risk. But it’s not as big of a thing as we fear it to be. You don’t know what’s going to happen. But anyway, I think that all the way through, you need to remember Jesus’ statement: “My yoke is easy.”

Please see the associated video for a full account of the remainder of the presentation, including the question and answer session.