In our culture today we see many new forms of service, but it always seems like the same people are giving. One woman who gave all the time, influenced many people, and showed others how to love was Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 8, 1897. After surviving the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, her family moved into a tenement flat in Chicago's South Side. It was a big step down in the world made necessary because Dorothy's father was out of work. It was in Chicago that Day began to form positive impressions of Catholicism. (Forest 3) Day recalled when her father was appointed sports editor of a Chicago newspaper, the Day family moved in to a comfortable house on the North Side. Here Dorothy began to read books that affected her conscience. Upon Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, inspired Day to take long walks in poor neighborhoods in Chicago's South Side. It was the start of a life-long attraction to areas many people avoid. Day won a scholarshi!

p that brought her to the University of Illinois at Urbana in the fall of 1914. However, she was a reluctant student. Her reading was chiefly in a radical and social direction, she avoided campus social lif

The Catholic Worker also experimented with farming communities. In 1935 a house with a garden was rented on Staten Island. Soon after came he Mary Farm in Easton, Pennsylvania. This is a property, was eventually give up because of strife within the community. Another farm was purchased in upstate New York near Newburgh. Called the Maryfarm Retreat House, it was destined for a longer life. Later came the Maurin Peter Farm on Staten Island, later moved to Tivoli and then to Marlborough, both in the Hudson Valley. Day came to see the vocation of the Catholic Worker was not so much to found model agricultural communities as rural house of hospitality. Pacifism caused Day the most trouble. A nonviolent way of life, as she saw it, was at the heart of the Gospel. (Coles 99-103)

Forest, Jim. "The Catholic Worker Movement." A Biography of Dorothy Day.

"They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. One they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they always were members of the family. They are our brothers and sister in Christ."(Kent 154) Some justified their objections with biblical quotations. Didn't Jesus say that the poor would be with us always?" Yes," Day once replied, "but we are not content that there should be so many of them. The class structures are our making and by our consent, not God's, and we must do what we can to change it. We are urging revolutionary change." (Kent 152-156)

Day herself was last jailed in 1973 for taking part in a banned picket line in support of farm workers. She was 75. Day lived long enough to see her achievement honored. In 1967, when she made her last visit to Rome to take part in the International Congress of the Laity, she was one of two Americans - the other an astronaut - invited to receive Communion form the hands of Pope Paul VI. (Coles 202) On her 75th birthday the Jesuit magazine America devoted a special issue to her, finding in her the individual whom best exemplified the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the past forty years. (Kent 152) Notre Dame University presented her with its Laetare Medal, thanking her for "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." Among those who came to visit her when she was no longer able to travel was Mother (qtd. in Kent 153) Theresa of Calcutta, who had once pinned on Day's dress the cross-worn only by fully professed members of the Mission!

Day's apartment was the seed of many houses of hospitality to come. By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for ten women, soon after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936 the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no enlargement could possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, "gray men, the color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green hope, the rising sap of faith of those welcoming them." (Day 156) The staff received only food, board and occasional pocket money. The Catholic Worker became a national movement. By 1936 there were 33 Catholic Worker houses spread across the country. Due to depression, plenty of people needed them. The Catholic Worker attitude toward those who were welcomed wasn't always appreciated. These weren't the "deserving poor," (Day 156) it was sometimes objected, but drunkards and good-for-nothings. A visiting social worker asked !

ary Sister of Charity. (Kent 149-154)

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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