Viewpoint New fan of Dorothy Day neglects her values
By COLMAN McCARTHY
Now that George W. Bush is quoting
pacifist-anarchist-jailbird-agitator-nonvoter-Karl Marx sympathizer Dorothy Day
-- Any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called
the weapons of spirit, the president said at Notre
Dames May 20 commencement -- he might want to invite to the White House
some followers of the Catholic Worker co-founder.
These troublemakers shouldnt be hard to find. No other
religious group has a service ministry closer to the Oval Office.
Members of Washingtons Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house of
hospitality regularly pull up a van at Lafayette Park facing the White House to
distribute sandwiches to the hungry. Instead of a war on poverty, they think
theres a war on poor people.
Thats on their calm days. When they turn ornery, as Dorothy
Day often did, the group, led by Arthur Laffin, shows up every Friday at noon
on the north sidewalk facing the White House to demonstrate against the
U.S.-led economic sanctions imposed on Iraq.
Every Monday at 7 a.m., picketing Catholic Worker members are at
the Pentagon to protest military spending. Security guards occasionally shoo
them away, but the next Friday the demonstrators are back. They believe that
the current military budget of $309 billion -- about $850 million a day or
$9,000 a second -- is an immoral extravagance that undercuts social programs
serving the poor. The April 4, 1967, sermon of Martin Luther King Jr., is
remembered: A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death.
Whether it was brazen guile or hackwork political pandering for
what he thinks are Catholic votes, Bushs reference to Dorothy Day came
amid a pitch for his faltering Office of Faith-based Action. But the Catholic
Worker is as much resistance-based as faith-based. No group is less likely to
ask Caesar for his coin. Day took non-cooperation with the government so far as
never to seek tax-exempt status for her houses of hospitality, knowing well
that many potential donors would hold back: They couldnt deduct their
gifts.
To seek a tax-exemption, Day argued, would mean asking Holy Mother
the States approval for providing services -- our works of
mercy -- that people of faith should be committed to as a religious
fundamental.
We do not believe in the profit system, Day wrote in a
1960 letter to the city treasurer of New York who had sent a check for $3,579
that represented interest over 18 months on the $68,700 the city paid for a
Catholic Worker house torn down to extend a subway line. Day returned the
check. We cannot take profit or interest on our money. People who take a
materialistic view of human service wish to make a profit, but we are trying to
do our duty by our service without wages to our brother as Jesus commanded in
the gospel.
Please be assured that we are not judging individuals, but
we are trying to make a judgment on the [economic] system under which we
live.
It appears that the Bush speechwriters misquoted Dorothy Day. The
phrase weapons of spirit comes from a letter Albert Einstein wrote
in the 1930s: The masses are never militaristic until their minds are
poisoned by propaganda.
[Humans] should continue to fight, but they
should fight for things worthwhile, not for imaginary geographical lines,
racial prejudices and private greed draped in the colors of patriotism. Their
arms should be weapons of the spirit, not shrapnel and tanks.
While George Bush enjoys the standing ovations he receives at
fawning religious schools -- Notre Dames matched the one at Bob Jones
University -- the Catholic Worker and likeminded groups will continue their
double ministry: standing with the poor and standing against the values of the
state. One of Dorothy Days intellectual heroes was Tolstoy, with whose
thought she agreed: We must repudiate one of the two, either Christianity
with its love of God and neighbor, or the state with its armies and
wars.
Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist,
directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington. His e-mail address is
colman@clark.net
National Catholic Reporter, June 15,
2001
|