Published: Wednesday, 3rd February, 2010 5:00pm

Reflections with Fr. Ultan McGoohan

An extraordinary weakness of Christianity is that it has become respectable. The word Christian conjures up images of sober, upstanding, solid, safe and responsible citizens. One wonders if a combination of those terms is not in fact a betrayal of the essence of Christianity. When you read the Gospels you are left strongly with the impression that Christianity has little to do with respectability.

One of the constant criticisms of Jesus by his opponents is that he was not respectable enough. Jesus kept bad company, hanging out with sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, and other unreliable characters. One modern Christian who combined a deep faith with a radical lifestyle was a lady called Dorothy Day. She is not well known on this side of the world but she made a huge impact in the United States in the 20th century and I would like to share her story with you.

Early life

Dorothy was born in New York in November 1897 but she grew up in a tenement flat in Chicago. There she got her first taste of what it is like to be poor, the shame that can accompany it and the sadness that comes with seeing life turn out differently from what one had hoped. Dorothy's family were not Catholic and not particularly religious. Her first memory of having a Catholic experience was when she was a child, visiting a friend's house. Dorothy rushed into a room looking for her friend only to see the friend's mother down on her knees praying. It was an image that left a lasting impression.

As a teenager Dorothy loved to walk in the parts of Chicago that others preferred to avoid because they were regarded as too dangerous and poor. She went to university and began to read books that challenged the systems that kept people poor. She dropped out of college after two years and began work as a journalist for a socialist newspaper. Through her work she met working class people and the unemployed and learned about their problems and struggles.

In 1917 she had the first of many experiences of prison when she was sentenced for protesting with 40 other women outside the White House about the government's refusal to grant women the right to vote. In those early years of her life Dorothy came to the profound conviction that society was fundamentally unjust and designed in such a way to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The conviction that the social order of society had to be overturned animated her whole life.

Journey of faith

Through her meetings with poor working people and the unemployed she encountered the Catholic Church again. She saw the Church as the church of the immigrants and the church of the poor. She began to pray and drop in and out of churches from time to time, and bit by bit her faith began to grow. Her personal life was not without its troubles. She found herself pregnant and she had an abortion. She wrote about this experience and the effect it had on her in her novel, The Eleventh Virgin.

She later fell in love with Forster Batterham, an anarchist who had no time for religion or for the institution of marriage. He and Dorothy lived together and they had a daughter, even though he did not want children. The birth of Tamar was a turning point in Dorothy's life. After the abortion she thought she would never be able to bear children and so the arrival of Tamar seemed like a wonderful gift.

And thankful for such a great gift Dorothy decided to have her daughter baptised as a Catholic. She wrote: 'I did not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe and I wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a church would give her so inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the saints, then the thing to do was have her baptised a Catholic.'

Dorothy was baptised in December 1927. Unfortunately this decision let to the break-up of her relationship with Tamar's father.

Catholic Worker

Dorothy threw herself into her social work. She was encouraged to start a newspaper to promote Catholic teaching on the rights of workers, and the necessity to create a more just society. She called it The Catholic Worker. It was an immediate success and it continues to this day. She became deeply committed to pacifism and this got her into trouble with church and state during World War II and the Vietnam war. She was an incorrigible protester and was often imprisoned.

Dorothy set up Catholic Worker Houses all over the US States, to care for the homeless. She believed hospitality was of the essence of Christianity. She did not want to change the homeless people that stayed in her houses. She accepted them as they were. A visiting social worker once asked her how long she let people stay in her houses. Dorothy replied: 'We let them stay forever. They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. Once they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they always were members of the family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ.'

Challenge

Dorothy was imprisoned for the last time in 1973 for taking part in a banned picket in support of farm workers. She received numerous awards for her work including one from Notre Dame University for 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable'. She died in November 1980. To those who said she was a saint, she replied, 'Don't call me a saint, I don't want to be dismissed that easily.'

Nevertheless the cause for her canonisation is in its early stages. I think the following quotation from her stands as her finest testimony and as a challenge to all of us who claim to be followers of Christ: 'If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.'