KENOTIC REVOLUTION,REVOLUTIONARY DESCENT:

The Spiritual Politics of Dorothy DayDaniel Izuzquiza, s.j.

1. REVOLUTIONARY DESCENT: SEEING THE WORLD FROM THE PERSPECTIVEOF THE POOR ............................................................................................

2. KENOTIC REVOLUTION: THE POLITICS OF DOROTHY DAY............................3. AN INTEGRATED PROPOSAL ........................................................................CONCLUSION. THE BODY OF CHRIST AS RADICAL ECCLESIOLOGY....................APPENDIX. PETER MAURIN, KENOSIS AND REVOLUTION .................................NOTES............................................................................................................QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................................................

5142327293132

Daniel Izuzquiza, s.j., (b. 1968). While finishing his studies in Theology in the USA, he madecontact with the Catholic Worker, and visited four of their communities, livingseveral months in one of them.

IINTERNET: www.fespinal.com - Translated by Gerarda Walsh - Cover illustration: RogerTorres - Printed on ecological paper and recycled cardboard - CRISTIANISME I JUSTÍCIAEdition - R. de Llúria, 13 - 08010 Barcelona - tel: 93 317 23 38 - fax: 93 317 10 94 - info@fes-pinal.com - Printed by: Edicions Rondas, S.L. - ISSN: 0214-6509 - ISBN: 84-9730-231-1 -Legal deposit: B-43.995-2009. December 2009. The Lluís Espinal Foundation would like to inform you that its information comes from our historical archive belongingto our records. These go under the name of BDGACIJ and are registered with the code 2061280639. In order toaccess them, rectify them, delete or challenge them, please contact us at the street Roger de Llúria, 13, Barcelona.

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Dorothy Day is perhaps the most important figure in twentieth centuryNorth American Catholicism, even though she is little known in our cir-cles. Her life alongside the poor and her commitment to active non-vio-lence won her as much criticism as it did praise. Ever faithful to theChurch and scornful of capitalism, not every American Catholic under-stood or shared her views. A layperson, a mother, a grandmother, a wor-ker, a revolutionary and a deeply religious woman, Dorothy offers us anew way of life for these difficult times at the start of the twenty-first cen-tury.

She felt comfortable in a socialist, anarchist and pacifist environment,where she earned her reputation for her daily commitment to the poor,as well as the prophetic talent she possessed, right up to the end of herlife. She passed away in 1980, and was officially declared a “servant ofGod”, while her road to canonization is ongoing. She was a founder ofa Catholic anarchist movement in 1933, and remained a charismaticleader of that group for almost fifty years. Many were surprised that theCatholic Worker Movement managed to continue its work so well afterher death. The extraordinary thing about Dorothy Day was not in whatshe wrote or in what she believed, but rather in the fact that there wasno difference whatsoever in what she believed, what she said, what shewrote, and her way of life.

However, Dorothy Day did not acquire this socio-political commitmentthrough her Christian faith in an easy or peaceful way. Instead it was herreligious experience that she discovered progressively, and only ma-naged to make it part of her life after years of internal and externalstruggles. Dorothy was born into a hardworking family that cared littlefor religion. The anti-clerical tendencies of her father took precedenceover the weaker Anglican religiosity of her mother, and it was only in herearly adolescence that Dorothy had any contact with the Church.During her youth, she moved in more progressive, bohemian and secu-

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lar circles. Her worries, her friendships, and the environment in whichshe lived led her far away from anything related with the Church. Oneissue that we do need to clarify then is how Dorothy Day came to de-velop a Christian faith and a commitment to the Church.

This booklet therefore aims to look at the figure of Dorothy Day, exa-mining the radical and alternative position she adopted, as well as offer-ing some suggestions that, based on her life and work, may help tothrow light on our own situation, and encourage our own commitment tosuch issues. We will firstly do this by focussing on the early stages ofher life, or in other words, the way she defined her relationship with theworld and with her own spirituality. It is only by examining these roots(from the Latin word, radices), that we will be able to understand theradical aspect of her life and her public standpoint. Secondly, we will belooking at the close link that existed between this daily spirituality shelived out, and her political vision. This booklet will therefore be lookingat how Dorothy Day’s idea of revolutionary descent (in the spiritualsense) and kenotic revolution (in the political sense) offer a valid andradical alternative way of confronting the discourse and dominant prac-tices of globalised capitalism in the world. Before that however, and inorder to help the reader, we will present a brief portrait of Dorothy Day,containing the main events in her life.

1.1. From conflict to synthesisThe life of Dorothy Day could be seenas a consequence of the profoundsynthesis of elements that she en-countered in her life, and ultimatelyembodied. There was a fusion of faithand justice, tradition and revolution,religion and politics. In the early stagesof her life, these aspects seemed to betotally opposed, and that is why we will

be examining this issue in more detailnow, through her own autobiographicalwritings, to see how these elementsevolved over the years.

While she was still studying atsecondary school, at the age of onlyfifteen, she wrote that “I wanted, thoughI did not know it then, a synthesis”1.Some months later, when she joined theSocialist Party in the University of

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1. REVOLUTIONARY DESCENT: SEEING THE WORLDFROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE POOR

The key element of Dorothy Day’s revolutionary non-violence lay inwhat we could call her radical descent into the world of poverty. Bearingin mind that Dorothy was at the same time a social reformer, a politicalactivist and a spiritual leader, we will now have a closer look at her jour-ney into poverty, and how it was linked to her socio-political ideas. Wehave divided the analysis into four sections, beginning with the synthe-sis of different elements that made up her life. We will then be lookingat how this synthesis unfolded in her way of looking life and history, inher way of experiencing reality, and in her discovery of Jesus Christ inthe midst of the city. In other words, her faith-and-justice synthesis dis-played itself in three specific practices of descent with revolutionaryconsequences: she opened her eyes (and other persons’ as well) to thestruggle for justice; she became part of the life of the poor; she embo-died this message in her public life, in prison and on the street.

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Biographical details of Dorothy Day

8th November 1897 She is born in Brooklyn, New York1907 Her family moves from San Francisco (where the earthquake hit in 1906) to Chicago1914-16 While at the University of Illinois in Urbana, she joins the local branch of the Socialist Party1916 She moves to New York (East Side). She works in various left-wing newspapers, staying in contact with

the anarcho-syndicalist movement IWW, and the pacifist group League Against Conscription.1917 She is arrested in Washington DC, following a women’s suffragist demonstration 1918 She works as a nurse in New York1922-3 She lives in Chicago (where she is detained in the office of the IWW) and New Orleans1924 She publishes The Eleventh Virgin (autobiographical novel)1925-29 She returns to New York (Staten Island). Common-law marriage with Forster Batterham1927 Her daughter Tamar Teresa is born on 3rd March1927 She is received into the Catholic Church on December 28th

1930-31 She moves to Mexico and FloridaDecember 1932 Washington DC. Demonstration against hunger. She returns to New York, and meets Peter

Maurin1933 First edition of the newspaper Catholic Worker (May 1st)Winter 1933 First house of hospitality for beggars, unemployed, homeless people and drug addicts. She will

live among these people until her death.1935 First farming commune on Staten Island, NY1936 Thirty-three houses of hospitality in the USA1936 Spanish Civil War. The pacifist editorial stance of the CW causes them to lose two-thirds of their reader-

ship and subscribers1938 She publishes From Union Square to Rome1939 She publishes House of Hospitality1945 Fifteen houses of hospitality close as a result of their pacifist stance during the Second World War1942-46 She becomes a Benedictine Oblate in the Portsmouth monastery, Rhode Island1943-44 “Sabbatical year” or spiritual retreat1944 Tamar’s wedding (19th April)1948 She publishes On Pilgrimage (a collection of articles from the CW)1949 Peter Maurin dies, May 15th

1952 She publishes The Long Loneliness (her main autobiographical work)1955 11th July, Martha is born, her seventh grandchild1955 She becomes a Benedictine Oblate in the monastery of St. Procopius (Lisle, IL)1955 She is arrested following an act of civil disobedience against the plans for nuclear defence. The protests

and arrests would recur over the years that followed, up until 19611957 A visit of solidarity to “Koinonia”, a Christian inter-racial farming community. Although shot at, she is

unharmed1959-60 She becomes a postulant of the Jesus Caritas Fraternity (Carlos de Foucauld)1960 She publishes Thérese (a biography of St. Thérese of Lisieux)1962 She takes part in the setting up of American PAX (later known as Pax Christi)1963 She publishes Loaves and Fishes (the history of the Catholic Worker movement)1963 She joins the “Mothers for Peace” group that visits John XXIII after the encyclical Pacem in Terris1965 She takes part in the setting up of the Catholic Peace Fellowship1965 During Vatican Council II, she joins the days of fasting and prayer organised by Lanza del Vasto in order

to demand a condemnation of nuclear war1967 She takes part in the International Congress of the Laity1972 She publishes On Pilgrimage: The Sixties (a collection of articles from the CW)1973 She is imprisoned for the last time during the protests of the United Farm Workers of César Chávez in

California1976 She takes part in the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia1980 She dies November 29th. At that time, the newspaper has a circulation of 95,000; there are 70 houses of

hospitality and four farming communes.

Illinois and read some of the greatRussian novelists like Dostoyevski andTolstoy, she began to realise that “therewas a real conflict going on in me” (TheLong Loneliness, 42), a conflictbetween religion and the new perspec-tives on reality that she was encounter-ing. “I felt that my faith had nothing todo with that of Christians around me”(LL, 43).

Towards the end of the second partof her autobiography entitled “A Timeof Searching”, she discovers that “it wasthe great mass of the poor, the workers,who were the Catholics in this country,and this fact in itself drew me to theChurch” (LL, 107), and this also helpedher to bring this conflict to a new,though still fragile, form of synthesis. In1926, she wrote that “I had becomeconvinced that I would become aCatholic; yet I felt that I was betrayingthe class to which I belonged, theworkers, the poor of the world, withwhom Christ spent his life” (LL, 144).This struggle did not of course end withher full and formal incorporation intothe Church. With the scandals that shewitnessed going on in the Church, shefound it difficult to reconcile her viewthat the Church was the Church of thepoor. “There was plenty of charity, buttoo little justice” (LL, 150). She wouldput her deepest thoughts on paper:“How I longed to make a synthesisreconciling body and soul, this worldand the next (...). No wonder there wassuch a strong conflict going on in mymind and heart” (LL, 151). In the middleof all this, she travelled to WashingtonDC through her work as a journalist, tocover the Hunger March, led by

Communists, and this was a scene thatI consider to be the key episode in herstruggle to overcome this inner conflictshe described, which brought her closerto experiencing this new form ofsynthesis.

This passage is found at the end ofthe second part of The Long Lonelinessand describes the time she embarked ona profound personal quest, which tookplace when she was thirty-five yearsold. Dorothy speaks of a mix ofemotions of happiness, pride, bitterness,self-absorption and sinfulness. She asksherself “where was the Catholicleadership in the gathering of men andwomen together” (LL, 165). In thisparticular frame of mind, she went intoa church and offered up “a specialprayer, a prayer which came with tearsand anguish that some way would openup for me to use what talents I possessedfor my fellow workers, for the poor”(LL, 166). Forty years later, she recalls:“Today is our anniversary. In 1932 Iprayed at the Washington Shrine to theBlessed Mother to open up a way towork for the revolution! When I gotback to New York Peter Maurin waswaiting for me”2. Peter would alsosearch for “a new synthesis” (LL, 170)and this would ultimately come aboutthrough the Catholic Worker.Considering the narrative dynamic ofThe Long Loneliness, the practicalconsequences that emerged from thisprayer, and the personal testimony ofDorothy Day, it is clear that this episodemarked a turning point in her search forsome kind of synthesis and resolution.

So how did Dorothy Day articulatethis new found synthesis? Given that

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she was not a theologian or much of anintellectual, what she did was to simplyuse the popular ideas of her time;however, she made these ideas her own,and used them in a creative way,exploring, exploiting and embodyingthe consequences that were implicit tosuch beliefs. She was able to turntraditional doctrines around, byadopting them in a deeply personal wayas was her talent, as well as radicalisingthem through her daily proximity to thepoor. This is why it can be said that thesynthesis of her life had an implicittheological aspect, in what decades laterwould be coined as the faith-justice pair.

1.2. Opening her eyes to thepainful side of lifeSince the days of her youth, DorothyDay was a woman that paid attention tolife, in all its different shades anddetails. The Long Loneliness allows usto follow her trajectory in this regard,and see how her spirituality emergedfrom her very personality, her character,her style, her virtues and limitations.The religious conversion of Dorothy (aswith anyone), was formed from herhumanity, and of course transformedthrough grace. When she was onlyfifteen years old, she wrote to a collegefriend: “How I love the park in winter!So solitary and awful in the truestmeaning of the word. God is there. Ofcourse, He is everywhere, but under thetrees and looking over the wide expanseof lake He communicates Himself to meand fills me with a deep quiet peace”(LL, 33). It is not surprising that yearslater in 1962, she came to the conclusion

that: “It seems to me that I have alwayshad a sense of an immanent spiritualworld” (AIG, 62).

When she was sixteen years old andstill living in Chicago, she went througha period of formation that we could call“social mysticism”. In a beautifullywritten narrative, she recounts the wayin which her “reading began to besocially conscious” (LL, 36), how shelearnt from Carl Sandberg “to look onthe people as he did, with love and hopeof great accomplishment” (LL, 37). Thisawakening was almost like learning towalk again, with her journey taking anew direction: “When I read The Jungleby Upton Sinclair I began taking longwalks towards the West Side rather thangoing to the park or lake” (LL, 37). Anew significance was given to her senseof smell: “I collected odors in mymemory, the one beauty in those drabstreets” (LL, 37). It was as though sheheard different voices and music for thefirst time that “played too on the stringsof my heart” (LL, 38). Through this newway of reading, seeing, walking,smelling and listening, she finally beganto realise that: “I had received a call, avocation, a direction to my life” (LL,38). This direction was that of a radicaldescent into the life of the poor, a life inwhich years later, she would find herChristian vocation.

One of the first things she noticedupon her arrival to New York in 1917was that “silence in the midst of citynoises oppressed me” and that “thepoverty of New York was appallinglydifferent from that of Chicago. The veryodors were different. (...) It is a smelllike no other in the world and one never

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can become accustomed to it” (LL 51).Some years later, when Dorothy Daytook part in the suffragette demons-trations in Washington, she recalledhow “there was a religious flavourabout the silent proceedings” (LL, 73),even though the participants were forthe most part non-believers. It was clearthat since her youth Dorothy Day had,through her awareness of the insignifi-cant details of life, developed a sensiti-vity that was maintained and becameeven sharper throughout her life.

Another event that strengthened herability for reflection occurred in 1925.She was 28 years old and pregnant, shehad gone to live in Staten Island and asshe herself admits, it was as though shewas learning to breathe in a differentway: “If breath is life, then I wasbeginning to be full of it because of him[Forster, her partner]” (LL, 135). Shesometimes referred to this moment as“the beach experience,” and described ityears later in her personal diary: “I was‘born again by the word of the Spirit’,contemplating the beauty of the sea andthe shore, wind and waves, the tides.The mighty and the minute, the stormsand peace, wave and wavelets ofreceding tides, sea gulls, and seaweedand shells, all gave testimony of aCreator, a Father almighty, made knownto us trough His Son” (AIG, 62).Throughout her life and works, there areseveral examples that illustrate thedepth of her personal, social andspiritual openness to the life of Godpresent in the world. Her choice to liveamong the poor gave her a particularperspective on reality, whichstrengthened and radicalised her natural

tendency to notice and value the detailsof daily life3. For this reason, we can saythat one of the main characteristics ofthe spirituality of Dorothy Day is thatwhich the father of political theology,Metz, called a “mysticism of openeyes”, or that which in Ignatian traditionis called to “seek and find God in allthings”, or in other words, to becontemplative in action.

1.3. Experiencing reality amongthe poorIn 1942, during the Second World War,Dorothy Day was harshly criticised forthe pacifist stance of the CatholicWorker. Many people accused them ofbeing cowards and afraid of thesuffering and deprivation that warentailed. Her response offers some cluesas to how this radical descent that wehave already mentioned impacted herdaily life:

“But let those who talk of softness,of sentimentality, come to live with usin cold, unheated houses in the slums.Let them come to live with the criminal,the unbalanced, the drunken, thedegraded, the pervert. (It is not decentpoor, it is not the decent sinner who wasthe recipient of Christ’s love.) Let themlive with rats, with vermin, bedbugs,roaches, lice (I could describe theseveral kinds of body lice). Let theirflesh be mortified by cold, by dirt, byvermin; let their eyes be mortified by thesight of bodily excretions, diseasedlimbs, eyes, noses, mouths...”.4

In the same article, she goes on todescribe the living conditions of thepoor, and their daily life in the Catholic

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Worker. In this context, Dorothy offersa powerful contemporary version of thatwhich the Christian spiritual traditioncalled the application of the senses:

“Let their noses be mortified by thesmells of sewage, decay and rottenflesh. Yes, and the smell of the sweat,blood and tears spoken of so blithely byMr. Churchill, and so widely andbravely quoted by comfortable people.

Let their ears be mortified by harshand screaming voices, by the constantcoming and going of people livingherded together with no privacy. (Thereis no privacy in tenements just as thereis none in concentration camps.)

Let their taste be mortified by theconstant eating of insufficient foodcooked in huge quantities for hundredsof people, the coarser foods, the cheaperfoods, so that there will be enough to goaround; and the smell of such cookingis often foul...”.5

As for the sense of hearing, in 1957she wrote about her experience inprison: “Shouts, jeers, defiance ofguards and each other, expressed inthese ways, reverberated through thecells and corridors at night while, rosaryin hand, I tried to pray. Noise – perhapsthat is the greatest torture in jail. It stunsthe ear, the mind”.6 One last example,this time regarding the sense of taste, wefind in the public fasting which tookplace during the final session of theSecond Vatican Council in Rome, 1965,while the Council Fathers were discuss-ing and ultimately reached the point ofcondemning nuclear war. Dorothywrites:

“As for me, I did not suffer at allfrom the hunger or headache or nausea

which usually accompany the first fewdays of fast, but I had offered my fast inpart for the victims of famine all overthe world, and it seemed to me that I hadvery special pains. They were certainlyof a kind I have never had before, andthey seemed to me to pierce the verymarrow of my bones when I lay downevery night”.7

It is therefore easy to understandwhat we are referring to when we talkabout the embodied spirituality ofDorothy Day. Her focus on the physicalbodies of the poor moves away fromany spiritual, disembodied or medita-tive interpretation. In this way, thedoctrine of the Body of Christ and theCatholic tradition of the spiritual sensestake on a new meaning and are given aradical aspect because of her choice tolive among the poor. The physical bodyand the senses do not just offer us anisolated personal experience of socio-political reality, but instead open us upto this reality. It is only in this contextthat Dorothy’s personal encounter withChrist takes place, through His histo-rical body among the poor.

Reflecting on the consequences ofthe execution of the anarcho-syndi-calists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927,Dorothy Day recalls that the entirepopulation of poor and working-classpeople mourned their deaths, and thatshe then discovered “that very sense ofsolidarity which made me graduallyunderstand the doctrine of the mysticalBody of Christ in that we are themembers one of another” (LL, 138).That doctrine, which was very prevalentat the time, is the second theologicalidea that allowed Dorothy Day to reach

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her point of synthesis. She herself statesin the introduction to The LongLoneliness, that she found in the Church“a body with which to love and move,love and praise. I found faith. I becamea member of the Mystical Body ofChrist” (LL, 8).

In this way, the Body of Christ offer-ed a concrete solution for the deepestdesires of Dorothy, which was heryearning for communion and solidarity.In her own words:

“I always felt the common unity ofour humanity” (LL, 29); of course theproblem is how to achieve and how tolive out this unity in everyday life.“Community: that was the socialanswer to the long loneliness” (LL,229). For Dorothy Day, the expression‘the long loneliness’ meant ‘spiritualhunger’ which could only be fullysatisfied by seeing God. In the finalparagraphs of The Long Loneliness,Dorothy says: “Heaven is a banquet andlife is a banquet, too, even with a crust,where there is companionship. We haveall known the long loneliness and wehave learned that the only solution islove and that love comes withcommunity” (LL, 293). From this pointonwards, Dorothy would live out theimplications of the socio-politicalaspect of her beliefs. For example, theCatholic Worker was never understoodas an organisation, but was insteadviewed as a body of people, an organism(LL, 183), a notion that was clearlyinspired by the image of the Body ofChrist. Through this configuration,which was closer to the anarchisttradition of a horizontal structure ofleadership rather than the vertical

structure common to hierarchies ofpower, Dorothy combined a devoutspiritual experience with a radicalsocio-political aim.

1.4. Living among prisoners andhomeless peopleIn 1976, Dorothy Day made a briefappearance before the InternationalEucharistic Congress of Philadelphia,which was to be her last publicappearance. There, she recalled herspiritual life with these words: “Myconversion began many years ago, at atime when the material world aroundme began to speak in my heart of thelove of God (...). It was also the physicalaspect of the Church which attractedme. Bread and wine, water (all water ismade holy since Christ was baptized inthe Jordan), incense, the sound of wavesand wind, all Nature cried out to me”.8

In these words, we can see how acondensed version of her spiritualvision became a physical and materialreality. She often referred to this realityas the “sacrament of life” (for example,LL, 194), in an expression which wouldbe made popular years later by theliberation theologian Leonardo Boff.

This sacramental vision of the worldis strengthened in the mystery of theIncarnation, which Dorothy understoodas being not simply a historical event inthe past, but rather an on-going process.“My entire conviction at this time [ofconversion] was that the Word is madeFlesh today – the Incarnation is now.There is no true brotherhood of manunless we see Christ as our brother”(AIG, 63). Thus, she is able to conclude:

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“When we meditate on Our Lord’s lifewe are meditating on our own. God is tobe found in what appears to be the littleand the unimportant. Don’t look back1900 years. Look around us today”(AIG, 68). In the rest of this section, weare going to look at two examples ofhow Dorothy Day lived out thisspirituality of the Incarnation.

In the first place, let us consider herdiscovery of the Incarnation in thecontext of prison. Her first stay in prisonin 1917 had a profound effect on herlife. She experienced a dual process ofpersonal conversion: on the one hand, “Ilost all feeling of my own identity,” butat the same time she felt stronglyidentified with the other prisoners: “Iwas that mother whose child had beenraped and slain” (LL, 78). She lost herformer identity, and went on to recoverit again, but this time it was renewed,through her sense of identification withthe other prisoners. In some way, duringher time in prison, she began to take ona new identity. Five years later, she wasimprisoned again, this time in Chicago,and in relation to this experience, shedescribed how she shared as neverbefore, “the life of the poorest of thepoor, the guilty, the dispossessed” (LL,94). Arrested in 1956 during a non-violent protest, she writes: “I felt a senseof such closeness to God. Such a senseof His love, such love for Hiscreatures…” (AIG, 109). This process ofincarnation that Dorothy experienced inprison is also discussed in the followingtext, written years later. “On ourdetention floor there were six womenwaiting for trial for homicide. (…). Butthere, mingling with them, all the day

with gates open and corridor free, wewere sisters. We saw in ourselves ourown capacity for sin, violence, hatred”(AIG, 171-2). The dramatic force ofthese texts and experiences reflects theeffects that the doctrine of theIncarnation had on her life: in the sameway that Jesus Christ took on our humanform in flesh, Dorothy Day took on theshared physical identity of the pri-soners.

The second example shows theradical nature of Day’s belief in theIncarnation of Christ, and in Hisfraternity with the poor. This exampleactually just concerns one particularmoment in her life, but it is an incidentthat should be seen in the context of herwhole life, which represented a radicalsurrender to the cause of the poor,(otherwise, this would simply seem tobe a superficial or trivial anecdote). I amreferring to her encounter with a leper,a scene which is a familiar one inChristian history (from the accounts ofJesus of Nazareth to those of St. Francisof Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola or St.Francis Xavier, many Christians havereceived grace through their com-munion, service and physical contactwith lepers as well as other margi-nalized groups who have been stigma-tised by society).

Dorothy writes: “I had ‘kissed aleper’ not once but twice, consciously,and I cannot say I am much the betterfor it”.9 The first time, her encounter waswith a woman who had cancer of theface and was begging in the street; asDorothy passed, she tried to kiss herhand. “The only thing I could do waskiss her dirty old face with the gaping

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hole in it where an eye and a nose hadbeen. It sounds like something but it wasnot” (LF, 79).

The second occasion took placefollowing one of those familiar scenesof conflict in the context of exclusion.For reasons we will not look into here,Dorothy was in a situation where shehad to refuse a bed to a “drunkenprostitute with a huge toothless rougedmouth, a nightmare of a mouth” (LF,80). Yet on doing so, she kissed her andembraced her. What could have comeacross as a cold bureaucratic or adminis-

trative decision, as is often the casewithin the parameters of social interven-tion, became instead an expression offraternity and communion, an opportu-nity for a personal encounter in whichboth women revealed their human side.

In summary, the spirituality of Doro-thy Day (her experience of Jesus, theBody of Christ, the spiritual senses, andher living out of the Incarnation)evolved into a journey of descent to-wards the most marginalised sectors ofsociety, a radical journey with revolutio-nary consequences.

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2.1. Theological frameworkThis general framework consists of athree-fold articulation of various basicdoctrines of Christian faith and theirimplications in relation to socio-politi-cal life. The three elements are Incar-nation, Eschatology and Creation. Notethe order we have placed them, since itbears significant importance for ourproposal. Theological and moral dis-course usually follows a chronologicalorder (Creation, Incarnation, Eschatolo-gy) but here we will give priority to the

Incarnation as the liberating revelationof God in the person of Jesus Christ. Wewill show how this perspective hasimportant socio-political implications.

The first stage could therefore becalled the “politics of the Incarnation”.As Christians, we find the main sourceof our political actions in the contem-plation of Jesus, the Incarnation of God,the person that was born in Bethlehem,lived in Nazareth and Galilee, andfinally died on Mount Golgotha. Em-bodied in Jesus, we find a totally

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2. KENOTIC REVOLUTION: THE POLITICS OFDOROTHY DAY

We are now entering into the second part of this booklet, in which weare going to analyse the political implications of Dorothy Day’s spiritua-lity. The first part showed how her life and spirituality made a journey ofdescent, which we have described as a radical movement with revolu-tionary consequences. This descent, which allowed her to share the lifeof the poor, turns reality upside-down, has clear socio-political conse-quences and provides the basis for a real revolution from the lowerechelons of society. This section will begin by developing a theologicalframework that will help us to understand more about the novelty of thisupside-down revolution. Here we ask for a little patience from those rea-ders who are a little less used to overtly Christian and theological lan-guage.

different political focus: adopting ahumble approach, this is a figure thatchooses a life among the poor, bases thatlife on service, and follows a journey ofradical descent. The life of Jesusannounces the arrival of the Kingdom ofGod, which has already arrived and ispresent among the people. He announ-ces that the wishes of the poor willultimately be fulfilled, “today”, withHis arrival (Lk 4: 21). Yet His presenceis one of such humility that it wouldalmost go unnoticed: it is present likethe mustard seed. When we talk aboutpolitics, we tend to think about power,finance, structures, laws, pressuregroups or political influences. Never-theless, as Christians we should neverforget that the politics of Jesus and thepolitics of the Incarnation offer anentirely different focus.

On a second point, we are aware ofthe tension that exists between thepresent and the future Kingdom of God.We are called to acknowledge, embodyand reinforce the reality of God’sKingdom on Earth, but at the same timewe are aware of the fact that we are notof this world (Jn 15: 19). “Do not beconformed to this world”, St. Paul re-minds the Romans (Rom 12: 2). Further-more, in saying “yes” to embodying thisalternative example of humility in theface of an unjust system, we are beinginvited to say “no” to any form of think-ing that goes against the Kingdom. Andthirdly, from this perspective, we can bemuch more open and able to makesuggestions for the general organisationof society. Universality encouragescreation. Our concern for the commongood is not an abstract one, but instead

finds its roots in the specific experienceof the community of believers.

In summary, we are faced with athree-fold strategy: firstly, the positivealternative of daily incarnation; then,the permanent eschatological criticism;and finally, a realistic concern forsociety in its entirety based on theuniversality of creation.

As a result, when we consider thesocio-political implications of thisvision, we realise the importance of theIncarnation. The Church is called on toembody the real presence of Christ inthe world and through this, the Christiancommunity offers a real alternative tothe dominant system. As Christians, ourfirst word has always been “yes”, be-cause we have experienced the miracleof Christ, and we are invited todemonstrate this reality in the publicarena. In actual fact, it is not a matter ofthe Church “having” a social system ofethics, but rather of it being a socialethical system in itself. The Churchitself is a system of social ethics, in thatas a community of believers, and as aninstitution, it represents the incarnationof a way of truth, charity, justice,service, and also a radical journey ofdescent, which is revealed in the personand work of Jesus Christ. This “politicsof the Incarnation” is the first and mostimportant step, precisely because in ourcurrent theological context, this messageis often forgotten or misinterpreted.

Once we have highlighted the needfor a “politics of the Incarnation”, wecan then move ahead and put forward aproposed way of life that maintains acreative tension with the other twoareas, which we can call the “politics of

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eschatology” and the “politics of Crea-tion”. In the socio-political arena, thesetwo contrasting notions are linked to theterms denouncing and announcing.Ignacio Ellacuría referred to this sameissue with the words utopia andprophecy: “The prophecy of denuncia-tion, on the horizon of the Kingdom ofGod, marks out the ways that lead toutopia. Prophecy’s ‘No’, prophecy’snegation pointing beyond in itselfgenerates utopia’s ‘Yes’ by virtue of thepromise that is the Kingdom of Godalready present among human beings”.10

What this text demonstrates is theneed for a Christian model whichcombines the “not yet” aspect of escha-tological prophecy with the more posi-tive vision of utopia’s “already”, en-countered and realised (at least in part)in our history. The following sectionwill illustrate how Dorothy Day and theCatholic Worker lived out this three-fold theological model (Incarnation,Eschatology and Creation) in her dailypolitical approach.

2.2. The politics of Dorothy Dayand the Catholic WorkerIt is not easy to outline in brief thepolitical vision of the Catholic Worker.There have been various attempts tocategorise it, (as Christian socialism orcommunism, distributism, economic vo-luntarism, communitarian personalism,revolutionary non-violence, anarchism,decentralisation, political localism...),and yet there has never been one singlepolitical sector or term which adequa-tely reflects the complexity and origina-lity of this way of viewing public action.

Peter Maurin used the slogan “cult,culture, cultivation” in order to sum uphis vision. At other times, he would referto it when talking about the houses ofhospitality, “agronomic universities” orfarming communes, and roundtablediscussions. For this reason, I believethat the three-fold political vision whichwas developed in the previous section(Incarnation, Eschatology, Creation),offers a broader framework whichallows us to interpret the politics of Do-rothy Day and of the Catholic Worker ina flexible way, which is more in tunewith reality. I will be working withinthis framework from now on in order todemonstrate its instructive qualities.

2.2.1. The politics of the IncarnationThe first and most obvious example ofthe politics of the Incarnation apparentin the Catholic Worker can be found intheir houses of hospitality. These offer asocial space for the poor, the homeless,the unemployed, those who feel ex-cluded, undocumented migrants andmarginalised sectors of society, and area space in which they can recover theirdignity as human beings. In thesehouses, a new form of reality emerges,which embodies an alternative vision ofreality in a Christian vein, and in thissense, they are not simply dedicated tothe rehabilitation of homeless people,but rather the rehabilitation andtransformation of society. The housesrepresent a two-fold project, that ofoffering hospitality, and that of buildinga community - two distinct aims whichneed to co-exist in a creative manner. Inthis way, they are offering an alternativeto the more official model that domi-

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nates State-run social services, with itsbureaucratic mentality and formal andindividualistic strategy of “rehabilita-tion”. In the houses of hospitality, thereis no such thing as workers and “users”,or Bourgeoisie and proletariat. Instead,everyone shares the same roof and is ina sense “de-classed” by means of thisradical descent that establishes a com-munity.

The houses of hospitality set up bythe Catholic Worker movement, in con-trast with other social services ins-titutions, are not focused on efficiency.They practice the corporal works ofmercy in such a rigorous way that theynot only reject conventional politics, (inboth a religious and secular format), butthey also emerge with an anti-triumpha-list message in the cultural arena. Thisvision of politics seems closer to thesame emphasis of Jesus in the Incarna-tion, because from His birth in Beth-lehem up to His death on the cross, Hewas neither excessively accomplishednor triumphalist. In fact, analysts agreethat the influence of the CatholicWorker was never down to its numbers,its organisational capacity or its visibi-lity, but was simply down to its moraland spiritual integrity. We shouldperhaps take other political aspects intoaccount, but from a Christian point ofview, it is clear that the Incarnationhighlights the need for silent, humbleand lowly service. And neither shouldwe forget that such attitudes, when livedout in the public arena, inevitably carrya political influence.

The second example of how the Ca-tholic Worker represented the politics ofthe Incarnation can be found in farming

communes. If the houses of hospitalitysaw themselves as a direct and imme-diate response to the injustices ofmodern society, then the farming com-munes were like a long-term programoffering a radical alternative to thedehumanising system of industrialisa-tion, capitalism and consumerism. The“green revolution” of Peter Maurin pro-posed a decentralised economy, a notionthat was perhaps a little idealistic, butwhich was based on the medieval modelof social integration. Nevertheless, it iscertain that even in the first generationof the Catholic Worker, the failure of themovement to “go back to the land” wasobserved by all commentators.

However, on further reflection, weare led to the discovery of two in-teresting points. One of these is the factthat the farming estates held a powerfulappeal for younger generations whowere not satisfied with urban life or theecological crisis. Even some of thehouses of hospitality in the city deve-loped a type of “mixed system”, built onthe basis of fostering relations with arural commune that was already inexistence, or by creating a little marketgarden themselves, which would faci-litate both human and humane in-teraction with Nature. In a time of“sustainable development” and greenparties, this element of their work alsohas clear political implications.

The farming experience has a se-cond aspect that I feel to be more pro-found and perhaps even more importantthan the first. I am referring to whatcould be described as the “politics offailure.” In my opinion, there is no pointin trying to argue that the farming

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communes were, or are, an implicitsuccess. Personally, I would admit thefailure of this initiative. Having saidthat, from a Christian point of view,what I am refusing to accept is thatpolitics should always as a matter ofcourse be aiming for success or victory.As Dorothy Day wrote, “the Christianpoint of view was to keep in mind thefailure of the Cross” (LL, 216). Onanother occasion, she reflected on theeffects of the Catholic Worker with thefollowing words: “How little we haveattempted, let alone accomplished. Theconsolation is this – and this is our faithtoo: By our sufferings and our failures,by our acceptance of the Cross, by ourstruggle to grow in faith, hope, andcharity, we unleash forces that help toovercome the evil in the world.” (LF,204). I am convinced that any project ofChristian politics needs to accept a cer-tain amount of this politics of failure,unless it wants to succumb to animperialist or capitalist theology basedon continuous and deceitful success.

2.2.2. The politics of EschatologyVarious studies have come together tohighlight the central role played by Es-chatology (that is, the doctrine regard-ing the end of the times and the aim ofhistory), in the religious conversion ofDorothy Day, above all with the em-phasis on the fact that this is not simplya form of eschatology that has alreadybeen “realised” but rather somethingthat continues to be realised and verified(veri-fy: make real) in daily life:Eschatology is the force that feeds andpromotes the growth of the alternativestyle of life of the Catholic Workers.

Christian Eschatology functions as apermanent corrective in the face of allhuman achievements, since they arealways only partial or provisional in na-ture. If the perspective of the Incar-nation tends to say “yes” by providinga concrete alternative, then the eschato-logical vision says “no” to any work thatgoes “against God’s Kingdom”. Withinthe Catholic Worker and in the socio-political sphere, this eschatologicalvision develops in a special way throughactive non-violence and through thepractice of civil disobedience. More spe-cifically, three strategies can be men-tioned here: conscientious objection towar and military service, objection totaxes, and finally, going to prison. Sincethe general pacifist element of DorothyDay is most well known, we will focuson the other two aspects here.

Dorothy herself wrote: “I have beenbehind bars in police stations, houses ofdetention, jails, and prison farms (what-soever they are called) eleven times”.11

From the age of twenty until she wasseventy-seven years old, the experienceof prison was always present in her life.Nevertheless, it is not easy to determineexactly how many specific occasionswe are talking about, given that sourcesdiffer or do not offer precise details.Different studies seem to agree on thefact that there were seven detentions inprison during her life: twice before thefounding of the Catholic Worker (in1917 and in 1922) and following this,five more occasions (during the protestsagainst the Civil Defense Act between1955 and 1959, and finally in 1973,when she joined the struggle of undo-cumented migrant workers in Califor-

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nia, led by César Chávez). These inci-dents demonstrate that Dorothy was not‘obsessed by the idea’ of civil disobe-dience as though it were a permanentnecessity, but they also show that shewas not afraid of going to prison whenit was necessary either, in keeping withand remaining faithful to her non-violent commitment.

In the first part of this booklet, wehave already looked at the effects thatimprisonment had on Dorothy Day’slife and on her way of viewing theworld. The fact of going to prison wasnot an end in itself of course, althoughit shows that Christians should be ableto overcome utilitarianism and gobeyond the obsession with efficiency.The experience of prison could becompared to that which we would call ametaphor in relation to language: itrepresents a dramatic break from theordinary, quiet life, in such a way that anew perspective on life is opened up.For Dorothy Day, imprisonment was aspace in which the incarnated solidarityof God was dramatically revealedthrough pain and suffering. We couldactually say that the lifestyle advocatedby the Catholic Worker is a kind ofincarnated metaphor. Once more wecome across the dilemma between theIncarnation and Eschatology; betweenthe yes and the no response to the world,which also offers a specific way ofchoosing a life of poverty, in both aspiritual and political way.

The second element of the activenon-violence lived out by Dorothy Dayand the Catholic Worker is that of fiscalobjection or refusing to pay taxes. Thisis a practice that combines the anarchist,

distributist and pacifist elements of thepersonalist view of the Catholic Worker,in a specific and public way. Consciousthat “war is the health of the State” (LL,243-273) and that a significant percent-age of taxes were dedicated to militaryexpenses, the Catholic Worker practicedtax resistance. On most occasions, thisconscientious objection actually onlyapplied to federal taxes, given that localand autonomous taxes were consideredas being more focussed on providingsocial services. In this sense, perhapsthe greatest homage paid to DorothyDay following her death, was thedecision taken by Archbishop RaymondHunthausen of Seattle, to encourage thecitizens to refuse to pay 50 per cent oftheir taxes in protest against thespending on nuclear weapons in 1981,an action that caused great commotion.

There is still another issue that Iwould like to highlight regarding theCatholic Worker’s stance on taxresistance, because it clearly shows therelationship that existed betweenDorothy’s political activities and herdaily life of voluntary poverty. Nor-mally, tax resistance is expressedthrough a public statement in which theundersigned declares their refusal to paytheir taxes. However, the CatholicWorker was able to do this using a muchsimpler and more radical method: byremaining under the poverty line,Workers are not obliged to pay taxes. Inother words, they avoid paying taxes bychoosing a certain lifestyle that cate-gorises them as being “officially poor”.This tactic (less controversial than theformer, but just as public), allows themto establish a clearer connection

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between military expenses and socialinequality. It also offers a constructivesolution which is neither superficial norsimply symbolic, but is instead a formof protest which bases its politicalaction in a life shared with the poor, achoice which verifies (veri-fies: “makesreal”) the daily practice of non-violence. In other words, it creates aunifying link between the politics of theIncarnation (voluntary poverty) and thepolitics of Eschatology (tax resistance).

2.2.3. The politics of CreationHaving reached this point, it is possiblethat some modern and progressivegroups will be under the impression thatDorothy Day and the Catholic Workerhave ignored the structural vision of thewhole, and that they are insteadstepping back from the political sphere,or that they are not actually becominginvolved in the search for the commongood, by only working out partial orfragmented solutions. In my opinionhowever, the definition of ‘political are-na’or the ‘common good’does not needto go hand in hand with a Constantinianframework, in other words, it does notnecessarily mean that the role of theChurch is to organise society as a whole.

As I see it, there clearly is a place forthe “politics of Creation”, which in-cludes all members of society. How-ever, this politics of Creation, in goodChristian theology, is subordinate to theIncarnation and eschatology. From aChristian perspective, the only way topromote and live out our lives is intaking the path of humility and poverty.The uniqueness of the Incarnation wasin its message promoting the univer-

sality of the common good. This is thenarrow path, the humble and tiring pathof the Gospel. It is the way of radicalsimplicity, which we can call the ke-notic revolution. From this perspective,we can now look at how Dorothy Dayand the Catholic Worker focussed theirsocio-political vision. Although itwould be useful to study in detail theconcepts of economic decentralisationand political localism which arefundamental aspects of the CatholicWorker’s stance, I will only be exa-mining two aspects more closely in thissection: the labour issue and the so-called “clarification of thought”.

It has often been pointed out thatPeter Maurin and Dorothy Day had aparticular way of seeing the world ofwork and the issue of labourers, be-cause her position was much closer totrade unionism than the French peasantwas. A well-known expression thatPeter Maurin used to say in relation tothis was, “Strikes do not strike me”,which highlighted a clear distinctionbetween his position and that of the la-bour movement. Nevertheless, from thevery beginning, the Catholic Worker didall it could to help workers in theirstruggle to achieve better conditions andhigher pay (see LL 207-227). Particu-larly in the early years, in the context ofthe Great Depression of 1929, theCatholic Worker was actively involvedin labour issues. It supported the Natio-nal Recovery Act of 1933 within theNew Deal, it gave its backing to thelegal reform of 1935 regarding childlabour, and joined with the syndicateson several issues, among those thefamous sea-workers strike of 1936-37.

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At that time, Dorothy Day wrote aneditorial revealing her position inrelation to strikes: “Let us be honest andconfess that it is the social order whichwe wish to change. The workers arenever going to be satisfied, no matterhow much pay they get, no matter whattheir hours are. And it is to reconstructthe social order that we are throwingourselves in with the workers, whetherin factories or shipyards or on the sea”.12

In other words, the Catholic Workerunderstood that the struggle regardingwages was not enough. Dorothy knewthat the “unions still fight for betterwages and hours, though I have comemore and more to feel that that in itselfis not the answer” (LF, 83), given thatthis approach uses the same logic as thecapitalist system. As an alternative, Do-rothy Day proposed a civilisation thatwould be based on voluntary poverty.

A common criticism was that thisstance mistakenly forgets the issues ofstructural injustice found in modernsocieties (for example, how wealth iscreated and distributed), and therefore,tolerates the very existence of an unjustsystem. In fact, this was the very samecriticism used initially by Dorothy Dayagainst the Church, in which she saw“plenty of charity but too little justice”(LL, 150). Years later, in 1972, she wroteas part of another editorial: “Breadlinesare not enough, hospices are notenough. I know we will always havemen on the road. But we need commu-nities of work, land for the landless, truefarming communes, cooperatives andcredit unions”.13

I do not believe it would be fair tointerpret the different emphases in

Dorothy’s writings as if they reflected achange in her thinking. Instead theyshow an understanding of these issuesthat was both complex and radical. It iscomplex because it takes on board manydifferent issues at the same time; and itis radical because it does not conform toone clear superficial solution.

A second element that illustrates theway in which the Catholic Worker livesand understands the “politics of crea-tion” or the universality of the socio-political elements can be found in itsintellectual dimension. As Dorothy Daywas a journalist, she viewed the Workeras a newspaper above all; for his part,Peter Maurin was an intellectual, andthis led him to create roundtable debatesfor the clarification of thought, whichwas also a fundamental part of theWorker from the outset. It thereforeseems clear that the Catholic Worker didnot just maintain a charitable, sectarianor naive stance, but instead alwaysactively sought to improve the whole ofsociety.

The Catholic Worker newspaper isan unlikely example of how the editorialstance and the internal structure of thepaper coincide in a very coherent way.In this way, the movement of theCatholic Worker and the newspapermutually strengthened each other. Thecirculation of the newspaper reached amaximum level of 190,000 copies inMay 1938, an impressive number for aradical and minority paper. The round-table discussions for the clarification ofthought also intended to move beyondthe minority groups of militants andthus expand their constructive proposalin the face of a new society.

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In the same sense, we should takeinto account the fact that the CatholicWorker is not necessarily a permanentvocation. Instead, many of its membersonly remained in contact with thishospitality and pacifist movement for afew days, weeks, months or years. Yetwhat is important is that the majority ofthese members remained profoundlychanged by their experience, and thatexperience often influenced their futuredecisions. So, the Catholic Worker be-came a sort of training camp for livingout the Gospel. Dorothy Day herselfdescribed it in the following way:“What is it all about – the Catholic Wor-ker movement?’ It is, in a way, a school,a work camp, to which large-hearted,socially conscious young people cometo find their vocations”.14 The “wildfireeffect” of a minority movement, whichoffers an alternative lifestyle to thosewho have been excluded from society,cannot be underestimated as a trans-forming element of that same society.

In particular, the influence of theCatholic Worker can be seen in manyof the Catholic progressive movementsin the social, political, and intellectualcontext of North America. I willmention just four examples. TheAssociation of Catholic Trade Unions(ACTU), a small but influential group,was founded by John Coy in 1937, aformer Catholic Worker. The magazineCommonweal, one of the mostrespected voices among Catholics inthe USA had as its editors between1949 and 1984 two Workers fromChicago, John Cogley and JamesO’Gara. Dorothy Day herself wrotemore than thirty articles for this

publication. In the political arena, theexperience of Michael Harrington inthe Catholic Worker was documentedin his book The Other America, whichhad a great influence on the federalprogramme “War on Poverty” in thesixties, with Kennedy and Johnson.More recently, we can recall the role ofRobert Ellsberg as editor-in-chief of thepublication Orbis (which played afundamental role in the introduction ofliberation theology to the Englishlanguage), where he arrived after livingfive years in a Catholic Worker housein New York.

In summary then, it seems clear thatDorothy Day did understand the com-plexity of social reality and the need foroffering an equally complex solution.She was convinced that Christiansshould always maintain a close relation-ship with and among the poor, creatingalternative solutions from within theirsocial perspective. She also knew thatthe followers of Jesus Christ, a figurethat was crucified for His love of Godand of the poor, are called to reinforcethis opposition against the forces of evil.Finally, she knew that Christians have aresponsibility to work for the commongood, which springs from these othertwo elements, and it is from this senseof responsibility that specific personalvocations may arise. However, it isimportant to be aware of the order inwhich these three factors come, in parti-cular that it is not simply a chronolo-gical order, but is also a theological andpolitical one. This is what we havedescribed as the politics of theIncarnation, the politics of Eschatologyand the politics of Creation.

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3.1. A proposal in three stepsIn order to clarify my point of view, Iwill be putting forward a proposal forChristian contribution to social transfor-mation divided into three steps, whichexposes the “political thinking of Doro-thy Day” and applies it to our situation.In my opinion, as Christians living inthe modern world, we often forget thefirst of these three points that I am going

to raise, but this is why I believe thisfirst point to be the most important andmost urgent of them all.

1) Political imagination. Our currentsituation shows a clear need for ob-taining real and radical alternatives tothe oppressive system of global capita-lism. As Christians we should show thatit is possible to do without a culture thatis characterised by the ownership of

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3. AN INTEGRATED PROPOSAL

In this third part,15 we will be putting forward an integrated proposal inthree steps, as a means of applying and fulfilling the insights of DorothyDay in our own context. This is also important because some interpre-tations of the Catholic Worker movement can tend towards a sectarianview, without taking into account the political implications of withdrawingfrom the public arena. In my opinion, it is right to criticise theConstantinian model of understanding power (a dominant model, whichcan be seen as both misguided and dangerous). It is a meaningful cri-ticism from a Gospel perspective, and also agrees with some recentdiscussions from left-wing alternative groups, which propose changingthe world without being in power.16 However, while this is a sensible andnecessary viewpoint, it is also true that it sometimes appears to forgetthat in withdrawing from a nation’s political arena, the whole situationmay in fact worsen, particularly in relation to the poor. In my opinion, dif-ferent elements and different contexts need to be considered at thesame time, each requiring a different focus pertaining to each individualsituation.

private property and the presence ofarmies, and replace it with a real formof non-violent socialism. We need toshow through our own lives that thisother world is possible. Every Christianindividual and community, withoutexception, needs to become involved inthis task. It should not be seen as some-thing optional or superfluous: instead itshould be about remaining faithful to aparticular way of life, and this is themost important contribution that Chris-tians can make to our world. In the firstplace, this lifestyle will create oppor-tunities for social resistance against thesystem and secondly, it can create analternative to the global system.

2) Non-violent direct action. Onsome occasions, Christians need to saya clear and absolute “no” to certaindecisions taken by States, governmentsor companies. In these cases, it ispossible that some form of action,whether it be non-cooperation or civildisobedience, may be necessary. Al-though only a few Christians may feelpersonally called to carry out this typeof radical action, the Church as aninstitution and its respective commu-nities should support these persons di-rectly.

3) The common good and theWelfare State. In the meantime, Chris-tian churches should not ignore dailypolitical life or legislative processes,given that many important decisions aretaken in this area, (decisions which havea great influence on the lives of thepoor). For example, it is very importantto struggle in order to maintain the(limited) social conquests of the Wel-fare State against modern-day neo-

liberal attacks. In my opinion, this is themost common approach of Christianswho become involved in socio-politicalissues. Nevertheless, in accordance withthe discussion followed up to this point,this step is not the most important one,and should only be considered as aconclusion of the first two steps. SomeChristians with a high level of technicaltraining should be responsible forputting forward proposals which wouldspring from alternative suggestionsoffered by the whole community (as weexplained in the first step).

If we look more deeply at thisproposal, we can see that it is actuallyjust an adaptation of the classicprinciple of subsidiarity of the socialdoctrine of the Church. Everything thatsmall communities and local bodies cando at their level, they should. It is aninjustice and an unnecessary hassle toassign responsibilities to large associa-tions when smaller organisations cancarry them out just as well. This shouldbe the main emphasis, particularly at atime when we tend to ignore suchissues. But at the same time, thisprinciple of subsidiarity also makes itclear that greater and more influentialsocio-political bodies (national states orinternational institutions), need toeffectively and adequately carry out allthe tasks within their area ofresponsibility, because they are actuallythe only ones capable of carrying themout. It is also worth bearing in mindhowever, that in keeping with thisprinciple, such initiatives should notwait on the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ifcertain proposals can be put in motionamong smaller Christian communities.

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3.2. From proposal to action:three examplesThese principles should be lived out inthe daily life of Christian communities.In our socio-political actions, it oftenhappens that we expect answers fromthe hierarchy to matters in which weourselves are actually the social andecclesiastical point of reference (whichis yet another example of how we livetrapped and restricted within a hierar-chical model of political actions thatseeks to influence us from above, as in,from a position of power). Sometimeswe look for specific answers in Papalencyclicals, without realising that bytheir very nature they are supposed to begeneral in character, and yet we do notput in the energy and creativity requiredto embody imaginative alternatives inthe daily life of our own ecclesiasticalcommunities. Or we may feel dis-appointed when the Bishops’ Confe-rence lacks the desired force in its publicstatements, without realising that theecclesial base did not provide them withthe creative scope they needed in orderto offer a strong alternative. This is whyI will now go on to illustrate myproposal with a few simple examples inrelation to the political, cultural andeconomic arena.

In the first place, let us consider themoral position of Christians onviolence, power, war and peace. In thetwentieth century, although we haveseen much progress and (limited)success in the domain of political non-violence, there has been no significantimprovement in relation to the abolitionof armies as a way of resolving interna-tional conflicts. As Christians we have

contributed to the creation of alterna-tives to violence, but in fact, nomeaningful and global alternative hasbeen offered by the Church. Forexample, what would happen if thesame number of Christians who at thistime work as military chaplains (inSpain, there are over 150, according tofigures for 2004), dedicated all theirtime to the study, development andplanning of alternative methods of non-violent defence for the next fifty years?What would happen if all the parishesand Church movements carried out atraining programme in active non-violence for all their members? I believethat this would be the best contributionthat the Church could and should makein order to attain world peace. But in themeantime, should the Church remainsilent in the face of war, militaryresearch, arms trafficking, and othersuch issues? No: I am fully convincedthat it should raise its voice so that it canbe heard clearly, forcefully andmeaningfully. And finally, as the thirdstep, these Christians who feel called toparticipate in direct actions of civildisobedience should continue to followtheir calling, because their actions willbe much more significant and powerfulin the context that I am proposing.

My second example relates to thesocio-economic arena and deals withthe possibility of socialism. The mostcommon stance among Christiansocialists is that of trying to influence aparty’s politics so that the decisionstaken are as progressive as possible inrelation to social welfare, taxes, publicservices, social care, civil rights, and soon. Under normal circumstances, I

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would agree with such proposals andwould not have any problem with thisargument (except for the fact that thediscussions needed to make thesedecisions can be so sophisticated froma technical point of view, that when itcomes to actually influencing a specificissue, the Christian influence may haveby that stage waned or dispersed). Inany case, what I will say with certaintyis that the most important contributionof Christian socialists is not in thedomain of taking very sophisticatedpolitical decisions, but instead is in thearea of creating real and public alterna-tives to capitalism. In other words, weshould insist in living daily practices ofshared property, in creating institutionsthat break with the logic of the markets,or in developing imaginative experi-ments that show that it is possible to liveanother way. Furthermore, such indi-viduals or groups would be occasionallyrequired to say a clear “no” to capitalismby using certain public methods of non-cooperation, such as boycotts.

The socio-cultural example is linkedto the issue of immigration. In keepingwith the type of proposal that I amputting forward, the Christian stance onthis issue should be to move towards

creating a real community of “natio-nals” and immigrants (with or withoutlegal documents), regardless of theirorigin, language, economic status orcultural baggage. Our most importantpolitical contribution in the area ofimmigration would be in demonstratingthat it is possible to achieve anintegrated community without any typeof division. This would involve a totallydifferent way of understanding integra-tion, education, health, working condi-tions, legal status, Church worship,community relations, the State andcitizenship: in other words, a real alter-native way of life. It would of course bedesirable that some Christians would beable to make more sophisticatedsuggestions in this area in order to im-prove and regulate immigration lawsand international relations; and thatother Christians would join the strugglein a more active way, by opposingunjust laws or by becoming involved incampaigns of civil disobedience. In anycase, I would like to insist upon the factthat only a real and radical Christianalternative way of life would providethe necessary context in which ourproposals and actions would bemeaningful and coherent.

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These days, particularly in the FourthWorld and on matters of exclusion,17 wedo not have a People capable of“obtaining” their integrated freedom. Itseems that the People, as a collectivesubject powerful enough to changehistory, has lost its focus. What we arefinding now, particularly in the FourthWorld, is that a great number of peopleare suffering what can only be describedas dehumanisation, to such a degree thatthey would find it difficult to considerthemselves as members of anyrevolution. The risk faced is that ofleaning towards individualism or re-treating into a form of spiritual privacy.This is why I believe that the term theBody of Christ offers a realistic frame-

work, which is both embodied andpowerful, and which is capable ofdirectly confronting the injustices weface on a daily basis.

The Body of Christ speaks clearlyand plainly on the subject of torture,domestic violence towards women,death corridors, the sexual abuse ofminors, abortion, anorexia, bulimia,teenage pregnancy, rape. The Body ofChrist embraces the junkies who dragtheir Aids-stricken bodies through thestreets of many big cities, childrenwhose bellies are bloated due to star-vation and thirst, bodies crippled bybombs or mines, injured bodies of un-insured workers, bodies of beggars ly-ing on street benches, dead bodies of

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CONCLUSION. THE BODY OF CHRIST AS RADICALECCLESIOLOGY

To conclude, I would like to return to that image of the Body of Christ,so loved and so often recalled by Dorothy Day, because it seems to methat it offers a practical means by which we can bring together differentsuggestions and different fragmented communities, providing them witha real alternative to the capitalist system.

those trying to cross the Rio GrandeBorder, bodies of prisoners in solitaryconfinement or packed into cells. In thewords of the “Aims and Objectives” ofthe Catholic Worker Movement in 1940:

“This teaching, the doctrine of theMystical Body of Christ, involves todaythe issue of unions (where men call eachother brothers); it involves the racialquestion; it involves cooperatives,credit unions, crafts; it involves Housesof Hospitality and farming communes.It is with all these means that we can liveas though we believed indeed that weare all members one of another,knowing that when ‘the health of onemember suffers, the health of the wholebody is lowered’”.18

The Body of Christ speaks of acommunion, of inclusive relations, anunconditional welcome, of union in themidst of difference, of belonging to ashared world. The Body of Christspeaks of the Eucharist, the Lord Jesusand His miracle cures, the CosmicChrist and the final resurrection of allpeople, all touches, embraces and tearsof human history. The Body of Christbuilds up the Church as a real andvisible alternative to the dominantsystem. The Body of Christ shows thatanother world really is possible.

This Christian and theological notionhas therefore got political implicationsof a revolutionary nature. Let us hear thewords of two contemporary phi-

losophers from the anarchist tradition.Toni Negri and Michael Hardt write:

“Globalization must be met with acounter-globalization, Empire with acounter-Empire. In this regard we mighttake inspiration from Saint Augustine’svision of a project to contest the deca-dent Roman Empire. No limited com-munity could succeed and provide analternative to imperial rule; only a uni-versal, catholic community bringingtogether all populations and all langua-ges in a common journey could accom-plish this. The divine city is a universalcity of aliens, coming together, coope-rating, communicating”.19

And these authors finish their bookwith the following words: “Militancytoday is a positive, constructive, andinnovative activity. This is the form inwhich we and all those who revoltagainst the rule of capital recognizeourselves as militants today. Militantsresist imperial command in a creativeway.… This militancy makes resistanceinto counterpower and makes rebellioninto a project of love.”20

In the same vein of Dorothy Day andthe Catholic Worker, radical Christiancommunities could be our way of em-bodying this loving plan of God in anauthentic anti-Empire, the Body ofChrist. We are called to live out a pathof radical descent with revolutionaryconsequences, in order to be able to setin motion a real kenotic revolution.

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Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Ca-tholic Worker, died in 1949. In his obi-tuary, Dorothy wrote: “Peter was thepoor man of his day. He was anotherSaint Francis of modern times”.21 Sheherself used these words again in TheLong Loneliness:

“Peter had been insulted andmisunderstood in his life as well asloved. He had been taken for a plumberand left to sit in the basement when hehad been invited for dinner and anevening of conversation. He had beenthrown out of a Knights of Columbusmeeting. One pastor who invited him tospeak demanded his money back whichhe had sent to Peter for carfare to hisupstate parish, because, he said, we hadsent him a Bowery bum, and not thespeaker he expected. “This then is theperfect joy”, Peter could say, quotingthe words of St. Francis to Friar Leowhen he was teaching him whereperfect joy was to be found” (LL, 287).

Dorothy recalled the importance ofthis episode in their lives: “This, then, isperfect joy. How often that has beenused around the Catholic Worker,making us laugh for joy at the suddenlight and perspective given to ourproblems”.22 Perfect happiness is not atodds with the notion of suffering, on thecontrary, it often springs from thelifestyle of voluntary poverty.

Peter Maurin embodied the ideal ofthe Catholic Worker, in that he broughttogether intellectuals and workers. Hewas a learned man who used his lap asa writing desk, and his pockets asdrawers: he was a very humble manwho always refused any social positionor acknowledgement which was not inkeeping with a life of poverty. Hiswhole life was a form of radical descent.As Dorothy used to say, “He hadstripped himself, but there remainedwork for God to do (...) God did it forhim” (LL, 281). God seized Peter’s

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APPENDIX: PETER MAURIN, KENOSIS AND REVOLUTION

mind, his ability to think, to write, andto argue. He was ill for more than fiveyears, and during that time, despite thefact that he had been a brilliant orator hewas unable to speak. If Peter’s life couldbe seen as a clear example of activepurification by following Jesus Christ,his latter years were equally demonstra-tive of the effects of passive purifica-tion, to use a phrase of St. John of theCross. The following reflections writtenby Dorothy Day in another context,could be directly applied to Peter: “Thetrue anarchist asks nothing for himself.He is self-disciplined, abnegated, andaccepts the Cross without asking forcompassion, without complaining”(AIG, 141). What can be learned fromPeter Maurin in relation to the linkbetween “revolutionary descent” and“kenotic revolution”?

Peter’s life, his illness and deathwere a clear embodiment of the conse-quences of this radical descent, which asChristians, we know as “kenosis”. Byfollowing Jesus Christ, Peter Maurin“made himself nothing, …he humbledhimself and became obedient to death”(cf. Phil 2: 7-8). And it was preciselythis kenotic descent that had revolutio-

nary consequences, because it placedhim among the poor, as part of a move-ment from which there was no return.Maurin often used the former slogan ofthe International Workers of the Worldand its notion of “building a new worldfrom the remnants of the old” in orderto verbalise his revolutionary plan. Butagain, we need to understand that Pe-ter’s revolution was a kenotic upside-down one. It was not a revolution basedon efficiently organizing influentialleaders, but was instead based onoffering humility and service to thepoor, and with the poor. It was not arevolution that sought to take power, butwas instead an “im-potent” revolution,which renounced power. It was arevolution in reverse, a revolutionwhich (like Mary in the Magnificat),turned the status quo upside down.

In summary then, the type ofspirituality that brings about identifyingoneself personally with the kenoticChrist has political consequences,because it leads to a radical alternativeway of life that revolutionises thedominant system, an alternative way oflife that may not be very appealing, butthat will be profoundly revolutionary.

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NOTES

1. Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness. Introduction byRobert Coles (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 39.It will hereafter be referred to as LL.

2. William D. Miller, All is Grace: The Spirituality ofDorothy Day (Garden City, NY: Dobleday & Co.,1987), 191. This work is actually a collection of spi-ritual notes of Dorothy Day. Hereafter it will be refer-red to with the initials AIG. This particular quotationcomes from a letter to her friend Nina Polcyn,December 8th 1975.

3. During a spiritual retreat she writes in her notes: “Fromher retreat notes: “Perhaps hagiographers were tooprone to wallow in vomit, pus, sputum –the utterlyrepulsive– all to make their ‘point’, as Peter [Maurin]would say, showing how the saints rose above thenatural, the human, and became supernatural, super-human, in their love” (AIG, 105). Dorothy never feltthe need to abandon this harsh human reality, andinstead found this supernatural love right in the mid-dle of this same human misery.

4. Dorothy Day, “Why Do the Members of Christ TearOne Another?”: The Catholic Worker (February1942). Cited at http:// www. catholicworker.org/do-rothyday, doc. # 390.

5. Ibidem.6. Dorothy Day, “Dorothy Day Writes from Jail”: The

Catholic Worker (July-August 1957). Ellsberg, o. c.,281. During a 1948 retreat she wrote: “The city hasbeen so full of noise lately. (…) Noise has been oneof the things that oppresses me” (AIG, 132).

7. Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage”: The Catholic Worker(October 1965). Cited at http://www.catholicwor-ker.org/dorothyday, doc. # 832. For a presentation onthe general theme of “faith and the senses” in herown spiritual diaries, see AIG, 65-74.

8. Dorothy Day, “Bread for the Hungry”: The CatholicWorker (September 1976). Cited at http://-www.catholicworker.org /dorothyday, doc. # 258.

9. Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes (New York: Harperand Row, 1963), 79. Hereafter, all references to thisbook will be with the initials LF.

10. Ignacio Ellacuría, “Utopía y profetismo desdeAmérica Latina. Un ensayo de soteriología histórica”(Utopia and Prophecy in Latin America) in EstudiosTeológicos, vol. II (UCA Editores, San Salvador2000), LF. 233-293; here, 252-3.

11. DD, “On Pilgrimage”: The Catholic Worker (May1974). http://www.worker.org/dorothyday,doc.# 540.

12. “Our Stand on Strikes”: The Catholic Worker (July1936). Edited by Robert ElLSberg (ed.), DorothyDay: Selected Writings (Maryknoll, NY: OrbisBooks, 1992), 241.

13. “Of Justice and Breadlines”: The Catholic Worker(January 1972). Edited by ElLSberg (ed.), DorothyDay: Selected Writings, 252.

14. Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage”: The Catholic Worker(March-April 1975). Cited at http://www.catholic-worker.org/dorothyday, doc. # 548.

15. Here I refer to part of my article “De la liberación a laresistencia. Una mirada a la teología de la liberacióndesde el corazón del imperio”: Revista de FomentoSocial 59 (2004) 521-551. (Tr: From liberation toresistance. A look at liberation theology from theheart of the empire). The dialogue between myselfand Ildefonso Camacho can be seen in this issue, andmy response can be seen in the following issue.

16. See John Holloway, Cambiar el mundo sin tomar elpoder. El significado de la revolución hoy (Mataró:Ediciones de Intervención Cultural, 2003). (Originalversion in English: Change the world without takingpower. The meaning of revolution today).

17. See A. Rodríguez Teso (coord.), Preñados de espe-ranza. Sentir, pensar y gozar a Dios desde la exclu-sión (Madrid: Cáritas Española, 2001) (Tr: Filledwith hope. Feeling, thinking and enjoying God fromthe perspective of exclusion), and José Laguna, ¿Dela liberación a la inclusión? (Barcelona:Cristianisme i Justicia, 2004), (Tr: From liberationto inclusion?).

18. Dorothy Day, “Aims and Purposes of the CatholicWorker Movement”: The Catholic Worker (February1940). Cited at http: // www.catholicworker.org/do-rothyday, doc. # 182.

19. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 207.

20. Ibid., 413.21. Dorothy Day, “The Story of Three Deaths”: The

Catholic Worker (June 1949). Cited at http://www.-catholicworker.org/dorothyday, doc. # 495.

22. Dorothy Day, “On Pilgrimage”: The Catholic Worker(May 1976). Cited at http:// www.catholicworker.-org/dorothyday, doc. #569.

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QUESTIONNAIRE

1. The title of this booklet may be a little surprising and even "countercultural". In themodern world, we don't often talk about social descent, revolution, or about being atthe lower end of society...

– What did you feel on reading the title of this booklet, and reading aboutthe synthesis that existed in Dorothy's life?

2. The first part of this booklet demonstrates how, in making the choice to live hereveryday life among the poor, this changed, authenticated, blended and radicalisedthe spiritual and political vision of DD.

– What can we learn from this and what consequences can this bringabout in our own lives?

3. We have seen how it is not easy to categorise or put a label on the political vision ofDD: "I refuse to accept that politics ought to necessarily lead to success or victory".

– What solutions does this provide for our own complex social reality?– How can we merge a life of service with political commitment?

4. "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solutionis love and that love comes with community" says DD.

– What new paths are open to us in our own particular communitiesfollowing the reading of this booklet?– How can we combine within these communities the commitment tothe issues of hospitality, pacifism and immigration?

5. Finally, the ecclesiology of the Body of Christ is put forward as an alternative to thedominant system. This idea "has political implications of a revolutionary character".

– Can faith be considered as a form of alienation?– Do you think that faith and justice are inseparable?– How do you believe this should be lived out as followers of Jesus?