Dorothy Day and the Catholic Wonder Women

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Speaking to the United States Congress two years ago in the Fall of 2015, Pope Francis cited Dorothy Day as an American “who shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people.” She was the only woman the Pope named in his landmark speech, but his mention of her called to my mind the essential and indispensable roles many Wonder Women have played, historically and in my lifetime, in the American Catholic Church.

Day is a unique reference point for a pope. She took many lovers, had a common law marriage, had an abortion, and raised a daughter as a single mother out of wedlock. Day also was a suffragette with controversial political views who vocally expressed opposition to political statements of some Church leaders. She converted to Catholicism later as an adult, but then resolved to actually try to live her life according to the mandates and principles of the Gospels.

Along with Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Together, with many volunteers, they daily engaged in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, caring for sick, visiting prisoners, burying the dead, admonishing the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving all injuries, praying for the living and the dead. Day even came to Utah in about 1970. She visited my monk friends at the Huntsville Trappist monastery, and while in Salt Lake City attended a performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She later commented in her newspaper about how excited she was to receive a gift of Utah Trappist monk wheat bread and creamed honey. After she died in 1980, the church declared her a “Servant of God” and the American Bishops have opened a case of possible sainthood for her.

Day’s devotion is like that of a lot of other Catholic women I have known, starting with my mother. Mom was the rock upon which our Catholic family life was built, even after she was essentially abandoned by her husband (my father), divorced, and left to work and raise four children alone. Mom followed in the footsteps of her own mother and great aunt before her. Her mother, Catherine Sullivan, died young in 1939 but before that was another Irish Catholic rock who cooked, cleaned, and also vigilantly watched over the spiritual lives of her family. Mom’s aunt, Mary Leonard came to Vermont from Limerick, Ireland in 1882, and worked to bring her parents and siblings to this country a few years later. Mary Leonard never married, and instead devoted her life to caring for her younger brother, a Catholic priest who served in Vermont for almost fifty years.

Then there were the nuns. Particularly, I think of the many Utah Holy Cross sisters (such as Sr. Patricia Ann Thompson) and Benedictine sisters (including Sr. Stephanie Mongeon) who taught the young (including me), visited the old, ministered to the poor, cared for the sick, and in between prayed for everybody else. They were the lovely and devoted workhorses of the Church, laboring long hours for little or no wages. And there were other women too, my own two sisters, and my own wife of three decades, and now my two daughters, all of whom have endured suffering and made great sacrifices for their families and others in countless ways. What the Pope said about Day is true of all such women: “A people with this spirit can live through many crises, tensions and conflicts, while always finding the resources to move forward, and to do so with dignity.”

Catholic Catechism teaches that that God is not made in our image, that is God is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the differences between the sexes. However, to help us understand the nature of a loving God, in the Gospels Jesus spoke of God as Abba, our Father. I did not know my own father well, nor did I admire his actions about which I did know, so this image of God as Father never really has resonated with me personally. Some of the most vivid incarnations of God for me have not been fathers. They have been the women in my life, God’s Wonder Women.