Living a revolution at Friendship House

...To whom do we owe first loyalty and responsibility...

...She asked me if I could and would direct it...

...we must study the world to know the world so as to change the world...

...The Baroness boldly spoke about the vocation of the lay state, declaring "We are all called to holiness...

...in the Negro, ; were building iges after I left \1 was the ulvacate our two utremely tight e indeed in a ¦veal after Pat npaign which Pat played in laining $5,000 lg at 4233 S. alt hurdle: rewere then at ibing and carmoney to pay /Tom Crowe, i Father Dan what friends ost of the next I to the Black : on as usual: s, welcoming strain, a fluid or entering or i keep up with the orientation and training of our staff and the farewell parties for departing staff...

...For years, Friendship House debated a proposal to expand its present commitment to civil rights in the cities by adding the rural apostolate...

...and the iggering in its weal \May 19, early awkward lut in the intermphasis in the much, ramework still and action by iods have been ining and strat:hildren, teens House News and is now the :h at Chicago igo, IL 60604...

...And we used the rural setting for orientation and training...

...Sometime previously, I had broken my engagement to a Marxist...

...and Birmingham, and 15 years before the U.S...

...It was only a short distance from the Sheed apartment to Corpus Christi church where our crowd of students, teachers and office workers might attend a "missa recitata" (a novelty then, if not an adventure, and to some, a no-no) and hope to hear a homily by the engaging and innovative pastor, Father Ford...

...And ostensibly to pursue a graduate degree in the University of Chicago sociology department but actually to place my life and fate in the unknown, I left for Chicago to begin my adventure with God...

...I wanted to be part of this crusade so 1 joined the crowd of teachers, typists, Columbia and City College of New York undergrads who volunteered in Harlem...

...I recounted briefly in an article for Commonweal [May 19, '44] "Invading the South Side," some of my early awkward steps to introduce the Friendship House idea...

...and the Regina Halfway House . . . the list was staggering in its brilliance...

...On the cted Richard : the country le the Shah is tainly little on at the top, uther down, ring itself to na and resoion of what it trouble at all parture...

...Not far from the Catholic Worker was the Orthodox church on Cherry Street where we occasionally attended the Eastern Rite Mass of Father Rogosch, especially when the magnificent liturgy was sung in Old Slavonic by the Fordham University choir composed mostly of Irish Americans taught to sing it phonetically...

...The three were pioneers in promoting an awareness of what was called the Negro problem...

...Both Friendship House and the Catholic Worker were movements begun by women and inspired by women who were prophets...

...New York at that time seemed to be a vortex pulsing with many ideas, movements and events that were to affect and shape thousands of lives including my own...

...The ease and freedom I with which the new apostolate grew was warming to my heart...

...The big physical stress in the spring of 1947 was the ultimatum we received from the landlord that we vacate our two stores on 43d Street within 60 days...

...Eventually, Harlem House too had to close its doors, leaving the Chicago Friendship House to carry on the civil rights struggle...

...The AFL and CIO were then at loggerheads in Chicago and the electrical, plumbing and carpentry work was at a standstill even if we had the money to pay for it...

...Marxism especially made an impact on me because from the age of nine when the Russian revolution broke out, I was aware viscerally of its violent cosmic, messianic potential...

...When I first heard the Baroness lecture at my parish church, St...

...She told how she would confront the evil of racism and provide in a Christian way for black and white to tackle their problems together...

...Add to the lightness of the vision the intoxication and zest for life in its fullness I experienced in Friendship House staff members and volunteers...

...The topics were theology, Marxism, French worker-priests, the siege mentality, and so on...

...As it happened, Friendship House didn't go that route, but Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario, operated by the Baroness, now Catherine de Hueck Doherty, is called a "lay" institute, although its members take four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience and stability...

...8 December 1978: 779...

...Francis of Assisi in Brooklyn in 1938,1 was already deep into the ferment of the exciting '30s...

...We were to remain there for most of the next 20 years, and the building was eventually sold to the Black Panthers...

...And now in 1978, what is the significance of the Friendship House movement...

...5 Chicago Friendship House celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Friendship House movement, a radical idea of black and white working and living together, that appeared on the American scene 25 years before Martin Luther King, Jr...

...We crashed the barriers of segregation at its source by the simple technique of bringing blacks and whites together in our homes, churches, hospitals, schools, neighborhoods...

...In the extremely tight housing situation on the south side, we were indeed in a pressure cooker...

...But I did seriously ponder the question: can I give up my income and live and work by begging...

...It was a lay apostolate, she said, but different from and more organized than the Catholic Worker...

...No one yet has recaptured the magic, yes the glamour, of New York in those years when Sheed & Ward opened the New York branch of their publishing house on lower Fifth Avenue, bringing to this side of the Atlantic the writers of the European Catholic renaissance—Leon Bloy, Henri Gheon, G.K...

...and Shreveport, Louisiana...

...The beautiful home was designed by a friend of the Baroness, Nicholas Makletzoff, and owned jointly by them until 1943.1 had known Nicholas since 1940, and, in fact, he was one of the main reasons I kept going back to Combermere...

...But amid the sad farewells, there were felicitations on my forthcoming marriage to Nicholas Makletzoff in October, 1948...

...the Christian Family Movement (CFM) with the Crowleys...

...Ownership of the big old hulk of a building at 4233 S. Indiana Avenue presented a new, more difficult hurdle: rehabilitating the building...

...And to me personally, it was a severe blow that eventually led to my decision to leave Friendship House after ten years of service, a wrench that I felt to my roots...

...Father Jack Egan's Cana Conference...

...We seemed to be in a constant battle to keep up with Commonweal: 778 ng to my heart, net Library and nd later owned mbrand and all stian Workers dso Today, the 3ara and John FM) with the ;; Sheil School )rury...

...When the Baroness needed a substitute, I was delegated to speak for her...

...Again, could one honestly beg while using property or other security...

...There was lots of dating, and I for one found several men attractive...

...We stood at Union Square many a Saturday night to sell the paper...

...What faith we had in those days, what friends beyond compare...

...I know that we women naturally looked over the "male potential...

...In the late '30s, Americans and especially Catholics began to hear the shocking truth about racism in this country uttered by this refugee from Communism...

...And what I finally gained from Marx was, I thought, a splendid adaptation of his world view to my Christian world view...

...And yes, it was true that we used rural places for periodic refuge from slum shock to recoup, to get better perspective, to examine our aims, strategies, strengths, weaknesses...

...The daily barrage of activities went on as usual: programs, preparation of lectures and articles, welcoming visitors, new staff coming, older staff going...

...The methods have been widely diverse: lectures, home visits, study, training and strategy sessions, leadership weekends, clubs for children, teens and mothers, and publications...

...We told i a good imid imperiums n't make any without the periums anymning, with great classic ) this for two ¦ and a happy ity to the f we wanted inleashed the :xico...

...So I thought about Friendship House—a way of life that seemed to embody all my ideals, my desire to "restore all things in Christ...

...But in the intervening four decades, our approaches and our emphasis in the civil rights movement have not changed very much...

...The realities about marriage we faced as a staff revolved around such questions as: can married couples be staff workers...

...The State and in just another ; old Comi to keep on ,NK GETLHN 40 YEARS-FROM HARLEM TO CHICAGO Living a revolution at Friendship House ANN HARRIGAN MAKLETZOFF ON NOV...

...At the micro level, some enormous pressures were building up that brought about several basic internal changes after I left Friendship House in 1948...

...bout seventy is to travel to \ were, it was ted the thing sntly forever, n discussions rthing wrong entral Intelliill of that we the CIA as xuse for not as the Rover as been based United States rid, taking up fell from the /hich in turn Austria and so 5 have turned he imperium or debilitated because that ore...

...A letter I wrote to Commonweal after Pat Crowley's death described the whirlwind campaign which raised $15,000 in, five weeks, and of the part Pat played in processing the legal papers on the loan of the remaining $5,000 from our good friends at Rosary College...

...can we accept couples if they are childless...

...Ed Marciniak's newspaper, Work, the Saint Benet Library and Bookshop founded by Sara Benedicta O'Neill and later owned by Nina Polcyn...

...Long may it flourish...

...F New York was the mecca of brilliant and fascinating ideas and theories, Chicago positively buzzed with projects and activities and fascinating people...

...At first I feared people wouldn't pay much attention to me, a run-of-the-mill American, or as the Baroness once candidly described me, "just a Brooklyn school teacher...

...Of course, we were avid readers of Orate Fratres, the avant garde liturgical magazine, now Worship, and we loyally supported its editor, Father Virgil Michel, OSB, pioneer in the liturgy/vernacular debate...

...To them I owe much of my living faith...

...The jurisdictional problems were settled by Tom Crowe, our contractor friend of happy memory, and Father Dan Cant well...

...It certainly was far ahead of its time in several ways, and it demonstrated magnificent vision of true human relations...

...What a revolution...

...Unquestionably the question of marriage loomed large in our attempts to think through just how marriage fitted in with being a lay apostle in the movement...

...Supreme Court decision on desegregation laws...

...It was in Harlem in 1938 that the Friendship House idea was conceived by a colorful and dynamic Russian refugee, the Baroness Catherine de Hueck, and given birth with the help of three New York priests: John LaFarge, S.J., of the Catholic Interracial Council, George B. Ford, pastor of Corpus Christi church near Columbia University, and Michael Mulvoy, CSSP, pastor of St...

...Certain I am that after forty years there is no place I'd rather have been than in Friendship House in Chicago...

...I very nearly did...

...WHAT was the place of marriage in Friendship House...

...Mark's church on 137th street who was affectionately known as "Harlem's blackest white man...

...Madonna House has inspired much specialization in two areas: marriage and rural life...

...The considerable part played by women is significant...

...Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Jacques Maritain, Christopher Dawson, Paul Claudel, Zundel and the rest...

...The critics were opposed—priests, relatives, clerics warning I was endangering my faith by following this charlatan, wasting my time, abandoning my profession, my security...

...also Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand and all those young priests involved in Young Christian Workers (YCW) and Young Christian Students (YCS...

...I agreed with Marx that the Achilles heel of the West is the exaltation of money above everything else...

...Friendship House News (1941) became Catholic Interracialist (1955), and is now the magazine Community, edited by Al Schorsch at Chicago Friendship House, 343 Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60604...

...Right off, I must say I never considered this a serious subject for debate because in choosing to work in the vast and incredibly complex arena of race relations, we had already bitten off much more than we could chew...

...For me it was also the year the Catholic Worker was first sold on street corners...

...And we*led the way...

...8 December 1978: 777 Meanwhile way uptown in Harlem was the chance we'd never had before: to meet blacks as people on an equal footing in Friendship House, a new apostolate begun by the Baroness...

...And many listened...

...Many of the same crowd flocked to the 135th Street store where Friendship House was located because we could listen all day and all night to this exotic Russian, to marvel at a foreigner explaining to us native Americans the facts of Jim Crowism, facts we had been living with and looking at all our lives and had never really seen...

...These factors troubled staff workers who were single...

...Such a prospect gripped me as no other challenge in my life has ever done...

...This enabled me to join in first confronting the consciences of people with the sin of segregation as being incompatible with Christianity and belief in a tender and compassionate God...

...Friendship House people will tell how studying the Scriptures and living the liturgy can strengthen day-to-day living...

...Each of the houses will some day tell its own rugged pioneer story of how it contributed to clarifying the concept of vocation as a call to holiness (wholeness) for all men and women, not just priests and religious...

...In addition, there was the Friendship House connection with the Doherty home in rural Canada...

...Four years later, the chance to test this came to me in an invitation from Bishop Bernard J. Sheil to the Baroness to open a Friendship House in Chicago...

...Despair at this almost irreplaceable loss was felt in our ranks...

...Downtown on Mott Street was Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker, the magnet drawing us to the weekly meetings for "clarification of thought," where ideas on poverty, personalism, the bourgeois spirit, pacifism, back to the land, in the light of the Scriptures, the encyclicals, Gandhi, Kropotkin, were all examined...

...Pamphlets: Facts in Black and White, Christ in the Negro, Friendship House Staff Workers, etc...

...As luck or Providence would have it, I was due for a year's sabbatical...

...I can still remember how deeply shocked I was when I realized how blind I had been to the truth, and how oppressed I am to this day by the hatred and indifference of middle-class society...

...The marriage of the Baroness to Eddie Doherty in 1943 certainly began a trend in the Friendship House apostolate...

...A teacher, I spent all my leisure time at Friendship House, and paid the $35 monthly rent on a storefront across the street for use as a club house for the junior counselors, a youth group...

...What made the idea of Friendship House so revolutionary among Catholics was that we could see very plainly the problem was really a white problem...

...also Today, the Catholic student magazine edited by Jim O'Gara and John Cogley...

...The three new houses were not destined to last...

...Our only model was the religious life...

...For all these purposes, Chicago Friendship House acquired a farm in Marathon county, Wisconsin, and used it for several years...

...A new entity called a "lay institute" interested us as a possible way of establishing a framework that would be flexible enough...

...The Sheeds, Frank and Maisie, added to the excitement by holding lectures and discussions in their Riverside Drive apartment...

...Indeed 1933 was a magical year...

...To do full time, and away from carping critics, what I had been doing every possible moment of the past four years...

...Sheil School of Social Studies and its director, George Drury...

...But we did agree that society should be de-urbanized...

...Yes, that was a situation of great stress and strain, a fluid staff lacking stability, rules and specific time for entering or leaving...

...A conviction was developing within me that the world I knew needed to be changed, to be prodded, shocked, awakened, cleansed...

...about the nearness of God in our daily life...

...Letters between Monsignor Paul Hanly Furfey of Catholic University, the Baroness, Mabel Knight of Harlem Friendship House and me reveal how agonizing these questions were...

...I fell in love with one of them, a delightful, good-looking black man whom for a time I considered marrying...

...Most of us had already experienced the charm of summer vacations there on the Madawaska River...

...We didn't realize it then but we were going through the growing pains of a lay apostolate, trying to define what it was...

...Then Betty Schneider who had already given yeoman service in Friendship House over the years became head of the Chicago Friendship House and later, when official ties with the Baroness and Madonna House were cut, the Friendship House national director...

...It made some of us want to join one of their houses of hospitality and more easily to perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy, to be poor with the poor and the rejected of this world...

...The new leadership swept away some of the old concepts in the 1950s, and there was a resurgence in the formation of houses in three cities, Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C...

...At the macro level, the Friendship House framework still stresses education, discussion, communication and action by blacks and whites working together...

...Things came to a head in 1947 when four experienced and devoted staff members announced their forthcoming marriages...