Voices from the Catholic Worker, Rosalie Riegle Troester
Gilliam, Robert
IN BRIEF Voices from the Catholic Worker, by Rosalie Riegle Troester, Temple University Press, $49.95/22.95 (paper), 697 pp. From 208 interviews and 6,600 transcribed pages, Rosalie Riegle...
...Giving some shape to this mountain of words must have been a daunting task, but the result is an admirable piece of work...
...Catholic Workers are a likable and admirable lot as depicted in this book...
...The chapter "Memories of Dorothy Day" is particularly good and left me wanting more...
...ROBERT GILLIAM 25...
...Inevitably, some of the chapters and sections are more focused than others...
...Only a few seem a bit grim and self-righteous...
...ROBERT GILLIAM worked at the New York Catholic Worker and is now a librarian at SUNY Brockport...
...Not all Catholic Workers are Catholics, but most still are...
...Troester arranges interview excerpts around key topics, presenting much of the book as an imaginary roundtable discussion...
...My impression, perhaps my wish, is that the disagreements are exaggerated...
...stunningly heterodox opinions...
...Troester's choice of voices here seems skewed to what may be her own preferences in these matters...
...Given Troester's eclectic presentation it might help to think of this book as a tasty stew or great fat pudding, full of tasty morsels or generously studded with sweet treats...
...We don't hear enough, at any one time, of some voices...
...The importance of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and the Catholic Worker movement in twentieth-century American Catholicism is no longer much disputed...
...The concluding sections explore the Catholic Worker's relation to the church and internal disagreements about homosexuality, abortion, and women...
...Troester, who teaches English at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, was a Vietnam-era peace activist and a friend of the old Saginaw Catholic Workers...
...These issues are interesting but also unsettling, and offer something of a downbeat conclusion...
...Some I know personally, having been involved in the Worker myself, and most of the others I would like to meet...
...Troester conducted her interviews between 1986 and 1991, and the more recent past gets more attention than the old days...
...Since no interview seems to appear in its entirety, the key disadvantage is that we can lose a sense of the individual speaker...
...Voices was inspired by the work of Robert Coles and Studs Terkel, who offers an enthusiastic recommendation on the back cover...
...DIOGENES ALLEN is the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary, and author o/Christian Belief in a Postmodern World...
...From 208 interviews and 6,600 transcribed pages, Rosalie Riegle Troester has compiled and edited what she calls "an oral history of the Catholic Worker...
...Using only 7 percent of her interview material, she still has assembled a hefty book...
...For those friends, critics, seekers, and scholars who continue to be interested in this still lively movement, this big book holds many pleasures...
...The often-neglected Worker houses outside of the New York "motherhouse" also get a lot of attention, and help give a fuller and more accurate picture of the movement...
...Voices includes sections on history and the founders, the daily work, community life, the farms, and the problems of Catholic Worker families...
...A few express some rather REVIEWERS CARL L. BANKSTON III, a historian and sociologist, teaches at Tulane University...
...They are generous and serious, some are wise and holy, some are raucous, and most seem quite sane in spite of it all...
Vol. 121 • June 1994 • No. 11
