'Commonweal' & the 'Catholic Worker'
Jordan, Patrick
1 9 2 4 . S E V E N T Y Y E A R . 1 9 9 4 'COMMONWEAL' & THE CATHOLIC WORKER' CONNECTS & DISCONNECTS PATRICK JORDAN A nniversaries are for celebrating, and major ones the more so....
...She could have been one of the most brilliant and influential of Commonweal's editors...
...Before there was a Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a free-lance journalist who had converted to Catholicism in 1927, wrote with some frequency for Catholic journals, including Commonweal, America, and the Sign...
...While Portier doesn't dispute the claim head-on, he admits there is part of his "evangelical self that wants to ask, but "what about the Catholic Worker?' In his response, Van Allen briefly describes some striking links between Commonweal and the Catholic Worker, but resists a full answer to Portier's question: to provide one would require perhaps another volume...
...That meeting took place in December 1932 and led to the first issue of the Catholic Worker in May 1933...
...In a recent biography of Shuster (George N. Shuster: On the Side of Truth, University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), Thomas E. Blantz distinguishes between Day's emphasis on the life of active involvement in the social movements of the time and Commonweal's more intellectual and journalistic bent...
...Together, the four constitute a significant discussion of Commonweal's status, aims, and achievements (or lack of them...
...Some years later, George N. Shuster, Commonweal's managing editor from 1928-37, would write PATRICK JORDAN, Commonweal's managing editor, is a former managing editor of the Catholic Worker...
...Now Van Allen is at it again, celebrating Commonweal's seventieth birthday with Being Catholic: Commonweal from the Seventies to the Nineties (Loyola University Press, 1993...
...1 9 2 4 . S E V E N T Y Y E A R . 1 9 9 4 'COMMONWEAL' & THE CATHOLIC WORKER' CONNECTS & DISCONNECTS PATRICK JORDAN A nniversaries are for celebrating, and major ones the more so...
...Day frequently recalled that it was Shuster who told Peter Maurin (1877-1949), the theorist and cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, to look her up...
...The new volume received extensive treatment earlier this year in the Spring issue of Horizons magazine...
...But, he continued, Day had seen the dedication of the Communists, and she "wanted words and deeds expressing a deeper Christian concern than was theirs" to be her life's work (America, November 11,1972...
...that Day "was a very gifted writer, perhaps the most talented Catholic woman writer since Kate Chopin...
...Commonweal published her reports from Mexico and New York's Lower East Side, as well as a short story...
...Still, on the occasion of Commonweal's seventieth anniversary, it is not out of place to offer some observations on the links, similarities, and contrasts between the two enterprises and on their contributions to the church and society...
...Three appreciative but critical reviews were followed by a response from Van Allen...
...Twenty years ago, on Commonweal's fiftieth anniversary, Fortress Press published Rodger Van Allen's durable history of the magazine's first half-century, The Commonweal and American Catholicism...
...One of the reviewers, William L. Portier, raises an important question about Van Allen's claim—made in the 1974 volume—that the journal founded by Michael Williams in 1924 "developed into perhaps the most significant lay enterprise and achievement in the history of American Catholicism...
...But Blantz gives another insight into what prompted Shuster to suggest Maurin get in touch...
Vol. 121 • November 1994 • No. 20
