Six decades of rewarding struggle
Skillin, Edward S.
Commonweal's just-war position, a fact that, for this particular writer, has presented frequent occasions for soul-searching. Commonweal continues to be a forum, however, where pacifists such as...
...Over thirty-five years ago, Edward S. Skillin wrote that "our country has need of media that attempt to relate our present characteristics, and tendencies for the future, to the noblest traditions of our people...
...Zahn concluded that the present-day Catholic Worker movement could do no better than to follow Day's lead, and that not to do so would threaten its unique character and distinct contribution...
...The need for such independent and critical journals of opinion as Commonweal is as strong today as in 1924...
...To think of overcoming such evil by material means, by alleviations, by changes in the social order only—all this is utterly hopeless.'" The challenges Commonweal faces are different but finally not unrelated: How to develop a language with which to communicate the Catholic vision with clarity and resonance...
...She genuinely appreciated those with whom she lived and worked, made great efforts to forgive and be reconciled with those she had offended, and found a ready joy in all things beautiful...
...No one who has ever been associated with the Catholic Worker movement, been acquainted with its remarkable personages, or read the pages of its various papers has remained unchallenged, untouched, or uninspired...
...Both the "catholic" and the "worker" of its title are areas that need definition...
...the former as a journal of opinion meant to challenge society and the church...
...But if it is to celebrate significant anniversaries in the future, Commonweal will need many new readers and generous supporters...
...Since that time, the Catholic Worker movement has continued to expand in size and diversity, as a recent review in Commonweal by Robert Gilliam indicated (June 3,1994...
...More essentially, how does the movement remain Catholic...
...Outsiders can only hope that those who carry on the daily life of the movement will continue to anchor themselves in the Gospels and the sacraments, the lives of the saints, nonviolence, the justice preached in the Scriptures, and charity toward one another...
...But that diversity and the loss of its remarkable founders have had an inevitably unsettling effect on the movement...
...The same is true, of course, of the Catholic Worker movement...
...To return to Professor Portier's original question and Rodger Van Allen's response, it is apparent that both Commonweal and the Catholic Worker paper and movement have played significant roles in the life of twentieth-century American Catholicism...
...In a 1988 Commonweal article, Gordon Zahn broached serious questions about the future of the C.W...
...The latter has done so as a movement aimed at rejuvenating society in the light of gospel principles and a shared life with the poor...
...The Catholic Worker movement has yet to successfully portage into the post-founders' era...
...How to bring those insights into play in an in-your-face era where group antagonisms are promoted and self-interest reigns...
...For its part, over the years the Catholic Worker has reprinted pieces from Commonweal on pacifism and on the life of faith, and has invited Commonweal editors to speak at its meetings...
...Day's example, as John Cort once remarked in these pages (September 24, 1982), is a standard to be reckoned with: "I most firmly believe that all social reformers, without exception, should ponder well Day's words: 'We live in a time of gigantic evil...
...It is hopeless to think of combating it by any other means than that of sanctity...
...Here's hoping we and future generations of American Catholics are up to the challenge, and that historians like Rodger Van Allen will be there to tell the story...
...The hallmark of Dorothy Day was not simply the strength of her character, intellect, or views, but her clarity of soul and her delight in what she was doing...
...It is clear that Commonweal itself has been so moved...
...On the one hand, how does the Worker's Depression-era critique of industrialized society and the nature of work apply in a post-Communist, post-industrial, computerized mass society...
...In the future, both Commonweal and the Catholic Workerface significant challenges...
...Commonweal continues to be a forum, however, where pacifists such as Eileen Egan, James Douglass, Michael True, Michael O. Garvey, and John Dear have published their views...
...Such questions continue to surface in the movement, as they do throughout the church in general...
...How to restore a sense of common bonds and renewed commitment to the common good in such an age...
...When Dorothy Day died in 1980, historian David O'Brien wrote in Commonweal that Day was "the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism...
...Conversely, Commonweal has practiced protest and offered a different but essential type of hospitality by welcoming distinct and sometimes quite divergent views in its pages...
...Regional meetings of Catholic Worker houses, and a wide variety of Catholic Worker newspapers and newsletters—from such various cities as Houston, Saint Louis, Worcester, and Los Angeles as well as New York—seem to be the means the movement is developing to clarify its aims and provide intellectual and spiritual grounding...
...Zahn reported that some Catholic Worker houses were taking liberties with the celebration of the Eucharist, and pointed out that on matters of faith and discipline, Dorothy Day would never promote her private judgment in such matters if they were at variance with the church's mag-isterium...
...29...
...Some Catholic Workers, troubled by their fellow Workers' lack of clear identification with the church, have sought to enshrine theological restorationism, misrepresenting Dorothy Day's love for the church as a form of blind obedience...
...And how to keep the magazine afloat on limited resources when fewer people seem interested in substantive reading...
...At the other extreme, some Catholic Workers have taken the course of theological libertarianism, attempting to use Day's repeated stands against the status quo as a means of justifying their own divergence from church teachings...
...All of this—in the midst of unceasing hardship—was based on prayer and faith...
...In a very real sense, there is today a struggle going on for the soul of the Catholic Worker movement...
...Without either—let alone both—society and the church would have been decidedly diminished...
...It should come as no surprise that an anarchist-leaning, decentralized movement would find it difficult to replicate the focus, energy, discipline, and inspiration provided in her lifetime by Dorothy Day...
Vol. 121 • November 1994 • No. 20
