Dorothy Day - Still a Sign of Contradiction | Commonweal Magazine

Dorothy Day funeral in Manhattan (1980)
Still a Sign of Contradiction | Commonweal Magazine
by Michael J. Baxter

For the first two decades after her death in 1980, Dorothy Day was revered as a life guide mainly by devoted followers and fellow travelers. In their pastoral letter on nuclear weapons, The Challenge of Peace (1983), the U.S. Catholic bishops praised her pacifism but only as an individual witness; they did not recommend it for society at large. Catholic scholars commended her heroic service to the poor but criticized her theology as utopian and sectarian. After the end of the Cold War, when the “end of history” seemed to vindicate free-market economies and liberal democracy, her critique of capitalism and the state was deemed irrelevant. But a gradual shift has occurred in reckoning with her legacy, prodded by the most unlikely of authorities.

In 2000, Cardinal John J. O’Connor, Archbishop of New York and head of the U.S. Military Vicariate, initiated the cause for Day’s canonization. Friends and coworkers who knew her were consulted. A Dorothy Day guild was established. She was named “Servant of God.” Then in 2012, the U.S. Catholic bishops gave their unanimous approbation of Day’s cause and forwarded it to Rome. In 2015, Pope Francis stood before a joint session of Congress and extolled Day’s example of faith, devotion to the saints, and social activism rooted in the Gospel. More recently, her life and work have gained increased attention beyond Catholic circles. In 2016, the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks included a chapter on Day in his bestselling book The Road to Character, extolling her persistent struggle for justice. This past January, the DVD version of the film by Martin Doblmeier, Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story, hit the top spot for documentaries on the Amazon sales chart. In March, it was aired by PBS. And now we have a new full-length biography published by a major trade publishing house and intended for a general readership. There has never been so much attention focused on the matriarch of Catholic radicalism in the United States.

Dorothy Day would have been wary of all this adulation.