Saint · Contemporary
Dorothy Day
1897–1980 · Catholic Worker personalism; distributism; pacifism
Convert (1927); co-founder of the Catholic Worker with Peter Maurin; cause opened 2000.
A journalist of the radical Left who, after an abortion, a common-law marriage and the birth of her daughter, entered the Church and in 1933 founded with Peter Maurin the Catholic Worker: houses of hospitality, farms, a penny newspaper, voluntary poverty and the works of mercy. She was an absolute pacifist, a daily communicant, a Benedictine oblate and a fierce traditionalist in doctrine and liturgy.
Why he matters: The most important figure of American Catholic social witness, named by Pope Francis before Congress with Lincoln and King; she shows that orthodoxy and radical poverty for the poor are one Gospel.
Where to be careful
Her anarchist distrust of the state, her absolute pacifism (not the Church's just-war teaching) and her sympathies with some communist causes are personal positions, not Catholic doctrine.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.