Dorothy Day in 1916
Six miles to the south, a 15-year-old girl, living on Webster Street one block from Lincoln Park, fell in love for the first time. Her name was Dorothy Day.
I love the idea of a saint who falls in love — falls in love over and over again throughout her teens and young adulthood. A saint who made mistakes like the rest of us, some of them soul-shattering, such as submitting to an abortion, a decision she regretted the rest of her life.
I also like it that Dorothy was a journalist and that, although she’s identified with New York City, she lived in Chicago from 1906-14 and, later, in her twenties, from 1921-23. During that second sojourn, she worked at City News Bureau where I worked half a century later.
Dorothy — who started the Catholic Worker movement, edited the Catholic Worker newspaper, ran a “house of hospitality” in the New York slums and went to jail in protests on behalf of the poor and against war — was called “the first hippie” by Abbie Hoffman.
Although proposed for sainthood by the Catholic magazine Salt in 1983, three years after her death, and several times later by New York Cardinal John O’Connor, it wasn’t until 2000 that church officials began to consider her case. (In contrast, Pope John Paul II was beatified last year, just six years after his death, and even has his own feast day, Oct. 22.)
Dorothy was acerbic and quick to anger, and her biographer Jim Forest calls her “saint and troublemaker.”
But, if you look closely, doesn’t that really describe what saints do — make trouble?
Patrick T. Reardon
10.23.12
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.