Dorothy Day, a Broken Family, and Sexual Abuse at Maryfarm: Some in the world will not be saved by beauty

Dorothy Day was a journalist, and she left an enormous written record that can help us understand her life and her work. She wrote articles for The Catholic Worker newspaper and Commonweal Magazine. She wrote novels, one of which was published under the title of The Eleventh Virgin. She wrote two memoirs: The Long Loneliness and From Union Square to Rome; and she published On Pilgrimage and Loaves and Fishes, which are collections of brief essays. And she kept a diary. Her diaries, edited by and published by Robert Ellsberg, total more than a thousand pages.

Yet a student of Dorothy Day could read all that Dorothy had written and all that has been written about her and still be shocked and astonished by The World Will Be Saved By Beauty, the story of Dorothy Day's life written by Kate Hennessy, Dorothy's youngest grandchild.

One knows, after reading just a few pages of Hennessy's book, that Kate inherited Dorothy's gift for language and for storytelling. Hennessy's narrative about Dorothy's search for meaning as a young woman is as gripping as any novel.

Second, much of the book is an examination of Dorothy's relationship with the two most important people in her life: Forster Batterham, the father of Dorothy's only child; and Tamar, Dorothy's daughter. People who are generally familiar with Dorothy's biography know that Dorothy loved Forster deeply, but her relationship with him ended after Dorothy baptized Tamar as a Catholic and then became a Catholic as well.

But Hennessy tells us that Dorothy's relationship with Batterham continued for several years after the couple ceased to live together. In fact, at one point Dorothy believed she might be pregnant with Forster's second child. Hennessy gives us deeper insight into the kind of man Forster was--a man of deep conviction but no fortitude--a man Malcolm Cowley described as a person who would not let anything interfere with his whims.

Tamar's life, as told by her daughter, impressed me as deeply tragic. She was wooed by Dave Hennessy, a man loosely attached to the Catholic Worker movement and 13 years Tamar's senior. Dorothy did not want Tamar to marry Dave. As Dave's daughter Kate Hennessy wrote, everyone knew he was trouble. But Dorothy fumbled in her effort to break the bond that Dave had managed to patiently construct with Tamar as he waited patiently for her to reach the marriageable age of 18.

Tamar had nine children with Dave Hennessy, who was never able to support his huge family. Like Forster Batterham, Dave was a dabbler who rarely held a steady job. He was an alcoholic and verbally abusive to his young wife. Long before Tamar gave birth to her ninth child, she had lost interest in her husband.

And now here is the shocking revelation slipped into the middle of Kate Hennessy's book. All students of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement know that the Catholic Worker farms were the brainchild of Dorothy's collaborator, Peter Maurin. Maurin saw communal farms as the way to get people out of the city and into the countryside, where families could support themselves and lead a Christian life.

Dorothy, however, saw the farms as places where food could be raised to support the Catholic Worker's food lines, as  well as quiet, sheltered places for retreats. In fact, Maryfarm, the Catholic Worker's largest experience with rural living, attracted an assortment of misfits, and it was impossible to get all of Maryfarm's residents to work cooperatively and productively.

Of course, we already knew that the Maryfarm was a failure, even before Kate Hennessy's account of the farm was published. What we did not know, however, was that a faction of the Maryfarm residents came under the spell of Guy Tobler, a French attorney, who manipulated the lives of some of the Maryfarm residents, a group made up of a few married couples and single men.

Hennessy reveals that the Tobler perverted the Christian environment Dorothy and Peter Maurin were trying to nurture at Maryfarm and created a culture of manipulation, subjugation of women and children, and even sexual abuse.

Just before Christmas 1946, Dorothy walked away from Maryfarm permanently. In February 1947, she informed the archbishop that Maryfarm was no longer affiliated with the Catholic Worker. How could it be, once it had been perverted by a force of primordial evil?

I was drawn to Dorothy Day many years ago; I felt a kinship with her because we both misspent our youth (although my youth was much more misspent than Dorothy's). But learning these new details about Maryfarm caused me to admire Dorothy Day even more. Surely by the witness of her life, she helps us realize that God calls us to be faithful, not successful. And as Dorothy's life shows us, the Christian life can be a hard and bitter life; it is indeed, to borrow a phrase from Dorothy--The Long Loneliness.

Tamar Hennessy, Dorothy Day's Daughter: Patron Saint for Lapsed Catholics

In 2002, the Vatican named Dorothy Day a Servant of God--the first step on Dorothy's road to sainthood. Pope Francis put in a kind word for her when he spoke before Congress in 2015; and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, called her "a saint for our time." Some day, Dorothy will surely be canonized.

Catholic saints are often designated as special patrons for particular groups of people. St. Thomas More, for example, is the patron saint of lawyers. St. Adrian of Nicomedia, I am told, is the patron saint of arms dealers; and St. John Vianney is the patron saint of priests. Dorothy Day, when she is canonized, might become the patron saint for the homeless.

As far as I know, no saint has ever been designated as the patron for lapsed Catholics--or recovering Catholics, as former Catholics sometimes call themselves. Surely, lapsed Catholics deserve their own patron saint--someone who will intercede for them before God concerning their special difficulties and afflictions.

And so I hereby nominate Tamar Hennessy, Dorothy Day's daughter, to be the patron saint of lapsed Catholics.  Tamar, who left the Catholic Church, never to return, is the perfect holy person to intercede for Catholics who have fallen away.

Tamar's life was deeply tragic. She was born to Dorothy Day and Forster Batterham in 1926, but her mother and father never married. Batterham was an atheist who did not believe in the institution of marriage. In fact, he left Dorothy after she baptized Tamar as a Catholic and then became Catholic herself.

Tamar did not have an easy childhood. She grew up amidst the hurly burly of the Catholic Worker movement and shared the life of poverty that her mother Dorothy embraced.  The Catholic Worker houses of hospitality collected an assortment of oddballs and eccentrics, and these were the characters who peopled Tamar's childhood.

In fact, Tamar wound up marrying one of those Catholic Worker oddballs. While still an adolescent, she met David Hennessy, a troubled young man with a loose affiliation to the Catholic Worker movement.

Thirteen years Tamar's senior and with a disfigured ear (damaged in some sort of gun incident), David was no great catch. Nevertheless, at the age of 16, Tamar made up her mind to marry him.

Dorothy did not want Tamar to marry David. As David's daughter Kate Hennessy wrote years later, everyone knew he was trouble. But Dorothy fumbled in her effort to break the bond between David and Tamar as the couple waited patiently for Tamar to reach the marriageable age of 18.

Tamar had nine children with David Hennessy--no birth control for Catholics. Unfortunately, David was never able to support his huge family. Although he operated a sketchy mail-order book selling business, he rarely held a steady job. Moreover, he was an alcoholic and verbally abusive to his young wife. Long before Tamar gave birth to her ninth child, her relationship with David was in tatters.

The couple separated when Tamar was in her mid-thirties. They did not divorce; they were Catholics after all. But Tamar never formed a relationship with another man. And years later, after David died, his daughter Kate revealed that David Hennessy was probably a homosexual.

The Catholic Church glorifies the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage; but surely even Catholic hardliners like Cardinal Raymond Burke would admit that the union between Tamar and David Hennessy was miserable and unfortunate.  Or maybe not. Cardinal Burke might say Tamar will get her reward in heaven--at  least if she remained Catholic.

But Tamar did not remain Catholic. She and her children became more and more disaffected by Catholicism; and one by one, they all left the faith. (One daughter, Martha, later returned to the Church.)

Tamar was often asked to explain why she left the Catholic Church, but she rarely talked about her decision.  "I had been trying to be a good Catholic," she told one inquirer. "The kids and I gave up on it and feel much better for it."

So Tamar became a lapsed Catholic and a bitter one at that. "One of my greatest accomplishments," she told daughter Kate, "is that none of my children is a practicing Catholic."

But Tamar Hennessy led a sanctified life--a life of sacrifice, sorrow, and simplicity. She adopted a semi-subsistence lifestyle on a Vermont farm, sometimes relying on public assistance to make ends meet. She suffered from depression and from the tragic deaths of two children and a grandchild.

Throughout her life, she was generous to anyone in need--very much in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement. Her daughter Kate said Tamar seemed drawn "to all things broken," including people. Perhaps it was her husband's brokenness that drew Tamar to David Hennessy when she was a teenager.

Surely, Tamar Hennessy is a worthy saint for lapsed Catholics, all those millions of people who left the Church because in their minds at least the Church had nothing to offer them--no solace for their suffering, no sacraments to salve their pain.

Tamar Hennessy, Servant of God, pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

References

Kate Hennessy. The World Will Be Saved By Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother. New York: Scribner, 2017).

Divorce survivors and the Catholic Church: "When bitter memories freeze the tongue and songs of love are left unsung"

When burning embers in the darkness
Bring cold comfort to the heart
When bitter memories freeze the tongue 

And songs of love are left unsung

Hot Buttered Rum
Lyrics by Tommy Thompson (sung by Red Clay Ramblers) 

If you have any doubt about how fatuous the New York Times has become, then read Austin Ruse's essay in Crisis titled "The New York Times Loves a Good Love Story." Ruse began his story with this riveting paragraph:

A few years ago, the New York Times told the incredibly moving story of Robert Kennedy Jr. courting a woman who became his third wife but only after he divorced his second wife who later hung herself in the family barn after being harassed by Kennedy apparatchiks. None of this was included in the Times story.

More recently, the Times wrote another gushy story about Michael Ruhlman and Ann Hood, two accomplished writers, who crossed paths when they were younger and finally reunited and got married. However, the Times glossed over the fact that Ruhlman and Hood were both married and had children when they got emotionally evolved.

Ruse used these two New York Times stories as a springboard for his impassioned defense of marriage--marriage as the Catholic Church understands it. And I agree with everything Ruse said. Divorce is a psychological and spiritual disaster, and no divorced person who has children ever gets over it.

And as Ruse said, the harm divorce causes the children themselves is catastrophic and irreparable. "[N]o matter what the situation in the marriage, it is always best for the children for the parents to stay together." Indeed, Ruse writes, "[t]here is voluminous data that supports even the notion that it is better for a child to live in a broken home than to come from one."

But then I read Kate Hennessy's biography of Dorothy Day, titled The World Will Be Saved By Beauty. Kate Hennessy is the youngest daughter of Tamar Hennessy, Dorothy Day's only child; and Kate is Dorothy Day's youngest grandchild.

 The World Will Be Saved by Beauty is a beautifully written book. After reading only a few pages, I could see that Kate had inherited her grandmother's gift for writing.  As I turned the pages I began to see that the book is as much about Dorothy's daughter, Tamar, as it is about Dorothy.

As Kate Hennessy relates, Tamar was immersed from childhood in the Catholic Worker movement, which was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Although Peter and Dorothy called for a radical Catholic response to social injustice, they were both orthodox Catholics--orthodox in every way.

When she was 15 years old, Tamar met David Hennessy at the Catholic Worker farm in Easton, Pennsylvania. David was 13 years older than Tamar, and Dorothy would not allow her daughter to marry until she was 18. David waited patiently, and the two were married in 1944.

David and Tamar Hennessy lived a Catholic marriage. They had 9 children together and one miscarriage. In fact, for 14 years, Tamar was either pregnant or nursing.

But David Hennessy was a deeply troubled man. Even before he met Tamar, he got into some kind of altercation with his best friend, who shot David's ear off with a .30-30 rifle.  Not long after the wedding, it became apparent that David drank too much; indeed he eventually became an alcoholic. He was quarrelsome and only intermittently employed. He stumbled from one minimum-skill job to another and was never able to adequately support his wife and nine children.

When David got older, his mental health deteriorated and he was institutionalized for a time. Tamar finally left him, although as good Catholics, Tamar and David never divorced.

David died at the age of 92 after having lived for a time with another woman who may have been a prostitute. After his death, Kate Hennessy discovered and read her father's diaries and came to the conclusion that he may have been a homosexual.

Some Catholic marriage!

I have a Catholic Catechism in my home. I haven't read it all, but I agree with the Church's stance on marriage, family life, and the dignity of human life in all stages.

But I came from a family that did not live by Catholic values. In fact, my parents suffered from severe mental health problems and were physically and psychologically abusive to their children.

I see friends--good and decent people--who are struggling with all kinds of serious life issues: divorce, drug addiction, alcoholism, unemployment, mental illness, alienation from their children, cancer, and even violence.

God help me, but I don't think the Catechism is very useful for dealing with the harsh realities of life in postmodern America. Jesus didn't operate from a catechism. Basically he just called on us to respond with love and kindness to the human suffering we see around us every day.

But a lot of scholars, theologians, priests, and bishops disagree with me. So what in the hell do I know?

Dorothy Day and daughter Tamar

References

Kate Hennessy. The World Will Be Saved By Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother. New York: Scribner, 2016.

Austin Ruse. The New York Times Loves a Good Love Story. Crisis Magazine, May 5, 2017.

A white ex-Dallasite reflects on the killings of 5 white Dallas police officers by an African American: "We do the things that come to hand"

A few years ago, while living in Dallas, I had a harsh encounter with a Dallas police officer--an encounter that scared me and made me angry. I had gone to DFW Airport to drop my wife off for her flight, and I pulled into the designated parking area for my wife's departure gate. A Dallas police officer blocked the entrance and told me to drive to the next parking area--about a half block away. I asked if I could stop just long enough to allow my wife to get out of the car, and the officer screamed at me. "Get out of here right now," he bellowed.

I was shocked by the officer's menacing rage, and it made me mad. I thought about confronting him and getting his name so I could file a complaint, but I knew if I did I would probably wind up in handcuffs with my face on the pavement.

In the months to come, I continued thinking about this incident, which I internalized as an assault on my human dignity. Why was the cop so irrational? Why did he block me from parking where I am normally allowed to park? Was he reserving the parking lot for a VIP? Was he on edge because of an oncoming crime? I didn't know.

And I recall thinking how much angrier I would be if I were a young African American or a Hispanic. I think I would have assumed the officer's rage was triggered by my race.

Then a few months later, I had another encounter with a Dallas cop--this one in downtown Dallas. I was driving to St. Jude's Chapel on Main Street for noon Mass and I inadvertently made an illegal left turn right in front of a Dallas cop in a police car.

I didn't wait to be pulled over. I immediately parked at a curb and waited for the officer to approach me. Before the officer said anything, I apologized, telling him I recognized that I had made an illegal turn.

The officer's response surprised me. "Are you OK?", he asked. I told him that I was. "Do you know where you're going?", he asked me next; and I told him I was headed to St. Jude for noon Mass.

Then he asked a final question: "Do you know how to get there?" And I told him that I did.

The officer then wished me a good day and waved me on.

This brief exchange completely neutralized the smoldering resentment I had harbored toward the Dallas cop at the DFW airport. I felt like the Holy Spirit had intervened on my behalf to heal a small but festering wound I had been nursing.

I realize of course that the second friendly cop was asking me questions to determine if I was drunk or otherwise impaired. But he did it in a courteous and respectful way. He had no way of knowing that his demeanor restored that part of my dignity that a DFW cop had deprived me of when he yelled at me a few months earlier.

This brings me to the terrible shooting incident that took place in Dallas not long ago when Micah Johnson, an African American, killed five white Dallas police officers who were guarding a peaceful protest demonstration. What prompted Johnson's insane rage? Had Johnson been treated rudely by a white cop sometime in his life?

And this caused me to ask myself what I can do to reduce racial tensions in my own home town--Baton Rouge, where a white police officer shot and killed a black man just a few days before the Dallas shootings.

The troubles of this world seem overwhelming. In spite of all the public rhetoric, racial tensions are getting worse in the United States, not better. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing in this country. Terrorism can strike anywhere: in a movie theater, a nightclub, a seaside promenade. What can I do to help make the world a better place?

Dorothy Day asked herself this question while locked up in jail, and this is the answer she came to:

When I lay in jail thinking of these things, thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom, of jails, drug addiction, prostitution, and the apathy of great masses of people who believe that nothing can be done--when I thought of these things I was all the more confirmed in my faith in the little way of St. Therese. We do the things that come to hand, we pray our prayers and beg also for an increase of faith--and God will do the rest.

So, like the kind Dallas police officer, let us do the things that come to hand. Let's treat everyone we meet with respect and courtesy, let us look for opportunities to perform small acts of kindness, let us follow the little way of St. Therese and Dorothy Day.

That's really about all most of us can do to make the world a better place; but, as Dorothy reminds us, we must trust that God will do the rest.

___________

Note: My quotation of Dorothy Day comes from Loaves and Fishes. I italicized part of the passage for emphasis.

So many white martyrs: How many nameless American Catholics suffer silently and willingly in faith?

Today is the Feast Day of St. Justin the Martyr, who was beheaded in Rome by order of Junius Rusticus sometime around 165 A.D.

Father Matthew reminded us at the noon mass that there are two kinds of martyrs: red martyrs and white martyrs. Red martyrs who die for the Christian faith. Over the long history of the Catholic Church, there have been thousands of red martyrs, in fact millions. Some of them are famous and lived in ancient times: St. Agatha, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Cecilia, and many more. Others died more recently:  Thomas More, John Fisher, and Margaret Clitherow, who died during the English persecutions of the sixteenth century. And there are the famous North American martyrs of the seventeenth century: Rene Goupil, Isaac Jogues and Jean Lalande and others

Robert Royal, author of The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, persuasively argued that the twentieth century produced more Catholic martyrs than any century in the history of Christendom. Millions of Catholics died for their faith in Europe, Asia and Mexico. Two million Polish Catholics were killed by the Russians or the Nazis during the Second World War, and most of them are unremembered.

And then there is white martyrdom, which is martyrdom without blood or the violent taking of life. As Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire explained:

White martyrdom, is a total offering to God, a 'dying' to the world and its allurements. A white martyr willingly gives up worldly concerns and makes his or her life a perpetual pilgrimage. A white martyr lives a life of heroic devotion for Him alone, eagerly uniting that devotion with Christ's sufferings.

Who might be described as white martyrs? Kateri Tekawitha, for one; John Paul II, and Therese of Lisieux. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin might justly be described as white martyrs. And of course, there are thousands and thousands of others, most of whom died in obscurity and without being formally recognized in any way.

In contemporary American society, we do not think much about martyrs or martyrdom--whether red or white. We are a culture obsessed by the quest for power, for wealth, and for fame. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the people of the hour. Barrack Obama had his long moment in the sun: Editor of Harvard Law Review, President of the United States, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But now he fades into hoary obscurity while others scramble to be just as powerful and as famous.

But white martyrs are all around us; many are my friends. I have a friend who unjustly lost his job at a Catholic university and now works as an adjunct professor  at three universities located in three different cities. He drives  300 miles or more a week to teach five classes. He and his family are suffering because an adjunct's salary is not a living wage. But he is steadfast in his Catholic faith and active as a layperson in the life of his parish. Maybe he is a white martyr.

I have another friend who was swept up in an ugly family quarrel that left her disinherited. Without question, she needed her share of her parents' estate more than the siblings who received a bigger portion of the family wealth when she was cast out. But she goes to Mass every week.  Perhaps she is a white martyr as well.

How many people do we know who are struggling with old age and illness but are not bitter, who still go to weekly Mass? How many people nurse aging spouses who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, or some other hopeless illness? How many people have lost their jobs before they were ready to retire and see their lives stretching before them as a slow decline into humiliating poverty? And how many of these people still go to Mass?

None of these people will be recognized as saints. No feast day will be set aside to give them honor. And when they are dying, there may not even be a priest available to administer last rites. These are America's white martyrs, and as long as we have them, there will always be a Catholic faith.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

References

Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire. The White Martyrdom of Kateri Tekawitha. Catholic Online. Accessible at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=980

No country for angry old white men: A Catholic's reflections on Dorothy Day and the Colorado Springs shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic

Pancho needs your prayers it's true, but save a few for Lefty too

He only did what he had to do, and now he's growing old

Townes Van Zandt

Robert Lewis Dear

America has two kinds of serial killers. First, there are the angry young white men who have serious psychological problems and often want to commit suicide after killing the maximum number of people. We've seen a lot of these guys: at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, the Aurora movie theater, and Sandy Hook. Their body counts are impressive.

Second, we have the angry old white men who are frustrated by their misspent lives and who often obsess on some personal injury or a particular social injustice. There are fewer of these guys, and in general, they kill fewer people. John Russell Houser, age 59, killed two people and wounded nine in a Lafayette, Louisiana movie theater in July 2015. Robert Lewis Dear, age 57, killed three people and wounded nine in Colorado Springs earlier this week.

Houser and Dear had similar profiles. Both men were estranged from their families, both had had minor run-ins with law enforcement, and both were loners with mental health issues. Both killers' motivations are unclear, although Dear's attack may have been triggered by his feelings about abortion.

What can we say about murderers like Houser and Dear? We can pontificate about stronger gun-control laws like President Obama routinely does--taking time away from his golf game to express his outrage. We can lament the fact that our nation doesn't have better mental health care, which is a convenient way of saying the government should do something.

But the truth of the matter is this: America has always had angry old white men living on the margins of our society.  At one time, men like Houser and Dear might have had union jobs, which would have provided them with health care and a pension. But the union jobs are mostly gone, and we have millions of aging men with poverty-level jobs or no job at all and no health insurance. A great many of them once had wives and families, but these were lost in some mysterious way that men like Houser and Dear do not understand.

Suicide rates for middle-aged men are going up, and mortality rates are going down for people in Houser and Dear's demographics. White people with less than a college degree are killing themselves or succumbing to drug- and alcohol-related diseases in higher numbers than they did 20 years ago.

Let's face it: our society doesn't think much about angry old white men unless they shoot someone other than their relatives. At least, by killing strangers, Houser and Dear forced Americans to acknowledge their existence, which in their minds perhaps, is at least something.

What can we do to help prevent men like Houser and Dear from shooting people? And by we, I mean by us individually, not the government?

I think we can begin by showing some respect for aging people who are not important to anyone. We all subscribe to the slogan that "Black Lives Matter," but almost no one articulates the notion that old white guys matter.

And perhaps we can school ourselves to see the poor as Dorothy Day saw them--as the living embodiment of Christ. Men like Houser and Dear are poor, and they have serious mental health problems. They're no fun to be around. But Dorothy Day spent her whole life with people like them--smelly, mentally unstable, poor people. You can't read Dorothy's Loaves and Fishes without coming to the conclusion that she voluntarily chose to live in a nut house.

But most of us can't live like Dorothy Day lived; God has not given us the grace or charity to do so. But at least we can smile at people like John Russsell Houser and Robert Lewis Dear; we can lend them a helping hand when they come our way. Maybe a smile at the right moment would have stopped John Russell Houser from shooting people in a Lafayette movie theater. Maybe a smile in the parking lot in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic would have caused Robert Lewis Dear to leave his weapons in his car and simply drive away.

I know this is a simple, even simplistic thing to say, and I am giving advice I often don't heed myself. But I am certain of this: Our society, and each of us individually, bear some responsibility for the angry old white men who, bereft of family, friends, or jobs, begin shooting people for no apparent reason.

Dorothy Day

For what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas? Genocide in Iraq

As my small band of readers know, I have two blogs: a blog on Catholicism and culture and a blog on the federal student loan program. Occasionally, I comment on foreign affairs at both blog sites. Why do I do that?

Regarding my blog site on the federal student loan program, here is my explanation: The federal student loan program props up our nation's amoral, arrogant, and vapid higher education system; and it is this system that has educated our nation's political leaders who are now making disastrous foreign-policy decisions. 

President Obama and almost all his cronies were educated at places like Harvard Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, etc., where they evidently learned no problem-solving skills or even the capacity to make foreign policy decisions based on our long-term national interests or fundamental principles of morality.

And you see where we are now: huge messes in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, and Iraq.  So I have commented from time to time that the global mess we are in has its roots in our elitist, arrogant universities.

As for my blog on Catholic culture, I comment on international affairs because my Catholic faith compels me to take stands on international affairs if moral principles are at stake. Servant of God Dorothy Day was a pacifist; she even opposed American involvement in World War II. I am not a pacifist; but I believe we should not send Americans to die or be maimed in order to defend unjust national interests.

Now to the subject of this blog.  Ever since the United States abolished the draft, it has excused everyone from joining the military who choose not to do so.  Since that time, it has been mostly young men and women from working-class and impoverished families who went to war.  Barack  Obama's children will never put on a uniform, and neither will the children of most of the people who serve in his administration or in Congress. I can almost guarantee you that no hedge fund manager or corporate CEO has a child who served in a combat role in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And--to be fair, I would not willingly see my own children or grandchildren fight in Afghanistan or Iraq. I am grateful that none of my family members have had to go to either place.

So  for what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas in a foreign war? To fight Hitler, obviously.  That would have been an easy decision for me. But I would not have supported the firebombing of a civilian population as the U.S. and Britain did in Germany. Nor would I have supported the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki--even though my own father was in a Japanese prison camp when those bombs were dropped and the dropping of those bombs may have saved his life.

So here is my position. I believe the United States should calibrate its policy of military intervention around basic human rights and the rights of religious minorities and virtually nothing else.  In the Middle East right now it is almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Is the Assad regime in Syria morally superior to the forces that oppose it? Who knows? Is the military regime that runs Egypt better than the Morsi government that the military overthrew? Again, who knows?

So I propose that the United States should take this stand: We will not go to war against any government that protects  basic human rights and respects the rights of religious minorities.  Thus if the Assad regime protects Christians in Syria, we would support it over ISIS.  If the Military junta respects Egyptian Christians, then we would support it over the Islamic Brotherhood. And we would intervene to help nations facing outrageous atrocities against innocent civilians like the genocide in Rwanda and the kidnapping of more than 200 school girls in Nigeria by Muslim extremists.

Right now, ISIS is overrunning parts of Iraq and threatening Kurdistan.  ISIS terrorists are committing genocide against religious minorities in the region--including Christians.

The Christians of the Middle East (and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa) need American military help. With apologies to Dorothy Day, I think we should give it to them. Surely, if there is any emergency important enough to send a hedge fund manager's son to die in the Middle East it is the current crisis in Iraq.  God help me--this emergency might even justify sacrifices from my own family.

Miracles don't happen in our postmodern age--or do they? Dorothy Day and my friend Sarah

In The Keys of the Kingdom, A.J. Cronin's delightful novel about the spiritual journey of Father Francis Chisholm, a Scottish priest, Cronin sketches a story about Father Gerald Fitzgerald, who is hoodwinked by Charlotte Neily, a young woman who claims to have experienced a beatific vision of the Virgin Mary and to have discovered a miraculous spring of healing water. After reporting this amazing event, Charlotte takes to her bed,where she displays the stigmata and survives for nine days without any food or drink.

Father Fitzgerald is completely taken in and soon envisions the construction of a shrine like the one at Lourdes and an influx of pilgrims and tourists.  Unfortunately, Father Fitzgerald's junior curate, Father Francis, unmasks the miracle as a hoax when he comes to visit Charlotte and discovers her propped up in her sickbed, eating chicken and drinking beer.

Meanwhile, another Catholic family, the Warrens, are anticipating the death of their young son Owen, who is dying from an ulcerated leg. Without telling anyone, Warren's mother bathes Owen's leg in the spring that Charlotte discovered, and his leg is healed.

When Father Francis is invited to the Warren house to witness Owen's recovery, he thinks he is being summoned to administer last rites and even fears he may be too late.  But when he arrives, Father Francis finds a healthy young Owen along with Owen's physician, Dr. Willie Tulloch, a kind man but fiercely atheist.

Dr. Tulloch is happy to see his patient recover but he is somewhat angry as well. "There's bound to be a scientific explanation beyond the scope of our present knowledge," he tells Father Francis. "An intense desire for recovery--psychological regeneration of the cells."

Then Doctor Tulloch stops short and grabs Father Francis's arm. Almost desperately, he cries out: "Oh, God!--if there is a God!--let's all keep our bloody mouths shut about it!"

Even today, almost all of us know someone who was at death's door who mysteriously recovered. But, like skeptical Dr. Tulloch, most of us refuse to believe in miracles. There must be some scientific explanation, we tell ourselves. After all, we live in a postmodern age--an age of reason, rationality, and secularism. If there is a God, we damned sure don't want to know about it.

But in truth miracles happen every day. I have a good friend, Sarah Maple, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Her doctors told her she could expect to live about two years.

But in 2010, Sarah's brain tumor began to shrink and eventually disappeared. In early 2014, her doctors discovered a second brain tumor, but in July that tumor too began to shrink.

It is true that Sarah has received excellent medical treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Nevertheless, almost everyone who began treatment with Sarah at Mayo and who had the same diagnosis has died. Surely the fact that Sarah has survived so long is miraculous.

During this harrowing experience, Sarah experienced a second miracle. Although she had been raised in a severe Protestant denomination that is well known for its hostility to Catholicism, Sarah had abandoned that tradition before she became ill. And during her illness--at the age of 63--Sarah entered the Catholic Church.

Many people have prayed for Sarah. I myself invoked the aid of Servant of God Dorothy Day and I am absolutely sure that Dorothy heard my prayer and was sympathetic. My friends Mark and Louise Zwick, who run the Catholic Worker Hospitality House in Houston, also sought Dorothy's aid. Friends of mine from Tanzania--two Catholic priests--prayed for Sarah and asked the Ugandan Martyrs to intercede on her behalf, and I am satisfied that their prayers have great power.

And whatever one may think of the miraculous powers of the Catholic saints, almost everyone I have told about Sarah's story--Catholic or non-Catholic-- has said that Sarah's conversion to Catholicism is miraculous.

So let us look for miracles in our daily lives--let us expect them. Even though we live in a deeply cynical postmodern world, God's healing power is surely present now as in ages past. His spirit constantly moves among us as we give ourselves over to a childlike faith that we are not alone in a soulless universe. We are all sustained in the palm of God's loving hand.

And God sent Christ to dwell among us. Mysteriously, he is present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. And though we are not worthy that he should come under our roofs, let us have confidence that if he but says the word, our souls shall be healed.

Dorothy Day

References

A.J. Cronin. The Keys of the Kingdom. Chicago: Loyola Classics, 1941.

Your People Are My People; Your God is My God: A Catholic Convert Reflects on His Protestant Ancestors

Last Friday, I attended an appreciation dinner sponsored by Christ the King Church, my local parish, given as a way of saying thank you to the parish's many volunteers.  Father Bob led us in the Catholic grace before we sat down to eat our dinners.

Bless us O Lord,

And these thy gifts which we are about to receive

From Thy Bounty

Though Christ Our Lord

Amen

I have come to love this brief table prayer, said daily by millions of Catholics all over the world.  Those of us who say it are acknowledging our dependence on God and our gratitude for all the blessings of life, including the food we eat.

And I find its brevity, its humility, its almost childlike simplicity strangely touching.  This little prayer is utterly refreshing to me compared to the long-winded Protestant table graces of my youth, with pastors going on and on and on as the fried chicken got cold in front of us.  If anyone wants to know what these Protestant prayers are like, they should see the movie August: Osage County. Chris Cooper's character gives a lengthy mealtime grace, delivered in the sweltering heat of an Oklahoma farm house, that is a pretty good approximation of the real thing.

This prayer forms part of our Catholic heritage--my  Catholic heritage. As I say it, I feel a kinship with all the American Catholics over the centuries who clung to their faith in spite of scorn and prejudice from  the predominant American culture.  The Irish immigrants of Boston, the Italians of New York, the Poles of Chicago, the German Catholics of Texas and the upper Midwest, the Hispanic immigrants of California--all these people are my people.  Their God is my God.

Sometimes when I reflect on my Catholic heritage--freely given to me when I came into the Church--I feel pity for my Protestant ancestors who gave up the power, the beauty and the glory of Catholicism--and for what?  To become Methodists? To become Presbyterians? To become Episcopalians? They threw their inheritance away for a crust of stale bread.

And I wonder sometimes, over the centuries that have passed since the Reformation, did any of my Protestant ancestors turn back to the Mother Faith?  Did some Fossey in ages past marry a Catholic French girl or an Irish-American girl and return to the Church?  Did one of the Andersons stumble upon the reality of Christ in the Eucharist and begin to weep as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton did more than 200 years ago on the coast of Italy?  Did even one of my Protestant ancestors ever wander into a Mass and be overcome by its beauty  as happened to Dorothy Day early in the last century?

Or am I the only one among all the generations of my Protestant ancestors stretching back to Henry VIII who turned back?  Did God call me alone of all my family to return to the fold? Of all my blood relatives who crossed the River Styx in error, am I the only one--through the wideness of God's mercy-- to mysteriously come floating back toward the abundance of life on the healing streams of the Tiber?

"Everyone's problem is no one's problem": Elliot Rodger, the UC Santa Barbara shooting spree, and Dorothy Day

With distressing regularity, young American men are committing mass murder.  The Columbine killings in 1999,  the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, Jared Loughner's killing spree in 2011, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December 2012.  And now we learn about Elliot Rodger, a 22-year old student at UC Santa Barbara, who killed six people last week before taking his own life.

Every case is different of course--particularly with regard to the casualty lists. So far, I think, Seung-Hui Cho's attack at Virginia Tech holds the casualty record: 32 killed and 17 wounded.

But most follow a common pattern.  First, all the attacks were planned and some were planned meticulously over a period of many months. All the attackers were students or had recently been students at American schools or colleges. All the attackers gave some warning or clear indication that they were contemplating violence. And all were male. (The Amy Bishop killings at the University of Alabama-Huntsville was a case of workplace violence and is in a different category altogether.)

In most cases, the attackers killed themselves before they could be captured; but Jarod Loughhner and James Holmes (the Aurora, Colorado movie-theater shooter) were captured alive.

In most of these cases, the attackers used at least one semi-automatic weapon to shoot their victims. Often they were well supplied with ammunition and extended-ammunition magazines. But Elliot Rodger stabbed three of his victims to death and injured some people with his automobile.

All these cases have provided fodder for media commentaries--from Bill O'Reilly of Fox News to Frank Bruni of the New York Times. (After all, Frank can't devote all of his columns to attacking the Catholic Church.) And everyone has a solution for stopping these killing sprees, which seem to be escalating in frequency.

Some argue for better gun control--particularly restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons and extended-ammunition clips. Some argue for better mental health care. Some blame violent video games, and some blame America's supposedly misogynistic culture.

I found myself wondering what Dorothy Day would say about all of this. Dorothy died in 1980, but she saw her share of violence and mental illness. Her writings and diaries contain frequent descriptions of  mentally ill people that the Catholic Worker took in and sheltered. Indeed, she wrote in 1972 that "[i]nsanity is the problem of our era. . . . One can call it many names, alienation, withdrawal, depression, nervous breakdown--we have them all . . ."

Dorothy thought the Catholic Worker's farm settlements were one solution to violence.  She called one CW farm "a school for the living, a school of nonviolence."  Musing in her diary in September 1972, she reflected on our society's tendency to see violence as a collective problem, not a problem that requires an individual response. "'Everybody's problem is no one's problem,'" she wrote. ""Seems to me there is some kind of proverb or aphorism like that."

Dorothy did not have any clear solution to the problem of violence in American society, although she thought state-sponsored abortions--by sanctioning violence against the unborn--might be contributing to the problem.

I do think, however, that Dorothy would counsel us to be kind to all the troubled, unstable people we meet, even though mentally ill people can truly be a bother and an irritation.  Dorothy and her CW comrades certainly lived by that philosophy. They sheltered a number of truly exasperating people--people who clearly suffered from mental illness.

And this causes me to wonder whether Elliot Rodger would have murdered six people last week if just one person had showed him a little kindness on the day before he went on his killing spree.  But who knows? Maybe someone had been kind to Elliot Rodger on the day before he stabbed and shot people. But maybe that person wasn't quite kind enough, patient enough, compassionate enough to turn the tide.

I'm not saying of course that Elliot's friends and acquaintances share responsibility for what Elliot did. But I am saying that we all have opportunities in our day-to-day lives to show a little patience, a little compassion, and a little kindness to the abrasive and annoying people we meet. We never really know, do we, just how close to the edge that any person might be in any given moment.

References

Dorothy Day. The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2008.

Dorothy Day--Patron Saint of Hospice Workers?

Some day Dorothy Day will be canonized--let us pray this day comes soon. And when she is named a saint, for whom will she be a special patron?  Certainly she is patroness of the American poor and the homeless, the patron saint of Catholic journalists, and perhaps the patron saint of women who have had abortions.  And if people who were hounded by the FBI desire a saint, Dorothy could probably fulfill that role as well.

But perhaps she will also become the patron saint of hospice workers.

Dorothy, as she herself acknowledged, was deeply in love with Forster Batterham--an anarchist of sorts and an atheist with a name that makes him sound like a character from Downton Abbey. But Forster left Dorothy after she became pregnant and told him she planned to have her child baptized in the Catholic Church.



Dorothy Day and Forster Batterham

Nevertheless, Forster and Dorothy stayed in touch for the rest of their lives--connected if not by religion, then by the child  they had conceived together.

About three years after Dorothy and Forster separated, according to Robert Ellsberg, Forster formed a new relationship with a woman named Nanette; and Forster and Nanette lived together for thirty years until she died in 1960.

In September 1959, Forster contacted Dorothy and asked her to care for Nanette, who had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.  Dorothy agreed to help, and she nursed Nanette until she died in January of 1960. Along with Forster's sister, Lily Burke, Dorothy became Nanette's informal hospice nurse.

It must have been bitterly hard for Dorothy. Nanette was terrified of death, and Forster could not bear to be alone with her. Indeed, during Nanette's decline, Dorothy saw an unappealing side of Forster. Nanette confided to Dorothy that she had had an affair with a younger man with Forster's complicity--an ugly revelation.

As Dorothy wrote in her diary, this unsavory bit of information shined a light on Forster's character. "It is all part of his absolute rebellion against responsibility, family, religion, tradition, as far as he himself is concerned."

Indeed, Dorothy concluded, Forster was "completely selfish and a coward."

Dorothy owed Forster nothing and she certainly owed Nanette nothing. But Dorothy continued to nurse Nanette. On the night of December 23, 1959, Dorothy wrote this:

Nanette very bad, suffering from nurse's ministrations, her three-way irrigations. Nanette says she is continually wet, flowing from colostomy. She cried pitifully, hating her decay, wishing she could commit suicide, go back to the hospital for a few days, etc. It was a hard day, though we started out well making mince pie, etc.--anything to distract her

By late December, Nanette was near death--her face and legs was swollen. Forster, wallowing in self pity, often wept and constantly fled from Nanette's presence.  At this point, Nanette wavered between a longing for death and the struggle to live. "I am strong-willed and stubborn," Dorothy quotes Nanette as saying. "No one can help me, doctor, psychiatrist, hypnotism, drugs. I am alone."

On January 8, 1960, Nanette died. She had been in agony for two days. "The cross was not as hard as this," Nanette said in her final hours. But in the end, she died peacefully, "with a slight smile."  Ellsberg records that Nanette was baptized as a Catholic before she passed away.

Dorothy never wrote of these events except to record them in her diary. Yet the nursing of Nannette  is perhaps Dorothy's greatest act of humility, generosity and love. In my view, Dorothy deserves to be canonized for this act of kindness alone.

On December 27, 1959, as Nanette lay a few days from death, Dorothy wrote this:

Food, warmth, shelter, clothing, beauty, yes--ourselves most of all--to be available to men. But in the CW there are so many, and each one wants it all, your time, your love, your attention. "You are never here." This is my suffering, my failure, and my cross.

Rejoice. 

References

Robert Ellsberg (ed.) The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2008.