WORKING CLASS ANTI-WAR SAINT
Catholic Worker Dorothy Day’s grandchildren reflect on a legacy that still challenges the church
(RNS) — Kate Hennessy, the Catholic Worker co-founder’s granddaughter, said Day is a model for her fellow believers ‘to grasp faith and trust with all we have, even if it is by our bleeding fingertips.’
Dorothy Day sits in protest as police stand by.
Fiona Murphy
December 1, 2025
Dorothy Day’s grandchildren Martha Hennessy, left, and Kate Hennessy, right, participate in the Vatican-hosted symposium titled “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day,” on Nov. 26, 2025, in Rome. (Video screen grab)
One such person is Robert Ellsberg, the religious publisher and author who dropped out of Harvard in 1975 at age 19 to join the Catholic Worker movement in New York City. Day asked him to become the managing editor of its newspaper, the Catholic Worker, and he worked closely with Day until her death in 1980, and would go on to publish Day’s letters and diaries, most notably in “The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day,” in 2008.
“This year marks the 50th anniversary of my encounter with Dorothy Day,” Ellsberg said. “I decided to take a little time off from college, which turned into five years, and quite soon I got hooked there (at the New York Catholic Worker). Kind of lost track of time.”
Some believe that Day’s cause for sainthood has been slowed because her life, which unfolded largely in New York, challenges the church’s comfort and conscience. In the Catholic Worker and elsewhere, she wrote relentlessly about workers’ rights and the lives of the marginalized. She also purchased buildings to house people living in poverty and chose to live among them, and was jailed for protesting war and nuclear weapons. She routinely refused to pay income taxes as an act of conscience.
Dorothy Day in 1968. (Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Journal/Marquette University Archives)
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who recently commissioned a large mural that includes a portrait of Day in the city’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, appeared via a prerecorded video, saying the archdiocese is “really proud of her.” He called the symposium meeting “appropriate.”
“She belongs to the world; she belongs to the church universal,” Dolan said. “We look for the day when the church universal can recognize that by edifying her on the first step towards canonization. Thanks for doing it, everybody.”
Martha Hennessy, who was accompanied by her sister Kate Hennessy, anchored Day’s spiritual power very intimately in her grandmother’s physical presence.“When I was 3 years old, I remember sitting on Dorothy’s lap,” Martha said. “I do believe that that experience of having my ear on her chest, hearing the resonation of her voice and hearing her heartbeat, that, for me, was an incarnational experience of God.”
With her works, the houses of hospitality, Martha said, her grandmother showed her how to integrate faith into one’s daily life, and the daily lives of others.
“I would describe life and work at Maryhouse as the agony and the ecstasy,” Martha said, referring to the movement’s New York outpost. “The skills that we need at Maryhouse are, can you cook a lot of food, can you be nice when you serve the food, and can you help clean up on a regular basis?”
Kate, a writer and artist living in Ireland who published the book “Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother” in 2017, framed Day’s legacy as an enduring moral challenge.
Hennessy talked about the institutional, economic, political and personal ways Day continues to challenge both Catholics and society at large.
Martha Hennessy, right, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter and a member of New York’s Maryhouse Catholic Worker community, reads an excerpt from her grandmother’s book “On Pilgrimage” in the courtyard of the Vineapple Cafe in New York, Dec. 8, 2021.
(RNS) — Kate Hennessy, the Catholic Worker co-founder’s granddaughter, said Day is a model for her fellow believers ‘to grasp faith and trust with all we have, even if it is by our bleeding fingertips.’
Dorothy Day sits in protest as police stand by.
(Photo by Bob Fitch, courtesy of Journey Films)
Fiona Murphy
December 1, 2025
RNS
(RNS) — It is rare for the close relatives of a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church to be alive, much less able to observe the process. Yet at a Vatican symposium, “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day,” on Wednesday (Nov. 26), the grandchildren of Dorothy Day were able to hear how others think about her work as a founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and introduce many to the woman they knew.
“What I really want to do is to share her with others, share her with you,” said Martha Hennessy, Day’s granddaughter, who is a Catholic Worker herself and peace activist who runs farms in Vermont. “She did belong to the world, but she also belonged to her family. So, I just want to share some stories about family life.”
Day currently holds the title “Servant of God,” the first formal stage in the canonization process. Her local diocese has completed its investigation into her life and submitted evidence and testimony to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints. If approved, the pope would declare her “Venerable,” recognizing that she lived a life of heroic virtue. From there, beatification and canonization typically require two miracles attributed to her intercession.
The process has moved slowly in Rome, with the Vatican taking its time. Among the advocates for her cause, sustaining public engagement and promoting reflection on her life are crucial as the church shows little urgency.
So, while the audience heard from Kevin Ahern, a leading advocate for her sainthood and a member of Manhattan University’s Dorothy Day Guild, which works to preserve and promote Day’s legacy of charity, pacifism and spirituality, the symposium emphasized recollections from those who knew her.
(RNS) — It is rare for the close relatives of a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church to be alive, much less able to observe the process. Yet at a Vatican symposium, “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day,” on Wednesday (Nov. 26), the grandchildren of Dorothy Day were able to hear how others think about her work as a founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and introduce many to the woman they knew.
“What I really want to do is to share her with others, share her with you,” said Martha Hennessy, Day’s granddaughter, who is a Catholic Worker herself and peace activist who runs farms in Vermont. “She did belong to the world, but she also belonged to her family. So, I just want to share some stories about family life.”
Day currently holds the title “Servant of God,” the first formal stage in the canonization process. Her local diocese has completed its investigation into her life and submitted evidence and testimony to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints. If approved, the pope would declare her “Venerable,” recognizing that she lived a life of heroic virtue. From there, beatification and canonization typically require two miracles attributed to her intercession.
The process has moved slowly in Rome, with the Vatican taking its time. Among the advocates for her cause, sustaining public engagement and promoting reflection on her life are crucial as the church shows little urgency.
So, while the audience heard from Kevin Ahern, a leading advocate for her sainthood and a member of Manhattan University’s Dorothy Day Guild, which works to preserve and promote Day’s legacy of charity, pacifism and spirituality, the symposium emphasized recollections from those who knew her.
Dorothy Day’s grandchildren Martha Hennessy, left, and Kate Hennessy, right, participate in the Vatican-hosted symposium titled “A Pilgrim of Hope: An Academic Symposium on the Legacy of Dorothy Day,” on Nov. 26, 2025, in Rome. (Video screen grab)
One such person is Robert Ellsberg, the religious publisher and author who dropped out of Harvard in 1975 at age 19 to join the Catholic Worker movement in New York City. Day asked him to become the managing editor of its newspaper, the Catholic Worker, and he worked closely with Day until her death in 1980, and would go on to publish Day’s letters and diaries, most notably in “The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day,” in 2008.
“This year marks the 50th anniversary of my encounter with Dorothy Day,” Ellsberg said. “I decided to take a little time off from college, which turned into five years, and quite soon I got hooked there (at the New York Catholic Worker). Kind of lost track of time.”
Some believe that Day’s cause for sainthood has been slowed because her life, which unfolded largely in New York, challenges the church’s comfort and conscience. In the Catholic Worker and elsewhere, she wrote relentlessly about workers’ rights and the lives of the marginalized. She also purchased buildings to house people living in poverty and chose to live among them, and was jailed for protesting war and nuclear weapons. She routinely refused to pay income taxes as an act of conscience.
Dorothy Day in 1968. (Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Journal/Marquette University Archives)
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who recently commissioned a large mural that includes a portrait of Day in the city’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, appeared via a prerecorded video, saying the archdiocese is “really proud of her.” He called the symposium meeting “appropriate.”
“She belongs to the world; she belongs to the church universal,” Dolan said. “We look for the day when the church universal can recognize that by edifying her on the first step towards canonization. Thanks for doing it, everybody.”
Martha Hennessy, who was accompanied by her sister Kate Hennessy, anchored Day’s spiritual power very intimately in her grandmother’s physical presence.“When I was 3 years old, I remember sitting on Dorothy’s lap,” Martha said. “I do believe that that experience of having my ear on her chest, hearing the resonation of her voice and hearing her heartbeat, that, for me, was an incarnational experience of God.”
With her works, the houses of hospitality, Martha said, her grandmother showed her how to integrate faith into one’s daily life, and the daily lives of others.
“I would describe life and work at Maryhouse as the agony and the ecstasy,” Martha said, referring to the movement’s New York outpost. “The skills that we need at Maryhouse are, can you cook a lot of food, can you be nice when you serve the food, and can you help clean up on a regular basis?”
Kate, a writer and artist living in Ireland who published the book “Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty, An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother” in 2017, framed Day’s legacy as an enduring moral challenge.
Hennessy talked about the institutional, economic, political and personal ways Day continues to challenge both Catholics and society at large.
Martha Hennessy, right, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter and a member of New York’s Maryhouse Catholic Worker community, reads an excerpt from her grandmother’s book “On Pilgrimage” in the courtyard of the Vineapple Cafe in New York, Dec. 8, 2021.
(RNS photo/Renée Roden)
“I think it would be an utter tragedy if those of us who lived privileged and protective lives choose to see Dorothy the saint, as a way to comfort ourselves,” she said. “I have seen over the years many attempts to tame her, conform her, or when that is impossible, to dismiss or ignore her. Dorothy asks us to see the world suffering and to not turn away and say, I can do nothing.”
She noted that Day often taught the power of small acts, likening them to a pebble whose ripples extend far beyond what we can see. In an emotional tone, Kate said her grandmother believed there is always something humanity can offer, which is Christ-like love, even in the face of vast suffering.
“I suggest that we all be terrified of what she is asking of us to gaze clearly on,” Kate said. “In the here and now, to grasp faith and trust with all we have, even if it is by our bleeding fingertips.”
A legacy, she warned, should never be sanitized or turned to for personal comfort. Kate prefaced her remarks by acknowledging the emotional weight of her grandmother’s life and canonization cause. “This topic is so emotional for me, I’m going to cry through it,” she said.
Nearly 50 years after Day’s death, her legacy lives on not only in the church’s canonization deliberations in Rome, but in the grief and love her grandchildren continue to carry forward.
“We will all feel grief in our love as we open our hearts, for we will now know what we have and what we are in danger of losing,” Kate said. “What a gift, what a task we all have before us.”
“I think it would be an utter tragedy if those of us who lived privileged and protective lives choose to see Dorothy the saint, as a way to comfort ourselves,” she said. “I have seen over the years many attempts to tame her, conform her, or when that is impossible, to dismiss or ignore her. Dorothy asks us to see the world suffering and to not turn away and say, I can do nothing.”
She noted that Day often taught the power of small acts, likening them to a pebble whose ripples extend far beyond what we can see. In an emotional tone, Kate said her grandmother believed there is always something humanity can offer, which is Christ-like love, even in the face of vast suffering.
“I suggest that we all be terrified of what she is asking of us to gaze clearly on,” Kate said. “In the here and now, to grasp faith and trust with all we have, even if it is by our bleeding fingertips.”
A legacy, she warned, should never be sanitized or turned to for personal comfort. Kate prefaced her remarks by acknowledging the emotional weight of her grandmother’s life and canonization cause. “This topic is so emotional for me, I’m going to cry through it,” she said.
Nearly 50 years after Day’s death, her legacy lives on not only in the church’s canonization deliberations in Rome, but in the grief and love her grandchildren continue to carry forward.
“We will all feel grief in our love as we open our hearts, for we will now know what we have and what we are in danger of losing,” Kate said. “What a gift, what a task we all have before us.”
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS ARE ANTI-PAPIST PROTESTANTS
Donald Trump outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.
(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead/Flickr)
December 01, 2025
ALTERNET
Despite Pope Leo XIV to calling on his Catholic leadership to issue a forceful statement condemning President Donald Trump's "villification of immigrants," Trump loyalists, writes John Kenneth White in The Hill, have responded by declaring war on the Catholic church.
By a nearly unanimous vote, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their first special message in 12 years, saying they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” and “concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”
They added that "we are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”
The bishops then put out a video denouncing the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” against those confronted by ICE — over 1.4 million have watched it so far, according to White.
But as clergy members continue to denounce the Trump administration's policies, MAGA has doubled down against the church.
“Boarder czar” Tom Homan condemned the bishops’ letter and the church as “wrong," adding “I’m saying it as not only border czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic. I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church, in my opinion.”
White notes that Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) "accused the Catholic Church of using government grants to profit from services rendered to refugees. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft charged that the bishops squandered more than $2.3 billion dollars received from the government, and praised Trump for terminating them."
Laura Loomer, Trump loyalist and so-called MAGA whisperer who called Pope Leo a "woke Marxist Pope," posted on X, "Are all of the Jew haters going to be calling out the Catholic bishops and the Marxist American Pope for condemning deportations?”
Matt Walsh, another Trump defender, White explains, "attacked the bishops, saying they didn’t make a video criticizing the Biden administration 'for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb,' or 'its support for the castration and sexual mutilation of children.'"
White says that these attacks are the antithesis of the church's teachings.
"Those attacking the bishops and making reference to the sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church over the past decades does not diminish the bishops’ call for humane treatment of immigrants and adherence to the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ," he writes.
"Trump casts himself as pro-Catholic and calls himself 'the most pro-life president ever.' But that does not mean that the maltreatment of those living outside the womb is no less a sin," he adds.
Actual Catholics, White says, are not happy with Trump.
"Catholics are swing voters and often determine election outcomes. Joe Biden won their votes in 2020; Donald Trump had a 12-point advantage in 2024. Today, a majority of Catholics disapprove of Trump," he writes.
"The Catholic Church is more than 2,000 years old. Declaring war on it is hardly civilized or politically smart. Trump has three years left in office. The Catholic Church will survive condemnation by those in power; it’s hardly the first time this has occurred in its long and storied history," he concludes.
By a nearly unanimous vote, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their first special message in 12 years, saying they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” and “concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”
They added that "we are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”
The bishops then put out a video denouncing the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” against those confronted by ICE — over 1.4 million have watched it so far, according to White.
But as clergy members continue to denounce the Trump administration's policies, MAGA has doubled down against the church.
“Boarder czar” Tom Homan condemned the bishops’ letter and the church as “wrong," adding “I’m saying it as not only border czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic. I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church, in my opinion.”
White notes that Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) "accused the Catholic Church of using government grants to profit from services rendered to refugees. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft charged that the bishops squandered more than $2.3 billion dollars received from the government, and praised Trump for terminating them."
Laura Loomer, Trump loyalist and so-called MAGA whisperer who called Pope Leo a "woke Marxist Pope," posted on X, "Are all of the Jew haters going to be calling out the Catholic bishops and the Marxist American Pope for condemning deportations?”
Matt Walsh, another Trump defender, White explains, "attacked the bishops, saying they didn’t make a video criticizing the Biden administration 'for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb,' or 'its support for the castration and sexual mutilation of children.'"
White says that these attacks are the antithesis of the church's teachings.
"Those attacking the bishops and making reference to the sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church over the past decades does not diminish the bishops’ call for humane treatment of immigrants and adherence to the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ," he writes.
"Trump casts himself as pro-Catholic and calls himself 'the most pro-life president ever.' But that does not mean that the maltreatment of those living outside the womb is no less a sin," he adds.
Actual Catholics, White says, are not happy with Trump.
"Catholics are swing voters and often determine election outcomes. Joe Biden won their votes in 2020; Donald Trump had a 12-point advantage in 2024. Today, a majority of Catholics disapprove of Trump," he writes.
"The Catholic Church is more than 2,000 years old. Declaring war on it is hardly civilized or politically smart. Trump has three years left in office. The Catholic Church will survive condemnation by those in power; it’s hardly the first time this has occurred in its long and storied history," he concludes.
No comments:
Post a Comment