A saint?
Scott Fina
I should have known better.
I was assisting Catholic Workers with their weekly food distribution at their house in Guadalupe, a small town in California. At least a hundred people had come for food that Tuesday morning. They were mostly members of farmworker families, and included old folks, young mothers and their kids, and a few homeless men. We handed out bags of groceries to them to take away. Some were also seeking help with other needs, such as health care and unjust treatment by landlords.
I was having lunch with the Catholic Workers. It was part of the Tuesday routine, before we headed out to deliver bags of food to folks who were unable to come to the house in the morning. I don’t remember why, but as we ate lunch I inquired about the progress of Dorothy Day’s canonization process.
I should have known that was a loaded question to raise among some of Dorothy Day’s veteran followers, who had been in the Catholic Worker movement for decades, and had all served time in prison for civil disobedience in protesting American militarism and injustice to the poor, and were fresh from their morning interaction with some deeply impoverished people. What followed was one of the most intriguing and enlightening, albeit complicated dialogues about the Catholic Church, sainthood and Christianity itself, that I have ever been party to. Here I share the gist of the discussion.
But first, some disclosures. I have been closely associated with the Catholic Worker movement for 10 years and have spent time with members of several Catholic Worker houses in California. Yet, I really can’t define what the Catholic Worker movement is. I can more easily express what it is not. It is not an institution, although some Catholic Worker houses have legal non-profit (501 c 3) status. It is not really a “Catholic” movement; many Catholic Workers are devout Catholics in the traditional sense; but many are not Catholic or are marginally Catholic, and many are “unchurched.”
Nor do I fully understand what a saint is, at least in the formal context of the Catholic Church. When I was a kid, I recall thinking that canonization movements took a long time and involved lots of hurdles. But as an adult, it seems that these things have changed.
There is a study out of Harvard that examined the statistics around the canonization process under Catholic popes from 1592 (Clement VIII) to 2009 (during the tenure of Benedict XVI). The study concludes that the tenure of beatification of people eventually canonized has radically decreased, while the frequency of canonizations has greatly increased in our modern times (https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/barro/files/saints_paper_020910.pdf ).
US Catholic.org notes that that Pope John Paul II canonized more saints than all popes combined during the 500 years before him (www.uscatholic.org/articles/201310/how-many-saints-are-there-28027). So by these measures, it seems that Catholics have been getting holier in my lifetime! But it’s strange that I haven’t noticed this among the Catholic crowds I walk in.
And speaking of popes and Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis is not helping to clarify “saintly” matters for me. Francis canonized Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II on the very same day. Those are two Catholics, and now two canonized saints, I struggle to hold together.
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was a church prelate through the second World War, who realized how irrelevant and disconnected to humanity Catholicism had become, as he observed American and French Catholics killing German and Italian Catholics, and vice versa, seemingly unhampered in their actions by their religion. In response, as Pope John XXIII, he initiated the second Vatican Council, “opening the windows of the Church” to let it breathe fresh air and see the world around it, as the analogy goes. As a result, Catholicism became much more a populist faith and Catholic morality looked much more deeply into the injustice and suffering of humanity.
Karol Józef Wojtyła became a priest soon after the end of WW II, and rose to be a Church prelate during the Cold War. His experience as a Slavic Catholic and a leader of the Polish church under the oppression of the Soviet Union, led him, as Pope John Paul II, to push back against Marxism and humanism. John Paull II “closed the windows” of the Catholic Church (at least part way) to keep out the drafts from the Vatican II reforms and help keep in older traditions, reemphasizing personal piety.
But maybe my polar comparison of these two popes is unfair. Perhaps they had more in common than not. Time Magazine has recognized Popes John XXIII, John Paul II, and Francis, as its “Man (Person) of the Year.” I must be missing something here!
But now back to Dorothy Day.
I am confident that all Catholic Workers recognize the saintliness and holiness of Dorothy Day. But there is no unanimity among Catholic Workers on whether she should be canonized. Some are praying and even promoting her canonization, while others, including the Catholic Workers at Guadalupe, have serious concerns about it. The tension and concern is around the potential impact of the formal canonization of Dorothy Day.
As a start, it was the very conservative churchman, Cardinal John O’Connor, who first requested the Congregation of the Causes at the Vatican in 2002, to consider the canonization of Dorothy Day, which resulted in her recognition as a “servant of God,” the first step in the process. This fact raises the question of what manner or in what light will the institutional Catholic Church recognize the holiness of Dorothy Day through her canonization?
Dorothy Day was a convert to Catholicism, but she became Catholic after having an abortion and a child outside of marriage, and being divorced. And she was unquestionably a devout Catholic, who staunchly supported church doctrine, and went to daily Mass, read extensively about the lives of the Catholic saints and their writings, and habitually said the Church Office (Divine Liturgy of the Hours). She was, in this regard, very pious, and in a way that would please the likes of Pope John Paul II.
It is Dorothy Day’s remarkable conversion and piety that some Catholic Workers believe that ultimately motivates the Church hierarchy to canonize her. The fear is that the hierarchy, especially after Pope Francis is gone, will define her importance mostly in that manner, and suppress her radical faith justice, i.e., box her prophetic dimension and stack it in among the many neatly ordered and rarely visited shelves of Catholic institutionalism.
Catholic Workers that have this fear, refer to a famous statement made by Dorothy Day (as did the Catholic Workers in Guadalupe), heard directly and quoted by Robert Ellsberg. Robert Ellsberg is the son of Daniel Ellsberg, who on a couple of occasions as a young teenager, helped his father make copies of the Pentagon Papers. Robert spent five years living and working with Dorothy Day in New York in his early twenties, and partly because of her, converted to Catholicism. He is currently the publisher of Orbis Books, a “Catholic” and progressive press.
In his 2015 article in America Magazine, “Called to Be Saints: Why I support the canonization of Dorothy Day,” Ellsberg recalls hearing Dorothy Day say: “When they call you a saint, it basically means that you are not being taken seriously.” (www.americamagazine.org/issue/called-be-saints ) This was a not so subtle criticism by Dorothy Day of the patronizing Catholic hierarchy that is predisposed to dismissing anything that stirs the waters.
But there is another camp among the Catholic Workers, and other followers of Dorothy Day, who believe, or strongly hope, the canonization of Dorothy Day will have the opposite effect (as does Robert Ellsberg): that her example of radical faith justice and pacifism will help bring the prophetic, social equality and mercy teachings of Scripture more into the mainstream of Catholicism, where they belong but have been too often and tragically put aside.
And it is toward this end, that the Catholic Workers at Guadalupe referred to another statement made by Dorothy Day, referring to the Church: “Though she is a harlot at times, she is our Mother.” I’m not sure whether this statement is really more apocryphal (part of lore), or was actually or made by Dorothy Day. I did find it attributed to her and quoted in an article by Kevin Emmert in Christianity Today: “The Church is a Harlot, but I Love Her.” (www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2013/august-online-only/church-is-harlot-but-i-love-her.html)
But assuming Dorothy made this statement, what a poignant, if not somewhat profane, insight into what an authentic, and integrative relationship that “model Catholics” should have with the institutional Church and its very imperfect and often coopted leadership. Is it not Christ-like to let love and forgiveness rule the day, while still holding truth to power, even when it is abusive? Is it not like walking on the waters while stirring them, and letting an internalized, radical faith lead you through the waves so you don’t succumb to them?
And perhaps this is the essence of Dorothy Day’s saintliness: being an adult in a world of powerful forces that are acting like angry children. And was not the lesson of her life, being fully human and fully loving? And was this not also the incarnational mission of Jesus: God entering creation to show us how to be fully human? So sainthood is not being Godlike, but really being humanlike?
One of the Catholic Workers took this idea a little further, and made it more concrete. He suggested that if Dorothy Day is eventually canonized, that her followers should wear T-shirts walking up to communion in Mass, the front of which would say: “The Church is a harlot!” and the back of which would say “But I love her because she is my mother,” with Dorothy Day’s name underneath it.
After getting a visual on what this would look like, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. But then I realized the idea is not so facetious—especially with what is at stake during these troubled times of the Church.
I will put it another way. I believe I have known real saints, Catholic and non-Catholics. These are people who see good and bad, experience joy and sorrow, and recognize the miraculous and tragic. They integrate these contrary realities through a journey of love over their lifetime, becoming convinced of the existence and goodness of the divine because of the wonderful potential, albeit paradox, they see in the human.
March 2019
