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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Dorothy Day, "Love is the Measure!"

Jim Forest, in his compelling book, Love is the Measure, (a biography of Dorothy Day, founder of the 1900s Catholic Worker Movement) writes, “It pained her [Dorothy] to see ‘business like priests’ who seemed more like ‘Cain than Abel.’ who ignored the poor and never said a word about social justice. Yet she was grateful that even they offered her access to the sacraments. She took comfort in knowing that there were other priests who lived poorly and ‘gave their lives daily for others.’ However, often it seemed that Christ was hidden, rather than revealed by the Church. The bishops and the clergy seemed often unaware of the poor, yet the poor were in the Church. Dorothy surmised, ‘If only it was less a Church of charities and more a Church of social justice. I felt charity was a word to choke over. Who wanted charity?’ It seemed all too often that the charities were hardly better than government agencies, heavy with bureaucracy and lacking human touch.”

The Catholic Worker Movement was founded by Dorothy Day (+1980) and Peter Maurin (+1949).
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