“Don’t call me a saint,” she once said, “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily”
Dorothy Day said we are all called to be saints. So why didn’t she want us to officially name her one?
Some of Dorothy’s followers fear that by naming her a saint the church will turn her into “a pious cutout—shorn of her prophetic and radical edges—or use her to promote some agenda that was not her own. Others question the investment of resources that might better be used for the poor.”
Part of Ellberg’s reasoning for supporting the cause—beyond his conviction that she was indeed a saint—came from his study of her own writings. “We are all called to be saints,” she had once written, “and we might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name. We might also get used to recognizing the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us.”
Furthermore, she recognized the sad reality that many people no longer sought holiness in their lives: They, “if they were asked, would say diffidently that they do not profess to be saints, indeed they do not want to be saints. And yet the saint is the holy man, the ‘whole man,’ the integrated man. We all wish to be that.” That is some food for thought for anyone who thinks a life of Christian discipleship is a hindrance to becoming a fully integrated person.
Dorothy also spoke truth to power—which is certainly why powerful men have stooped to calling her loathsome—and her targets were sometimes the princes of the church. “In all history popes and bishops and father abbots seem to have been blind and power loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them,” she once wrote. “It is the saints that keep appearing all thru [sic] history who keep things going.”
In 2020, Mike Mastromatteo wrote a review for America of Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century, a new biography by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph. “The same woman who attended Mass every day of her adult life, refused to hear any criticism of the Pope, and accepted Vatican teachings on all matters concerning sex, birth control, and abortion,” he quotes the authors, “could be blistering in her remarks about priests who lived in well-appointed rectories and turned a blind eye to racial segregation in their own parishes, bishops who were allies of the rich and powerful, and Catholic writers who viewed patriotism and faith as equivalent virtues, who were more concerned with the threat of ‘godless Communism’ than the needs of the poor.”
Diligent readers of America may recall that official recognition of Dorothy Day’s saintly life came from the mayor of New York City before it came from the Vatican: On March 25, 2021, Bill de Blasio announced that a 4,500-passenger boat on the Staten Island Ferry line will be named for Dorothy Day. It’s fitting, isn’t it—the Staten Island Ferry is that most communist of plots: a free public amenity.
Day seemed to have a deep understanding, and therefore opposition to clericalism long before Francis named it.
ReplyDeleteDay like Merton held that being a saint was really important, at the same time that both saw through the pietism that is a counterpart of clericalism.
She sounds like a saint to me. I don't believe she'd be the first saint in the canon to call out hierarchical slackness and misbehavior.
ReplyDeleteIf "free" transportation is the essence of Communism, then let us have more Communism. I'd prefer not to have to pay tolls on highways around here.
I don't believe she'd be the first saint in the canon to call out hierarchical slackness and misbehavior.
DeleteI often read the brief lives of saints on the Universalis website. There were many who spent their lives either reforming dioceses or monastic orders. While they also often took care of the poor and the sick, it seems that being a "holy pest" is part of the job description of a saint.
"Diligent readers of America may recall that official recognition of Dorothy Day’s saintly life came from the mayor of New York City before it came from the Vatican"
ReplyDeleteIsn't she already designated a Servant of God?
At their November 2012 meeting, the U.S. bishops unanimously supported her cause, and the Vatican accepted the recommendation, naming her “Servant of God.” If an investigation proves her life to be exceptionally virtuous, she will be declared “venerable.
DeleteThis is in the news because New York will be sending material over to the Vatican from its investigation. Eventually it is expected that she will be declared venerable, the step before "Blessed" and then "Saint" both of which require miracles.