Catholic Worker

Radical Catholics

Priced at a penny, the periodical was targeted to many different audiences, such as the disenfranchised poor, the unemployed, lay Catholics exploring the social teachings of the faith, and the religious leadership. Its articles covered news related to labor and social movements but also included reviews, essays, and editorials that helped provide analysis of events and advocacy of the Catholic Worker approach to social problems. Finally, the Catholic Worker included contributions of artwork and quotes from church authorities, such as popes and theologians, which grounded the paper in the Catholic tradition.

This grounding was necessary, because the Catholic Worker advocated such a radical approach. The paper helped build up a coherent and consistent belief system that established the Catholic Worker movement as a legitimate, but radical, part of the Catholic social theology. The movement's radicalism lies in its practices. The attempt to have a radical approach to the Gospel, or to live out a close, literal reading of the Gospel as the foundation of society, has a long legacy; the medieval St. Francis of Assisi, for example, promoted one such approach through his embrace of poverty.

The Catholic Worker movement was the first American Catholic approach. It began when Maurin brought a couple of impoverished friends to the newspaper's offices to share meals. Day quickly realized that an editorial commitment to helping the needy could only exist if there were a practical commitment as well. Thus, sharing a few meals with these friends at the main office of the Catholic Worker became the first of the national network of the Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality, which provided meals, sleeping accommodations, and other assistance to the needy.

The Catholic Worker movement followed some simple principles, all advocated in the periodical as well. Maurin provided the first three: 1) roundtable discussions to help inform those without formal learning and to help ground those with formal learning; 2) Houses of Hospitality to provide places of social justice and service; and 3) farming communes to feed and train the un-employed. In addition, each House of Hospitality formed the spiritual center for a group of workers and of guests. All residents, whether workers or guests, were expected to share the ideal of voluntary poverty. This meant wearing donated clothes, receiving no salaries for work done at the house, and relying on donations to pay bills such as rent and utilities.

...