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On
March 3, 1927, Tamar Theresa Day was born. Day could think of nothing better to
do with the gratitude that overwhelmed her than arrange Tamar's baptism in the
Catholic Church. I did not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered.
I wanted to believe, and I wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a
Church would give her so inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the
companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was to have her baptized
a Catholic. After Tamar's baptism, day split from Batteram permanently. On
December 28, Day was received into the Catholic Church. A day commenced in her
life as she tried to find a way to bring together her religious faith and her
radical social values. In the winter of 1932 Day traveled to Washington, DC, to
report for Commonweal and America magazines on the Hunger March. Day watched on
December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception the protesters parade down
the streets of Washington carrying signs calling for jobs, unemployment
insurance, old age pensions, relief for mothers and children, health care and
housing. What kept Day in the sidelines was that she was a Catholic and
Communists had organized the march, a party at war with not only with capitalism
but religion. After witnessing the march, Day went to the Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception where she expressed her torment in prayer: I offered up a
special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would
open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the
poor. Back in her apartment in New York the next day, Day met Peter Maurin, a
French immigrant 20 years her senior. Maurin, a former Christian Brother, had
left France for Canada in 1908 and later made his way to the United States.
When
he met Day, he was handyman at Catholic boys' camp in upstate New York,
receiving meals, use of the chaplain's library, living space in the barn and
occasional pocket money. During his years of wandering, Maurin had come to a
Franciscan attitude, embracing poverty as a vocation. His celibate, unencumbered
life offered time for study and prayer, out of which a vision had taken form of
a social order, instilled with basic values of the Gospel in which it would be
easier for men to be good. A born teacher, he found willing listeners, among
them George Shuster, editor of Commonweal magazine, who gave him Day's address.
As remarkable as the providence of their meeting was Day's willingness to
listen. It seemed to her he was an answer to her prayers, someone who could help
her discover what she was supposed to do. What Day should do, Maurin said, was
start a paper to publicize Catholic social teaching and promote steps to bring
about the peaceful transformation of society. Day readily embraced the idea. If
family past work experience and religious faith had prepared her for anything,
it was this. Day found that the Paulist Press was willing to print 2,500 copies
of an eight-page tabloid paper for $57. Her kitchen was the new paper's
editorial office. She decided to sell the paper for a penny a copy, so cheap
that anyone could afford to buy it. On May 1, the first copies of The Catholic
Worker were handed out on Union Square. Few publishing ventures meet with such
immediate success. By December, 100,000 copies were being printed each month. In
The Catholic Workers, readers found a unique voice.
It expressed dissatisfaction
with the social order and took the side of labor unions, but its vision of the
ideal future challenged both urbanization and industrialism. It wasn't just
radical but religious too. The paper didn't merely complain but called on its
readers to make personal responses. For the first half year The Catholic Worker
was only a newspaper. Maurin's essays in the paper were calling for renewal of
the ancient Christian practice of hospitality to those who were homeless. In
this way followers of Christ could respond to Jesus' words: I was a stranger and
you took me in. Maurin opposed the idea that Christians should take care only of
their friends and leave care of strangers to impersonal charitable agencies.
Every home should have its Christ Room and every parish a house of hospitality
ready to receive the ambassadors of God, but as winter approached, homeless
people began to knock on the door. Surrounded by people in need and attracting
volunteers excited about ideas they discovered in The Catholic Worker, it was
certain that the editors would soon be given the chance to put their beliefs
into practice. Day's apartment was the seed of many houses of hospitality to
come. By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for ten women, soon
after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936 the
community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no enlargement could
possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, gray men, the
color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none
of the green of hope, the rising sap of faith. Many people were surprised that,
in contrast with most charitable centers, no one at the Catholic Worker set
about reforming them. A crucifix on the wall was the only unmistakable evidence
of the faith of those welcoming them.
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