When I was a 22 year old newly married woman, my husband bought me a book on Dorothy Day. I loved it! She embodied so much of who I was and who I wanted to be. I met people from the Catholic Worker Movement in my time working at The Port, on the Westside of Chicago, run by a few dedicated Franciscans. At the Port, we fed the poor, but didn't stop there, we taught classes on computers and tended their children while they learned. It wasn't so much a hand out as a hand holding. Flash forward a few years, as a young mother trying to find my place in the world of Catholic motherhood, I was told by a friend that Dorothy day was a Communist, and good Catholics shouldn't read her. I listened. I was having an identity crisis, I was 25 mother of 1 with another on the way, I was trying very hard to be "good" and fit in. It wasn't working, I was miserable. I wasn't true to myself or to my somewhat wild self. Reading many great books helped me resolve who I was, so did giving up on impressing others and making them happy. Now, Dorothy Day is back in my life, with a better understanding of her and her ideas, which are without a doubt Catholic.
The Distributist Review » Blog Archive » Where Are the Poor?
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