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Making the Encyclicals Click: Catholic Social Teaching and Radical Traditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The radical Catholic movement that takes its name from the Catholic Worker paper and the communities inspired by it has had an important influence on the life of the Church both in the United States, where it was founded, and elsewhere in the world. This paper looks at ways in which its distinctive theological vision and praxis can revive and focus the presentation and living-out of Catholic Social teaching in this country – particularly with regard to unconditional love for the poor, a commitment to pacifism, and a grounding of this work in Catholic sacramental and devotional life.
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- Copyright © 2012 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2012 The Dominican Council. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2011, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA
References
1 London: Burns and Oates. Other lectures in this conference have drawn attention to some criticisms which can be made of this document. I have another one: permanent deacons are expected by the Church to have a specialist knowledge of the Church's social teaching and this is supposed to be reflected in their formation, presumably because many of them are in secular employment. This is made clear in official documents from the Holy See, and yet they are not mentioned once in the Compendium.
2 Adolf Hitler, May Day address 1937, quoted in Helmreich, E. C., The German Churches under Hitler (Detroit 1979), p. 282Google Scholar.
3 Many courses on The Common Good were organised by other Christian churches.
4 ‘The Scandal of the Works of Mercy’, Commonweal 4 November 1949, in Jordan, Patrick (ed.) Dorothy Day Writings from Commonweal (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 2002), pp. 103ffGoogle Scholar. [there is an abridged version in Ellsberg, Robert (ed.) Dorothy Day Selected Writings (London: DLT 2005) pp. 98ffGoogle Scholar.]
5 For an exploration of Day's theology of love see Bozza, Mary Louise, Dorothy Day: Our Love for God, Neighbor and Self, unpublished thesis, Boston College, 2003Google Scholar, available online, dissertations.bc.ed/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=ashonovs.
6 A Year at the Catholic Worker (New York: Paulist Press 1978)Google Scholar
7 Betty Gifford and Bill Gifford, Catholic Worker Daze (Xlibris 2008). Current issues of the Catholic Worker from different parts of the world bear this out.
8 On personalism and its influence on Day see Mark, and Zwick, Louise, The Catholic Worker Movement Intellectual and Spiritual Origins (New York: Paulist Press 2005), pp.97ffGoogle Scholar., Rourke, Thomas R. and Rourke, Rosita A. Chazarreta, A Theory of Personalism (Lanham: Lexington books 2005)Google Scholar, Mounier, Emmanuel, Personalism (Notre Dame 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Balthasar, Hans Urs von, ‘On the concept of person’, Communio 13 (1986), pp. 18ffGoogle Scholar.; Ratzinger, Joseph, ‘Concerning the notion of person in theology’, Communio 17 (1990), pp. 439ffGoogle Scholar.; and Cavanaugh, William, ‘Balthasar, Globalization and the Problem of the One and the Many’, Communio 28 (2001), pp. 325ffGoogle Scholar. For a study of the concept of the person which seems to be strangely unaware of the Catholic tradition, see Alistair McFadyen, The Call to Personhood (Cambridge 1990). Also of relevance to the background of personalism is Simon, Yves R., Practical Knowledge, ed. Mulvaney, Robert J. (Fordham University Press 1991)Google Scholar.
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10 Quoted in Zwick and Zwick, op.cit., p. 113.
11 Zwick and Zwick, ‘Roots of the Catholic Worker movement; Saints and Philosophers who influenced Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’ in Thorn, Runkel and Mountin, op cit.
12 The most forceful expression of this view is Geoffrey Gneuhs, ‘Radical Orthodoxy: Dorothy Day's Challenge to Liberal America’, in Thorn, Runkel and Mountin, op.cit., pp. 205ff., who also shows why Day's commitment to traditional Catholic piety is consistent with her whole approach. He writes: ‘Her orthodox faith and selfless love remain prophetically radical, radical in the true sense of the word, whose Latin word means “root.” With Peter Maurin she went to the roots of Catholic social doctrine and gave a luminous vision of a world lived as the common good. Her lived commitment to life with the poor, the rejects of society, the lonely, and her rejection of an all-powerful state and the liberal culture of convenience remain an eloquent witness to Christ Crucified, Christ Redeemer.’ (p. 221). Gneuhs is an artist living in New York who was a Dominican priest and associate editor of the Catholic Worker in the years before and after Day's death.
13 ‘We Go on Record’, Catholic Worker May 1972, in Ellsberg, op.cit., pp. 311ff.; she was in long term dispute with the Internal Revenue Service because of the Federal State's preparations for war.
14 A recent example of a scurrilous Lefebvrist attack on Day and the Catholic Worker movement would be Byrne, Carol, The Catholic Worker Movement (1933–1980): A Critical Analysis (Milton Keynes: Anchor House 2010)Google Scholar.
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23 Therese (Springfield: Templegate 1979)Google Scholar. It was originally published in 1960 and extracts are in Ellsberg, Selected Writings.
24 See various essays in Thorn, Runkel and Mountin, op.cit.
25 For a picture of some of the tensions in the movement over its Catholic identity since Day's death see Thorn, Runkel and Mountin, op.cit., especially Ann O’Connor and Peter King, ‘What's Catholic about the Catholic Worker Movement? Then and Now’, pp. 128ff., and Fred Boehrer, ‘Diversity, Plurality and Ambiguity: Anarchism in the Catholic Worker Movement’, pp. 95ff.
26 See ‘Works of Mercy’, 1 March 2011, http://benedictxvihouse.blogspot.com, accessed 18 August 2011.
27 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 65.
28 ‘More Souped-up Marxism? A summary and initial assessment of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate’, The Pastoral Review, vol. 5 issue 5 (September/October 2009).
29 Catholic Radicalism: Phrased Essays for the Green Revolution (New York: Catholic Worker books 1949), p. 18Google Scholar, quoted in Collinge, op.cit., p. 392.
30 Susan Moutin, ‘Contemporary Students and Dorothy Day’, in Thorn, Runkel and Mountin, op.cit., pp. 28ff. Students are required to maintain appropriate placements in community projects.
31 See Beck, Ashley, Benedict XV (London: CTS 2007), pp. 36ffGoogle Scholar.
32 15 August 2011.
33 Oxford: Blackwell 1999.
34 For the influence on Day of the liturgical movement see Zwick and Zwick, op.cit., pp. 58ff.