Dorothy Day The World Will Be Saved By Beauty

Looks at the life and work of the provocative Catholic social reformer from the personal point of view of someone who knew her well, her granddaughter.

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist, generous humanitarian, and devout Catholic convert. This visually rich book illustrated by beloved artist Br. Mickey McGrath depicts the fascinating journey of her conversion to the Lord through nature and the beauty around her. Brother Mickey's paintings and sketches are illuminated by a series historical and inspiring stories exploring Dorothys life's work of helping those in need. Dorothy's own inspiration, St. Francis de Sales, is also celebrated along the way with elements of his own spiritual wisdom about life, humility, patience, and other "little" virtues. An inspiring new book revealing past generations of faith and leading the next generation toward a hopeful and optimistic future.

A family memoir--as written by her granddaughter--of this prominent Catholic, writer, social activist, and co-founder of a movement dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor, offering a intimate portrait of this complicated woman and exploring the effects of her legacy on her daughter and grandchildren. --Adapted from publisher description.

For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, Dorothy Day offered an example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her struggles and concerns. Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect her response to the vast changes in America, the Church, and the wider world. Day experienced most of the great social movements of her time but, as these diaries reveal, even while she labored for a transformed world, she simultaneously remained grounded in everyday human life: the demands of her extended Catholic worker family; her struggles to be more patient and charitable; the discipline of prayer and worship that structured her days; her efforts to find God in all the tasks and encounters of daily life. A story of faithful striving for holiness and the radical transformation of the world, Day’s life challenges readers to imagine what it would be like to live as if the gospels were true.

“Magisterial and glorious” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), the first full authoritative biography of Dorothy Day—American icon, radical pacifist, Catholic convert, and advocate for the homeless—is “a vivid account of her political and religious development” (Karen Armstrong, The New York Times). After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next fifty years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism. Her protests began in 1917, leading to her arrest during the suffrage demonstration outside President Wilson’s White House. In 1940 she spoke in Congress against the draft and urged young men not to register. She told audiences in 1962 that the US was as much to blame for the Cuban missile crisis as Cuba and the USSR. She refused to hear any criticism of the pope, though she sparred with American bishops and priests who lived in well-appointed rectories while tolerating racial segregation in their parishes. Dorothy Day is the exceptional biography of a dedicated modern-day pacifist, an outspoken advocate for the poor, and a lifelong anarchist. This definitive and insightful account is “a monumental exploration of the life, legacy, and spirituality of the Catholic activist” (Spirituality & Practice).

The compelling autobiography of a remarkable Catholic woman, sainted by many, who championed the rights of the poor in America’s inner cities. When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as “a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality . . . founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than fifty years in numerous battles of social justice.” Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous conversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage. The Long Loneliness chronilces Dorothy Day’s lifelong association with Peter Maurin and the genesis of the Catholic Worker Movement. Unstinting in her commitment to peace, nonviolence, racial justice, and the cuase of the poor and the outcast, she became an inspiration to such activists as Thomas Merton, Michael Harrinton, Daniel Berrigan, Ceasr Chavez, and countless others. This edition of The Long Loneliness begins with an eloquent introduction by Robert Coles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime friend, admirer, and biographer of Dorothy Day.

Dorothy Day’s unpretentious account of the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux sheds light on the depth of Day’s Catholic spirituality and illustrates why Thérèse’s simplicity and humility are so vital for today. Whether you are called to the active life like Day or a more hidden existence like Thérèse, you will discover that these paths have much in common and can lead you to a love that has the power to transform you in ways that are unexpected and consequential. Now back in print, this short biography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Dorothy Day expresses the surprising yet profound connection between Day—the founder of the Catholic Worker movement who was praised by Pope Francis for her passion for justice and dedication to her faith—and the beloved saint best known for her Little Way. When Day first read St. Thérèse’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul in 1928, she called it “pious pap.” At the time, Day—a social activist who had been living a bohemian lifestyle—had only recently been baptized a Catholic. Some twenty-five years later, Day’s perspective on Thérèse had so completely changed that she was inspired to write this biography. She did not find it an easy task: “Every time I sit down to write that book on the Little Flower I am blocked. . . . I am faced with the humiliating fact that I can write only about myself, a damning fact.” But she persisted, and despite numerous rejections eventually found a publisher for it in 1960. She wrote in the Preface: “In these days of fear and trembling of what man has wrought on earth in destructiveness and hate, Thérèse is the saint we need.” Written originally for nonbelievers or those unaware of Thérèse, the book reflects how Day came to appreciate Thérèse’s Little Way, not as an abstract concept, but as a spirituality that she had already been living. The Catholic Worker, which she cofounded with Peter Maurin, was dedicated to feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. Day’s life, like Thérèse’s, was filled with all the humble, self-effacing jobs that were a part of this work. She found in Thérèse a kindred spirit, one who saw these simple hidden tasks as the way to heaven. “We want to grow in love but do not know how. Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it,” Day wrote. Just as Day had a conversion of heart about the Little Way, you, too, can be changed by Thérèse’s simple, yet profound spirituality.

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their story-a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them-the School of the Holy Ghost-and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common." A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change-to save-our lives.