The appeal of St. Dorothy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-dorothy-day-a-model-for-us-all/2012/12/07/7233849a-3fd1-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

The recent vote by America’s Catholic bishops to move Dorothy Daytoward canonization was controversial, but mainly among those who manufacture controversy for a living. The media have enjoyed pointing out that Day’s main advocate, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, is a traditionalist, while Day was a socialist who once had an abortion. It must be something like a conservative president nominating a raging liberal to the Supreme Court, except with eternal tenure at stake.

The application of political categories to theological matters is usually a mistake. In this case, it exceeds the media’s usual quota of religious ignorance.

Day, to be sure, would make for an interesting chapter in “Lives of the Saints for Children.” She began her pilgrimage as a left-wing journalist in 1920s New York, writing for journals with names like the Masses. Day interviewed Leon Trotsky, was friendly with John Reed, picked up pocket money by modeling nude and drank to excess with playwright Eugene O’Neill. One boyfriend promised to leave her unless she got an abortion — and left her anyway after she did.

In Day’s late twenties came the birth of a daughter and a decisive Catholic conversion, complete with rosaries, devotion to the saints and daily Mass. Her common-law husband at the time, a militant atheist, could not abide the change and left her as well. He accused her of “absorption in the supernatural” — a pretty good description of sainthood. Day set out to serve the poor, hungry and homeless while criticizing the “filthy, rotten system” that seemed to produce so many of them. She founded dozens of communal farms and “Houses of Hospitality,” where those in need were treated as humans and guests, not merely as the masses. She also protested for workers’ rights and against nuclear weapons and got arrested with the best of them. In 1980, at the age of 83, Day died at a House of Hospitality in Manhattan that she shared with the indigent.