J. Leon Hooper, S.J. Dorothy Day specified the Catholic Worker's manner of living justly in contemporary
American Society as a "little way." The term was not original to Day. She first
found it in the autobiographical writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little
Flower." In its original setting, that is, within the life of an enclosed Carmelite
nun, the "little way" embraced mostly the non-spectacular, routine living of
twenty isolated religious sisters. Thérèse herself sought a way to God within daily
human interactions-"interactions" that she accurately described as
"ordinary." The application of Thérèse's term to Day's own world and her own
activities required considerable inventiveness and even effort. For Day and the Workers,
the "little way" came to characterize a contemporary method for transcending in
act the social sinfulness of, and brutal divisions within, national and international
societies. Here I will trace Day's transposition of the term from its original enclosed
setting to that of the Great Depression and the Second World War. I will suggest that the
tools and attitudes by which Day effected the transposition betrays something distinctly
"Catholic" at the core of her approach to social living.(1) Before Day was capable even of distinguishing between Thérèse of Lisieux and Teresa
of Avila,(2) the Little Flower's life and her
"way" had been endorsed by Roman Catholics as a fitting path to God from within
daily (bourgeois) living.(3) The "way" also had
been roundly criticized for encouraging purely passive images of female and lay sanctity,
images that supported the general magisterial opposition to working class and feminist
attempts to gain public voice, whether through independent labor organizing or voting
crusades. That this "little way" appeared to leave unchallenged the killing
structures of overly bureaucratic, "iron jacketed" capitalistic societies had
also been noted. Speaking from within, rather than outside, these concerns, Day the
socialist's first reactions to Lisieux and her "little way" were not kind. She
complained: What kind of saint was this who felt she had to practice heroic charity in eating what
was put in front of her, in taking medicine, enduring cold and heat, restraint, enduring
the society of mediocre souls...., for whom a splash of dirty water from the careless
washing of a nun next to her in the laundry was mentioned as 'mortification" when the
very root of the word meant death...(4) In the face of the Great Depression and the rise of European fascism. Thérèse's
"little way" did appear trivial. Even more, her way seemed to encouraged
passivity in response to death by starvation and violence, to discourage any action-much
less heroic action-that was needed to reverse the decline unto death of the West. Day
confessed to having found Joan of Arc and, of course, Teresa of Avila "much more to
[her] taste." She looked for "ways" that fit more closely with the social
hope that first guided her to the labor movement, then to writing for Communist
publications, and eventually to co-founding the Catholic Worker movement. Even Day's
mildly feminist sense of personal dignity bridled at the "sweet," socially
passive saint. She took her confessor's recommendation that she read Thérèse's Story
of a Soul as another example of "men, and priests too, [being] very insulting to
women, handing out what they felt suited their intelligence; in other words, pious
pap"(5) Day and Thérèse were eventually reconciled. Day wrote a book on Thérèse and claimed
her as a "workers' saint." To move from her initial rejection of Thérèse, Day
reconstructed the saint's own interior (Thérèse's own self-understanding) and expanded
Thérèse's outward movements toward social transformation. Here I will first examine
Day's reconstruction (or creation) of Thérèse's sense of self, a reconstruction that Day
needed if Thérèse was to be of any help to Catholic Workers. Then I will trace Day's
transposition of Thérèse's fragile attempts at social loving from the convent scullery
into Worker soup kitchens and anti-war protests. A Sense of the Redeemed Self Day's first adjustment, then, concerned Thérèse's sense of herself-a sense
foundationally characterized by a strong contrast between the creature and the Creator-the
thoroughly dependent creature before an omnipotent God. Stated in these terms, the
contrast is theological, to which Day would not, and could not, object. Often conjoined to
this theological contrast, however, are moral contrasts, two of which she did not find
helpful. The first moral contrast was constructed on strong condemnations of human
depravity, the challenge of which led Day to a positive grounding for the redeemed self.
The second moral contrast was based on parent/child metaphors and challenged Day's notions
of human moral agency. Both concern human dignity as understood within a theological
anthropology. A. The Depraved vs. the Loving Self While Day's first objections to Thérèse's way rose from Thérèse's alleged
indifference to social evil(6), several other Catholic
critiques of Thérèse found dangerous, if not fatal, flaws within Thérèse's sense of
self. At issue was Thérèse of Lisieux's awareness of personal sinfulness, particularly
as highlighted and critiqued by Hans Urs von Balthasar. According to Day, von Balthasar
"writes that [Thérèse's] family had done extremely well in not blunting her fine
and delicate sense of sin"(7), a sense that is
necessary for the maintenance of a proper relationship to one's redeemer. While at first
Day seems to applaud the steps that Thérèse's parents took to nourish a "delicate
sense of sin," she immediately qualifies the utility of this 'delicate sense' in her
treatment of another von Balthasar claim. The situation under consideration was
Thérèse's confessor's claim, addressed to Thérèse herself, that, in his judgment, she
had never committed grievous, mortal sin. According to Day, ...Father von Balthasar complains that, due to this indiscreet remark of her
confessor's, Therese lost that sense of sin which is so necessary if the Christian is to
feel pity and responsibility.(8) A strong sense of sinfulness, understood as personal worthlessness or even absolute
depravity, is not, for Day, a sufficient, nor even a necessary, entry into Thérèse's
"little way" (I will explore below Day's positive foundation for "the
way"). In fact, in the classic style of those who recently, explicitly encountered
with Freud the ambiguous aspects of the censoring self, Day could write that Thérèse
"also suffered intensely from scruples and for so long that it was a neurosis, like
the need to be forever washing one's hands. She was tempted to vanity and wept, and then
wept because she had wept"(9)). In a chapter dedicated
to Thérèse's "Mental Illness," Day returns to Thérèse's neurotic
scrupulosity,(10) examines further "Therese's account
of the nervous, neurotic state she was in for almost two years ...at the departure of
Pauline" (the first of her sisters to enter Carmel), and concludes that "[b]oth
of these illnesses, scruples as well as the former mysterious ailment, would be considered
today to be some form of mental or nervous breakdown."(11)
In a very modern, yet quaintly Catholic move, she concludes that... I am sure we should pray to St. Therese about those around us who are going through
this suffering, these "nervous breakdowns," these delusions. If her
"way" is for all, surely we should recognize her experience, and her desire to
help in this field, too.(12) Day has, then, associated any sense of moral "transcendence" that achieves
its "higher" viewpoint through a starkly negative evaluation of the self with
the category of "illness," even "delusion," not with "sin."
Clearly a proper sense of self, even in relation to God, need not rely on von Balthasar's
"sense of sin." Why did Day so emphatically step away from von Balthasar's endorsed sense of
sinfulness-even to the point of partially reducing her model saint to a Freudian neurotic?
It would appear that Day was trying to avoid within Thérèse any sharp dichotomy between
the natural and the supernatural. Here we approach Day's more positive theological
grounding for a sense of self. Day sensed a deep link between her own interior drives and
her experience of her God. At various points throughout her life, beginning with her 1938
apologia for her own conversion (addressed to her brother), Day insisted that the
(natural) loves of her life, far from hindering her, in fact brought her to God. Neither
social evil nor personal sinfulness (both of which she had intimately experienced)
suggested to her a path to God that she could follow. She insisted that "[i]t was
human love that helped me to understand divine love. Human love at its best, unselfish,
glowing, illuminating our days, gives us a glimpse of the love of God for man."(13) She expressly mentioned the man who fathered her child,(14) as well as her newly born daughter, as leading her
directly to God. The presence of her newborn lifted her up to God. Such a great feeling of happiness and joy filled me that I was hungry for someone to
thank, to love, even to worship, for so great a good that had been bestowed upon me. That
tiny child was not enough to contain my love, nor could the father, though my heart was
warm with love for both.(15) Not surprisingly, then, Day searched for similar continuities between
"natural" loving and love of God in Thérèse's own life. And she did find at
least one, though again Day needed to work hard to get at it. Thérèse's shying way from
external contacts, even while living at home, offered few examples of human loving on
which Day could construct her argument. Von Balthasar had already argued that Thérèse's
affection for her own sisters was less than heroic, which perhaps led Day to avoid linking
these "natural" loves with divine love. At one point Day scanned through
Thérèse's known human contacts, leading her to suggest that Thérèse did know something
of the love of man and woman, since she most likely heard something of that love from a
cousin, or from the women who came to consult with the sisters.(16)
Here too, though, the link is weak. Again Day mentions Thérèse's love for her religious
superior, but then backs away, suggesting that this love was not reciprocated and that the
relationship was not entirely healthy.(17) Day has more success examining Thérèse's love for her father, though even here she
encounters some difficulties. First she strains to redeem Thérèse's father (he does
appear to have been virulently class-conscious, anti-Semitic and not as competent as his
wife at earning an income).(18) Then, after a Thérèsian
description of tender touching between her and her father, Day apparently feels she must
emphatically dismiss any suggestion that the love between Thérèse and her father was
clinically depraved. She writes: The perversion of the best is rottenness indeed, and people of this day have looked
down into the depths, the black depths of perverse love, and realizing its horror have
fled from love expressed in tenderness. And yet the desire for love is so strong, the
desire for tenderness is so inherent that there is a frank and unashamed seeking after sex
as an opportunity to enjoy this all too human need of tenderness.(19) Thérèse, Day insists, "never wrote anything that she had not experienced."(20) When she wrote of love, "she knew all aspects of
love: love of mother, of father, and of family. Her love for her father enabled her to
grow in her love of God her Father, an aspect of the Godhead that has been too much
neglected.... the first part of Thérèse's life was spent in illustrating to the world
the tender love of a child for its father, the dependence, the trust of a creature for the
Creator."(21) On Thérèse's affection for her father, then, Day stakes her claim that Thérèse rose
from a natural love to divine love. It is the same person who loved her father and her
God, with no sharp dichotomy between those loves. Day candidly treats Thérèse's love for
her father as sexual, as grounded in her body and through her body as providing a language
for her love affair with God. In response to the erotic language of Thérèse's
description of her own first communion, Day argues, [Thérèse's] is the language of love, of course, and the only way to describe the love
of God is in terms of the most intense human love, that between man and woman.... this
love which makes all seem new is already described in the Old Testament as a wedding, and
there has never been a greater song of love written than the Canticle of Canticles.(22) Thérèse's "raptures of love" led her to measure all her life (and, as we
shall see, all of her death) by the norms of love. "Love was the measure by which she
wished to be judged, and she sang of a merciful Father. Of a Father who loved his children
to folly."(23) In a language that is very
characteristic of even the early Day, Thérèse set as her own goal to "make Love to
be loved."(24) Loving God was not enough. Thérèse,
Day insists, sought to fall in love with God. She strove for the union of her own fully
emotional, sexual person, passionately, with her Redeemer. And one aspect of the
"ordinariness" of Thérèse's way, Day suggests, is that these "transports
of love," "these joys," are open to all.(25)
Ordinary human nature, sexual at its core, is open to union with God, can be caught up and
redeemed in our dealing with God.(26) This complex link between natural and divine loving allowed Day to challenge von
Balthasar's insistence on a sense of personal sinfulness as the bedrock of grace. Day does
admit that "[Thérèse's] realization of the capacity of each one of us for
sin must have been enormous." However, she denies Balthasar's starting point for that
sense. Why was Thérèse aware of the "capacity" for sinfulness? Not because of
an overpoweringly negative sense of her own self. Rather, her sense of the
"capacity" for sinfulness rested in her capacity for loving. Here we encounter
the centrality of loving and, particularly, of "being in love," in Day's
theological anthropology.(27) For Day's Thérèse, the
capacity for loving, and being in love is the condition for the possibility of grasping
both the distance between human and divine love and the effective nearness of God. A sense
of dependence on God's redemptive power is in direct, not inverse, proportion to
"being in love with Love." That which is redemptive in Thérèse's sense of
human sinfulness, in her uneasiness with life outside the Carmel, her longing for union
with God and for, as we shall see, the redemption of non-believing souls, emerged out of
her own positive desire to love God. The self that desires so intently to love God knows
something of God's operative presence in its own soul. It also knows something of the
action that God's presence makes possible. B. The Dependent vs. the Mature Self So far, then, Day argues that Thérèse moved toward God, integrally and boldly, from
her natural loves. Even this move, though, appears to have been too bold for some. After
noting with approval that Thérèse's "desire to love was boundless" and citing
Thérèse's exuberant "I want to love Him so!... To love Him more than He has ever
been loved!,"(28) Day again takes on another critical
but unnamed priest(29) who judged such aspirations to be
unfitting. When [Thérèse] expressed herself in this way to one of the priests who came to give
the annual retreat to the Sisters, he rebuked her for presumption and told her just to
attend to her duties, avoid her usual faults, and not try to be so ambitious.(30) Thérèse might be a little flower, but she is not wilting. Nor was Day. If she could find parallels between her and Thérèse's moves from
creature to Creator within an apparently unlimited (or expanding) desire for God, she
could also find parallels between their senses of self, as demonstrated in two further
parallels that Day finds/constructs between them. The first is their similar senses of
personal certitude, the second their assertiveness, both of which have something to say
about the self, discussed in this section, and about moving toward social action in the
next. How dependent and childlike was the Little Flower? Day describes both Thérèse's and
her own conversions as having resulted in a relatively permanent sense of confidence based
on her conviction of God's gracious self-giving. After Thérèse recognized the limits of
her own father's love, Day claims, she "knew with a certainty that is heaven itself,
or a foretaste of heaven, that she had been taught the secret, the 'science of
love.'"(31) Similarly, after a description of her own
uncertainty regarding her own conversion to Catholicism ("I had no sense of peace, no
joy, no conviction even that what I was doing was right"(32)),
Day continues: A year later my confirmation was indeed joyful and Pentecost never passes without a
renewed sense of happiness and thanksgiving. It was only then that the feeling of
uncertainty finally left me, never again to return, praise God! Again this sense of certainty, which is "heaven itself, or a foretaste of
heaven," suggests a strong sense of personal dignity, grounded as it is on a sense of
enduring love of the self. For a socialist who in fact "hated myself for being weak
and vacillating" this internal, quite personal certitude indicated to her a newfound
maturity with her Lord. And, as noted, Day found a similar maturity in young Thérèse. How does a mature woman act in the world, confident that she is directed toward, and
loved by, her God? Here Day must move toward Thérèse the actor, not Thérèse the
passive child, nor even Thérèse the passive lover. And she finds the key to Thérèse's
"active" life in a curious place, namely, in Thérèse's disobedience or, more
exactly, in the only two disobedient acts that could possibly be ascribed to Thérèse.
The first revolved around the execution of a murderer named Pranzini.(33)
Apparently Thérèse's father did not allow his daughters to read the daily paper.
Nonetheless, Thérèse heard of the vicious multiple murders that eventually led Pranzini
to the guillotine. In what appears to be her first clear breakout from her immediate
family concerns, Thérèse set for herself the goal of praying for Pranzini's conversion.
Up until the day of his execution he had consistently and vehemently refused any attempts
at religious reconciliation. So Thérèse prayed, and looked for a sign that God was
answering her prayers. On the day after Pranzini's execution, she secretly-and
disobediently-searched her father's newspaper, finding there a report that the defiant
Pranzini had in fact, as he walked to the block, grabbed a priest's crucifix and kissed it
three times. As I will point out later, this incident suggested to Thérèse (or at least
to Day) a "practice" of social concern that would be key to Day's
appreciation/redemption of this child saint. For the moment, though, Day notes, almost
with glee, that an independent young woman defied a direct command. In Day's recounting, Thérèse's second disobedience occurred when she, her father, and
several local clergy traveled to Rome, the highlight of which was a group audience with
Pope Leo XIII.(34) Some of the accompanying clergy had
previously denied the fifteen year old Thérèse's request that she be allowed to enter
the Carmel, insisting that she wait another six years. During the papal audience, in the
presence of these clergy and contrary to their expressed wishes, she directly spoke with
the Pope, repeatedly asking for the permission that her traveling companions had denied.(35) Day's reaction to these two accounts is curious. Concerning the second she considers
the possibility that Thérèse was caught between the permissions granted by her father
and the proscriptions of the church hierarchy, and chose rightly to obey her family. More
tellingly and more helpfully, though, she continues: This is the second time in her life that Therese confesses to what is generally
regarded by those in religion as 'the sin of disobedience.' But there is no question in
her mind of sinning. There is only the conviction of the primacy of conscience.(36) Here Day does not spell out what she means by the "primacy of conscience,"
nor any notions of individual human dignity that might support this primacy. She does call
each disobedience, approvingly, "an exercise in her [Thérèse's] own judgment,"
and once again questions a pious critique of Thérèse. "It would have been more perfect if she had been obedient," it has been said.
"She should have mortified her interior sense of judgment, her understanding and her
will, and merely prayed that obstacles would be overcome for her, so that she could enter
Carmel." Rather, Day asserts, Therese was eminently a child of common sense. She would use her reason as far as it
would take her, and then live by faith, abandoning herself to divine providence. She would
work as though all depended on herself, and then pray as though all depended on God, as
St. Ignatius advised.(37) Obviously Day did not agree with the assessment that Thérèse 'sinned' or showed
imperfection in her disobedience. In fact, in her exercise of what might be called her
sense of individual human dignity, she participated in, and contributed to, God's
redemptive action in late nineteenth-century France. In her acting, not in sheer
passivity, she effectively worked toward the fulfillment of God's specific will. What sort of woman is Thérèse (or at least Day's construction of Thérèse)? Bluntly
Day presents her as psychologically sick, sharing many of the typical kinks that can
emerge from within an overly protected, bourgeois environment. Yet the saint that Day
finds usable as a model for the Catholic Worker is not a person overburdened by a sense of
personal weakness or sinfulness, nor even currently relieved of a overburdening sense of
past sinfulness. Day's Thérèse is a young woman who has some appreciation of her own
capacities for loving and a confident willingness to hope big in continuity with those
capacities. Behind the obvious kinks, Day's Thérèse is remarkably modern, at least
regarding her own sense of self and sense of dignity. The foundation for this "
little way" is a recognizably modern human person. But the activity required of the
"little way" still remains rather medieval, rather enclosed. Lisieux's Thérèse
needs to be transposed as a social actor onto the streets of twentieth-century New York. Socializing the Way So far, then, we have both Thérèse and Day moving in a sublating fashion (higher
incorporating while preserving the lower) from love of particular persons to love of God.
Such a "way" presumes and anticipates that the human person in principle can
integrally love neighbor and God, that human nature contains within its own God-given
drives an openness to God. Thus Day with Thérèse insists on a positive grounding of the
way. As yet, though, this "way" can remain socially passive, rendering the
believer/lover simply submissive to whatever authorities might dominate civic and
religious living. To move from appreciation of the natural to the divine speaks yet only
of an interior, even individualistic, movement of the heart, not of a movement into the
world that challenges the social expectations and structures of that world. To move toward
social action, Day had to link her own social concerns with those of Thérèse and, in the
process, transform the range and strength of Thérèse's own social loving. She had to
find a socially active agency even in Thérèse's enclosed living. Now, still within the structure of rising from love of the particular to love of God,
Day did go beyond Thérèse. Whereas for Thérèse the larger world was a godless object
to be feared, for Day the working classes, as individuals and as social units, offered a
base, similar to her daughter and her common law husband, for her heart's reaching out to
the divine. She repeatedly insisted that that which induced her enter the Catholic church
was, simply, the fact that workers intently walked in and out of Roman Catholic churches.
"It was the Irish of New England, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Lithuanians, the
Poles, it was the great mass of the poor, the workers, who were the Catholics in this
country, and this fact in itself drew me to the Church."(38)
From a natural good she again moved to God, in a way that included the natural in the
divine. The love of God eventually sublates, takes up and fulfills, her love of workers as
a people. Now, while Day could claim that her own love of the working classes brought her to God,
she could never make such a claim about Thérèse. The socially shy young woman shunned
contact with most people outside her family; she never composed hymns of praise for God's
presence and action among peoples (as best I know). The distance between the cofounder of
the Catholic Worker Movement and the enclosed, tubercular sister appears immense. How
could Thérèse's "little way" have any relevance for those who cleaned up after
fights between their drunken "guests"? Here, again, Day had to transpose the
saint who described a splash of scullery water as a mortification into the bread lines of
the Great Depression. Day offered two ways by which she might link the Worker and the
sister within a notion of social action. The first such link was provided by Thérèse
herself. The second emerged out of Day's own reflections as she faced the limits of her
own social action. In the process she fully socialized Thérèse's "little way,"
or socialized it as far as Day's own anarchism would allow. First, then, Thérèse's contribution. I have already noted Day's partial socializing
of the "little way" in her extension of the internal impulses that lead to God
beyond simply Thérèse's interpersonal loves to social loves, in Day's case, to love of
the working class. Day's love of workers led her to the Church founded by Jesus Christ, as
Thérèse's love of her father led her to the Father. I have also previously mined
Thérèse's first "disobedience" for its human dignity content. From the object
of Thérèse's first disobedience, Day constructs a socially active, even though enclosed
and sickly, Carmelite mistress of novices. How far did Thérèse's concern for Pranzini
lead her to social action? At first glance, not very far. From her sixteenth to
twenty-fifth years, Thérèse remained safely ensconced within her convent walls. During
the last six years of her life, she was increasingly disabled by tuberculosis, to the
point that even the small actions of convent life became impossible. And yet, according to
Day, Thérèse did reach out, as she had to Pranzini, to those in the world who 'have lost
the precious treasures of faith and hope and with them all joy that is pure and
true."(39) She offered up the physical and spiritual
"blackness" that overcame her with the onset of tuberculosis for those who do
not know and acknowledge God's love. She offered them as a prayer that non-believers might
now, in this life, "experience Love." She understood herself as an agent that
would "make Love be loved." In the divine "Economy" of the Mystical
Body, Thérèse's actions could, and as she herself had observed in the Pranzini
conversion, did have social effect. Yet Thérèse was not content to have her present sufferings aid simply the unbelievers
of her own time. In something of the style of a Buddhist Bodhisattva, Thérèse, in the
face of her own death and union with her Savior, defines her redeeming mission as just
beginning. "I will spend my heaven doing good upon the earth."(40)
Again, in Thérèse's words, "I will not be able to take rest until the end of the
world, as long as there are souls to be saved." And in a great act of faith, she
claims: God would not have given me the desire to do good upon earth after my death if He did
not will to realize it; He would rather have given me the desire to rest in him.(41) As Day would have it, the saint who "willed to be as obscure as 'a little grain of
sand' during her short life,... willed equally vigorously to be known when she died."(42) Thérèse's action for social transformation would be
fully engaged after her death. Was Thérèse effective? Day is quick to point out that it
was primarily the workers-those of ordinary lives of loving and suffering-that recognized
the greatness of Thérèse's little way. It was they who first insisted that Thérèse be
canonized. It was ultimately her love for those "outside of Love," and her
willingness to suffer that they might "love Love," that in fact did allow her to
continue working, effectively, for the conversion and faith of modern men and women.
Thérèse's social hopes, through her ongoing social agency, is being brought to
completion. At her death Day's Thérèse did not fall back in her Lord. She chose to, and
continues to, participate in God's real-world action for justice. There remains one last link that Day tried to forge between Thérèse's little way and
the activities of the Catholic Worker, a potentially fruitful link that she in fact only
partially exploited. By the mid-1950s Day and the Movement had covered considerable
grounds. Having been born in the great social hope of Peter Maurin, that is, in the hope
of agrarian universities that would gather in rich and poor, learned and ignorant, into
islands of Christian cooperation that would in turn dismantle both capitalistic and
totalitarian societies, Day and the Worker had to face the fact that their large social
hopes seemed even the more distant. When we began the Catholic worker, we first thought of it as a headquarters for the
paper, a place for round-table discussions, for learning crafts, for studying ways of
building up a new social order. But God has made it much more than all this. He has made
it a place for the poor. They come early in the morning from their beds in cheap
flophouses, from the benches in the park across the street, from the holes and corners of
the city. They are the most destitute, the most abandoned.(43) How does Day understand this falling from the great hope for social transformation to
caring mostly for those who appear incapable of escape from our social margins? Certainly,
she claims, God has led the Catholic Worker to reside with the poor and, even more, to
recognize that the poor are Christ (with all the realism the "are" can
muster). In a spirit of hospitality that advances well beyond simple kindness, and even
beyond a sense of equality with the poor, Day grants to the poor the privilege of being,
somehow, the presence of Christ in this world. And it is our response to the poor that
determines and is the forum within which our faith in God's presence grows or dies.
"When we meet people who deny Christ in his poor, we feel, 'here are atheists
indeed.'"(44) Yet, while a spirituality of hospitality religiously grounds a personal commitment to
the Catholic Worker community and its practices, Day was still sensitive to her old
socialist friends' accusation that feeding the dregs of society remained simply a cruel
tokenism. Our work is called futile, our stand of little worth or significance, having no
influence, winning no converts, ineffective if not a form of treason. Or it is termed
defeatism, appeasement, escapism.(45) How might she understand her actions that appear to have no socially redeeming effect?
Day answers that such action is a "sacrament of the present moment-of the little
way."(46) "Do we see results," she asks,
"do these methods succeed? Can we trust in them? Just as surely as we believe in
"the little way" of St. Thérèse, we believe and know that this is the only
success" (even her sentence here is incomplete).(47) In the face of blinding poverty, why be involved in the Catholic Worker Movement? In
the face of murdering nations, why commit to non-violence? Why work at soup kitchens? Why
talk with crazies as if they are sources of God's love and insight for ourselves and our
world?(48) When I lay in jail thinking of...war and peace, and the problem of human freedom, of
jails, drug addiction, prostitution, and the apathy of great masses of people who believe
that nothing can be done-when I thought of these things, I was all the more confirmed in
my faith in the little way of St. Therese. We do the minute things that come to hand, we
pray our prayers, and beg also for an increase of faith-and God will do the rest.(49) Ultimately Day falls back to a deep affirmation that God has "in principle"
redeemed, and is currently working to redeem, human social existence. Her sources and
vocabulary for that affirmation are Julian of Norwich and Catherine of Sienna. We repeat that we do see results from our personal experiences, and we proclaim our
faith. Christ has died for us. Adam and Eve fell, and as Julian of Norwich wrote, the
worst has already happened and been repaired. Christ continues to die in His martyrs all
over the world, in His Mystical Body, and it is this dying, not the killing in wars, which
will save the world.(50) In suffering with those who suffer, we participate in God's action to redeem all human
beings. In the very action of working, but also of praying, we work with that God of
action. In these social processes, we move toward Heaven, because, as Day repeatedly
voices with Catherine of Siena, "All the Way to heaven is Heaven, because He said I
am the Way."(51) God is present in even, and perhaps
especially, the ways that are little, the bread handed out to the incurably crazy. Day's version of "little way," then, is grounded in a human person who is
aware of God's personal election, as experienced in hopes and realized abilities to love
others, and particularly in the desire to love God to the fullness of one's personhood,
or, better yet, even beyond (yet in direct continuity with) the fullness of one's own
personhood. Moreover, it is a way that participates in God's owns redemption of God's
creation. To get there, Day took a bourgeois, middle class woman (not a peasant), drew
that woman into a self possession that might have appalled Thérèse's father (as it did
von Balthasar), and sent her out to transform her society into a community of believers in
Love. The degree to which Day had to "stretch" her material need not detain us
here. We note that Day reached into human nature and redeemed all that she could, and
reached across human societies in acts that participate in the Way of their creator. She
is catholic in both the depth of the human person she understands to be lifted up to God,
and catholic in the action for justice that she demands. And she is Catholic in the sense
of the great tradition that affirms the compatibility of nature and grace, reason and
revelation. 1. Behind this study is a broader concern that I only will mention
here. Most current treatments of Dorothy Day and John Courtney Murray (the U.S. Jesuit who
struggled toward a Roman Catholic affirmation of civil religious freedom and argued for
limited use of nuclear weapons) present us with a choice between the two. We can follow
the radical counter-cultural challenge of Day or capitulate to capitalistic individualism
as did Murray. (Previous neo-conservative authors offered us the choice of socialist
mangling of free markets (with Day) or affirmation of creative human dignity (with
Murray's natural law theory). Further, those who currently contrast Day and Murray have,
in their own background, a theological anthropology clearly and strongly grounded in von
Balthasar's understanding of the human person and human societies before God. The
following article lays the groundwork for highlighting (Roman Catholic) theological
continuities between Day and Murray, mostly in their understanding of the depth and
breadth of redemptive love. This presentation keys off Day's own criticism of Balthasar's
theological anthropology. For a similar study of John Courtney Murray's reaching into the
depths of the human person and the breadth of human society to find redeeming grace, see
J. Leon Hooper, S.J., 'Theological Sources of John Courtney Murray's Ethics," Theological
Studies 57 (June 1996): 19-45. 2. Day claims she first became aware of Thérèse as she lay
recuperating in Bellevue hospital after the birth of her daughter, Tamer Teresa (Therese
(Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1979), v) Day had previously encountered Teresa of Avila in
the writings of William James, and chose to name her daughter after that saint. A
similarly recuperating woman in the bed next to Day introduced Day to the Little Flower. 3. Thérèse's move to encountering the foundationally true and
beautiful within the "ordinary" does fit within the Romanticism that Charles
Taylor describes as an anecdote to Enlightenment rationalism (Taylor, "Part III:
"The Affirmation of Ordinary Life," in Sources of the Self: The Making of
Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1989), 211-304), well tempered,
however, by petit bourgeois ethics. 4. Therese, viii. 5. Ibid., vii. 6. See the first few pages of her autobiography, where she struggles
in a Julian of Norwich manner with the problem of evil and hell, on the one hand, and the
notion of an unconditionally loving God (Thérèse of Lisieux, Autobiography of Saint
Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul. Third Edition , edited and translated by
John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 13-15 . This manner of addressing the problem of evil and God, though, is lacking in the rest
of Thérèse's autobiography. 7. Therese, 78 8. Ibid., 81. Balthasar himself continues: "Judging from
Thérèse's own attitude afterwards one might even suspect that what P. Pichon [her
confessor] actually said was: had never been guilty of sin" (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thérèse
of Lisieux: The Story of a Mission, translated by Donald Nicholl (New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1954): 57f). Balthasar finds a similar lack of a sense of sinfulness in St. Paul,
and laments that Thérèse had to fight her way to a sense of her being a
"little" saint at the end of her life, not the "great" saint or lover
to which she had earlier confidently aspired. But even Thérèse's reduced state before
her death was not little enough for him. "And so, even to the end, her self-surrender
and abandonment smack to some extent of a stage performance" (p. 63). As will be
noted later, immediately before her death Thérèse also asserted great, hardly subdued,
social hopes for her post-death mission and loving. 9. Therese, 82. 10. Day adds "she did have the long attack of scruples which
was enough to make her unlovable to those around her" (Ibid., 88). 11. Ibid., 100. 12. Ibid. 13. From Union Square to Rome (Silver Spring: Preservation
of the Faith Press, 1938), 151. She continues: Love is the best thing we can know in this life, but it must be sustained by an effort
of the will. It is not just an emotion, a warm feeling of gratification. It must lie still
and quiet, dull and smoldering, for periods. It grows through suffering and patience and
compassion. We must suffer for those we love, we must endure their trials and their
sufferings, we must even take upon ourselves the penalties due their sins. Thus we learn
to understand the love of God for His creatures. Thus we understand the Crucifixion. 14. "I had known Forster a long time before we contracted our
common-law relationship, and I have always felt that it was life with him that brought me
natural happiness, that brought me to God. His ardent love of creation brought me to the
Creator of all things" (The Long Loneliness (New York: Harper and Row,
1952), 134). 15. Therese, vi. Day's two autobiographical works (From
Union Square to Rome and Lone Loneliness) contain several similar claims
from her childhood. For example, after a description of several encounters as a ten year
old, she wrote "whenever I felt the beauty of the world in song or story, in the
material universe around me, or glimpsed it in human love, I wanted to cry out with joy.
The Psalms were an outlet for this enthusiasm of joy or grief--and I suppose my writing
was also an outlet" (Long Loneliness, 29). 16. Therese, 136. 17. Ibid., 129 18. At the death of their mother, Thérèse and her sisters were
made wards of their mother's brother, not of their father. During the early years of
Thérèse's life in the Carmel, her father was mentally incapacitated to a point that
required hospitalization. He spent his last year in the household and care of that same
uncle. 19. Therese, 89. 20. Ibid., 134. 21. Ibid., 134. In a recent collection and study of
Thérèse's correspondence with Maurice Belliére (a young missionary priest), Patrick
Ahern has correctly pointed out that Thérèse herself directed Maurice to approach Christ
through his loves, rather than through his own chronic rejection of his self (a
recommendation symbolized in Thérèse's insistence that Maurice reach for Christ's arms,
not His feet). Ahern understands this as Thérèse's overcoming of her own heavily
Jansenistic upbringing (Patrick Ahern, Maurice and Thérèse: The Story of Love
(New York: Doubleday, 1998), 135-43. 22. Therese, 85. 23. Ibid., 135. 24. Ibid, 166.. 25. Ibid., 109. 26. In a slightly defensive description of her turning from Forster
(the father of her child) , Day wrote: "I had known enough of love to know that a good healthy family life was as near to
heaven as one could get in this life. There was another sample of heaven, of the enjoyment
of God. The very sexual act itself was used again and again in Scripture as a figure of
the beatific vision. It was not because I was tired of sex, satiated, disillusioned, that
I turned to God. Radical friends used to insinuate this. It was because through a whole
love both physical and spiritual, I came to know God" (Long Loneliness,
140). 27. She writes "A mystic may be called a man in love with God.
Not one who loves God, but who is in love with God. And this mystical love, which
is an exalted emotion, leads one to love the things of Christ. His footsteps are
sacred" (Italics her own, Union Square, 11). The language of falling into
and being in love punctuate all Day's autobiographical writings, including of course her
novel, The Eleventh Virgin. New York: Boni, 1924. 28. Therese, 130. 29. Apparently a-and perhaps the-Jesuit contribution to Thérèse's
sanctification 30. Therese, 130. 31. Ibid., 154. 32. Ibid., 141. 33. Ibid., 120. For Thérèse's description of the event,
see her Autobiography, 99-100. 34. Therese, 118f. Also Thérèse's Autobiography,
134-36. 35. Day suggests that, in her dealing with the clergy of her
pilgrimage group, Thérèse acquired a strong sense of clergy sinfulness, from which she
committed herself to a life-long mission of praying for priests (p. 122). She does not
predicate this sinfulness of Thérèse. 36. Therese, 120. Highlighting is Day's,. 37. Ibid., 120. 38. Long Loneliness, 107. 39. Therese, 161. 40. Ibid., 166. 41. That these several citations concerning an after-death general
mission to the world come from final statements recorded by Thérèse's natural and
religious sisters does present a problem of authenticity. As is broadly recognized,
Thérèse's sisters 'purified' much of her Autobiography (which were eventually
corrected by the discovery of the original manuscripts). The generalized wish of Thérèse
to continue, and even expand, her work on earth (from a July 17th 1897statement
recorded by Sister Agnes of Jesus (Pauline) and used by Day) does have several more
particular parallels again in recorded Thérèsian expressed desire to come back to earth
and be with her sisters (e.g., her July 8th "If, when I am in heaven, I can't come
and play little games with you on earth, I will go and cry in a little corner."), but
also and importantly in her July 13th 1897 letter to missionary and friend
Maurice Belière ("When my dear little brother leaves for Africa, I shall follow him
not only in thought and in prayer; my soul will be with him forever and his faith will
know very well how to discover the presence of a little sister whom Jesus gave him, to be
a support to him, not for a mere two years but until the last days of his life."
(Patrick Ahern, Maurice & Thérèse: The Story of a Love (New York: Doubleday, 1998),
153). The generalized wish to return to work on earth to which Day appeals does find a near
parallel in The Autobiography's "B Manuscript" (written in September
1896). Then and there Thérèse writes to Jesus: "Ah! In spite of my littleness, I
would like to enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors....
But O my Beloved, one mission alone would not be sufficient for me, I would want
to preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote
isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of
creation until the consummation of the world" (Autobiography, 192-3). It
appears that Thérèse's early expressions of loving service for Jesus came together with
her near death insistence that she would return to her sisters and to Maurice. 42. Therese, 173. 43. From a Catholic Worker essay entitled "The Pearl
of Great Price," July-August 1953, as published in Selected Writings: By Little
and By Little, edited by Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993),
112-114. Key to the Worker's distancing from labor was labor's settling into comfortable
accommodation with management, which Day deplored. 44. Selected Writings, 82. 45. From "Inventory," January 1951, in Selected
Writings, 105. 46. Ibid., 104. 47. Ibid., 105. 48. For a description of Robert Coles's first recognition of Day's
faith in God present in those at the margins of sane society, see the "Preface"
to his Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1987),
xviii. 49. Selected Writings, 285. 50. Ibid., 105. 51. Ibid., 104..
Woodstock Theological Center
CTSA 1999
Footnotes
See also: