The following was sent to me by a friend. It is taken from an article that she offered for publication in her day, but was refused. No doubt, had the blogosphere existed then as now, we could have read it here. I offer it for your consideration in light of my most recent post.
A Jew came into the office of The Catholic Worker the other day and sat around and read for a while. He nosed through Cahill’s Christian State and condemned it for its anti-Semitism. Then he looked at a missal for a while and hummed through some of the Gregorian plain chant.
“I cannot,” he said, “be a Communist because I believe in God.” And he said it sadly because he believed that the Communists were nearer to social justice in their efforts to bring about a proletarian state than were the believers in God.
When he left he took with him the apocryphal books of the Old Testament and the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila.
People have been calling the office of The Catholic Worker and asking us if we had anything to do with the street meetings which were going on over at Long Island Station in Brooklyn. Our paper was being distributed over there, after rabid anti-Jew speeches. The men who spoke to us over the telephone said that they could find no race antipathies in The Catholic Worker, but they wanted to know what right Jew-baiters had to take over our paper as literature to distribute.
There were three Catholics speaking over in Brooklyn and by appealing to the baser instincts in their audience they were getting a huge crowd, a cheering crowd, which stood around for three hours listening to speakers who pointed out how red-blooded and 100 percent American they were, how filled with intestinal integrity, and how some scum parasites of Europe had come over here and taken over the country. The great danger was the Jew. All evils came from the Jew. Jewish materialism was the cause of all our ills. It was the Jew who brought about the revolution in Russia. It was Jews who ruined Germany. Hitler was merely trying to restore law and order.
We have consistently tried to avoid discussion of European questions in the paper we are getting out. We feel that we can’t take up the subject of Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico, let alone China. (One time on a bitter cold night last winter I was walking down Eighth Street and there was a cheering Communist parade coming around the corner. On all sides there was hunger and evictions, strikes and lockouts. Millions, fifteen or seventeen millions of men out of work. Forty-five millions dependent upon relief of some kind or another. But the Communists in their world-wide altruistic frenzy were not at that moment engaged in protesting present and near-at-home evils. Their banners bore the slogans, Down with Chiang Kai Chek!)
I repeat, we the editors of The Catholic Worker had decided not to venture on world affairs. But when Catholics get up on New York streets and arouse race hatred in their Catholic listeners, then it is time for us to take a stand.
We believe that Hitler owes his success to the fact that it is easier to arouse a people against something concrete like a race than against an idea. It is not just the idea of materialism that the German people are fighting. They have made the Jew as a race the scapegoat. They have fastened on it the ills of present-day society. They have blamed Jews for defeat during the war, for the inflation after the war, for the present ills of the capitalist system. And even though individuals of the race, even though large masses of the race are guilty of the sins with which they are charged, the animus aroused against them is singular in that it is not an animus against the evils attendant on their actions, but against the Jews themselves.
To criticize the Jews for the protest which Jews have organized in this country and to say, as I heard them say at Long Island Station, “Are the Jews a sacred race that this enormous protest should have been organized?” is to be manifestly unfair. If no protests were organized on account of the persecution in Mexico or Spain, it is the fault of the Catholics themselves in that they are not naturally vociferous. Why didn’t all the Knights of Columbus, all the St. Vincent de Paul men, all the Holy Name men, all organizations in fact, hire Madison Square Garden themselves, form a parade that would block traffic for some ten hours and broadcast a huge protest against what was and is going on in Mexico?
Another thing, horrible as the persecution of the Catholics is, it is not a persecution of a race or people. It is all Catholics, of whatever nationality, that are having to put up a struggle for a position. The Times tried to point this out when they said that in Spain it was ex-Catholic against Catholic. What they should have said is that it was Spaniard against Spaniard. The persecution in Germany is actually a persecution of the Jews as a race. A stiff-necked generation. Not because they are Communists especially. Not because they are materialists. Many of them are not Communists and some of the most religious-minded men are Jews. But it is all Jews who are being fought and excoriated. It is the old pogrom spirit being revived. It is comparable only to the persecution of the Negro because of his race. It seems to be easy to arouse people to a concrete hatred of race. It is easy for children to fall into contemptuous attitudes because of race differences. And I believe that Hitler could never have gotten the following he has if he had not given to his fellow Germans someone, not something, to hate. It is a hatred primitive, fundamental, base.
For Catholics or for anyone to stand up in the public squares and center their hatred against Jews is to sidestep the issue before the public today. It is easier to fight the Jew than it is to fight for social justice that is what it comes down to. One can be sure of applause. One can find a bright glow of superiority very warming on a cold night. If those same men were to fight for Catholic principles of social justice they would be shied away from by Catholics as radicals; they would be heckled by Communists as authors of confusion; they would be hurt by the uncomprehending indifference of the mass of people.
God made us all. We are all members or potential members of the mystical body of Christ. We don’t want to extirpate people; we want to go after ideas. As St. Paul said, “we are not fighting flesh and blood but principalities and powers.”
In addition to getting out a paper, the editors of The Catholic Worker are engaging in a fight against the Unemployed Councils of the Communist Party. To combat them they are doing the same thing the Communists are doing, helping the unemployed to get relief, clothing, food and shelter. But we are cooperating with the Home Relief instead of obstructing them. Two or three times a week we have eviction cases. When a desperate man or woman comes in asking for help, we have to call the Home Relief to find out about getting a rent check. Then we have to find a landlord who will accept the voucher. Usually they won’t. There is only one landlord in our entire block who will take them. Over on Avenue B there is an Irish landlord willing to cooperate. On 17th Street there is a Jew. He is a Godsend because he has three houses.
After we have found an apartment, we have to commandeer a truck and men to do the moving. The sixteen-year-old boys in our neighborhood have been most helpful. Then there are always unemployed men coming into the office who are eager to help.
The other day we had a German Protestant livery stable man, giving us the use of a horse and wagon to move a Jewish family, and five Catholic unemployed men assisting their brother the Jew in getting transferred.
It is a situation which typifies the point I wish to make, that we are all creatures of God and members or potential members of the Mystical Body. This is something which those Catholics who bait the Jews lose sight of.
Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was the cofounder with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement in 1933.
A Jew came into the office of The Catholic Worker the other day and sat around and read for a while. He nosed through Cahill’s Christian State and condemned it for its anti-Semitism. Then he looked at a missal for a while and hummed through some of the Gregorian plain chant.
“I cannot,” he said, “be a Communist because I believe in God.” And he said it sadly because he believed that the Communists were nearer to social justice in their efforts to bring about a proletarian state than were the believers in God.
When he left he took with him the apocryphal books of the Old Testament and the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila.
People have been calling the office of The Catholic Worker and asking us if we had anything to do with the street meetings which were going on over at Long Island Station in Brooklyn. Our paper was being distributed over there, after rabid anti-Jew speeches. The men who spoke to us over the telephone said that they could find no race antipathies in The Catholic Worker, but they wanted to know what right Jew-baiters had to take over our paper as literature to distribute.
There were three Catholics speaking over in Brooklyn and by appealing to the baser instincts in their audience they were getting a huge crowd, a cheering crowd, which stood around for three hours listening to speakers who pointed out how red-blooded and 100 percent American they were, how filled with intestinal integrity, and how some scum parasites of Europe had come over here and taken over the country. The great danger was the Jew. All evils came from the Jew. Jewish materialism was the cause of all our ills. It was the Jew who brought about the revolution in Russia. It was Jews who ruined Germany. Hitler was merely trying to restore law and order.
We have consistently tried to avoid discussion of European questions in the paper we are getting out. We feel that we can’t take up the subject of Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico, let alone China. (One time on a bitter cold night last winter I was walking down Eighth Street and there was a cheering Communist parade coming around the corner. On all sides there was hunger and evictions, strikes and lockouts. Millions, fifteen or seventeen millions of men out of work. Forty-five millions dependent upon relief of some kind or another. But the Communists in their world-wide altruistic frenzy were not at that moment engaged in protesting present and near-at-home evils. Their banners bore the slogans, Down with Chiang Kai Chek!)
I repeat, we the editors of The Catholic Worker had decided not to venture on world affairs. But when Catholics get up on New York streets and arouse race hatred in their Catholic listeners, then it is time for us to take a stand.
We believe that Hitler owes his success to the fact that it is easier to arouse a people against something concrete like a race than against an idea. It is not just the idea of materialism that the German people are fighting. They have made the Jew as a race the scapegoat. They have fastened on it the ills of present-day society. They have blamed Jews for defeat during the war, for the inflation after the war, for the present ills of the capitalist system. And even though individuals of the race, even though large masses of the race are guilty of the sins with which they are charged, the animus aroused against them is singular in that it is not an animus against the evils attendant on their actions, but against the Jews themselves.
To criticize the Jews for the protest which Jews have organized in this country and to say, as I heard them say at Long Island Station, “Are the Jews a sacred race that this enormous protest should have been organized?” is to be manifestly unfair. If no protests were organized on account of the persecution in Mexico or Spain, it is the fault of the Catholics themselves in that they are not naturally vociferous. Why didn’t all the Knights of Columbus, all the St. Vincent de Paul men, all the Holy Name men, all organizations in fact, hire Madison Square Garden themselves, form a parade that would block traffic for some ten hours and broadcast a huge protest against what was and is going on in Mexico?
Another thing, horrible as the persecution of the Catholics is, it is not a persecution of a race or people. It is all Catholics, of whatever nationality, that are having to put up a struggle for a position. The Times tried to point this out when they said that in Spain it was ex-Catholic against Catholic. What they should have said is that it was Spaniard against Spaniard. The persecution in Germany is actually a persecution of the Jews as a race. A stiff-necked generation. Not because they are Communists especially. Not because they are materialists. Many of them are not Communists and some of the most religious-minded men are Jews. But it is all Jews who are being fought and excoriated. It is the old pogrom spirit being revived. It is comparable only to the persecution of the Negro because of his race. It seems to be easy to arouse people to a concrete hatred of race. It is easy for children to fall into contemptuous attitudes because of race differences. And I believe that Hitler could never have gotten the following he has if he had not given to his fellow Germans someone, not something, to hate. It is a hatred primitive, fundamental, base.
For Catholics or for anyone to stand up in the public squares and center their hatred against Jews is to sidestep the issue before the public today. It is easier to fight the Jew than it is to fight for social justice that is what it comes down to. One can be sure of applause. One can find a bright glow of superiority very warming on a cold night. If those same men were to fight for Catholic principles of social justice they would be shied away from by Catholics as radicals; they would be heckled by Communists as authors of confusion; they would be hurt by the uncomprehending indifference of the mass of people.
God made us all. We are all members or potential members of the mystical body of Christ. We don’t want to extirpate people; we want to go after ideas. As St. Paul said, “we are not fighting flesh and blood but principalities and powers.”
In addition to getting out a paper, the editors of The Catholic Worker are engaging in a fight against the Unemployed Councils of the Communist Party. To combat them they are doing the same thing the Communists are doing, helping the unemployed to get relief, clothing, food and shelter. But we are cooperating with the Home Relief instead of obstructing them. Two or three times a week we have eviction cases. When a desperate man or woman comes in asking for help, we have to call the Home Relief to find out about getting a rent check. Then we have to find a landlord who will accept the voucher. Usually they won’t. There is only one landlord in our entire block who will take them. Over on Avenue B there is an Irish landlord willing to cooperate. On 17th Street there is a Jew. He is a Godsend because he has three houses.
After we have found an apartment, we have to commandeer a truck and men to do the moving. The sixteen-year-old boys in our neighborhood have been most helpful. Then there are always unemployed men coming into the office who are eager to help.
The other day we had a German Protestant livery stable man, giving us the use of a horse and wagon to move a Jewish family, and five Catholic unemployed men assisting their brother the Jew in getting transferred.
It is a situation which typifies the point I wish to make, that we are all creatures of God and members or potential members of the Mystical Body. This is something which those Catholics who bait the Jews lose sight of.
Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was the cofounder with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement in 1933.
"...even though large masses of the race are guilty of the sins with which they are charged..."
ReplyDeleteHow telling this quote is. Even in the writer's zeal to be seen as above the fray and without racial bias- there it is, in plain view. Racism, couched in piety.
How "telling" indeed!
ReplyDeleteIs it not closer to the heart of Christ to read that line in the entirety of her argument and conclude:
-that even "THOUGH", may be interpreted, as if to say even "IF"" Is that not the modern manner of speech today?
- that, even IF/THOUGH you granted credence to the reasoning of your opponents prejudice;
...it would still be in violation of his claim to be among Christs' followers if were to act upon his hatred... it would break his covenant with God to harm any individual on the basis of race.
He would sin.
(con't next comment)
(continued)
ReplyDeleteGod clearly calls that person to bring that hatred and prejudice to the Cross of Christ and be washed clean of it in His blood.
I choose to err on the side of generosity with God's mercy, rather than too severe with His judgement, when called upon to discern His will for me in such decisions as this.
I believe this is the path that Christ call's me to walk as a follower of the Lord of Mercies.
It is for people who are willing to allow such an interpretation of Dorothy Day's heart that I search. For who among us can truly KNOW the heart of another?
So, I ask you please: let us begin this journey by setting this one simple guide to follow. "When in doubt, may charity win out" in knowing the guide of the Good Shepherd, to know His will.
Fr. Tim
Charity, yes. And we are not to judge, I feel this deeply, Fr.Tim. But to have blindness to the inherent bigotry in her writing, no. For that is the trunk of the matter- this lady was, herself, a bigot 9in her thinking about the Jewish people, no matter how high minded or kind of heart she felt that she was being. We are not to judge her, because we are not here to judge, but to deny the facts is not honest. Let us instead agree that we would hope that her inherent bigotry was a product of ignorance and the time that she lived in, and not something that we will accept in today's more educated world.
ReplyDeleteGod usually speaks to us through "clay vessels"; sinful and defective humans. It is impossible to find an exception. I freely grant that you may be justified in holding your opinion of Dorothy Day as holding the mindset that she does.
ReplyDeleteBut how then could we hear that whisper of faith? I do believe such a thing exists. Where would it be found if not on soiled vessel?. Did Christ not do as much when he wrote in the dust of the earth? If the mud of the earth could carry the inscription of God, is it not likely that we would find him in by searching in places where we might not have thought to find Him? Again I say, I do believe that He is in fact, most likely to be found exactly within those who are flawed. I don't pose this question rhetorically but believing that you may have some insight to offer which I may benefit from.
....con't
(continued)
ReplyDeleteI described your writings of your blog as being inspiring, and "in-spired". "That" voice that spoke your story to you as you wrote your prose;
that muse which revealed that hidden insight of your "dimmet perambulations"to you is related (least a "cousin") to the voice which I believe to be the urging of Eternal wisdom. I seek to know how the respective "inspirations" are experienced, so to be able to better discern what is wisdom from that which is the folly of my own creation. So....
What qualities do you attribute to that voice; the one which first spoke of a hidden truth? Is it lyrical? What is it about that insight that struck you and inspired you to write your post.
I wonder if you can help me to take a walk through (what I offer as a "limited" exploration of our respective inner "sanctum sanctorum".
I respectfully await your reply
Fr. Tim
Dear Fr.Tim, it is my humble belief that everything that we are, all that exists, is made from G-d, and so is of G-d, truly. I am but a small portion of the light and the dark, as are we all. My opinion of this subject is that if this kind and G-d loving woman couldn't keep those ideas from her own writing in that time, when she was clearly trying to ameliorate a negative force, then obviously there was a common mindset at the time against the Jewish people, and that makes so many cruel amd unkindly motivated things that happened in that time, which are inexplicably maddening to us in this time, quite explainable. How can people who know what is happening to another people stand by without helping? How did those people reconcile turning their backs on Germany, and then Poland, for so long, while we now know that they DID know what was going on? Perhaps some of the reason is that the people being maligned were already a maligned people, and perhaps most people then would have been hard pressed to behave with charity and kindness towards a people who even loving, Christian minded folks would say "...even though large masses..." etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sobering sentence, that one. For me, it is a reminder to be ever mindful of my own thinking about other peoples, whether they differ from me through their race or religion, or even their choice of sports team! :) Thank you for posting here, especially on such thoughtful and mind expanding subjects. I will follow your blog, and I am certain that I shall learn a great deal from your erudite words and open heart.