"St. Francis for Modern Times"
Inside: Dorothy Day on the modern-day St. Francis; Peter Maurin, two Catholic Worker writers get to the roots of the Maurin family; and news from Catholic Worker communities from Germany to NYC.
Sowing Love in These High Holy Days
This time of year seems inherently sacred, chock-full of “high holy days.” Our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Rosh Hashanah this weekend, and the Catholic calendar seems to be following suit, with the feast days of some of our most beloved saints clustered around the Jewish celebration of the new year.
We celebrate the feast of St. Vincent de Paul—a true model of Catholic Worker love of the poor—on September 27. In the midst of difficult days of hospitality, I always remember a St. Vincent de Paul quote once shared with me: “It is for love alone the poor forgive you the bread you give to them.” As Dorothy Day might say, we cannot offer palliatives alone. What use is it to give our neighbor bread if we do not know their name, enter into relationship, let our wellbeing be contingent on their own? how can we claim to love or feed them if we do not strive to make a world where we all can have what we need to live and thrive?
Then, just two days later, we celebrate the Archangels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael. Raphael is certainly not as famous as his fellow angels, but he’s my favorite—he is an answer to the prayers of Tobit—not just because Tobit asks for God’s aid, but because Tobit also does not hesitate to leave his dinner to do a Work of Mercy. Raphael is an angel disguised as a traveler and a stranger—how many of these angels do houses of hospitality welcome each day? Then, of course, Jerome, doctor of the church who lived as a monk in Bethlehem and cared for Roman refugees is celebrated on September 30. And from there on out, it’s a firehose of holiness: October 1: St Thérèse; October 2: Guardian Angels; October 4: St. Francis of Assisi.
Thérèse and Francis were guiding stars for Dorothy Day, and they continue to shine bright for many Catholic Workers. Although publishers wanted Dorothy Day to write her own story, Dorothy said her book on St. Thérèse was one of her favorites. But Dorothy, like Thérèse, was one of the masters of spiritual autobiography. Thérèse’s Story of a Soul, written at the instruction of her sister, influenced many great saints with its simple, honest accounting of Thérèse’s “little way.” Dorothy’s own autobiography (one of three), The Long Loneliness, is regarded as a classic of spiritual memoir, and Rosalie Riegle reviews a new book that discusses Day’s autobiography, among others.
And, of course, on Friday, we celebrated the feast of St. Francis. Peter Maurin, many of his biographers wrote, is an interpreter of St. Francis. When Peter died, Dorothy eulogized him as a "St. Francis for modern times." We share an article from a previous edition of The Catholic Worker that discusses new research into Peter’s family members. Our authors share brief biographies for six of Peter’s 23 siblings—six down, 17 to go!
The art that opened this issue, in honor of the Feast of St. Francis, perfectly captures this season to me: the high holy days of harvest time. This visualization of the Prayer of St. Francis is by our faithful Roundtable artist Monica Welch. “In my hand-drawn illustration of the Prayer of St. Francis, each head of wheat is drawn around one of the desired attributes: love, pardon, faith, hope, joy and light,” Monica said. “A reminder during complicated times that we reap what we sow: may we sow peace.”
Amen. On Monday, the sacred season continues with the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The Harrisburg Catholic Worker community will be praying a rosary vigil for the people of Gaza and a just peace in the Middle East. We invite you to join us spiritually, in prayer, wherever you are. In a world of hatred, let us sow love and peace for our neighbor and their children’s children to reap.
In Christ’s peace,
Renée
P.S. Our reader survey is still open! We’re reading every response and will share the results soon. In the meantime, if you haven’t taken the survey, it takes about 5 minutes:
FEATURED
Researching the Family Maurin
When Matthieu Langlois and James Murphy met each other at a Catholic Worker gathering, they quickly learned they shared a common language—French—and a common curiosity about the life of the most famous French-speaking Catholic Worker—Peter Maurin.
In an article for 90th Anniversary Edition of The Catholic Worker last year, they shared some of their research about a few of Peter’s 23 siblings, who led lives just about as adventurous as their elder brother’s.
Peter often mentioned that he was the oldest of twenty-three children.
Who were they? What were their names? What did they accomplish during their lifetimes?
In The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day wrote that some Maurin men had followed Peter’s lead and joined the LaSallian Brothers. Dorothy also said that his youngest half-sister had become a nun and was “head of a school in Bolivia”. Although interesting, this information was not enough to satisfy our curiosity.
We started doing our own research and found that among his twenty-three brothers and sisters, six had entered religious life. Three men with the LaSallian Brothers and three sisters with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
According to Maurin family legend, the high number of religious vocations in the family are attributed to a visit from St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, where he blessed the home of their mother’s—Marie Page’s—ancestors circa 1712.
If the piety of the Maurin family played an important part in the choice of these six men and women to enter religious life, we also have to consider other factors, like the specific character of the Lozère region, where the family came from. Although Lozère is a small region, it has produced eight saints and one Pope (Blessed Urban V). Patrick Cabanel pointed out in his book Cadets de Dieu (God’s Cadets), during the nineteenth century many young people of Lozère chose to embrace religious life.
This was due in part to the strong presence of several religious orders, among them the LaSallian Brothers (founded by St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle) and the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary.
Read more about Peter Maurin's siblings here.
New Fund Created to Support Des Moines Community
In a recent edition of Via Pacis from the Des Moines Catholic Worker, Frank Cordaro introduced the Friends of Catholic Worker Fund, which, he said, is a group of friends of the house supporting the community’s many needs. The group, Friends of Catholic Worker, was founded last year by an old friend of Cordaro’s.
“Three years ago, Ray Blase, [his grade school and high school classmate], started buying the meat we use for the Dingman house meals. He started asking fellow classmates and friends to also donate,” Cordaro wrote in the newspaper. Now, Blase has started a nonprofit to support the house.
Cordaro noted that the fund is a 501c3 nonprofit. In a phone call with Roundtable, Cordaro clarified that this nonprofit is not operated by the Des Moines Catholic Worker. Cordaro said that their nearly 50 year-old newspaper, Via Pacis, has lost a lot of subscribers—and supporters—as they age and pass away. “So it’s an evolving thing, how do you beg in a Catholic Worker way?” Cordaro said.
Cordaro noted that even owning a home—much less four, as the Des Moines Catholic Worker does—is a form of privilege. But it’s a privilage that makes hospitatlity possible. The yearly bill for their hospitality of four houses of hospitality which house 8-20 people, their soup kitchen, which serves 700 meals a week, and their vans amounts to around $150,000. While that may be a steep bill for folks living in voluntary poverty, Cordaro pointed out the community was able to provide for hundreds of neighbors in need with just “a normal paycheck for upper-middle-class people.”
One way Cordaro said that fundraising looks like begging and retains the Catholic Worker value of voluntary poverty is that “fundraising” should be about meeting material needs and concrete bills rather than just making money to make money. Ray and the Friends of the Catholic Worker Fund provide “over $30,000 a year, $22,000 for meat and the rest for house staples like rice, potatoes, cooking oil; house, kitchen, and bathroom cleaning supplies; clothing detergent, seasonings, and lots of other stuff we need to keep the doors open,” Cordaro wrote.
“We are heading into new times and new ways of begging for the stuff we need to keep the Dingman House doors open, pay the bills, and maintain three other houses and a cargo van,” Cordaro wrote in Via Pacis. The nonprofit will also help with big-ticket items like a new (physical) foundtaion for Bishop Dingman House, weather-proofing one of the houses, or a new furnace.
Another way that Catholic Worker fundraising looks different is that it’s based on relationships. Cordaro said it’s critical that people who are helping the house financially know one another and the community. Ray, who founded the Friends of the Catholic Worker, is one of the community’s best cooks, according to Cordaro.
Read more about the work of the community at Via Pacis or check out the new fund’s website: Friends of Catholic Worker.
THE ROUNDUP
Members of St. Joseph and Maryhouse in New York City joined thousands last Thursday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. "I went because my country is supplying weapons to Israel, weapons which have killed many thousands of civilians,” said Bernie Connaughton, who attended. “My own country is supporting Netanyahu's regime."
Dorothy Day is included in a recent book on spiritual memoir by Richard Lischer. Rosalie Riegle reviews “Our Hearts are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir” for CatholicWorker.org. Read her review here.
Catholic Worker scholar Luke Stocking highlights Peter Maurin’s peasant roots and the importance of a connection to soil and sustainability in peasant agriculture. “We know that Jesus was, and is, close to peasants,” Stocking writes. “He preached directly to them, which is why the Gospels are full of peasant imagery — sheep, goats, and mustard seeds.” Read his essay in the Catholic Register.
Susan Crane, of the Redwood City Catholic Worker, recipient of the 2024 David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher Award from World Beyond War for her nonviolent protest at a German military base, shared a blog post from jail: “Security and peace are not the fruits of war. […] The only ‘winners’ in war are the war industries around the world.” Susan van der Hijden, Crane’s cellmate and fellow Catholic Worker, was released back to the Amsterdam Catholic Worker community last week. Read Crane’s full remarks at World Beyond War.
Catholic Worker communities can be models of diaconal ministry and the synodal church, according to a recent essay in the National Catholic Reporter. The Synod on Synodality opened on Wednesday with a Mass in the square of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. This is the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. This year, the topic of women’s ordination to the diaconate is at the forefront of the news as they convene in Rome. Read more at the National Catholic Reporter.
Cherith Brook Catholic Worker in Kansas City, Missouri, celebrated endings and beginnings this summer. An open mic night in August celebrated the founders, Jodi and Eric Garbison, as they transition out of an active role in leading the community and the completion of Cherith Brook’s storefront project. At the end of September, the community announced they had passed their final inspection to be a food-service site certified by the Kansas City Health Department, meaning they will be able to serve hot breakfast—just in time for the cold weather! Read more in their latest newsletter.
The Catholic Worker in Amsterdam celebrated a Sunday picnic and “eco-tage” on September 22 on train tracks at the Port of Amsterdam that carry coal trains and connect them to the rail line. “We sabotage the tracks accompanied by dialogue with the powers & principalities, for we wrestle not (so much) against coal & steel, but against the spirit that makes looting, killing & burning the poor and the planet possible & profitable,” they wrote. For more, read the full story on their website!
A FEW GOOD WORDS
“Peter the Materialist” by Dorothy Day
In this essay, which was first published in the September 1945 edition of The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day celebrates Peter Maurin and St. Francis as great personalists. Read the whole piece on CatholicWorker.org.
Peter is always getting back to Saint Francis of Assisi, who was most truly the “great personalist.” In his poverty, rich; in renouncing all, possessing all; generous, giving out of his heart, sowing generously and reaping generously, humble and asking when in need, possessing freedom and all joy.
Without doubt, Peter is a free and joyous person. And it is the freedom and joyousness that comes from a clear heart and soul. There are those who might say it comes because of his anarchistic nature, his refusal to enter into political controversy, his refusal to use worldly means to change the social order. He does not indeed refuse to use mystical means, physical means, secular means, the means that are at hand. But the means of expediency that men have turned to for so many ages, he disdains. He is no diplomat; he is no politician. He has so thoroughly discouraged in his followers the use of political means that he has been termed an anarchist by many, especially by our dear Jesuit friend, Father Dowling, who often has often come to us and talked to us of proportional representation.
To give up superfluous possession! Peter has no income so does not need to worry about income taxes. He does not worry about rationing. He uses those things he needs, in the way of clothing and food, “as though he used them not.” He has no worries about style, fit, fashion. He eats what is put before him, and if he prefers anything he prefers vegetable stews to meat, a hot drink to a cold, oil to butter. He does not smoke; he does not drink wine only “because it causes his brother to stumble.” Otherwise, he believes in feasts as well as fasts, and there are, after all, many feast days, days of rejoicing, weddings, baptismal feasts, name days, and all the Saints’ days.
Saint Francis desired that men should work with their hands. Peter enjoys manual labor. He used to tell the late Father Virgil Michel that if Benedictines had kept to their early ideal of manual labor, there would not be so many breakdowns from mental over-work. “We must use the whole man,” says Peter, “so that we may be holy men.”
Roundtable covers the Catholic Worker Movement. This week’s Roundtable was produced by Jerry Windley-Daoust and Renée Roden. Art by Monica Welch at DovetailInk.
Roundtable is an independent publication not associated with the New York Catholic Worker or The Catholic Worker newspaper. Send inquiries to roundtable@catholicworker.org.