"A Voice for the Revolution": Translating Dorothy Day
Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic discusses her first year living at a house of hospitality, Dorothy Day's unique American voice; and her upcoming Spanish language book club on "From Union Square to Rome"
If all her friends jumped off a cliff, Magdalena Muñoz Pizzulic, 32, would probably refrain. But when one of them was applying to master’s degrees in theology, she decided to jump in on the opportunity.
“I saw him applying, and I was—I don't know what went through my brain—but I was just like, okay, maybe I should try to apply to,” Muñoz said in a recent Zoom call with Roundtable.
So the native of Patagonia, Chile, squeaked out an application for a university she had never seen, nearly 6,000 miles north of her home—working right up to the deadline. “I applied the very last day,” she said.
Muñoz’s leap paid off: she was accepted into the program. “I didn't even know that Notre Dame was in Indiana,” she said (Muñoz is neither the first nor last applicant to that top-20 university to have a fuzzy grasp on its exact location.)
Muñoz studied theology as an undergraduate at the Pontifical University of Chile in Santiago, Chile. In her undergraduate theological studies, she was involved in an organization, Mujeres Iglesia Chile, that amplifies the voices and experiences of women in the Catholic Church.
Through that group, she learned about Dorothy Day as an example of trailblazing Catholic womanhood, but she was not aware of Day’s living legacy. “I didn't know that the Catholic Worker was something that was still going on,” she said.
She was quickly clued into the living legacy of Dorothy Day when she encountered the Catholic Worker in South Bend during the very first semester of her master’s program. A student group organized a day of service for theology students, during which Muñoz helped organize the kitchen pantry at the men’s house of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker. After that experience, she was hooked.
“I remember thinking, wow, like it is possible to lead your faith and also your commitment to society, in a more committed way than what I am doing right now,” Muñoz said. She clicked with St. Peter Claver community members’ humor and politics. And she said she was drawn to the way that the members of the house opened their lives to the poor.
In the crush of graduate school studies, Muñoz did not get the chance to return to the house until she enrolled in the course on Dorothy Day taught by Casey Mullaney, coordinator of the Dorothy Day Guild and a community member at St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker in South Bend.
In that class, Muñoz appreciated learning more about Dorothy Day—particularly her complications and contradictions. She liked that Day is a saint close enough in living memory, “that we can criticize,” Muñoz said. Day is not a saint from millennia or centuries ago, whose bumps have been sanded down, she said. But rather, Day is, to her, a saint whose “dark spots” or difficulties have not yet been excised from her hagiography, and so they bring her more to life, closer to our living experience.
In that class she learned more about Day’s philosophy, too. “It was so refreshing for me that one of the most important Catholics in the United States, as Pope Francis said, was a woman who was so radical and committed and had such a strong political stance in a country where you don't see that much,” she said. The Catholic Church in the United States felt very conservative to Muñoz, and she said she had been surprised by how conservative it felt to her.
“It’s way more conservative than what I'm used to in my experience in Chile,” she said. Muñoz said she had always lived her faith in a very integrated way with her social and political commitments, through service to the poor and volunteer work. “I've always been like a full-time Christian,” she said, “not only something that I do once a week for Mass.”
In her graduate program, on the other hand, Muñoz felt that the only avenue open to her to live her faith on campus without a car and isolated from the city was through liturgical activities. But during Mullaney’s class on Dorothy Day, that changed.
Muñoz began attending the Catholic Worker’s dinners, volunteering to wash dishes.“Doing the dishes every Wednesday was actually the way for me to reconnect with my faith,” she said. “Finding out that the U.S. has this saint and movement that is so radical and politically committed, but always having the gospel at the center was amazing,” she said. “Really refreshing.”
By her last semester of school, Muñoz had already decided she would move into the house that spring. Muñoz graduated from the Master of Theological Studies program at the University of Notre Dame in May 2024. That same week, she moved into St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker.
Her new life at the women’s house of cooking, community, and encounter has provided the opportunity to share more about the Catholic Worker—its daily life, history, and philosophy—with her family and friends back home in Patagonia. Muñoz hopes to one day open a Catholic Worker community in Patagonia.
Muñoz said she has gleaned a few key pieces of wisdom from her experience as she considers starting a Catholic Worker house in Patagonia in the future.
“You just need a group of committed people; two or three to start,” Muñoz said. House, meals to serve, clothes to give? “All other things can be trusted to God,” she said. Over this past year, Muñoz said she has witnessed surprising moments of providence, well, providing. “If we actually leave space for the Holy Spirit to act, things will develop,” she said.
While before moving into the Catholic Worker house, Muñoz mostly read Dorothy Day’s writings, now, she said, she reads “other Catholic Worker’s experiences.”
Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays and Stanley Vishnewski’s writings have been some highlights for her. Maurin packs a lot of ideas into his Easy Essays, she said, and she’s found them a rich meal for her intellectual curiosity about the Catholic Worker. Peter Maurin’s Easy Essay on “What the Catholic Worker Believes,” part of the series “Five Definitions,” is one of her favorites.1
“I feel that there are so many different kinds of vocations or ways to understand the Worker,” Muñoz said. “It’s necessary to go through different testimonies and the diversity of the movement.”
One of the lessons that she has learned in community is that each person’s contributions to the life of the community looks unique. “Everybody's contributing and helping in a way that you don't expect,” she said, “learning and respecting other people's vacations will make your experience much better.”
This sense of radical respect for a person, particularly their freedom to live their own vocation is an essential tenet of the Catholic Worker’s personalism. Muñoz appreciates the flexibility that the philosophy of the Catholic Worker, its models and principles, are able to be applied in different ways, depending on the context. “Poverty manifests in many different ways, depending on the context,” Muñoz said. She notes that “the margins” and the marginalized can be found in many different corners of a society.
Although Muñoz found the religious cultures of Chile and the United States quite distinct in many ways, she thinks the Catholic Worker’s mission challenges the same underlying cultural mores: capitalism’s insistence on rugged individualism, work to earn dignity not work as an expression of dignity, and a disdain for the “undeserving poor.”
Last year, Chile had a homeless population of around 40,000, according to the Associated Press. Aftershocks from the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic fallout have increased the population, as well as migration from Venezuela. “Helping the undeserving poor, but not asking them to accommodate to this system could be seen as a project that is not worth it,” Muñoz said of applying the Catholic Worker ethos of open-handed hospitality back home. Which, she noted, is also a great challenge the Catholic Worker issues to its neighbors here in the United States.
But Muñoz is not waiting until she returns to Chile to make the Catholic Worker more accessible to Latino readers.
Starting on July 8, Muñoz is leading a weekly book club on the Spanish translation of “From Union Square to Rome,” “Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma” for the Dorothy Day Guild. Muñoz selected Day’s first autobiography out of necessity: it’s the only one of Day’s books that is currently available in Spanish. “The Long Loneliness” and “Loaves and Fishes” have also been translated, but are currently out of print, she said. “We hope this changes soon,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz will be leading book club sessions over the next four Tuesday nights, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET.
This particular moment feels apt because of the recent election of Pope Leo XIV, a pope who connects the North and South American continents and who speaks fluent Spanish. “He's Peruvian, but also American,” Muñoz said. She said Latin Americans immediately claimed Pope Leo XIV as Peruvian (and he even opted into Peruvian citizenship, she pointed out). But she also felt Pope Leo’s election has created an opportune moment for Latin American Catholics to learn more about the U.S. Catholic Church—the Church that shaped the Peruvian-American pope.
“I'm excited that it is the first book club in Spanish,” Muñoz said. “I feel that people also will be surprised on discovering a saint, a woman that was so radical and progressive in a society where we are not used to seeing these kind of figures coming from,” she said. “I think that will be very surprising and very encouraging.”
There is a negative perception, she said, of the colonial power to the north. “U.S. intervention affected basically all the Latin American countries and basically promoted all the dictatorships,” Muñoz said, referring to U.S.-backed coups in Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile during the 1960s and 1970s. Muñoz said it was encouraging to read a voice like Dorothy Day’s from the United States that was contemporary with these coups and yet “was supporting revolution, was supporting the people, was against these dictatorships that were sponsored by the U.S.”
“Especially now that the whole world situation is very fragile, I think that her voice and her message and commitment to peace is extremely relevant,” Muñoz said. Even, she said, in countries or cultures prone to isolation from center stage of the global dramas, Day urges the Mystical Body of Christ to remember that our lives, joys, sufferings and deaths, are connected to one another. “Even though these conflicts are not something that directly affect us on an everyday basis, they will in the future as a society and as communities,” Muñoz said.
Ultimately, Muñoz finds that Day’s ideas translate well to other languages and cultures, because she has a universal message. “I think that Dorothy has so much to say to everybody,” she said.
Five Definitions
[The following is an analysis by Peter Maurin of definitions given by John Strachey (Communist), Lawrence Dennis (Fascist), Norman Thomas (Socialist) and Stanley High (Democrat) of their respective beliefs. (February, 1935)]
What Communists Say They Believe
Communists believe
that the capitalist system
has reached the point
where it does no longer work.
Communists believe
that when the workers
come to the realization
of the downfall of capitalism
they will no longer tolerate it.
Communists believe
that the capitalist class
will resort to all means
that may be in its power
to maintain its existence.
Communists believe
that the Communist Party
knows how to assure
the production and distribution
in an orderly manner
according to a predesigned plan.
What Fascists Say They Believe
Fascists believe
in a national economy
for the protection
of national and private interests.
Fascists believe
in the regulation of industries
so as to assure
a wage for the worker
and a dividend for the investor.
Fascists believe
in class collaboration
under State supervision.
Fascists believe
in the co-operation
of employers’ unions
and workers’ unions.
What Socialists Say They Believe
Socialists believe
in a gradual realization
of a classless society.
Socialists believe
in the social ownership
of natural resources
and the means of production
and distribution.
Socialists believe
in a transition period
under democratic management
between two economic systems,
the system of production for use
and the one of production for profits.
Socialists believe
in freedom of the press,
freedom of assemblage,
freedom of worship.
What Democrats Say They Believe
Democrats believe
in universal suffrage,
universal education,
freedom of opportunity.
Democrats believe
in the right of the rich
to become richer
and of the poor
to try to become rich.
Democrats believe
in labor unions
and financial corporations.
Democrats believe
in the law of supply and demand.
What the Catholic Worker Believes
The Catholic Worker believes
in the gentle personalism
of traditional Catholicism.
The Catholic Worker believes
in the personal obligation
of looking after
the needs of our brother.
The Catholic Worker believes
in the daily practice
of the Works of Mercy.
The Catholic Worker believes
in Houses of Hospitality
for the immediate relief
of those who are in need.
The Catholic Worker believes
in the establishment
of Farming Communes
where each one works
according to his ability
and gets
according to his need.
The Catholic Worker believes
in creating a new society
within the shell of the old
with the philosophy of the new,
which is not a new philosophy
but a very old philosophy,
a philosophy so old
that it looks like new.