Are Children a Good Idea?
Inside: Catholic Worker communities provide clarity of thought, resistance to the "filthy rotten system" and make a world where it is easier to be good.
Asking the questions, living the solutions
This week, I (finally) finished reading Marc Ellis’ Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century and had the delight of reading an advanced reader copy of Jeff Korgen and Christopher Cardinale’s graphic novel Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion, which comes out on Labor Day.
Both Dorothy and Peter’s lives and their witnesses point to something fundamentally wrong with much of our society, something that each of them discovered through the slow process of reading, thinking, and spending time with those on the margins. It’s easy for most of us to glide over this feeling that something is wrong with the way we live our lives, since the systems we live in don’t encourage us to ask questions: don’t ask where your lettuce comes from, don’t ask who’s making your clothes, don’t ask the person begging on the side of the freeway exit what their name is, why they’re there, or what they need.
But Korgen’s book concludes with a small snapshot of the communities who are still living out Day’s “radical devotion”—still trying to make a world where it is “easier to be good.” Our issue today highlights some of those communities who are continuing their work of clarification of thought, who are wondering why our relationship to labor and work is so unhealthy and unnatural, who are noticing how our impersonal and profit-driven ways of ordering our economy are affecting how we think about the smallest humans amongst us, who are building communities that are healthy and sustainable.
As a guest here at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker told me recently (echoing Dorothy’s famous line), if you feed people but don’t try to educate them or help them break out of their destructive cycles of thinking, you’re enabling their problems. As I told him, part of breaking those bad cycles can’t be just a personal reframing of the problem, but identifying the “filthy rotten system” that shapes our shared reality.
The Catholic Worker authors of our three featured articles have noticed the problems in our “filthy rotten system.” And they aren’t just critiquing the problems, they’re living solutions. Their stories inspire me and I hope they inspire you, too.
peace,
Renée
FEATURED
Everyone Wants a Revolution, but No One Wants to Do Childcare
“Children have become a consumer decision,” writes Lydia’s House (Cincinnati, Ohio) co-director Mary Ellen Mitchell, “a luxury item not unlike an expensive mortgage or a Tesla: good for you if you can afford them, but don’t ask for help with that. The result is a collective lack of willingness to sacrifice for children that are not our own.” But her lived experience at Lydia’s House—along with the parenting practices of the Mbendjele people—suggests that there’s a way to celebrate the birth of every child and to support every mother.
Here’s an excerpt from her essay from the Lydia’s House summer newsletter:
In an age of contraception, we assume that those who can’t afford children should forgo them. After all, if these women don’t have houses, why are they having babies?
But something deeper is going on than poor planning or contraceptive sloppiness. What I’ve learned in doing this work is that children are one of the few ways that women in our circle of care have of saying yes to the goodness of life and relationships. Indeed, they are often excluded from the things of the “good life” and cut off from healthy relationships; approximately 40 percent of guests at Lydia House spent time in foster care growing up, and half of them have experienced domestic violence in the last year. Children create family and meaning and bring joy. When all other trappings of the world are wiped away by material poverty, this truth seems to rise up.
You can read the entire essay at CatholicWorker.org.
Carrying on the Catholic Worker in St. Louis
Hospitality and resistance to “the filthy, rotten system” are key to the charism of the new St. Louis Catholic Worker community—but so is a commitment to joy, playfulness, creativity, and friendship.
Three friends who originally met through the Catholic Worker launched the new St. Louis Catholic Worker house one year ago, about four years after Karen House, the previous Catholic Worker community in St. Louis, closed. Lindsey Myers, Chrissy Kirkhoeffer, and Theo Kayser talked about their Catholic Worker journeys and the joys and challenges of starting a new community on the Coffee with Catholic Workers podcast in April, which Kayser co-hosts with fellow Catholic Worker Lydia Wong.
Myers got interested in the Catholic Worker after spending a year volunteering with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps at the largest homeless shelter in Phoenix. At the same time, she also visited the soup kitchen down the road, and found the atmosphere there much more inviting compared to the institutional atmosphere of the homeless shelter, so after her volunteer year was up, she applied to work at Andre House of Hospitality (Phoenix, Arizona).
Kirkhoeffer first learned about the Catholic Worker in college, and soon began volunteering at St. Francis Catholic Worker (Columbia, Missouri). She took a social justice course in college that exposed her to the social teaching of the Catholic Church. In November 1998, she went to a large protest at the School of the Americas, a U.S. government program that trained soldiers from Central American “death squads.”
“Boy, that blew my mind, just all of these people who were just so joyful, and (they) seemed so alive,” she said. “It was infectious. I really wanted to know what they were doing, and it was inspirational.”
One priority in shaping the new community has been to make it sustainable, avoiding the pitfall of burnout.
“How can we, you know, reclaim activism in a way that doesn't take away from us being our whole selves?” Myers asked. “One of our values we talked about is play or joy, and I think that being able to have that sense of abundance, that we're not just putting our head down and doing the work, but how can we be playful and joyful and bring that out in each other and also in the movement.”
Another value the three share is the importance of resistance work. “It's not just the works of mercy, no matter how important those are,” Kayser said. “Our goal as Catholic Workers is a whole societal change, and doing the works of mercy and trying to model (not only) what care for each other looks like, but also what care for somebody in Gaza looks like when our country is providing the bombs that are destroying their hospitals.”
Listen to the podcast or read the full transcript at CatholicWorker.org.
Making Work Personal and Communal
The Industrial Revolution was a sea change in human habits. It drastically transformed our relationships to basic building blocks of being alive: like work, food, and sleep. Colin Miller (author of the forthcoming We are Only Saved Together) has begun a new series for his diocesan paper looking at the Catholic Worker’s critique of society and Church teaching in light of those changes. Here’s an excerpt:
I am no medieval romantic, and I’m thankful for many modern inventions. But it remains simply a fact that there has never been a more momentous change, probably in the history of the world, than the transition to the industrial society that we have experienced in the last 250 years. Writer Wendell Berry calls it “the one truly revolutionary revolution, probably in the history of the human race.”
One of the most vital aspects of this change concerns the nature of work. In a pre-industrial world — a land-and-craft society — most people were either farmers or tradesmen, work was personal, and it made life personal. You literally made or raised your own house, furniture, fields, food, animals, and the rest — or at least your friends or someone you knew did. This meant that you literally lived surrounded by your own creative work, or that of your family and community. Your life’s efforts were reflected to you in very tangible ways — you were touching, seeing, smelling and tasting it all the time.
Life was maximally personal, and so maximally satisfying. It was also profoundly communal.
I recently met a man who had given up working in finance and has now become the butcher in a town of small farmers. He remarked on the palpable difference in working for people who you are good friends with. The job takes on a completely different character, for not only are you accomplishing a task, but you are also working within friendships. You are, therefore, creating the bonds of a strong local community and a healthy local economy at the same time.
I have often heard from those who grew up on farms around St. Paul 50 or 75 years ago that life was cooperative. Each season, farmers would help each other: breaking ground or planting in the spring; harvesting in fall; building a barn in the summer; haying, slaughtering, or any number of other jobs that are close to impossible to do solo. Often, tools were owned by one household but used by the whole community…
Read the rest of Colin’s essay at CatholicWorker.org.
THE ROUNDUP
Michael Setikoleko (Uganda Catholic Worker) continues to recover following his 28-day imprisonment for intervening in an illegal land grab that would have displaced 37 families. The terms of his release require him to report to the Luwakaka Police Station every Friday for four weeks or until his fine is paid. On Friday, police officials met with Setikoleko for six hours, pressuring him to drop his campaign on behalf of the villagers. See our previous story in last week’s issue.
Mark Colville (Amistad Catholic Worker, New Haven, Connecticut) believes the U.S. Supreme Court Grants Pass ruling allowing municipalities to ban sleeping in public places will result in more such bans in Connecticut, according to a story in CTPost. The Amistad Catholic Worker opened its backyard to unhoused individuals after the city cleared a tent city where they had previously been living.
Corpus Christi House (Boise, Idaho) has been helping the community beat the heat this summer by becoming a designated cooling center. In addition to refuge from the heat, the house also provides water, meals, showers, and a safe space for individuals. With temperatures continuing to stay hot, the house is looking for essentials such as bottled water, sunscreen, and summer clothing. More about the daytime homeless drop-in center can be found on their website.
The House of Bread and Peace(Evansville, Indiana) will now be operated by ECHO Social Services in a merger between the two nonprofit organizations. Founded bySister Joanna Trainer in 1981 as a Catholic Worker house of hospitality serving homeless women and their children. ECHO Social Services Director Sarah Wolf pledged to maintain the fundamental character of the house: "I see this as an amazing opportunity to make sure that the house continues Sister Joanna's mission and has the support and infrastructure that will help the house and the clients that are served," she said in a press release.
Casa Alma (Charlottesville, Virgina) has a new director in Kristan Pitt, who will be joining the community as a resident volunteer on August 1. As director, she will coordinate the residential community, manage Carlton house, and serve as the point of contact for partnerships. See the community’s announcement here.
Harriet Tubman House (Amsterdam, Netherlands) will celebrate its 25th anniversary on October 11, 2024. Founded by Claartje Vollebregt and Thera van der Ven, over the past quarter-century, the organization has provided shelter and care for more than 300 undocumented women and their children. To commemorate this milestone, the history of the Harriet Tubman House will be documented in a podcast created by Laura Lubbers, who is interviewing former volunteers and residents to present a comprehensive picture of the organization’s evolution. The podcast will be unveiled at the anniversary reception on Sunday afternoon, October 13. Those wishing to attend can register here. For inquiries about the anniversary, please email bestuur@harriettubmanhuis.nl or see the community’s May newsletter.
Jesus' approach to women and children highlights his rejection of patriarchal norms and his inclusive vision of a new family of believers, Han Song-bong says in a new lecture released by the Dorothy Day Spiritual Center in South Korea as part of their continuing lecture series. View the video (in Korean) on the community’s website.
CALENDAR
July 19 - 20 | National Eucharistic Congress, Indianapolis
Martha Hennessy Talk & Catholic Worker Roundtables
August 7 | Virtual event
The Long Loneliness Virtual Study Group
August 10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
CW Memorial & Action at Vandenberg Space Force Base
September 6-7 | Chicago, Illinois
Peter Maurin Conference
September 12-15 | Sugar Creek, Iowa
Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering
October 4-6 | St. Francis Catholic Worker, Chicago, Illinois
Catholic Worker National Gathering - Register here!
A FEW GOOD WORDS
Words from the Catholic Worker vault.
A Radical Call to Love
By Mike Harank in the October 1982 issue of The Catholic Worker
The Catholic Worker tradition [draws] no distinction between the call to perform the works of mercy and the call to protest the ultimate violation of the image of God within each person —which is the result of all war. The works of mercy, including active resistance to the works of war, are rooted in the Gospel command to bear witness to the truth and love of God in the world by loving one another. This love is expressed when we answer the call to build up and strengthen the Mystical Body of Christ through feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, comforting the sick, visiting the imprisoned and clothing the naked. But, by supporting conscription, paying war taxes, justifying militarism in the name of national security, and causing the poor to starve by an ever-expanding nuclear and conventional arms race, we mutilate the Mystical Body we are called to build up, strengthen and sustain with love.
Jesus taught us that we cannot serve two masters. When we are tempted into thinking that It is possible to serve both, perhaps we should ask ourselves the questions that St. Clement of Rome once addressed to the Christian community: “Why do the members of Christ tear one another? Why do we rise up against our own body in such madness? Have we forgotten that we are all members of one another?”
We at the Catholic Worker believe that the true power of God’s love is revealed when we perform the works of mercy and, despite our common failures, try to follow the counsels of perfection in the Sermon on the Mount.
Read the full essay on Catholicworker.org
Roundtable covers the Catholic Worker Movement. This week’s Roundtable was produced by Renée Roden, Jerry Windley-Daoust, Joan Bromberek, and Scarlett Ford. Thanks to Monica Welch for providing art.
Roundtable is an independent publication not associated with the New York Catholic Worker or The Catholic Worker newspaper. Send inquiries to roundtable@catholicworker.org.