Bringing Hope to the Gates of Hell
Six arrested in Kansas Action; Des Moines Catholic Worker remembers Bob Cook; Mattie Jenkins on Farming at Oscar Romero House in Kansas; Jeannine M. Pitas on Pope Leo XIV's inauguration and more
This past week, we at the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Worker here in Harrisburg hosted Nate Tinner-Williams, co-founder of the Black Catholic Messenger, for an incredible lecture on the Black Catholics who made the American Catholic Church—as Nate pointed out, the first Black Catholics arrived in the Americas more than a century before Jamestown’s 1619. And, ever since then, they have faced oppression, segregation, racism, but they have continued to break barriers—becoming bishops, priests, starting religious orders, spilling their blood in acts of martyrdom for freedom. It was an enlightening clarification of thought about a chapter of church history and national memory that has been suppressed and ignored.
In honor of his hosts, Nate mentioned Dr. Arthur Falls, the first Black Catholic Worker in Chicago, who asked Dorothy to represent Black workers on her paper’s masthead and who desegregated Chicago hospitals.
Yesterday, we closed out the speaker series we had hosted in honor of the Catholic Worker’s ninety-second anniversary this May, with mass with Bishop Timothy Senior and a lecture by Martha Hennessy, who spoke about Dorothy Day’s witness of hope during the special jubilee year of mercy.
In contrast to the jubilee’s “holy doors,” Martha spoke evocatively about all the “gates of hell” she has stood witness at—Kings Bay, Georgia, Danbury Prison, Rafah Crossing in Gaza—at each door, she said, she has brought hope.
Martha’s image resonated with many attendees. How many of us feel as thought the gates of hell have opened up right beneath our feet and are sucking our neighbors into the abyss?
Her reminder of faith’s demand to meet the gates of hell with faith, hope, and love was as timely as ever. And her witness of faith in action—and that of her “granny,” Dorothy Day—is a reminder of that love against which the gates of hell will never prevail. We hope our stories within remind you of that love as well.
peace,
Renée
FEATURED
Catholic Workers Protest Nuclear Weapons in Kansas City
At dawn on Monday, May 19, a group of 23 activists greeted workers arriving for the early shift at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC), a sprawling Honeywell-run facility that manufactures 80% of the non-nuclear components for the United States’ nuclear weapons arsenal. The protest was part of a weekend gathering of prayer, reflection, and resistance organized by PeaceWorks Kansas City, with support from Cherith Brook Catholic Worker and Jerusalem Farm, a Catholic intentional community. Catholic Workers from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin participated in the weekend.
Protesters held signs and banners condemning the facility’s role in the U.S. nuclear weapons modernization effort, including the accelerated production of the B61-13 gravity bomb—a device reportedly 25 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. The KCNSC is currently involved in seven modernization programs spanning land, air, and sea-based nuclear systems.
In anticipation of the protest, KCNSC officials rerouted employees to another entrance; however, protesters brought their message to hundreds of morning commuters passing by the facility.
As part of the demonstration, six activists crossed the property line and were arrested. They face trespassing charges and are scheduled to appear in Jackson County court in late June. Among the six were Mike Miles (Anathoth Catholic Worker Farm, Wisconsin), Brian Terrell, and a former member of Holy Family Catholic Worker in Kansas City, Brother Louis Rodemann.
Read more at catholicworker.org
Des Moines Catholic Worker Remembers Bob Cook
Friends, family, and fellow activists gathered May 17 at St. Paul Presbyterian Church to honor the life of Bob Cook, a longtime member of the Des Moines Catholic Worker and a man remembered for his deep faith, radical hospitality, and unwavering commitment to justice.
Frank Cordaro, co-founder of the Des Moines Catholic Worker, delivered a powerful remembrance of Cook, describing him as his “best friend—outside of family, closer to me than anybody I know.” The two first met in 1976, when Cordaro was leaving seminary to start a Catholic Worker house and Cook was serving on the board of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. Their friendship grew through weekly meetings grounded in Scripture and action.
“Bob literally chose a life that was not normal,” Cordaro said. “We had no trouble giving up everything we had to go follow Jesus—we were that crazy.”
Photos from the memorial are available on St. Paul Presbyterian’s Facebook page; see a video of the service, featuring Cordaro’s eulogy (accompanied by a transcript), at CatholicWorker.org.
CW Reads: To Dust You Shall Return
Mattie Jenkins of Romero Catholic Worker in Wichita, Kansas, shared a reflection on farming from their recent edition of Radix, the newspaper of their community in Friday’s CW Reads.
Of those things in life that speak for themselves, I believe farming is one. No matter how distant any one of us may be from where our food is grown, we all know that its availability is thanks to the work of farmers.
Still, I think there is a spiritual value to farming that goes beyond material production; there is something deeply human and indeed, deeply Christian about what we call farming. Catherine Doherty points to this in her book, Apostolic Farming, and one feels while reading her book that farming surely must have a place among the more common acts of prayer and worship practiced by Christians.
CW Reads: Pope Leo XIV’s Inaugural Mass Calls Us All To Renewed Faith
Jeannine M. Pitas, a former friend of the Dubuque, Iowa Catholic Worker, shared a perspective on Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration Mass from St. Peter’s Square for Thursday’s CW Reads. She writes:
For the past several years, I’ve been researching polarization and division within the Church – something that Leo clearly has little patience for, instead urging us to find common ground.
“We are called to offer God’s love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people,” he said in his homily.
But some commentators have noted that a greater problem in the Church is not disunity, but disengagement. Though Christ’s greatest commandment was for us to love one another, this love is not the reputation that Christians have earned for ourselves. More often we are known for intolerance, for judgment, for using our faith to justify whatever we see fit, from destruction of the earth to colonization. But this was not Jesus’ message.
COMMUNITY NEWS & NEWSLETTERS
Little Platte Farm and Dandelion House Featured on Podcast
After an eight-month hiatus, the Coffee with Catholic Workers podcast is back with episodes featuring Little Platte Catholic Worker Farm (Platteville, Wisconsin) and Dandelion House (Portland, Oregon). In their interview with Fumi Tosu (Dandelion House), hosts Leo Kayser and Lydia Wong ask about “the difference between starting a new house and continuing the work of an existing community, the name of the new Portland Catholic Worker community, and how his family history has influenced his peace activism.”
And in their interview with Lincoln Morris-Winter and Allyson Polman-Winter, Theo and Lydia ask “how their previous experiences in community inform their intentionality in slowly building a strong foundation for a sustainable community.”
Catch the full episodes wherever you stream your podcasts or on the Coffee with Catholic Workers YouTube channel.
Rose of Sharon CW Builds Village of Mud-Built Tiny Homes
The Rose of Sharon Catholic Worker in Durham, North Carolina, is slowly building a village of mud-built tiny houses, tree houses, and shared infrastructure on three vacant lots in Durham’s Bragtown neighborhood, according to an update to the community’s listing on CatholicWorker.org. The project broke ground on its first structure—an outhouse with composting toilets—in late 2023.
The community sold its longtime home on Rose of Sharon Road in 2023 after discerning that a rural single-family home no longer met the needs of the people they served. “We need a physical layout that allows everyone to have privacy in a living space that is truly their own,” the community wrote in a 2023 blog post, “and, at the same time, also allows shared infrastructure to look and feel shared—not like ‘it’s my kitchen, I’m just letting you use it.’”
They are using natural and sustainable building methods—including cob construction, shed-to-home conversions, and solar power—while continuing mutual aid work focused on housing, food rescue, and community organizing.
People currently living in tents or cars are welcome to stay on the property, where they are less likely to be harassed by police and can access basic services and community.
For more information, visit roseofsharoncw.org.
CW IN THE MEDIA
Fast for Gaza Launches
A coalition of military veterans, Christian peace groups, and humanitarian advocates launched a 40-day “Veterans & Allies Fast for Gaza” on May 22, gathering at the Isaiah Wall near the United Nations to protest the siege and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
The fast, led by Veterans for Peace and co-sponsored by 28 groups, including Pax Christi USA, calls for two demands: the immediate resumption of full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority and a halt to all U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. Fasters in New York are limiting themselves to just 250 calories a day, mirroring reported caloric intake levels in Gaza. At least 249 people have registered to join the fast across the U.S. and internationally.
Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War and a long-time peace activist participating in the fast in New York, cited the example of Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, who also fasted for 40 days. “Mairead Maguire wrote: ‘As the children of Gaza are hungry and injured with bombs by official Israeli policy, I have decided that I, too, must go hungry with them, as I in good conscience can do no other.’”
The fast will continue through June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the UN. For details or to sign up, visit the Friends of Sabeel North America website.
Kansas City Catholic Worker Farm Stands with Palestine
St. Isidore Catholic Worker Farm in Cuba City, Wisconsin was featured in a recent article in The Daily Yonder, a newspaper covering the rural United States, about communities of faith agitating for justice in Palestine.
Brenna Cussen-Anglada, who has spent time in Palestine, spoke of how her time there impacts her interactions with the land as a farmer: “I was really moved by Palestinians’ commitment to defending land that they loved,” she said. Read more here.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
Read Rerum Novarum with Maurin Academy
The Maurin Academy's Great Books reading group, led by Laurie Johnson, will meet on Thursday, June 5, at 7 p.m. US Central Time to discuss an early statement on the situation of laborers in industrial capitalism: Rerum Novarum: The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor by Pope Leo XIII (1891). We decided on this work in the wake of the election of Pope Leo XIV, who surely had in mind his predecessor's regard for working-class problems in the relatively new economy when he chose the name.
To register or learn more, email maurinacademy@gmail.com
WORDS FROM THE ELDERS
“On Pilgrimage”
by Dorothy Day, from the February 1960 issue of The Catholic Worker
Anywhere, at any time, we can be reached. Leaders of governments say that none but a madman would launch a war today. But there are many madmen, human senses are faulty, men may think they see and hear approaching planes, bombs, rockets and the button may be pushed to set off a counter offensive. Everything depends on the human element.
[…]
We were all talking at The Catholic Worker of the different kinds of fear, fear of people, bodily fear and spiritual fear, and Judith brought out the idea of “panic” the sudden extreme and groundless fear which Pan was supposed to cause. Which one can come upon in the desert perhaps, and stand in the way of our relationship to God. Joe Zarrella confessed to this fear once, when he, a city youth, felt himself surrounded by the woods on the top of the hills of Easton. To be alone with God it is a matter of terror for poor weak man if you get right down to it. And yet many of our friends have adopted the motto which they out at the top of their letters, “God alone.” And would they not be terrified if suddenly they were confronted by “God alone.” The Jews had this sense of awe, of His power.
(Knowing our frailty, God the Father sent us His son, Jesus, a man like unto us in every way save sin. Suffering hunger, thirst, fatigue, homelessness, fear even,–all temptations. And His blessed mother besides, through whom we can go to Him.)
Yes, there all kinds of fear, and I certainly pray to be delivered from the fear of my brother, I pray to grow in the love which casts out fear. To grow in love for God and man, and to live by this charity, that is the problem. We must love our enemy, not because we fear war but because God loves him.
Read Dorothy’s full column here.
About us. Roundtable is a publication of catholicworker.org that covers the Catholic Worker Movement.
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