Catholic Workers Stand in Solidarity with the Detained and the Starving
Catholic Workers rally for immigrants in the midst of the Los Angeles ICE raids; Christchurch Catholic Workers decry the moral bankruptcy of Israel's actions; and Harry Murray examines St. Joe's
The Power of Accompaniment
On June 6, Angelenos protested the ICE raids happening in Los Angeles. One particular flashpoint was a raid on a Home Depot in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood, whose parking lots serve as hubs for day laborers to connect with contractors. The following day, the Trump administration deployed 2,000 members of the National Guard into Los Angeles. On Monday, the Department of Defense deployed 700 Marines to the city. Governor Gavin Newsom has decried Trump’s actions as illegal and has sued to return control of the California National Guard to the state.
The logic of violence and power that guides the administration’s response to the protests does not bode well for the protection of American citizens—Marines have already detained an American citizen, according to Reuters.
As the protests erupted, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker celebrated the wedding of community members Matt Harper and Hannah Peterson. The festivities did not prevent them from organizing a last-minute vigil over the weekend as well. On Tuesday, they supported an interfaith prayer vigil for immigrants and held their Wednesday public liturgy outdoors to welcome protestors and others looking to gather in public.
This week, one of our Haitian neighbors here in Harrisburg, who fled Haiti in 2019 as his life was threatened and his house burned down, went to Orlando, Florida, for his asylum hearing. He and his family were nervous, as ICE has been arresting asylum seekers at their required court hearings. NPR reports ICE has arrested over 100 immigrants at court hearings and routine check-ins, creating a vile Catch-22: go to your mandatory appointment and risk arrest, or ignore the appointment and be subject to deportation as a no-show.
We spoke with many Catholic Worker friends, trying to find a connection in Orlando who could accompany him. Finally, we found a leader of a local Justice and Peace Ministry at a parish in Orlando who organized a group to meet our neighbor for lunch the day before his court date in Orlando and attended the hearing with him, which concluded safely, without incident.
It was a powerful experience of seeing the Mystical Body of Christ in action. Strangers, separated by thousands of miles, were brought together through their commitment to solidarity with the most marginalized among us whose rights and dignity are being violated as a matter of course. So many forces isolate and separate us, but my heart is constantly softened from stone to flesh by seeing how community finds a way to overcome these forces of division time and time again.
“We are not alone anymore,” Dorothy Day writes in her epilogue to “The Long Loneliness.” As Martin Newell writes in the London Catholic Worker’s newsletter (shared below), it is often extremely difficult to read the hope in the signs of the times. It is hard to believe that love will have the final word, as Dorothy writes. But to see people speaking that love through their actions, saying that most necessary word by putting their bodies alongside our brothers and sisters in danger, gives me hope. May it bring you hope as well.
peace,
Renée
P.S.: If you missed last week’s announcement, we’re looking for volunteers to help do some “maintenance and cleaning” at CatholicWorker.org this summer, beginning in July. Our two main projects involve proofreading and correcting Dorothy Day’s writings and contacting Catholic Worker communities to update the community directory. We’ve received a good response so far, but are still accepting help. If you’re interested, complete one or both of the signup forms below:
If you have already volunteered, thank you. You can expect to hear from us before July 1.
Correction
In our last issue, the caption under a photo of Brian Terrell incorrectly stated that the photo had been taken in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday, June 1. In fact, the photo was taken on Wednesday, June 4, in front of the New York Public Library.
FEATURED
Long Read: How Organized Anarchy Works at a House of Hospitality
On Thursday, we shared the second part of a chapter from Harry Murray’s “Do Not Neglect Hospitality.” Murray covers how Catholic Workers at St. Joseph’s House in New York City make decisions and run the daily soup line. He shares his observations on the rotating “benevolent dictatorship” of “being on the house.”
One cannot comprehend hospitality at St. Joseph's without some understanding of the notion of "taking the house," the rather curious way in which the New York Workers institutionalized anarchism.
Long Read: Finding Hope in Difficult Times
On Friday, we shared two essays from the London Catholic Worker’s most recent newsletter in CW Reads. Martin Newell, one of the house’s co-founders, wrote about reading the signs of the times, and finding hope, even in the midst of the seemingly multiplying darknesses:
Reading our times at this moment in history makes me aware of the apparently powerful gods, idols, and demons of the new world order who blasphemously demand our allegiance, or at least seek to determine our futures. Uppermost in my mind right now are AI (artificial intelligence), the climate and environmental emergency, and Donald Trump and his allies both in the US and elsewhere, ‘moving fast and breaking things’ (or more accurately, breaking people), and his frenemies like Vladimir Putin, playing chicken with nuclear threats and preparations for war that should be no more (Isaiah 2:4). The times feel very dangerous as well as uncertain. We all are being played in a high-stakes game of Russian roulette. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently moved the hands of the Doomsday clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been.
And yet, he writes, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, Catholics have been asked to practice the virtue of hope, which is, he says:
a deep trust that God is good, that God is love, and that Love has come into the world, and continues to do so with each child born and each act of generosity, care, or tenderness.
Read more from the London Catholic Worker’s newsletter here.
COMMUNITY NEWS & NEWSLETTERS
A Letter from Pope Francis to Nazareth House
The latest edition of The Magnificat, the newsletter of Bahay Nazareth (Nazareth House) in Manila in the Philippines, shares the entire text of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on the rights of workers, “to remind the Filipino workers that, as children of God, they have the right to be treated with dignity, fairly and justly.” Noel also shares a story of a “divine sign” he received from Pope Francis:
Back in 2015, when I was considering the possibility of opening Nazareth House (planned for late 2016), I wrote Pope Francis asking for his prayers. I said to myself that if there was a response from the Vatican, I would consider it a divine sign to go ahead. Well, we did obtain a written response from his office (though not a letter signed by him) stating that he will be praying for our intentions. Not quite satisfied that this is really a divine sign, I wrote again later saying that we will name a room after him if we ever did open the house. We received another response saying that the Holy Father was grateful for this kind gesture. So there is a room in Nazareth House called the “Francis Room”.
Read the full newsletter here.
“Israel is losing its soul,” says The Common Good Newsletter
“What price the death of a nation’s soul?” asks Jim Consedine in the most recent newsletter of the Catholic Worker community in Christchurch, New Zealand. Consedine continues:
Israel’s current excessive genocidal attacks, particularly on Gaza and now into Lebanon and Syria, have gradually killed off any high moral standing it may have earned through their rich religious history and will leave its people bereft of any positive spiritual base for the foreseeable future.
The most recent issue of The Common Good also shares (a portion) of the text of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and commemorates Pope Francis. They write of a new weapons company, Rocket Lab, that is contracting with the Pentagon. Read more online here.
Open Door Community Decries Death Penalty, Carceral State
The April/May issue of Hospitality, the newspaper of the Open Door Community in Baltimore, contains several new essays on Lent in “Trumpworld,” the cruelty of the death penalty, and the tragedy of recidivism.
Terrell Receives Peacemaker Award from Pax Christi Metro NY
Brian Terrell (Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker) was among several peacemakers honored by Pax Christi Metro New York at its annual Peacemaker Award Reception on June 7. In his comments, Terrell spoke of coming to the New York Catholic Worker fifty years ago and how the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day “set the course of my life.” You can watch an 8-minute video of his acceptance speech on Pax Christ Metro New York’s YouTube channel.
CW IN THE MEDIA
“They Kidnapped Us”: Israel Intercepts the Freedom Flotilla
On Monday, the Israeli military seized The Madleen, a ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. They took into custody twelve activists who were attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and bring humanitarian aid to the two million Gazans facing starvation. The United Nations reported on Friday that the Israeli authorities rejected eight out of 18 United Nations attempts to coordinate a peaceful distribution of aid. Hospitals report that more than 200 Gazans have been killed at aid distribution sites—shot while trying to get flour to feed their families. Cassandra Dixon, part of the community at Mary House Catholic Worker in Adams County, Wisconsin, shared her reaction to the news of The Madleen’s seizure in an email with Roundtable:
I was in Malta with the group that hoped to sail on the Conscience in early May, and all of us were devastated by the drone attack that disable the Conscience and prevented us from delivering the aid on board to Gaza.
Clearly the world must step in and force an end to Israel's Genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing and settler colonial occupation of the West Bank. Our governments are failing us in this time but it is also our personal responsibility to call on them loudly and constantly to stop enabling the death and destruction unfolding daily in our names with our tax dollars.
Nowhere in the world is this more true than in the United States. A 2016 Memorandum of Understanding committed the U.S. to providing $3.8 billion annually in military aid to Israel through 2028. In addition, since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has spent $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel.
As of press time, ten activists of the twelve activists had been deported and two of the French nationals are still in Israeli custody.
Read more on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera
Fast for Gaza Featured in Bar Crawl Radio
Bar Crawl Radio, a local New York City podcast, interviewed Brian Terrell and Kathy Kelly about the 40-Day fast that several Catholic Workers are participating in in New York City. Kathy Kelly shared stirring remarks she wrote for a recent article on the famine in Gaza. She said:
Life becomes limited when we accept that it must be a nightmare for the weak, when we confess that we are more addicted to comfort than we are to compassion – when the service of our appetites causes us to ignore the starving and those deliberately consigned to flames.
You can listen to the episode here.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
Dorothy Day Spanish Language Book Club
The Dorothy Day Guild is hosting four sessions of reading the Spanish translation of Day’s first autobiography, Mi conversión: De Union Square a Roma (From Union Square to Rome). The book club will meet on Tuesday evenings from July 8 to August 5, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
It is open to all those interested—you do not have to be fluent in Spanish. This reading group, which will meet on Tuesday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. To register for the Spanish language book club, you can use this form.
Long Loneliness Book Club
The Dorothy Day Guild is sponsoring a book club reading The Long Loneliness over the course of six Sunday evenings, starting Sunday, June 29, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time and continuing until Sunday, August 3. You can register for the book club using this form.
Dandelion House Sponsors “The Fierce Nonviolence Pilgrimage”
Dandelion House (Portland, Oregon) is hosting an 11-day immersion for young adults this summer focused on the people and places in the Pacific Northwest impacted by the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The 2025 Fierce Nonviolence Pilgrimage is an immersive experience exploring the spiritual roots and daily practices of nonviolent social change. The pilgrimage integrates political organizing strategies with spiritual reflection and community living. Participants will engage in contemplative practices, hands-on organizing training, and site visits to Spokane, Hanford, and Seattle/Puget Sound. The pilgrimage runs July 28 – August 7; get more details at the Fierce Nonviolence website.
WORDS FROM THE ELDERS
“A Constructive Road to Peace”
by Dorothy Day, from her column “On Pilgrimage” in the September 1976 issue of The Catholic Worker
Peter Maurin said we should try to build a society where it was easier to be good. And that is what the Catholic Worker is trying to do. And what the peace movement in the U.S. is trying to do.
People ask me, on my travels, (or young visitors to our houses and farms) and speak as though the peace movement is dead. They speak of the 60’s as though they were a time of fruitful activity, which they were not. They were a time of anger and turbulence, even. But I like to call attention to Bob and Marge Swann, both of whom spent six months in prison for trespassing on missile bases.
They were the ones to bring [E.F.] Schumacher [author of a book Dorothy Day loved—”Small is Beautiful”] to America, to speak at Harvard, and at N.Y. City College. They circulate the literature of a “new society, built within the shell of the old,” as Peter said. They will send you a list of the literature they have on hand […] to start you on a constructive road to peace.
Land trusts, credit unions, cooperatives, decentralization, a redistribution of land – this is the living peace movement today. “There can be no revolution without a theory of revolution.” So on with the study of theory which leads to action.