'Do You Want to Come Home?'
The spirituality and practicalities of Christ room hospitality. Plus: House of Grace CW clinic update; rooftop garden at Maryhouse; and a no-nukes cow.
Introductions and Milestones
What blockbuster movies are you looking forward to this summer? I haven’t had time to pay attention to what’s coming out, but here at Roundtable, I’m excited to have two interns joining our small team this summer. They will each take a turn introducing themselves in this space in the coming weeks, but for now, brief introductions.
Scarlett Rose Ford is a Master of Theological Studies student at Harvard Divinity School, concentrating in the History of Christianity. She is interning with the Catholic Worker as part of a Certificate of Religion and Public Life in Journalism at Harvard, where she aims to highlight stories that often go uncovered, believing these "small" stories can have the biggest impact. Scarlett previously attended the University of Alabama Honors College, where she studied English and Religious Studies, and she hopes to continue pursuing Catholic journalism after graduation.
Joan Bromberek is a rising senior at Loras College, majoring in International Studies and Politics with minors in History and Peace and Justice. In her free time, she enjoys socializing with friends and traveling. This past semester, she studied abroad in Portugal and had the opportunity to visit many countries in Western Europe, as well as Morocco.
Both internships are paid by third parties—Harvard Divinity School in Scarlett’s case. and a Valder Award scholarship in Joan’s case. Both women will be writing for Roundtable and CatholicWorker.org, focusing mainly on community profiles—although Scarlett has a fascinating piece on Mother Maria Skobtsova, the “Orthodox Dorothy Day,” coming up.
Other good news here at Roundtable: a few weeks ago, our subscriber count passed the 2,000 mark. About 100 of you have also opted to pay for your subscription, which helps free up my time to work on this newsletter and long-form stories such as the pieces on Christ rooms in this newsletter. Thank you!
Now, on to our featured stories.
Jerry
FEATURED
Reviving the Christian Practice of Hospitality
In the third and final installment of our series on Christ rooms, we circle back to Casa Alma CW’s Christ Room Network project, this time focusing on the spiritual and practical underpinnings of Christ room hospitality. We also look at a few people who are doing DIY Christ room hospitality, without any formal support from a wider community. What follows is an excerpt; you can read the entire article at CatholicWorker.org.
Casa Alma was in the midst of a leadership transition at the time of this writing, so no one from the community was available to be interviewed directly. However, a representative the community did provide A copy of the booklet that they developed, Christ Rooms: A Model for Hospitality as a Communal, Spiritual Practice. (The booklet is available for download from the CatholicWorker.org Christ Room page.)
The Casa Alma community members began developing the Christ Room Network program shortly after it opened its first houses of hospitality in 2010, according to the community’s Christ Rooms booklet.
“We began to think about how to expand our efforts and welcome more people in need without losing our character as a small community of volunteers living as Catholic Workers,” the community wrote. “We knew people within our own faith community (and others) who had spare bedrooms in their homes and an inclination to share them. We were friends with empty-nesters whose guest rooms were occupied by family on occasional visits. We knew couples and singles who had a garage apartment or in-law suite. But we didn’t know how those with available rooms could have sufficient support to safely welcome a stranger in need into their extra space.”
The community spent several years researching and discussing how best to provide a way to support Individuals who wanted to do Christ room hospitality.
Besides interviewing other Catholic worker communities, Casa Alma members also relied heavily on the classic book, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl. The book provided a valuable historical, theological, and spiritual framework for doing Christ room hospitality.
For Christians, Pohl writes, hospitality can be a form of spiritual practice: “The practice of hospitality forces abstract commitments to loving the neighbor, stranger, and enemy into practical and personal expressions of respect and care for actual neighbors, strangers, and enemies…. Claims of loving all humankind, of welcoming ‘the other’ have to be accompanied by the hard work of actually welcoming a human being into a real place.”
This spiritual grounding helped to shape some of the practical aspects of The Christ Room Network. For example, the community encouraged potential hosts to examine their own motivations for providing hospitality. They developed a list of qualities that might characterize the ideal Christ room host:
Time in their lives and space in their homes to welcome someone in need.
An active spiritual life and prayer practices to sustain and nourish them.
The ability to identify their motivations for hosting.
The ability to identify areas of hosting which might be challenging to them.
A willingness to enter into relationships of support and accountability.
The ability to resist fixing, changing, or giving unwanted advice to guests.
The community decided not to screen most hosts and guests with criminal background checks, relying instead on pre-existing relationships with hosts and “robust referrals” from social workers, case workers, and pastoral workers for guests.
Another key decision was to not host guests who were struggling with active and untreated addictions or mental health issues out of concern that most hosts “would not have the capacity or expertise to provide stable housing and support in these cases.”
The program also sought to provide lots of structured support: support households provided practical hosting help to host households, and guests were encouraged to select a third-party advocate to ensure their needs were being met. Hosts and guests were encouraged to develop a covenant outlining expectations.
But above all, the community presented Christ room hospitality as a spiritual practice. Sarah Malpass, at the time a Casa Alma board member who also did Christ room hospitality, emphasized that point in a 10-minute video the community created for potential Christ room hosts.
“For folks who are considering opening up their home…I think it’s really important to consider your posture and where you’re coming from,” she said. Christ room hospitality “is not about charity, it’s about intentional community, and so I think it’s important to remember that you’re not just opening up a room, but you’re opening up space in your life.”
The DIY Christ Room
Most people who do Christ room hospitality don’t have anything like the robust support system Casa Alma developed. Some just jump right in.
One veteran Catholic Worker started doing Christ room hospitality from her two-bedroom apartment in the wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. She related her experience in an email to the Roundtable newsletter:
For the past twenty years, I have lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the suburb of a major city. On several occasions, I have used my second bedroom as a Christ room, but I am supposed to get permission from the board of directors of my building before doing so.
My first experience was after Hurricane Katrina. The archdiocese requested rooms and I put my name on the list. Almost immediately I got a call, so I dutifully asked my board of directors. Surprisingly, they said “No.” I found another place for that couple to stay, and after that, I started sneaking people in.
I took in a Spanish-speaking woman who was going to college and used her financial aid to pay a rental on a storage unit for her furniture and other belongings. Then I housed a wonderful woman from Colombia and her growing son. She had huge physical problems, and I became sort of a surrogate mother to her, often taking her to doctors or hospitals. She finally was able to get her own apartment and we still keep in touch. I would also briefly house friends who were visiting or working nearby.
But then I got “caught” by the board somehow, and now they really check up on me a lot so other than housing my daughter for a few months, I seem unable to use my Christ room.
(The author asked to remain anonymous to avoid further antagonizing her building’s board of directors.)
Although Tiff and Al Reynolds worked with the Christ Room Network for a short while, they continued doing Christ room hospitality even after the program was shuttered during COVID. (The community hasn’t revived the program in part because it recently purchased a 10-unit apartment building as part of its hospitality program.)
They welcomed one woman who was referred to them by Casa Alma, and that woman stayed with them for more than a year. Shortly after welcoming that woman, they took in a mother with two young children, too. The other guests they have welcomed in the past few years were all referred to them by others.
“You get a reputation” in the wider community, Al Reynolds said, which leads to more referrals.
That was the case with Irene Amphonsa and her son, Kwame, who came to the United States from Cape Coast, Ghana, to seek specialized treatment for his cerebral palsy.
“We met her through our neighbor who was Kwame’s physical therapist,” Al Reynolds said. “She was living in a room in a house rented by another Ghanaian family and was not being treated very well.”
Amphonsa and her son lived with the Reynolds for four months during the year they were in Charlottesville.
Amphonsa, who is a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, had a good sense of humor, Al said. “She’s funny—we’ll tease each other. And of course, we had our share of African food. I went over and bought some goat with her at the local African store. She made a goat stew.”
Later, the couple visited Amphonsa in Ghana, and she has returned to visit them, too. “For the most part, everybody we’ve gotten has just become another member of our family,” Al said.
The man currently living in their house connected with them through one of their relatives who had gotten to know him through his work in a soup kitchen. The man had been working and living in an apartment, but then he fell and messed up his shoulder, Tiff said.
“So, he couldn’t work, so he lost his job, and then there you go, he lost his apartment,” Tiff explained. He stayed at the Salvation Army for a while, but his time was running out when he approached Tiff’s relative at the soup kitchen. “He couldn’t even sleep in his car because he doesn’t drive, and he doesn’t have a car. So anyway, he was going to be out on the streets.”
The couple don’t create a covenant with their guests, as Casa Alma suggests, although their understanding is that the hospitality—even if it lasts more than a year or two—is temporary. After one of their first guests, Peter, had been living with them for more than two years and had accumulated a sizable savings, they encouraged him to strike out on his own.
Other than that, they don’t really have a lot of rules.
“We basically tell people when they move in, you’re now a member of our family,” Al said. Guests have the run of the house; they are given a house key, an account on the family computer, and if they have a driver’s license, they can borrow a car. They are also invited to help out with maintenance and chores, and many take the Reynolds up on that offer.
Peter really became integrated into the family. After he expressed a desire to improve his English, their granddaughter opened a school for him.
“She was nine years old when I first met her,” Peter said for the Casa Alma Christ room video. “She took me so serious, she almost opened a classroom in the basement for me, with a board, with books, and she would give me homework. If I do something wrong or if I do not do my homework, she’ll make me sign the paper with my mom, which is Tiff.”
Carney and Constantino often received guests through referrals from the other Catholic Worker communities in Kansas City, although sometimes they also just invited people off the street.
“I can remember going out underneath bridges and locating somebody and saying, ‘Come on, let’s go get out from under that bridge,” Carney recalled. “Take up your mat and walk, so to speak.”
Carney met another guest, a talkative man who had schizophrenia, at his AA meeting. (Carney is himself recovering.) After running into him again at the public library, Carney struck up a conversation.
“And I just said to him, ‘What do you do all night? It’s wintertime.’ He said, ‘Oh, I just walk, I just walk and stay warm.’ And I said, well, we have some space. You wanna come home?’”
18 Years Running a Kansas City Christ Room
Husband and wife couple Charles Carney and Donna Constantino offered Christ room hospitality for 18 years before recently moving to a small apartment. Charles recently spoke with Roundtable editor Jerry Windley-Daoust and was briefly joined by Donna during the interview. The following transcript excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity and abridged for length. You can read the entire interview at CatholicWorker.org.
ROUNDTABLE: Talk a little bit about how doing a Christ room like you guys did is different from social work, because you spoke earlier about the difference in the power dynamic. [Carney had worked as a social worker earlier in his life.] And talk a little bit too about how a Christ room is different from a Catholic Worker house.
CHARLES CARNEY: Yeah, well, different from social work in that, first of all, I’m not getting paid. So that dynamic is taken out…so then we’re just kind of buddies. We’re just kind of partners. And if we’re going to the grocery store or if we’re working on, hey, ‘I need a ride to public housing so I can do this application,’ it’s kind of like a couple of friends working on it together, which is actually kind of freeing. And it takes away a lot of that stigma of like, well, you have to be helped. And the power dynamic is different because it’s a mutual kind of endeavor.
And I had lots of those and that was probably the most life-changing thing. Going to the grocery store with Bob, going over to the social security office with Andy and celebrating when he got his social security. Just human-to-human interactions.
I have seen social work do some good with people. But I don’t miss the bureaucracy of having to go through a lot of red tape. Some agencies, a person can make that first phone call and they get right into what they need. But there’s a lot of agencies, they make that first phone call and that there’s so many barriers in the way that they got to go through that they give up.
And I experienced this in helping people get through, like with Kansas Medicaid or with their social security disability. I have helped people get through a lot of those barriers.
The thing I love about the Catholic Worker is there’s no barriers. It’s like, come on in the door and here’s your room and what do you want to do next? We didn’t really have to have many set rules because it was just a few of us. And even the rules that we made could be made as a community of my wife and myself and the two or three other people we had. We did have up to three people at times and that was chaotic because that meant somebody was living in the living room or the basement.
But most of the time we kept it to two and it wasn’t as stressful and overwhelming as, say, Holy Family House, because there wasn’t this constant line at your door. And that allowed us to really do some of the gentle personalism in a deeper understanding and friendship and camaraderie that we might not have gotten when 25 people come through the door asking for food—or well, actually it would have been over a hundred asking for food. So, there was a much more depth of relationship with the Christ rooms.
It was much less stressful, not that it wasn’t stressful at times. It was probably more fun. And it was kind of in line with the original idea of what Dorothy wanted to see.
I think I figured out that like if one out of every 300 households would just take in one person going through homelessness, our problem would be solved. I mean, it would be, it would just take one out of every 300. And so we felt like, well, yeah, this is, it’s not rocket science. We can do this.
ROUNDTABLE: What stories stand out in your mind? Who do you remember?
CHARLES CARNEY: I remember Bob who was, he lived with us on three different occasions.
And the first, with the first time around, Bob’s the one who lived in the back room. In the utility room that wasn’t very well insulated. And we came to learn that he had escaped from prison while he was living with us.
Now, granted, it was a very minimum-security prison. And we had to decide, what do we do? And we decided nothing. He eventually went back to Iowa and turned himself in on his own without any kind of questioning from us.
And after he got out, he showed up at our door again. And we said, okay, come on in. We can at least put you up temporarily.
But it was kind of an honor to think that he felt enough that, you know, like this was home to him. And after he got out of prison, he came back home.
We had another guy who, he was really struggled with alcoholism. And our rule was no drinking or drugs at the house. If you do it outside, you know, we’re not encouraging that. But anyway, this guy was doing, he was living in that back room where Bob used to live.
And he said, he was really on some major benders. And by the time I had caught up with him, how can I say this delicately? His bedroom was, and I don’t know if I should tell this story. It has a good ending, but his bedroom was fouled with excrement.
And his benders were so bad. And that night I said to him, Frank, you can still stay here, but we need to get with your sponsor, your AA sponsor right now. And we need to figure out a plan on how you’re gonna get sober.
Otherwise I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. And he, it was summertime. And he said, take me to the railroad tracks behind Royal Liquors.
There’s a homeless camp over there. And at that point, his addiction was stronger than whatever else was going on in his life. And I took him over there, but we had helped him—we had worked with him together, we had applied for public housing. And on December 22nd, three days before Christmas, I learned that he had gotten that and he was able to get his own place and off the streets. I mean, what a Christmas present!
So let’s see, let me think of one more because I could go on and on. We had a gentleman who really struggled with schizophrenia, and he would just talk and talk and talk.
And, but I remember I knew, cause I had met him in an AA meeting, I’m in recovery. And I think he just came to the AA meetings cause it was a warm place to stay for a while, which I think is totally fantastic. I met him in a library and it was hard to really understand him, where he was going with things.
And I just said to him, what do you do all night? It’s wintertime. He said, oh, I just walk, I just walk and stay warm.
And I said, well, we have some space. Do you want to come home? And he was a lovely guy. I mean, he’s just harmless as could be. And so he came and live with us.
And it turns out that we were able to, he did get his social security benefits, but he loved to travel. And one day he just took off and his dad would call from Texas and his dad had no idea where he was. But then since he was with us, we were able to find out and at least he was able to talk to his dad and his dad knew he was okay.
But then he would just go and he’d have somewhere else like Colorado he wanted to go. And so he, you know, once springtime came around it was kind of like, okay, I’m done with you guys. So anyway, those are a few stories.
Our lives changed way more than probably the people that live with us changed. So anyway.
ROUNDTABLE: Well, tell me a little bit about that. What do you mean when you say your lives changed more? Like how did all of these encounters change you?
CHARLES CARNEY: I guess, you know, I’ve had to take a new life to look at how I see the world. And I’ve gone through times of great trial myself. The only reason probably I didn’t become homeless is because like I said, I have those resources.
I have a college degree. I was able to fake it till I make it, so to speak. And I guess I’m able to look at people and sort of understand, I think this is a big one, Jerry.
I did not understand how much trauma affected people. I was not trauma-informed. And I would just look at the surface of people’s lives and say, why do they keep going from place to place? Why do they keep getting evicted? Why do they have to come here every night for a meal? And then living and working with folks both at Holy Family House and our house, I understood deeply, deeply what trauma does to people.
And, you know, this idea that these are able-bodied people that can just go to work and why do they have to, they wouldn’t be with us if they didn’t really have a need. And, oh, you know, just the power of understanding trauma and, you know, and then the power of community. I also understood that like how much chances, how much it increases people’s chances when they have a roof over their head.
Their chances for recovery from addiction increase. Their chances for getting a new, more permanent place increase. Their chances for getting a job increase.
Their chances for eating right increase. Their chances for getting healthcare increase. And so just to have that roof over their head, you know, I learned that, man, once you get out on that street or you’re in those woods or you’re in that car, it is so much harder.
And it was really a blessing for us to be able to provide a safe place for folks to land and have that, have some basic level of comfort and just a space to work.
House of Grace CW Treats ‘Tranq Wounds,’ Appeals for Volunteers to Provide Health Care
In its latest newsletter, House of Grace Catholic Worker (Philadelphia) criticizes Mayor Parker's plan to end the open-air drug market on Kensington Ave., noting that while a few city blocks appear cleaner, people suffering from substance use disorder (SUD) are now scattered across side streets.
Meanwhile, the community’s free clinic continues to serve the SUD popilation.
“Daily, we meet and treat people suffering with unimaginable wounds,” write Mary Beth Appel and Johanna Berrigan. The wounds are “thought to be a complication of using fentanyl mixed with xylazine called ‘tranq wounds.’ We are conscious that they are also manifestations of much deeper wounds, and a heart-wrenching look at the inadequacies in treatment for people with SUD. At the clinic, we continue to meet people where they are, listen, and try offer what we can with compassion and dignity.”
The community hopes to offer more comprehensive health care at its clinic, beginning by resuming holistic health services. They are appealing for people who are able to provide massage, acupuncture, reflexology, “or any other type of holistic health services.” Dentists and volunteers, with or without medical expertise, are also needed.
In Haiti, the Kay Lasante Clinic has managed to continue operating despite ongoing instability in the country. “We pray daily for their safety.”
You can read all the details in their newsletter, including a nice piece about their sitting garden.
Rooftop Garden at Maryhouse Feeds CW Guests
“A new urban garden provides fresh produce for lunch Tuesday-Friday, served to more than 100 women and children; many are newly arrived migrants,” Currents News reported on Wednesday, June 5. The news piece highlights the efforts of the CW Movements to tend to the ever-growing needs of the Lower East Side community, namely through its rooftop garden.
Starting this spring—shortly after the publication of Pope Francis’ Laudate Deum—new life has been brought to Maryhouse, the 19th-century building where Dorothy Day lived and worked until her death. “We draw a lot of inspiration from Pope Francis,” Catholic Worker Liam Myers explained in the interview. “We think a lot about this connection between the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
View the news item here: Catholic Workers at Maryhouse Help Feed Migrants With New Rooftop Garden. You can also read coverage of the story in The Tablet: A Rooftop Garden Grows in Manhattan to Feed Hungry Migrants.
THE ROUNDUP
On Tuesday, two Catholic Workers began serving sentences at a German women’s prison for repeatedly entering Büchel Air Base in Germany to advocate for a nuclear-free world. Susan Crane of Redwood City, California, and Susan van der Hijden of Amsterdam arrived at the prison slightly late on June 4 after making a 100-kilometer Pilgrimage for Freedom from Nuclear Execution that began on Friday, May 31. The two women were accompanied by many friends and supporters; you can read detailed blog entries about their adventures on the pilgrimage and get their prison addresses at The Nuclear Resister. Read more here: Finding joy in resistance and prison | Campaign Nonviolence
What began as a mitten-making sewing circle has expanded to a sewing ministry at Hildegard House in Duluth, Minnesota. Recently, members of the Duluth Fiber Guild visited the house to give Catholic Workers “lessons in using various stitches, making knots, using a thimble, darning, sewing with a single strong thread, sewing on buttons, and repairing zippers.” Greg Boertje-Obed writes in the Hildegard House spring newsletter, “We have been putting their lessons into practice and have repaired tears, hemmed pants, sewn straps on backpacks, fixed holes in a sleeping bag, and replaced sliders on zippers.” Other articles in the newsletter focus on war tax resistance and an account of the April 15 Midwest Catholic Worker action at the Kansas City National Security Campus.
The St. Louis Catholic Worker House is hosting its first potluck in their new house on Saturday, June 15. There will be a blessing at 2pm immediately followed by food and friendship, and they will be offering tours of the new house until 4pm. Details can be found on their Instagram.
The Akron Catholic Worker seeks three new live-in house managers. Interested persons can find details at the volunteer posting on CatholicWorker.org.
CALENDAR
June 14 | Milwaukee
Join Casa Maria CW at the Capuchin Walk for the Hungry
June 20 | Milwaukee
Casa Maria CW Anti-Gun Vigil
June 24 | Virtual event, Maurin Academy
Eating Up Easter Film Screening
August 10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California
CW Memorial & Action at Vandenberg Space Force Base
September 6-7 | Chicago
Peter Maurin Conference
September 12-15 | Sugar Creek, Iowa
Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering
A FEW GOOD WORDS
What Price Pacifism?
by Fr. Robert A. Brown in the June 1949 issue of The Catholic Worker
No one can be a true Christian pacifist until he has embraced certain basic, spiritual truths (virtue is its own reward), and set about sincerely to incorporate these into his daily living. He may be far from perfect, but he has taken a path which, even from the beginning, opens new vistas ahead. Henceforth, his thinking on war will have clarified, its theology will be understood, and the great law of love will appear in new light, with all Its beauty and magnificence.
At the outset, such a one realizes what it means to be a Christian — that by Holy Baptism he has been elevated to the life of God, the supernatural life. This truth defies description, for who can fathom a mystery whereby mere humans are divinized? Yet by meditating In his heart, such a one becomes so impressed by this truth that he experiences a sort of second conversion; he sees a vision. Then he knows that he can no longer set as a mere human but that all his life’s activities, down to the minutest detail, must harmonize with the demands of his elevated status as a Christian. He cannot now perform mere natural actions, or pursue pleasure for its own sake, or be enamored of the world; for such conduct is opposed to the love and homage due the Most High God. Love, then, with all its exacting implications, unfolds itself unto his innermost soul. Detachment from creatures, abandonment to Will of God, love of the poor, the downtrodden, the persecuted, zeal for the works of mercy, these keep love aglow.
Habitual preoccupation with these truths make for the formation of what is called a Christian mentality. The Individual now, far from thinking, acting, judging, with the world, thinks with the Spouse of Christ, the Church, and with the saints, always mindful of St. Paul's words: “l live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
Gradually, then, yet effectively, the vulgar concept of war, its alleged inevitability, necessity, justice, gives way to the power of the weapons of the spirit and the dynamism of the meekness of Jesus. The utter folly of so much bloodshed asserts itself inexorably; the conviction arises that the religion of Jesus, given at the price of His Blood, once having been tried, can withstand the assaults of any enemy, carnal or spiritual, nay, can even convert him!
Light succeeds light. The traditional stumbling blocks to all out Christian pacifism vanish as smoke. Now one perceives that the wars of the Bible, fought by the command of God in the Old Dispensation, are no argument for war in the New Law. The great Christian battles and crusades, led by saints, ratified by popes, and in a few instances, it seems, by Heaven itself, cannot be adduced to justify twentieth century massacres. Present day warfare has assumed its own proportions; It has created a moral problem peculiar to this our age. Instigated by imperialistic greed, and carried on with demoniacal weapons, war as we know it can never accord with the Gospel of Jesus.
Verily Christianity has never been tried. In practice, we Catholics attribute more power for good to the atom bomb than to the dear virtues of our Christian calling.
Thanks for reading. Roundtable is an independent publication covering the Catholic Worker Movement, and is not run by the New York Catholic Worker or The Catholic Worker newspaper.