The Spirituality of Dorothy Day's Pacifism

Abstract

decade before her conversion to Catholicism, while a young radical journalist, Dorothy Day became a public opponent of war, a pacifist, according to the inclusive preWorld War I definition of the word.1 Day's advocacy of pacifism at the time emerged from two interwoven sources. The radical movement's penetrating critique of militarism, war, and imperialism helped to initiate and shape her opposition to war. Underlying her radical humanism, never having entirely disappeared from her childhood, was Day's precocious and profound understanding that the core of Christian belief and practice involved loving God and one's neighbor. When as a young adult she rejected organized Christianity, radicalism appealed to her precisely because she found its concern for ordinary people to be compatible with the authentic teaching of Christ. Adult conversion to Catholicism transformed her antiwar beliefs and practices. Traditional religious practices together with the ongoing renewal of Catholicism during the first half of the twentieth century enabled Day to adopt Christian nonviolence and absolute pacifism as her personal values and the aims of the Catholic Worker movement. While the young radical had allowed for violence in class warfare and in revolution, as an adult Catholic, Day rejected all war and all violence on principle. Conversion emboldened and empowered her to educate and follow her conscience and to act on her beliefs, with or without the support of Church leadership. Her Catholic pacifism, fruit of eclectic spiritual and secular influences, exhibited attributes shared by and different from the pacifism of her radical life. These influences included insightful reading of the Gospels, reflection on Church teachings,