Review: Dorothy Day by Kate Hennessy

A Book Review with a bit of my own biography

In the interest of full disclosure, I mention that I am the son of a couple depicted in this book, who first were followers of Dorothy Day but later part of the group that broke away from her Catholic Worker movement. My parents did then continue to live on a back-to-the-land farm community generally based on CW principles. Thus, as one of a family of ten children, Dorothy Day’s story and work was a background component very much a part of our upbringing.

That Dorothy Day is currently a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church—and is as deserving of emulation as any in that category—is an issue Kate eases past in the book, a tact I appreciate as I believe such a title would put the humanity her granddaughter so skillfully depicts on a pedestal beyond the reach of the many, myself included, for whom sainthood might mean little but Dorothy’s example might mean so much.

That Dorothy Day is currently a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church—and is as deserving of emulation as any in that category—is an issue Kate eases past in the book, a tact I appreciate as I believe such a title would put the humanity her granddaughter so skillfully depicts on a pedestal beyond the reach of the many, myself included, for whom sainthood might mean little but Dorothy’s example might mean so much.

Although I am about ten years older than Kate with the “divorce” between the Catholic Worker (including Dorothy, Tamar and her children) and the community in which I was raised occurring around the time of my birth (detailed in Chapter 11), I remembered, from a child’s viewpoint, of course, many of the people, places, and ideas in the book. And reading Kate’s detailed descriptions brought back unexpected memories, from its deeply painful aspects to the buried pleasures of growing up in a rugged back-to-the-land manner of living that few modern Americans have experienced. While I would not advocate such a lifestyle wholesale, Kate’s depiction of it reminded me that something akin to it could serve, even in memory, as a spiritual retreat like Henry David Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden Pond. I believe that even those who have never experienced anything like Kate’s or my upbringing will taste a certain nostalgia for the simpler life from her book.

Along with considerable drama and humor: since the author was from a family of nine (as one of ten myself it really resonated), the story of Tamar’s tribe transplanted to a habitat separated from its peers, made Kate’s description of sibling interaction uncommon but endearing. Mix in a multitude of goats, horses, cows, dogs, clunky cars, and really bad-tasting food, and parts of the book are right out of Dickens—only it ain’t fiction, as I can attest.

Dorothy Day and Religion

Religion, obviously, is part of the mix; Dorothy’s organization is called the Catholic Worker. That Dorothy’s way, as well as the one I was raised in, was “more Catholic than the Pope,” as the saying goes, has some truth to it; she did not spare the clergy when a tendency to luxury contradicted the Works of Mercy.  Kate includes both sides of the religious conundrum (neither Tamar nor most of her children remained Catholic) but settles gently, as did Dorothy much of the time, on a preference for the perennial principles of true spirituality over a particular creed, the spirit over the letter of religion.

I got to the end of Kate Hennessy’s Dorothy Day with nary a taste of haughty hagiography in my mouth, for which I am grateful. Instead, I found it a good, beautiful, and true presentation of a visionary grandmother and her devoted daughter as told by a talented and affectionate granddaughter, all three of whom were convinced, as the subtitle states, that even if all hell seems to be breaking loose, “the world will be saved by beauty.”