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Sunday Liturgy Call to Self-Giving: Dies Domini, John Paul II and Virgil Michel, O.S.B.

In an apostolic letter on Sunday observance (July 30, 1998), Dies Domini, Pope John Paul II encourages Christians “to rediscover the meaning of Sunday: its mystery, its celebration, its significance for Christian and human life.” Fundamentally a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Sunday observance invites believers to relive “the experience of the two disciples at Emmaus,… continue reading

Voluntary Poverty at Heart of Catholic Worker Movement

This article, the sixteenth in the series on the Roots of the Catholic Worker movement, features voluntary poverty, one of the marks of the movement. The great message which Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has for the world today is the message of voluntary poverty. John Cort, friend of Peter’s and still… continue reading

Dorothy declared Peter Maurin Saint of the CW Movement

Dorothy Day credited Peter Maurin as being the heart and soul of the Catholic Worker movement. She would be the first to proclaim him the saint of the movement. Peter was filled with the history and tradition of Catholicism, as well as an extensive knowledge of papal encyclicals. This was Peter’s common ground. He was… continue reading

U.S. JAILS FILLED WITH IMMIGRANTS: AN ENORMOUS EXPENSE

Juan José, a Latin American teenage immigrant being held in the INS Detention Center in Houston, wept as he told his story. For all of his life, he had fulfilled the promise he made to his mother of saying three Hail Mary’s each night for purity, only to lose his virginity to some 49-year-old criminal… continue reading

Poor Teach Hard and Dreadful Love: A Disillusioned Catholic Worker Stays On

Marion Maendel came to Casa Juan Diego from the Bruderhof. She was baptized into the Catholic Church in March 2000. It’s another suffocating Houston night. Air, warm and thick as smoke, cloaks the city and settles in folds between the buildings on Rose Street. I sit in my second-story room in Casa Juan Diego House… continue reading

“The Mystery of the Poor is This: They are Christ.” (Dorothy Day)

Alfredo, who spent the summer at Casa Juan Diego’s men’s house, is a seminarian from Colombia with the Scalabrini Fathers, studying theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. It was six years ago when I first read a copy of the Houston Catholic Worker. I was in my first year of studies with the… continue reading

“Economic Personalism” is a Fraud: The Solution to Capitalism

You don’t have to be a genius to realize the failure of Marxism. Even before 1989 one could have realized that Marxist regimes were not built on Marxist ideologies and theory, but were built on the rather strange foundation of tens of millions of bodies of the proletariat who disagreed with the regime. The foundation… continue reading

Encyclicals Indict Greed of Companies: Mexicans not Paid Living Wage in U.S. Maquiladoras

Andrew Wright will soon be married to Blossom Mueller, fellow Catholic Worker. They will begin their family life by making the retreat which Fr. Hugo gave so often to Dorothy Day, as part of their honeymoon. As more immigrants arrive each day with the dusty, greasy clothes on their backs I am reminded of what… continue reading

Baroness calls Dorothy Day a Saint

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, a refugee of the Russian Revolution, began working with the poor during the Great Depression, opening Catholic Friendship Houses in Toronto, Harlem and later Chicago. She went on to establish the Madonna House Lay Apostolate in 1947, which is based in Combermere, Ontario, Canada. Since her death in 1985, her lay… continue reading

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin Creative in their Approach to the Labor Movement (Labor & Workers)

This article, on labor and support for workers, is the fifteenth in our series on the Roots of the Catholic Worker movement, the saints, philosophers and ideas which influenced Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. When Dorothy Day became Catholic, a priest asked her to write the story of her conversion, telling how the social teaching… continue reading