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Fr. John Hugo, Spiritual Director to Dorothy Day, calls us to follow Jesus

This is the eighth article in a series on the philosophers, saints and spiritual guides who inspired Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in founding and living out the vision of the Catholic Worker. This issue features Fr. John Hugo, who developed the famous retreat that became also the Catholic Worker retreat. Fr. John J. Hugo,… continue reading

Reflections of a Guilty Bystander

Justin Vorbach was a teacher in Seattle for two years before coming to 
live at Casa Juan Diego as a Catholic Worker. I came to work at Casa Juan Diego in August. The past six months have 
been challenging but ultimately very rewarding. One rewarding
 experience has been studying U.S. history with Jacobo, a sixteen-year-old… continue reading

St. Teresa of Avila inspired Dorothy Day – Saint Teresa of Avila and Dorothy Day rebelled against Mediocrity

This is the seventh article in a series on the philosophers and spiritual guides who inspired Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in founding and living out the vision of the Catholic Worker. In this issue we feature St. Teresa of Avila. When she came into the Catholic Church soon after the birth of her child,… continue reading

New Legs, New Needs, Mail-Order Brides and New Friends

Julio Cesar jumped from a train in Odom, Texas, but slipped and fell under the wheels, losing a leg. He doesn’t remember a thing, but woke up in the county hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. The hospital social worker who called us remembered that he had sent us guests when he worked in Victoria, Texas–again a person in an… continue reading

An Immigrant’s Story of his Journey: I Had to Keep going and Arrive in Houston

The migrants who arrive in Casa Juan Diego tell of the difficulties in their countries that contribute to migration. Some years ago refugee youth from the civil war in El Salvador arrived in Los Angeles, where they learned about the life of gangs and delinquents from that area and were later deported. Then the International… continue reading

Room for Christ

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that… continue reading

Christian Contemplation not for Privileged Few, but for All (Jacques Maritain)

As a child I was brought up in “liberal Protestantism.” Later on I became acquainted with the different phases of secularistic thought. The scientist and phenomenist philosophy of my teachers at the Sorbonne at last made me despair of reason. At one time I thought I might be able to find complete certitude in the… continue reading

Christians must Transform the World: No Revolutions based on Hate and Greed (Jacques Maritain)

We have said that in the ordinary course it is principally by its sincerity or single-mindedness that an effort at reform or revolution is made effective and that it has a chance of success in the actual order o things. But how is this possible in the case of an effort to renew the temporal… continue reading

The Saints Refuse to Accept Evil (Jacques Maritain)

I take the liberty of insisting thereon: if Christians, in effect, were to renounce keeping in their hearts the desire for sanctity (even if they only desire it very distantly, excessively distantly, even if they live in evil), this would be an ultimate betrayal against God and against the world. The saints participate throughout the… continue reading

Pure Means – Ethical Choices (Jacques and Raissa Maritain)

(A free translation by Peter Maurin from a chapter in the untranslated volume of Maritain–The Temporal Regime and Liberty. (Later published in English as Freedom in the Modern World.) 1. GOING TO THE ROOTS In trying to bring the spirit of the Gospel, the spirit of integral humanism into the cultural  and temporal order, people fail to realize  the… continue reading