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From Union Square to Rome

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Here is an early work of Dorothy Day, who tells the story of her conversion from Communist journalist to Catholic Worker. Much of what she wrote here in 1938 would be taken up in her book "Loaves and Fishes", written more than a decade later. This first recounting of her faith journey, however, has a freshness and immediacy that the later work does not share. Part of this is because she write largely in the "second person" -- that is, she addresses her book to her brother, making an account of her heart and her life to this younger sibling with whom she shared so many ideals but not the Christian faith. Of course, this is part of the genre. Dorothy Day published her reflections to her brother in book form, so I take this to mean that she wanted to direct her message it for many other brothers and sisters, unbelievers and believers. In telling her story, she raises the hot issues of social justice, human solidarity, faith in life, prayer and self-sufficiency, politics and ethos.

"From Union Square to Rome" was written 70 years ago, and Dorothy Day died nearly three decades ago... but she comes alive in these pages and presses you, as reader, to take stock of your own beliefs and lifestyle. Thanks, Dorothy Day! I'm so glad that I found this book of yours!

Having begun to read the CW in college in the mid sixties, and finding their ideals very appealing as war hysteria was building up, i had a chance to actually visit their soup kitchen while they were on chrystie st. and shortly thereafter, their farm up river, where Dorothy Day herself opened the door.
Her books are just that, an opening of the door into her life and thought and
friendships. Her style is clear and honest, she is a careful writer, but avoids literary artifice; she is, by vocation, a reporter - an excellent reporter of her own life and intellectual and spiritual development.
what most impressed me about my first visit, was how closely the reality was to the theory. Most of us open the door to our friends. She opened the door to the world,right there on the bowery,in the middle of a lot of misery, and was willing to sit down and talk, and share her life and faith with whoever came in.
if you didnt meet her 'in life' you can meet her in her books. her writing is not like a 'beautiful' painting, its like an honest photograph.

This reprint of Dorothy Day's autobiographical "From Union Square to Rome"--a title Day disliked--contains the Introduction that appeared in the original 1938 edition. This introduction acknowledges the controversy surrounding Day's conversion to Catholicism: "The circumstances that led to her conversion are strange--so strange that even now after many years in the Church [eleven years] there are those who do not believe that she is a Catholic, but rather an enemy boring from within" (p. 1). I met Dorothy Day twice, in the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, and I was awed to meet someone who many proclaimed as a living saint. I read this book, "The Long Loneliness," and both her "On Pilgrimage" books (one covering 1948, and the other the 1960s). My rereading of these books has changed my view of Day: she was no saint. "From Union Square to Rome" is essential to evaluate Day's cause for canonization, urged and partly financed by the Archdiocese of New York. In proposing Day for sainthood, Cardinal John O'Connor informed Rome that Day left Communism behind when she converted. "From Union Square" reveals that he made an erroneous statement.

Writing to explain her conversion to her Socialist younger brother, Day includes many passages defending socialism and Communism. While stating her gratitude for the gift of the Catholic faith, Day describes how the idealism of her noble Communist friends helped lead her to the Church. She contrasts their zeal for the "masses," the "workers," and the "poor" with the complacency and inaction of many or most Catholics. She states her love for her Communist friends, which persisted post-conversion. While Day claims in "From Union Square" that the "Catholic Worker" ("CW") was created to provide a Catholic alternative to the Communist "Daily Worker," she neglects to mention that she sent Catholic Worker Christmas greetings to the "Daily Worker," which were printed in the latter's December 25, 1936 issue (Byrne, p. 43, cited below). In addition, on page 77 Day describes hearing Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, one of the organizers of the 1916 Mesabi miners' strike in Minnesota, appeal in a public speech for funds. Day was so impressed she gave all her cash to the cause, even her return bus fare.

As a Catholic, Day maintained her contact and friendship with Gurley Flynn, who was one of the three founders of the US Communist party and its first female Chairperson. Carol Byrne reveals these facts in her 2010 "The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis," available from Amazon. Day spoke with Gurley Flynn in the 1950s at a Union Square rally in New York, and spectators called Day "Moscow Mary" (Byrne, pp. 5-6 and supplementary notes). In her diary,"The Duty of Delight" (2008), Day recorded on December 23, 1958: "After the Harper visit met Ammon [Hennacy] at 12th St. and visited [Elizabeth] Gurley Flynn and her sister who has been ill" (p. 248). On September 16, 1964, Day wrote again in her diary: "Dreamed last night of writing speech for Gurley Flynn's memorial service at Community Church next Tues. They called me up about it and I told them I would write a letter" (p. 361). Day's letter praising Flynn was read publicly at the memorial service. Flynn had already had a State funeral in Moscow's Red Square with Khruschev present (Byrne, p. 6).

She maintained a similar long-term friendship with Communist "proletariat novelist" and lifetime "Daily Worker" columnist Mike Gold (born Irving Granich). She praised Gold's novel "Jews Without Money" at least twice in the "CW": once in February 1970 and again in September 1980. She did not mention that the novel ends with the hero praying for a Marxist worker's revolution to occur in the US and emancipate the working class, or that one of Gold's favorite phrases in the novel was "O workers' Revolution! . . . You are the true Messiah!" (Byrne, pp. 16-19 and supplementary notes; wikipedia "Mike Gold").

As Byrne documents (pp. 6-8), distance was a mere inconvenience to Day's maintaining a friendship with Anna Louise Strong, an American Communist "journalist" who died in Communist China, where she was an intimate of Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai and received a full State funeral. Strong was eulogized by Day in the June 1970 "CW." Day had written to Strong in China for years, although the letters had to go to Canada to be forwarded by a friend, as the US forbade mail to China (Byrne, pp. 6-8).

A reading of Stephane Courtois et al's "The Black Book of Communism" (1999), Paul Kengor's "Dupes" (2010), Mona Charen's "Useful Idiots" (2003), "Love Letter to America" by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, writing under the pseudonym Tomas Shuman (1984), and "The Sword and the Shield" (1999) by Vasili Mitrokin and Christopher Andrew enabled this reviewer to recognize the inconsistencies, emotionalism, and exaggerations that characterize Day's lifelong writing. They revealed Day as a propagandist and apologist for the Soviet Union and Communism. Day is supposedly striving to practice charity to all her brothers in Christ and to adopt a "personalist" view of people as individuals loved by God. (She calmly told Mike Wallace in an interview that God loves Adolph Hitler.) But Day was unable to love successful heads of US corporations. Her charity flew out the window as she tongue-lashed these individuals. An example is her reaction to Catholic philanthropist Charles Schwab:

I wheeled [my baby] in her little carriage along the road which led down to St. Joseph's Home, a former estate of Charles Schwab, which had been given to the Sisters of Charity....
That estate had been one of my stumbling blocks. I could never pass it without thinking of Schwab's career as head of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, of his work in breaking the Homestead strike, of how he, to this day, refuses to recognize unions of workers in his Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
I could not but feel that his was tainted money which the Sisters had accepted. It was, I felt, money which belonged to the workers. He had defrauded the worker of a just wage. His sins cried to heaven for vengeance. He had ground the faces of the poor. "Let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head" (Psalms 140:5), I thought with the Psalmist. "He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor, is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presence of his father." "He that sheddeth blood, and he that defraudeth the labourer of his hire, are brothers." (Ecclesiasticus 34:24-27). The words of the son of Sirach went through my brain, wearying me. (pp. 136-137)

What a contrast this passage condemning a successful capitalist whose fortune helped to care for orphans is with Day's plea in the April 1948 "CW" requesting her readers' prayers and sympathy for "Papa Marx" and Lenin, both of whom she presents as secular saints--going so far as to use the Gospel phrase applied to Christ--"He went about doing good"--to Lenin! "From Union Square" makes clear that Day never abandoned her Red colors, which were more important to her than sanctity. Day said, "Don't call me a saint! I don't want to be dismissed so easily." Let's abide by her wishes.